You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 315, August 2009
by Mykel Board

When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it immediately as the god he worshiped. After all, "he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action in his life." To Jonathan Swift in 1726 that was worth a bit of satire. Modernity was under way. We're all Gullivers now. --James Gleick

BBC NEWS reports that garden snails are evolving slower metabolisms. Snails with lower metabolisms are at an advantage because they have more energy to spend on other activities such as growth or reproduction, the researchers say in the journal Evolution.

Scientists measured the size of almost 100 garden snails and gauged their standard metabolic rate. After seven months, they recaptured the animals, collecting the empty shells of those which had died. They found size did not predict which animals survived. But metabolic rate did, with surviving snails having a metabolic rate 20% lower than that of the snails that didn't survive. The lower each snail's metabolic rate, the greater its chance of survival.

The researchers now plan to answer the ultimate question: is having a slow metabolism linked to moving slowly? If it is, that means that snails are not only evolving to use energy more slowly, but are increasingly moving at an even lower snail's pace.

****

I'm shooting a double streamer, missing on both sides. The twin yellow rivulets splash against the mensroom floor. I try re-aiming. One side finds the target. The other strays so far to the left it soaks the toilet paper against the wall. I try to correct it. But by now, I'm dribbling to a halt. Quickly, I stuff myself back into my pants. An extra, hidden stream leaks out and down the inside of my leg. Fuck, it's my last pair of jeans. I'm gonna smell like piss for a week.

Them's the breaks. I got 15 minutes between classes. If I spend too much time pissing, I'll never get to buy lunch. Shaking my newly wet leg, I run downstairs to the Cuban restaurant for a pair of empenadas. One chicken. One beef. I'll eat 'em on the elevator on the way back to work.

Flashback to this morning: The alarm rings. 7:20AM-- realtime. My clocks read 8. I set 'em 40 minutes fast so I have NO travel time. If I have to be somewhere at nine, I leave at nine, my time. I'm never late. Most people have to subtract transportation from their daily itineraries. Not me. I leave when I have to arrive. I teleport.

Since I don't have to be teaching until 9AM, I have half an hour until I even think about getting ready. With semen still sticking to my pubic strands, I figure I can skip my usual first morning activity. And what else do you do at 7:20-- real time? FACEBOOK, of course.

So I check a discussion about my trip to the South with Sid. I don't remember the details. Something about how I think Southerners are cool. A lot of people join this discussion. A few insults fly. Pretty soon we'll get to the NAZI stage. You know, Godwin's law? Everything gets to the Nazi stage.

Not that all Nazi references are irrelevant here. Sid and I did shake hands with the South Carolina representative of the National Socialist Party. But I don't think I wrote about that, so it won't be on Facebook... yet.

Among the disussionites is a pal from Beloit. A guy I reconnected with after 30 years of no contact. Out of the blue the way things happen on Facebook.

Yo Mykel, remember me? Add me to your friends list.

Flash ahead: I'm on my way back from work. The subway seat next to me empty... on both sides. It must be the smell of piss. I've got stuff to do tonight. Fix the Drink Club/Eat Club website. Finish the blog from the Tennessee trip. Sell the family jewels on eBay. Tons of shit. Not a second of free time. Come right home and... check in with Facebook.

My former college pal has banned me. I didn't jump to his defense. I let him twist in the wind. Now he's mad.

I was gone! Working. 12 hours away from the computer and "I abandon a friend of 30 years." Do I need to stay epoxied to the keyboard to keep my friends? How 'bout some time to respond? Time, huh?

Flash far back: It's 1969, Madison Wisconsin. I come here for the riots, a few weeks every year. I've snorted enough crystal meth, for the ride and the weekend. I'm so wired I can feel each individual nerve. I follow them, one by one from the parietal to the spinal chord, to the tips of my fingers or my penis. They're on. Full volume. My brain and body are racing.

Bus door opens. POW, I'm out of the bus. Fist in air. Power to whoever's asking for it. My army helmet on. Shouting at the cops standing rather innocently on the sidelines.

You're vegetable! I yell at them. Broccoli, potatoes, zucchini! (Zucchini?)

Amazingly enough, they don't give me the head-smashing I deserve. Instead, they stand patiently, teeth gritted, as I abuse them some more.

Methedrine is wonderful. It lets you go more than full tilt. Move at the speed of light. Stand in front of a moving train and stop it with one hand. Fly. Stand in front of a line of armed cops and call them vegetables. Anything. I'm God.

They give speed to U.S. soldiers in Iraq. They too can do anything. Face roadside bombers. Torture them. Kill kids. They're God!

Flashback to April 2009: Sid and I are in Tullahoma Tennessee. It's somewhere in the middle of our Southern tour. Sid is on budget freeze. He's just been canned from his business research job. He's fighting an unemployment claim with this boss. Newly impoverished, he faces his first trip to The South.

Our host here, a smooth-faced boyish young man named Seth, has the day planned out for us. We've just arrived, and after a leisurely Mexican dinner, we go to the creek to look at the beavers.

That's it. Just some chewed down trees and some eyes reflected in our flashlights. We don't do anything else. Just look. Once or twice there's the sound of water. A splash. That's it. Just Sid, Seth, me and the beavers. What a bore! I could be... what? On Facebook? Complaining about Hitler? Losing a friend? No no no. There is NOTHING I could be doing more important that just hanging out here watching beavers.

This is Tullahoma and after watching beavers, we go to sleep and get up the next day... and shoot guns.

Seth takes us to his parents' house. Mom's gonna make dinner for us. Barbecue, cornbread, grits, everything. But we have a whole day. Sid's never shot a gun before. I've done it many times, and love it. Seth also has a shotgun. I've never shot a shotgun before.

Seth and I trudge through the weeds on the other side of the country road he lives on. Together, we lift up an old truckhood to use as the backdrop for our bullets to come. We lug the hood to the front yard of Seth's parents' ramshackle house.

"Dad keeps building," he tells us. "Always a new room, a new porch. It just keeps growing. Takes its time. We got no deadline."

Seth peels some florescent targets from a sticky sheet and pastes them on a piece of wood in front of the truck hood.

Then, he goes through gun safety procedure, like a boy scout leader.

Aside: In my experience, it's gun owners, collectors and good ole' boys who are most careful about guns. Illegal pistol packers in the North are the ones that don't have a clue. I bet if you check accidental gun death stats, you'll find a much higher percentage where guns are tough to get. Where everyone has one-- or two, they know how to handle them. End of Aside.

Sid prefers the single action rifle. Put in a bullet, aim, and fire. Seth takes the semi-automatic. I want the shotgun.

Seth and I stand back as Sid takes his first shot. He loads the bullet and points the front of the gun in the general direction of the target....and the country road.

"Here comes a car," says Sid, taking aim. "Let's get 'em!"

"No!" shouts Seth. "That's my grandfather!"

As directed during the safety instructions, we raise the gun barrels and stand AT EASE. The car passes and Seth waves hello. It really is his grandfather.

Then we watch as Sid again fixes the front of the gun toward the targets. BLAM! There's no sound of a bullet hitting anything. BLAM! Again, nothing. Not even the truck hood. Where did the bullets go?

I worry about depleting the local fauna.

Seth sets a water jug in front of the targets.

"Here's something bigger," he says. "Just take your time, and make the little ball look like it's resting in the little notch on the top of the barrel."

We move back as Sid takes aim.

BLAM!

Somewhere on the other side of the road, a tree rattles a bit.

Sid shakes his head in frustration.

"I'll never get this," he says.

Suddenly, his eyes brighten and he takes a deep breath.

"My old boss," he says, taking aim.

BLAM! The top of the water jug. Shot clean off. A perfect hit. Relieved, we all shoot... for hours.

We kill targets, water jugs, clay pigeons, but not time. We're USING time, not killing it. Enjoying the moments. Sometime, Mom will call us for dinner and we'll go inside. Until then, we shoot.

At dinner. Mom and Dad say a little prayer and we eat. Great hosts, except mom is a little upset. We can see it in her eyes, and her actions. Seth will be leaving. The last of her sons to do so. He's moving to San Francisco, leaving Tullahoma.

"There's nothing to do here," says Seth.

The point: About 10 years ago, James Gleick wrote a book called, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything. In that book, he talked about how things were going faster. Every day brought a modern "convenience," that sped up the pace of living. What you used to expect in a week, you now expect in a day. In 2009, it's an hour.

Things go so fast that I grease up a dildo and by the time it finds it's way through my rectal arch d'triumph, I'm ten years older. Last millennium is the last decade already. Jee-zuz fuckin' Methuselah.

Speed kills. Yeah, it kills time. Contrary to the image of the multi-tasking, databasing, texting, super-efficient time savers. Speed destroys time. It makes it gone... usually in something as worthless as Facebook.

Watching beavers or spending hours shooting an old truck hood. That saves time. And it saves it in the best possible way. It's probably illegal to say KILL YOUR BOSS, so I won't. But I will say throw away your watch. Don't worry about being late. There is no late. We all end up in the same place. Maybe it's better to take our time getting there.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->Just to let you know dept: My college pal reconsidered and unbanned me. He even apologized for his rash action. Of course, that's not the point. This isn't about him. It's about speed. Everybody's rash actions. There's no time for any other kind.

--> Let's make NOT NICENESS illegal dept: I almost sent $10 to People for the American Way. They're a cool liberal group that wants socialized healthcare and opposes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, on their homepage is rousing support for HATE CRIMES legislation.
    THOUGHT CRIMES legislation is more like it. If I hit you and keep quiet, I get 90 days in jail. If I hit you and yell Take that whitey! I get years.
    Makes me embarrassed to be a liberal. When are these guys gonna realize you cannot OUTLAW hate?

-->Maybe Sid will remember dept: Sid Yiddish proofreads and edits my columns before I send them off to the MRR tribal chieftains. I don't remember if I wrote this one, sent to me on MySpace. He says I didn't use it yet so:

   Q. How many green anarchists does it take to change a lightbulb?
    A. None-because a lightbulb cannot be changed, it must be smashed!

-->Obama does another thing right dept: The President discontinued an annual Religious Right-focused prayer service held during the previous eight years at the White House.
    Though Obama has indicated that he will sign a proclamation recognizing the National Day of Prayer, no special White House prayer service will be held. This stands in contrast to G. W. Bush. He invited James and Shirley Dobson and other Religious Right leaders to the White House for an annual government-sponsored prayer service.

-->Obama does the wrong thing dept: American bombers killed 95 children in Afghanistan, and when U.S. puppet leader Hamid Karzai demanded an end to the bombing, Obama's National Security Advisor told him: "We can’t fight with one hand tied behind our back."
    I say maybe you should keep the hand tied, and quit fighting.
    Anyway, Obama fired the commanding general in Afghanistan, and replaced him with Lieutenant General Stanley A. McChrystal. A guy the brilliant blogger, Jacob Freeze, called the Richard B. Cheney of the US Army!
    According to Freeze: McChrystal got yanked out of the shadows when 34 of his boys were disciplined for torturing detainees. In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball.
    Obama, pull out. You need to learn a thing or two from history. Very recent history.

-->There ain't nothin' like a Dane dept: According to a report released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the world's happiest countries are Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands. Outside Europe, New Zealand and Canada land at numbers 8 and 6, respectively. The United States did not crack the top 10. Switzerland placed seventh and Belgium placed tenth.
    The report looked at subjective well-being, defined as life satisfaction. Did people feel like their lives were dominated by positive experiences and feelings, or negative ones?

-->Thanks and a tip of the hat to Rodrigo Cipriano in Corpus Christi, who sent me his low budget murder DVD, VIOLENT STORY. Yeah!
    I haven't watched the whole thing yet. (It takes me a week to watch a DVD.) I'm up to the part with the duct-tape and the funnel. Yeah!
    More DVDs please!! Send them REAL MAIL to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince St. Station, NYC 10012

-->Also thanks to Superbuick, one of my new favorite bands. They invited me to a great show at Otto's Shrunken Head, where they had to endure waiting through too many 1970s bands doing blues covers. Yuck! And an even more retro band, played the Charleston. How'd you like to follow THAT at 1AM?

-->And a third thanks to NOFX and the guys at FAT WRECKCHORDS for sending me the NO FX PASSPORT video. My experiences exactly! Spinal Tap wasn't weird enough!! The truth is much further out there. (Surrounded by cops in an empty field with barbed wire anyone?) The only thing was that on the Russian tour, I expected to see a cover of How Much Punk Rock Do You Hear in Russia? But it didn't happen.

-->Corrections dept: I just reread the column where I talk about Noah Levine, who advocates Buddhist recovery for punk rockers. I said that his father was a mediator, and he became one too. Sorry. My lysdexia. His father was a meditater. And he became one too. Auuummmmmmmmmmmmm!

-end-

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Mykel's MRR Column for #314, (July, 2009)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board


He's a rebel and he'll never be any good. He's a rebel and he'll never be understood. Just because he doesn't do what everybody else does. That's no reason why I can't give him all my love." --The Crystals

“Yessirreebob,” says Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “I don't hate no one. But when that colored guy comes in here saying he lives in Mississippi. I tell him. Listen boy, I don't hate no one. But you'd better get your ass out of Mississippi or you're gonna end up dangling from a tree.”

Sid and I are at THE REBEL SHOP, on the Square in Laurens, South Carolina. We're here to meet a real Klansman... something that neither of us have done before.

We stand talking to Mr. Howard, who my cousin, a Laurens resident, has told me is the Grand Dragon of the regional Klan. We can go to his shop if we want, she said, but she, sure as a shofar, isn't going to set foot in that place.

Mr. Howard looks at me. “You know how old I am?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“I'm so old that when God said let there be light,” he answers, “I pulled the string... And you know how old my wife is?”

I shake my head again.

“She's older than dirt!” he continues and laughs out loud.

On the chair next to Mr. Howard, Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is a younger-looking guy. Mid-forties, I'd guess. Bald with a short-trimmed gray fringe.

“This is Bob,” says Mr. Howard, Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “He's the South Carolina representative of the National Socialist Party.”

We shake hands.

“You must've guessed we're not from around here,” I say to Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Where ya'll from?” he asks.

I nod to Sid. “He's from Chicago,” I say.

“Chicago?” says Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “We have lots of members in Chicago. Surprising from up North.”

Sid and Mr. Howard shake hand.

“And where you from?” he asks me.

“Imagine the most horrible place you can think of,” I say. “Where would you least like to live in the world?”

“Ah,” he says, “you're from New York City.”

I nod.

He extends his hand, “pleased to meet you.”

“Yeah,” I say, “we're Yankees. But we believe in free speech and we're glad you're fighting to stay open. Keep up the fight. Don't let 'em close you down.”

“Oh,” he says, “they ain't gonna close me down. I'm gonna close for a couple weeks so I can concentrate on my law suits. SUE--eee! SUE-eee! SUE-eee! It's like hog calling. I'm suin' my lawyers. But once I got that taken care of I'll be back.”

“Well, good luck,” I say. “Don't let 'em get you down.”

“Don't worry,” says Mr. Howard, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “When you get back up North you tell 'em I shut down cause they won't let me kill no niggers no more.”

“I'll tell 'em that,” I say. “I'll spread the word.”

Sid (whose real name he won't let me use, but is something like CHARLES BORKAWITZ) and I make our purchases. I buy a t-shirt with a confederate flag on the front. On the back it says. KEEP THE REBEL SPIRIT. Sid buys one that has a doctored picture of the moon landing. The astronaut is planting a Confederate flag instead of an American one. The caption: SOUTH SIDE OF THE MOON.

“Should I pay with a credit card?” Sid whispers to me.

“No fuckin' way!” I say. “Charles Borkawitz at the Rebel Shop? Are you kidding?”

He pays cash.

On the way out, Sid picks up a couple of Klan membership applications. On the bottom, in fine print, is a note about how anti-violence the group is. It doesn't matter. Neither of us could join. It requires a statement that we're Pure members of the white race, of non-Jewish ancestry.

Too bad. I could use some extra sheets.

I start this column in the Knoxville TN airport, Continental Terminal. I'm on my way back to New York after a 10 day tour of Tennessee, with side trips to Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina. I've been traveling with my pal, eccentric throat singer/poet Sid Yiddish. We've been doing some readings, performances and a whole lot we've never done before... like shooting a shotgun... or meeting a Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

In a way, I hate to start this column with that meeting. It just reinforces the clichés about The South. I don't want to do that.

I LOVE THE SOUTH. It's got America's best food, friendliest people, and some of the most beautiful countryside. Easy Rider, Deliverance and GW Bush (a transplanted northerner) have given it a bad rep.

It's better than that. This is Sid's first visit. His first grits, first biscuits nd gravy, first pork barbecue. First time shooting a gun too! I love traveling with him. It's like watching a toddler discover his own penis.

"WOW! LOOK AT THAT!" he thinks. "It does that! And it's so much fun!"

“Wow, look at that!” says Sid. “It's a turkey. Right there by the side of the road. And up there. There's a hawk! I bet it found something dead in the woods.”

“Er, Sid,” I say. “Hawks don't eat dead things. They eat live things, like mice and squirrels. Buzzards eat dead things.”

“What about vultures?” he asks. “Don't vultures eat dead things?”

“Buzzards are vultures,” I tell him.

Sid's wants to get stuff with a confederate flag on it. Especially a bandanna. They're completely taboo in Chicago. You're even less likely to find one there than you are to find decent Mexican food in New York. And that's a pretty slim chance.

Me? I want to hit the garage sales, buy stuff to sell on Amazon and eBay to help pay for the trip. My Knoxville pal Chad is driving us around the city. Sid, who can smell these things, spies a lawnfull of junk.

It's our first garage sale. Toy pick-up trucks and plastic super-water pistols litter the grass. The seller is young. In his 30's, needing a shave but not a haircut. He's alone in the midst of the rubble. No sign of wife or progeny, although most of the stuff for sale is kids' toys.

There's an air of dumbitude around him. It's hard to say why... His individual features are quite handsome. But there's something in the way he moves. A loping gate and slightly off speech. The -DY not quite on the heels of the HOW.

Besides the toys, there are a few piles of clothes. On one of the piles, a cardboard sign says 25¢. Nothing interesting in that pile.
I look further and find a shirt with a confederate flag on the front and a half naked guy with a 10 gallon hat on the back. The words on the shirt say SAVE A HORSE RIDE A COWBOY. (I later learn these are words to a popular song, but I'm too far from popular culture to know it at the time.)

Tomorrow, Sid has us booked us into a homo café in Nashville. This shirt is the gayest thing I've seen in ages. I gotta wear it to the show. I look for the owner.

Sid has taken him to a corner of the yard. Their backs are turned to me. It reminds me of the kind of huddle adolescents enter when they talk about a girl... and she's there. Or maybe a patient and a pharmacist discussing Viagra.

When the huddle breaks, I show the shirt to the guy. "How much is this?" I ask.

He scratches his head.

"All the clothes are the same price," he says.

"I saw a sign over there that says twenty-five cents," I say. "Can I give you a quarter?"

"Nope," he says, confirming my suspicions about his intelligence.

"It's gonna cost you twenty-five cents."

Sid doesn't buy anything. In the car leaving the sale, I ask him what he and the sale-runner were talking about so privately.

"I told him I wanted to buy something with a confederate flag on it," says Sid. "I asked him if he had any bandannas or shirts. He didn't know what I was talking about."

Chad laughs.

"Of course he didn't," he says. "Nobody knows confederate flags here... 'cept maybe old Civil War buffs. Those aren't confederate flags. Those are rebel flags. People down here aren't confederates. They're rebels..."

Chad's voice changes, becoming a bit more southernly.

I hate the government. I'm a rebel. I don't like taxes or the government tellin' me what to do with my life. I'm a rebel. I don't hate niggers because of the color of their skin. I hate niggers because they're lazy. I'm a rebel.

His voice returns to normal. "That's how people think around here. If you live here, you understand it."

Yowsah! Suddenly, I get it. In a place like America where advertisers tell people express your individuality by buying our product. Where everyone except me is computing on an Apple notebook, each thinking they are different and I'm the conformist. Where Rush Limbaugh, richer and more powerful than any Washington bureaucrat, still talks about how he's the outcast. In America, we ALL think of ourselves as rebels.

In a culture like Japan, people think of themselves as like their neighbors. They struggle to fit in. Be like everybody else. Even if they're different, they view themselves as the same. In America, even if we're just like everybody else we see ourselves as different.

And there's more.

Not only are we different from what we see as 'everybody else.' Most of us are against what we see as everybody else. We're rebels. Straight edgers, conservatives, punks, vegetarians, all think they're rebels. They all see the rest of society as mainstream and they have to fight it.

There's still more. Some of us live to shock and offend that mainstream. Rush Limbaugh says he hopes Obama's economics fail. He wants shocks the liberals he thinks are running things. Boston straight-edgers used to run around knocking drinks out of people's hands. That'll show 'em. GG Allin shat on stage. See those normal people run!

There's a name for actions that deliberately offend the mainstream. It's punk rock. Rush Limbagh, Boston straight-edgers and GG Allin are punk rock. That Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has to close his store because of lawsuits. But that's not the way he wants us to tell it to our pals up North.

"Tell 'em I shut down cause they won't let me kill no niggers no more," he says.

You can't get more punk rock than that.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->Finally, what the world needs dept! Most of the masturbatory universe knows that the biggest tragedy of het porn is that the guys are as ugly as a Chase bank. I love Ron Jeremy, but I sure as a limpie wouldn't want to fuck him.
Lately, I found some websites that I'm just rubbing raw to. Great-looking guys as well as girls. Check out http://tinyurl.com/hubbahubbayowsah for starters. Then go on from there!

-->I'll shit in the aisles dept: Ryanair, the British discount airline has started charging to use the restrooms. This is a new low in Airline hoodwinks. What's next FREE airfare, but they charge you to sit down? Oh yeah, if you want actual wings on your plane, there's a $50 surcharge.

-->You can't even take the kids to a fuckin' movie these days dept: Check out the ultra-Disneyfied costumes in the new Hannah Montana movie. You'll see the latest disgusting move toward Christian-friendly teen fashions.
Forget Britney-era bling 'n' bras or clingy American Apparel spandex. 16-year-old "Hannah Montana" star Miley Cyrus wasn't even allowed to wear leggings while the cameras were rolling. Spaghetti straps were out, as were bare bellies, micro minis, one-shouldered tanks and anything resembling a camisole.
Now, the last reason ever to see a Disney movie has disappeared.

-->War against fantasy dept: Amazon and eBay have banned the sale of Rapelay, a rape simulation video game made by Japan-based company Illusion. Now, New York City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, is urging other websites to do the same.
"It’s easy to see why people are outraged," said Matt Bachl, a TV commentator. "Aside from the gang rape aspect of the game, the goal is to make women sex slaves without getting them pregnant. If a player fails, he must force the woman to have an abortion or risk being thrown under a train and killed."
How long is it gonna take people to realize that laws cannot stop fantasies? If you can't play the video game, I guess you just have to go out and do the real thing.

-->A new political hero? dept: The Nebraska Court of Appeals has dismissed former State Senator Ernie Chamber's lawsuit against God.
Chambers, an atheist, brought the lawsuit in 2007. He asked for a permanent injunction to stop, "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilietial plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, and the like."
First, a district court threw out the case. They said God could not be served legal notice, so the suit was not valid.
In his appeal, Chambers argued that since God is all-knowing, he would have received notice without being formally served.
The appeals court had a different reason for rejecting the case. They said that the court cannot decide "abstract questions or hypothetical or fictitious issues."
Does that mean they think God is hypothetical or fictitious? I hope so.

-->You talkin' to me, God? dept: The Arkansas state legislature failed to pass a bill that would have allowed concealed weapons in church. Rep. Beverly Pyle, one of the bill's sponsors said the proposal was about church-state separation. Churches should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to allow firearms in their buildings, she said, not the state.

-->Did you fail special ed? dept: So this guy finds me on Facebook. He's not someone I especially liked, but I'm easy. Forgive and forget. Right?
How does he ask to be friends?
Hey it's me? Remember me? I'm the one who fucked that girl you liked-- on your bed in New York-- while you were away in Mongolia. Will you be my friend?
Yea right.
Just when I think people can't get any dumber... somebody comes along and proves me wrong.

-end-

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Mykel's MRR Column for #313, (June, 2009)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 313, June 2009
by Mykel Board

A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says "You've been brought here for drinking." The drunk says "Okay, let's get started.” --Henny Youngman.,

There is a pounding inside my head. ThaBOOM. ThaBOOM. ThaBOOM. It starts somewhere on top, at the crown and slowly creeps behind my eyes, forcing them open. My eyes are perfectly happy the way they are. Closed. Making it beautifully dark. Outside, there is light. Who wants light? What the fuck am I going to do with light?? Light hurts.

Now, I feel a sticky stream of wetness start at the corner of my mouth and dribble toward my ear.

There's something in my hand. My right hand. Soft, squishy, like a limp Vienna Sausage. I raise that hand to bring it in for closer inspection. It's attached. It's my dick. I musta fallen asleep while jerking off. I wonder if I made a mess. Whose bed is this anyway?

I roll slightly to the right.

There's a sharp pain in my ribs. Has a tormentor prodded a Christ-like wound into my side, opening up a huge gash? Did Jesus awaken with his dick in his hand?

I touch the source of pain. It's a book. A hardback, poking me in the ribs. I open my eyes and squint at it: Dharma Punx, by Noah Levine. Now it's coming back to me.

Flashback: “Mykel,” says Jennifer, “if you really want to get on people's cases, you should write about Noah Levine. He's really popular. He's a punk Buddhist.”

“That's not so bad,” I say. “It's better than being a punk Christian. But Levine doesn't sound like a Buddhist name. Did he change it from Ramalevinedass or something?”

“You don't get it, Mykel,” says Jennifer. “He's in recovery. He's straight-edge. No booze or drugs or sex.”

“But he's recovering from that,” I say.

“No,” says she. “That IS the recovery.”

“Huh?” says I. “Giving up booze, sex and drugs is recovery? From what?”

“Addictions, Mykel,” says she. “He's recovering from addictions.”

What's wrong with addictions? Your body needs things and without them, it acts funny. That's addiction.

Water is an addiction. If you don't have it, your body acts funny. It dies. How come you don't see Water Anonymous groups spring up like penises at a strip bar? Why isn't anyone in recovery from water addiction? How 'bout oxygen?

I admit that oxygen has control over my life and I am helpless to do anything about it. I give myself up to a higher power.

Why isn't there O.A.?

The answer's easy.

Water and oxygen are socially acceptable addictions. These addictions are universal. We don't see them as addictions any more than mosquitoes see biting people as an addiction.

Drugs? Booze? Sex? These are universal. Nearly every culture in the world has them-- usually as religious sacraments. The Catholics and Jews have wine in a religious ritual. Muslims don't drink, but they have tobacco. And they screw the hell out of multiple wives. Only those wacky Mormons... and punk Buddhists... want to deny the natural.

In American culture, addiction to booze, sex or drugs is not socially acceptable. Why? Those things actually make your body feel good. There-in lies the taboo-- and the addiction. For these things, we need recovery.

I didn't get very far in the Levine book. I only read up to how he had a fucked up childhood, and that got him into punk. His father was a meditater. His mother was a hippie. Though Levine is “still a punk,” he went from addiction to becoming a meditater.

Sounds like everybody else who resents Dad as a kid and then turns into him. Dad was an insurance agent. I became a punk. Now, I work for AIG.

I'm not being fair, of course. I should finish the book before I rip it apart. But I've got a deadline... and I've got other fish to fry.

So this column isn't about that book, though it might be. It is about YOU, and your so self-righteous ideas.

I used to laugh when Donny the Punk said Punk is thinking for yourself. Come on! Punk is more conformist than Mormonism. You've got your uniform. Your set of beliefs (love and its pain=emo, Race and Nation = Oi, anarchy = crust, liberal bounce = poppunk, straight edge = non-crusty hardcore).

Despite these differences, and because of the conformism, a thread runs through all these styles of punk. They are outsider.--not mainstream. The music is not what your grandparents listen to, though it may be what your parents grew out of.

Lateral flash: Razorcake had an interview with VITAMIN X. Boiling it down, the band said. “We're straight edge, but don't care if you are or not...”

That's better than preaching, but they're Dutch! Dutch people smoke hash in coffeeshops. Dutch people can shop for whores on the street. Straight-edge makes sense there. It is NOT mainstream.

In America, it's not like that. In America, you have to show your I.D. to get into a bar. They arrest you for pissing on the street. You can go to jail for smoking hashish. That means drinking, smoking hash and pissing on the street are things BADGUYS do. PUNKS ARE BADGUYS.

For Americans, it's Nancy Reagan's JUST SAY NO. It's having the highest drinking age in the world. It's the censored (read non-sexual) film versions of every movie shown in our theaters. America's message is SEX, DRUGS, BOOZE = BAD! If you partake, you're a badguy... or badgal. PUNKS ARE BADGUYS! Get it?

Let's get this straight... er... correct. Drugs are punk. Drinking is punk. Sex is punk. More than that, if you neither drink, nor take drugs, nor fuck. You are NOT punk.

If you won't let me put my head between your legs, I'll be sad, but I'll get over it. If you won't let ANYONE put their head between you legs. YOU ARE NOT PUNK. Especially, if you're American.

If you won't buy me a drink, I won't die. But if you NEVER DRINK. YOU ARE NOT PUNK. Get it?

LAST MINUTE NOTE: I can read your mind. You're thinking that I'm a totalitarian. Somehow, I'm imposing my will on you. Forcing you to do what you think is wrong. Who am I to say what is punk and what isn't?

Jeezus fuckin' Siddhartha. I have no control. I can't force you to do anything. I can only give my opinion. Tell you what I think. Your TV set has more control over you than I do. You have to think for yourself. If you can't do that, you probably ARE a punk.


ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->Of course it was, dept: Yeah, last month's column was my usual April Fools' prank. I don't think it fooled many people. Chomsky may be a little pissed at me because I called him a holocaust revisionist. If I didn't apologize, I do that now. I was fed misinformation. In reality, he supports (as I do) the right of revisionists to speak their minds and present their cases. This does not mean he agrees with them.
  As far as I know, Jello Biafra is still a friend. I've never met Oprah Winfrey, so she has never sexually molested me.
  All the endnotes last month, however, were true.

--> Still Lovin' Obama dept: This is from an email friend in The Czech Republic: Wondering how you are doing in your part of the world. Last Tuesday, I was at the Globe where they were showing the U.S. election returns. I had only planned to stay a few hours, but there were over three hundred people there and lots of people I had not seen in a long time. I was at a table with someone from Scotland and a woman from India, people from all over the world not just the U.S.A. I thought it would go late into the next day, but at 5 in the morning McCain conceded. It was the reality that Obama actually won. People celebrated out into the streets, all nationalities. Quite an international event. People crying and laughing. I had a little cry as well, but went off to drink some more.

-->Curious Barack dept: Jim Hayes sent me a report about a Marietta Georgia bar that sold 'Curious George' t-shirts with Obama's face in them. Naturally, local lefties wanted them banned. So did the folks from the original Curious George. Those guys are touchy... just ask George Tabb!
  Mike Norman, the bar owner, responded by posting outside his bar: G.I.'s dying in Iraq. Thousands killed in quake. Gas $4.00. and a tee shirt makes the news. Shame. Shame!
  I say YEAH MIKE!

-->I can come out Jew... a little dept: While walking down Third Avenue, I see this protest right in front of some boring-looking office building.
  “What's here to protest?” I ask. “Are you guys against neckties and large chests?”
  “It's the World Zionist Headquarters,” says an attractive girl showing me her protest sign.
  Stop The Slaughter in Gaza, it says.
  “You guys don't look Arab,” I say. “Not that there's anything wrong with that.”
  “We're Jews!” says the girl, and she gives me a leaflet that says she's with Jews Say No, an anti-Zionist Jewish group. You can find them at their website: jewssayno.wordpress.com/
  “Yahoo!” Says I. “It's about time.”
  One caveat though. Just because we hate Israeli policy, and the government, doesn't mean we should hate the people. I have some fine Israeli friends, as well as Muslim friends. Don't let a country's politics put you off its people. Remember George W? And Adolf H?

-->Sometimes it pays to clean up dept: First time gettin' the nook in awhile. I gotta clean up the apartment, wash the dishes, hide the scat porn. Last time I did this, moving around 30 year old dust bunnies gave me awful bronchitis. This time, I wear a mask.
  Fuck! I just knocked into a stack of CDs people sent me over the last half a dozen years. I never listened to them, and now I have to clean them up. Aw well, might as well check out a few.
  Holy shit! Two great ones. I can't believe what I was missing.
  1. Alien Dead demo CD CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST! Hooeeey. Horrorcore like you've always wanted it. The music and vocals are so frantic you'll shit. I don't know what else they've got out, but you should find it and get it! Ask 'em at www.myspace.com/aliendead.
  2. PURE COUNTRY GOLD ain't what it sounds like. It actually sounds like lo-fi blues, manicked out, and played by the Reatards. The name of the band is PURE COUNTRY GOLD. Contact 'em at myspace.com/purecountrygold. I did.

-->(Il)legalize this? dept: The Mt. Shasta Brewing company is located in the tiny town of Weed, California. To promote their beer, the company made bottle caps with the logo TRY LEGAL WEED.
  In the middle of last year, The U.S. Treasury Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (what a combination!) said NO!
    They threatened the tiny company with fines and even closing them down. But with the help of the local (Republican) Congressman, they fought the Treasury Department AND the FDA... and won!!! Maybe it was because of the change of administration. Waddaya think?

-->Beastly and The Beast dept: The Discovery Channel is suing Amazon over its Kindle e-book. The charge? Patent infringement. TDC claims they invented the concept of encrypting a book for digital internet distribution.
  Do I support Amazon because they sell my books (barely)? Or do I support TDC because they're “the little guy” in this deal. It's like Tony Alamo and kiddie porn. I hate the victim, but I hate the law more.
  Several years ago, Amazon tried to patent one click checkout claiming they had a right to make every other website require two clicks to pay for goods. Originally, they got the patent. Later, I think, it was withdrawn.
  Now they're getting a taste of their own Prozac. But, right is right, and ideas should not be patentable. Nothing should be. So good luck Amazon. This one, I hope you win.
  Another irony: Amazon runs Discovery’s online store for them. Only in America can one company sue another, and keep them as a business partner. Yowsah.

-->Further in the hate the law more dept: The Supreme Court is going to hear a case where some right wing PAC made an anti-Hillary movie. They showed it on television while Hilary was running for president. The movie claimed, among other things, that Hilary was the foremost American spokesperson for European-style Socialism. If only it were true! I would have voted for her. In Europe, they have free health care and 6 weeks vacation. We wouldn't want that here, would we?
  Truth is not the point.
  The Hilary-ites said the movie was a violation of the campaign finance rules. The backers of the movie should disclose who they are and how much they contributed.
  The movie-makers said it wasn't a campaign, but was a movie. Free speech and all that. Besides, Michael Moore, a liberal, had a movie that said a lot about GWB. Was that a campaign ad?
  I go with the movie makers. It IS a matter of free speech. If the anti-Clintonites win this case, you bet your HOPE poster that the Democrats are gonna be making that film about Jeb Bush, or whoever... accusing them of... I donno. We'll just have to wait four years and see.

-end-

visit Mykel's homepage here

Mykel's MRR Column for #312, (MAY, 2009)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column

for MRR 312, May 2009
written in Feb. 2009

by Mykel Board


"I feel very old sometimes... I carry on and would not like to die before having emptied a few more buckets of shit on the heads of my fellow men.” --Gustave Flaubert

 “You talkin' to me?”

 I stand at the far end of a row of urinals. The farthest end. Urinal Number 8. Away from the prying eyes and ears of the other full bladders. The only other person in this row is way over there at Number 2. Far enough.

 A glorious river of the evening's beers floods out of me. As the liquid joyously pours out, a tiny fart nestles itself just inside my back door. A little stomach jerk and it's out. 

 Pfffft! 

 Slightly louder than I expect, but not a jet engine. 

 “You talkin' to me?” says the guy at number two. 

 Wiseguy. I pretend I don't hear him, but it wrecks the ecstasy of the moment. The joy of simultaneity. The beauteous bliss of synchronous urethral and rectal expulsion. Pffft! Gone in the wisecrack of a jerk at the other end of the porcelain street. 

 Experienced at making lemonade from a life full of lemons, I pick up the spoiled moment and roll it into a ball. Then, I press in the edges, and shape it. Sculpting with my thumbs and forefingers,

I whittle this spoiled moment into a metaphor. It's life, sex, politics. It's getting what you want. Then spoiling it.. easy as piss. We won that election. President Obama... just saying that gives me a thrill. President Obama. President Obama. Obama. Obamarama. Obamamamamamama. The sound slips through my lips like a fart at a urinal. It would be so easy to sit back and wait for my bailout. 

 It ain't gonna happen. It's a big country. A big new government. And I gotta log of shit to throw. 

 Cut to the senate: Imagine there's a senator. (It's easy if you try.) Now imagine his views are so outrageous that you wonder how even Americans could be evil enough to elect such a guy.

 Examples? Make “illegal immigrants” pay a fine for their illegality. Yep, force the bottom rung, hard-working poor to pay for coming to the U.S. Like this guy's grandparents DIDN'T pay, I bet. Like mine didn't pay... or yours either. 

 Annie Moore, the first Irish immigrant through Ellis Island... they gave her a ten dollar gold piece and said Good Luck! Welcome to America. But Mexicans? Well, they're not white, so I guess they don't count.

 But there's more with this guy. Consider the two kinds of immigrants: the big majority, who work, pay taxes, contribute to the economy... and the tiny minority, who steal, scam welfare, use resources. Imagine punishing one group. Which would you pick?

 This senator picks the working immigrants! He wants to terrorize THE EMPLOYERS. Make 'em pay stiff penalties for the evil deed of giving people a job. Fines will encourage the bosses to fire the peons. Put more people on the streets. Penniless. Collecting welfare... or stealing-- instead of paying taxes. Does this guy have stock in jail-building companies-- or what?

 There's more with him. 

 If you go to the grocery store, and not dumpster dive for your food, you've been paying more than ever for it. In places in Africa, and Asia, people can't pay. They then suffer a food deficiency disease called STARVATION. 

 In Central Africa, a young man has left the countryside to look for work in the city. There is nothing. He has no money. Slowly his stomach distends. His belly button looks like it's going to push itself out of his skin. Somehow, he pan-handles enough money for a loaf of bread. Enough for a loaf of bread yesterday. Today, the price has gone up. It's harder to get bread. Nobody grows wheat these days. Land that could be used for wheat is used for corn. But not corn this guy, or anybody can eat. Corn that's grown to be burned. 

 Yeah, stuff stuffed inside your car and burned. Biofuels. Instead of growing what people can eat, farmers grow food for your gas tank. And this senator LOVES IT. He wants more. Fuck carrots! They're too hard to grow and what can you do with 'em except eat 'em? Now, BIOFUEL! We can just burn that up. Then buy more. Yeah, it makes as much pollution as gasoline, but it's renewable. Okay, it causes starvation, but that's a small price to pay for the comfort of driving. Right?

 How 'bout raising the federal gas tax so people will just drive less? Fewer fuels of all kinds! 
 NO GAS TAX HIKE, says this guy. SUV owners applaud.

 “Okay,” you tell me. “But senators are shmucks. That's a given. Just because Obama is president doesn't mean everyone is a good guy.”

 Hang on to your hairpiece, buckaroos. The senator I'm talking about is AL FRANKEN!! Yeah, that liberal guy from Minneapolis. Check his website: www.alfranken.com It's all there, under issues. Immigration. Biofuels. The whole kit and caboodle. 

 So what the fuck do I care? It doesn't have anything to do with the hair on my balls or the way I've recently been shitting what looks like Mazola oil. (True! It's the weirdest thing. The toilet water looks like a lavalamp after I take a dump... er... a spritz.)

 Mental Scene shift: I think the reason MRR doesn't get any mail about me is that I don't talk about punk rock. The letter writers seem to be continuing the time honored punk rock tradition where That guy in DesMoines charges too much for postage is more important than dead people litter the Sahara Desert because Americans put corn in their SUVs.

 Such is the triviality of punkrock in the twenty-first century. 

 In the seventies, when punkrock began, Gerald Ford was president. Then too, it was trivial. It was CBGBs local, fun, a music-- and a clothing-- style. Nothing more. 

 In the eighties, hardcore burst out like a fartfull of Mazola oil. There were two reasons. His name was Ronald Reagan and hers Margaret Thatcher. The bad guys were in control. The Dead Kennedys stopped singing playfully about the dangers of Jerry Brown. 

 “We've got a much bigger problem now,” said Biafra. 

 And so we got Reagan Youth, and a ton of angry, fun, wild, political, punk bands from Agnostic Front through Conflict to Nausea to Warzone. 

 So what now? We have a lousy economy, but Barak Obama is president. Democrats control the congress and the senate. South America is electing pinkos left and right. Only Israel can manage to vote for a fascist when it has the chance. Oy vey! 

 What's left, but to do what liberals do the best: eat our own. Go back to complaining about Jerry Brown's denim jackets or Al Franken's stand on immigration. When you win a war, who do you fight? The people on YOUR side, That's who.

 It'll still take me awhile to get on Obama's ass. Even though he's 

1.Perked up The Whitehouse Faith-Based Office, instead of closing it.

2.Sent more troops to Afghanistan

3.Had Hillary rattle her saber against North Korea.

 And this is only FEBRUARY!! 

 But, I'm gonna leave him alone for now. The magnificence of his Negritude still overwhelms these other considerations. Instead, I'll lower my sights. Aim for the balls. 

 Al Franken wants to fine “illegal” immigrants? Bang! 

 Hillary refuses to talk human rights in China? Bang!

 You? The biggest bang of all.

 What're you gonna do until the next Bush? Until the next Iraq? Until the next market crash? How are you gonna stay punk when there's nothing to punk against? I already know. I know you.

You're gonna get soft. 

 First, you're gonna powder your own economic acne. Gee, I hope I can get back that job as a bag packer at A&P. 

 You hope Obama's stimulus package will work well enough to pay for your iPod replacement battery. You'll put on a tie and smile at K-mart customers. 

 Yeah, I'm talking to you. 

 You'll be there, begging mom and dad not to take you out of SF State. You'll promise to wash dishes, anything, just to stay in school because there are no jobs out there and that's the whole point of school, isn't it? 

 Using the technical language that has developed over years of punkrockdom, I salute you with that most punkrock of phrases, Fuck You! 

 You're hopeless, more worried about your MySpace photo than that just-fired Mexican. You stand right in the middle of that row of urinals, making it difficult for me at the edge. 

 I'm going to edge passed you. I want to talk to your little sisters and brothers, the 10-year-olds who watch you with disgust. They're the ones who see your punkitude drain into the porcelain when you move back with mom because the punkhouse fell apart. 

 They're the ones who'll have heard what you've been talking about during the punk times and who'll wonder what you meant. 

 “Rise above.” 

 They won't get it, as they watch you sink below.

  They're the ones who'll pick up that guitar you abandoned, and start figuring out chords. Yeah, I'd love to stand next to them at the urinal, but I don't need to. Those ten year olds? They'll know what to do all by themselves. And you'd better watch your back.

 Yeah, I'm talking to you. 

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->When cool things happen by bad people dept: Bill Gates, one of the world's most disgustingly wealthy people, impressed me for the first time. He released a cloud of mosquitoes at a technology conference in California.  
     "Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some here," he said. "There is no reason only poor people should be infected."  
       In reality, the mosquitoes were malaria-free, but the tactic was punkrock. Get those fuckers to feel the sting of life-- and death-- in the hotlands! 10 punk points, Bill.

-->Death Be Not Proud dept: I'm writing this in the middle of February 2009. Already two notables have kicked off. It does not bode well for the rest of the year. At my age, I could be entering the watch list!
     Actually, BILL LANDIS died in December 2008. But I only heard about it this year.  For those who don't know, Bill was the founder of THE SLEAZOID EXPRESS, the first newsletter of scum cinema. He liked the sleazy horror, the bizarre, and the camp. Although he was a difficult person in real life, he was a pioneer in print. If it weren't for him, the movie world would be much different now. You wouldn't be able to find DVDs of Cannibal Holocaust and I Spit on Your Grave. There would be no Grindhouse or Scream I,II or III, if there were no Bill Landis.
     LUX INTERIOR, singer for The Cramps, died on February 4, the fiftieth anniversary of Buddy Holly's death. The Cramps were maybe the world's first Psychobilly band. (If you don't count Hasil Atkins.) I saw them at CBGBs in 1976-- and several times since-- including a great show at SaltLäger in Copenhagen. Yeah, there would've been a GG Allin without a Lux Interior. But would there be a Reverend Horton Heat? I don't think so.
     Uh oh! I just heard about PAUL HARVEY. He's number three!

-->I thought it sucked from the git-go dept: Remember when every corner threatened to have a Starbucks? I even had a plan to map out Manhattan with a green square on those few blocks without one. 
     Well, buckaroos, those days are gone. Hundreds of the corporate sludge factories have given up the ghost. Even better, a recent review in Consumer Reports ranked Eight O'Clock Coffee as the best-tasting coffee. Starbucks, which costs a fuck of a lot more, didn't even get an honorable mention. 

-->Rare victory for the good guy dept: The Senate voted for part of the economic recovery bill that deals with giving money for school building construction. It said that tax funds used for school construction and rehabilitation may not be diverted to religious institutions. Religious Right groups complained that the bill was “hostile to religion.” 
 I say, I hope so!

-->I think it was Tolstoy who wrote “Without God all things are permitted. He meant it as a criticism. I only wish it were true. Life would be a fuck of a lot more fun.
    Still Christians, Muslims and Jews use this argument to say that if people didn't have the threat of God's punishment, they would not act in a moral way. God keeps people moral, they say.
     Science Illustrated (July/August 2008) says they're wrong. It reports that Yale researchers have found that pre-God-aware babies can still judge right from wrong, good from evil. 
 The researchers created a puppet show where one puppet tries to climb a hill and another either helps it, or holds it back. When they gave babies a chance to choose one puppet to hold. 93% chose the helper over the hinderer. The babies were all under 10 months old. God need not apply.

-->The obvious dept: So far, I've had no mail referring to my “rape” at the hands of Jello Biafra, Noam Chomsky, and Oprah Winfrey. I can't believe the 15-year-old readers (an oxymoron?) of MRR had enough sense of humor to realize the April Fools' joke. It was one, of course.

-end-

Go to Mykel's homepage here

Mykel's MRR Column for #311, (APRIL, 2009)

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

Column Number 311 April 2009

by Mykel Board

"The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.” --Edward P. Jones

April is supposed to be the month of rebirth, refreshment. Spring. Waking up from the frozen winter. But I'll be lucky if I can get out of bed this April... and I know I'll never completely recover. Soon you'll know why.

Fools may continue to believe the old sticks-and-stones poem your mother told you. But believe me, words CAN hurt. Not so much the one they're directed against, but the one who creates them.

Here's the story:

It starts in January. Just before my birthday. 65. I should retire... like normal people. Yeah, right.

The phone rings. I usually don't answer it. This time, I make a mistake.

“Hello?” I say.

“Hello.” The voice from the other side is deep, gentle, almost fatherly voice. “Is this Mykel Board?”

“It is,” I say. “If this is about the MasterCard bill..”

The voice on the other end of the line chuckles....

After the call, I run to take the Chinatown bus to Boston. Four hours and fifteen minutes later, I walk into his office. It's a modest place, walls lined with bookshelves. On one side is an incredibly messy desk, papers, folders, books open, face down, curved like birds in flight.

As he stands up, I notice his hair... Grayish, but full... like Ronald Reagan's only puffier. He's ten years my senior, but he's got twice as much hair. Is he really Jewish? Jews go bald. Why do you think they invented those yarmulkes? It's a cover up.

The man smiles, then shakes my hand.

“Mykel,” he says, “I've been waiting a long time for this meeting.”

“I never expected it,” I say. “I thought you were pissed off at me because I called you a holocaust revisionist.”

His face is static, as if molded into a perpetual smile.

“I don't even remember that,” he says. “I'm not one to hold a grudge.”

He motions for me to sit down. There is a vacant straight back wooden chair. Slatted, like something you might find in an old library.

“Professor Chomsky... can I call you Noam?... I've always wanted to ask you about that part in Aspects of a Theory of Syntax,” I say, “I mean the pronoun and anaphora. How does that relate to Dougherty's anaporn relationship?

And in John promised Bill to go, John goes. But in John persuaded Bill to go, Bill goes. Or is that more Government and Binding.”

The professor pulls his chair opposite mine. From behind some papers, he takes out a coffee pot and a cup. He pours me a cup of coffee.

“Here,” he says. “Relax before we converse”

He stands to hand me the coffee. But instead of handing it to me, he throws it in my face. The hot liquid burns my skin and blinds me.

“So, I'm a holocaust revisionist, huh? Revise this!” I feel a sharp pain on my cheek, where I guess he struck me with... his hand? A book? Before I have time to consider, I feel the pain on my other cheek. A small trickle of something warm runs down the side of my face.

“I'll give you an anaporn relationship,” he says, slamming something really big against the side of my head.

I pass out.

At first, it's just the pain in my wrists... like a dream about handcuffs. Then consciousness returns. My wrists really do hurt. I move my hand to rub away the pain... I don't move my hand. I can't. It's tied down. The other one too.

Then I feel the cold. A cool wind, washing over my... my naked body. I'm here. Exposed. Slowly, the awareness overtakes me. I smell sawdust. Feel something rough against my skin. I'm folded... folded over something. Maybe a sawhorse. My wrists tied to the legs in front. My ankles to the rear ones. My hips rest on the top of the sawhorse... rest? No, they're pulled tight against it. My balls forced back and downward from the pressure.

Through my slowly opening eyes I can see backwards-- and upside down, between my legs. There's Chomsky, naked from the waist down, fisting a surprisingly large erection-- his, not mine.

I close my eyes and lift my head. Someone's in front of me. I can only see from mid-thigh down. A pair of jeans, and some politically correct non-Nike sneakers.

“Hello Mykel,” I recognize the voice.

“Biafra!” I say. “Thank God you're here....” As I speak I notice my mouth hurts. My teeth hurt. I run my tongue over them and feel a back molar... loose... I wiggle it with the tongue tip, then speak.

“Jeezus fuck!” I say. “I don't get it.”

“Don't you Mykel?” he answers, laughing like a villain in kids' cartoons. “You've played the tune long enough. Now it's time to pay the piper. Remember that (his voice changes to a wimpy New York accent) I guess it was interesting, but it sure went on a long a long time...? Remember that? How about The Dead Kennedys were great, but Lard???... I'd just... greasy. Remember that Mykel?”

I hear the sound of a zipper unzipping.

A pinch. A brutal pinch of my nose...squeezed shut... nearly broken. I can't breathe. I open my mouth to take a breath. Immediately, something thick and hard enters, pressing against the back of my throat, making me gag.

“We'll see what lasts a long time,” comes Biafra's voice above me.

I feel like I'm going to puke... but I can't... No place to let it out. I gag.

Then the pain comes. Not from my mouth, but from behind me. From my anal rosebud.

“I don't have to plow you a new one.” It's Chomsky's voice behind me. “This one will do just fine.”

I want to scream as the dry scraping against the tender brown ring is stretched and torn. I can't scream. I can hardly breathe, as the Biafran kielbasa knocks my loose tooth free from my lower jaw.

I feel blood filling my mouth. Simultaneously, the sandpaper sound behind me changes into a soft squish. I must be lubricating with my own blood... Confirmed...in a warm trickle down the back of my legs.

“Yeeehah!” whoops the voice behind me. Then a slap to an asscheek. “Ride 'em cowboy!”

Porno stars look like they're having the time of their life when they all their holes are filled at the same time. The brutality of what's happening to me may be giving me the time of my life... but it's not a good time.

I hear a groan above me. The pace and intensity of the shoving into my mouth quickens. If I throw up, the vomit will be forced back into my lungs. I'm not sure I can hold back. I'll suffocate. Die. I have to keep control.

Hands press behind my head, forcing my nose into the mass of pubic hair in front of me. I swallow my tooth. Washed down by a mass of thick liquid that dribbles down the back of my throat.

He pulls out of my mouth. My head released, now limply hangs a few inches above the ground. A thin steam of blood, semen and drool dribbles up the side of my face.

I gasp as fresh air fills my lungs for the first time in what feels like an hour, but probably was no more than a few minutes. I can barely lift my head. I don't have to.

Someone has grabbed the hair on the back of my head and is yanking it upwards. One of my eyes is swollen shut from the hot coffee and the blows inflicted on it. Through the other eye, I make out a wide black face with a mass of curly-but-not-kinky hair. There is something familiar about the wide body and the loose wool sweater. I know that face. If only I could concentrate.

I let my eyes drop from the out-of-focus face, down the body, to the nude lower half... nude lower half???

I try to speak, but only a sputter of blood leaves my mouth.

The woman holds my head up, taking a fistfull of hair. Spreading her legs, she forces her naked crotch into my face.

“What's black and sits on three hundred pounds of crack? Huh Mykel?” she says.

“I thought it was funny.” I say through the muffle. Then think, FUCK! IT'S OPRAH WINFREY!

“Here's some crack for you Mykel,” she says grinding into my bleeding nose and mouth. “Funny, isn't it?”

My neck feels like it's going to snap off. Her thighs tighten around my head. I'm inhaling the entire Seattle fish market. I can't breathe. My lungs are going to explode.

At the edge of whatever vision I have left I see a vague outline... a black leather jacket. Levis. Short blond hair.

George Tabb! I think. He's here to save me.

“George!” I say through the massive twat in front of me.

“Yeah, Mykel,” he says, walking around to where my bloody asshole lies naked and abused. “Remember that time when...”

I can't hear the rest, because those black Oprah thighs have tightened around my head. The last words I hear before I lose consciousness are “Take my dick, please!”

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]

-->At the bottom of my pile dept: I found this clipping. It's about the father of a 7-year old Wisconsin boy. Dad was so upset his son wouldn't wear a Green Bay Packers jersey during the playoffs, that he forced it on the kid. Then he duct-taped it to him.

The father was arrested, fined $186 and released. My question: What the fuck kind of fine is $186? I'm not a football fan. Does that number have some kind of special meaning in football land? A quarterback number or something? Jeezus!

-->Making progress department: Until March 3 2008, Verizon wireless included the contract provision that subscribers agree that the company "does not own or manage the internet." The provision has since been dropped. However subscribers still have to acknowledge "Verizon assumes no liability for the accuracy of things that may be read over the Internet or received in e-mails." Does that mean that guy in Nigeria doesn't really want me to hold his money?

--> To avoid a trial, Karen Fletcher of PA, plead guilty to obscenity for fictional kiddie sex stories on her subscription only website. There were no pictures on the site. She was fined $1000 and given 6 months house arrest. This is the first obscenity conviction based solely on written material in more than 30 years. Is Obama gonna fix this???? And it gets worse:

-->Pssst, Hey kid, wanna buy a book? Let's see your ID dept: A new 2008 Oregon law makes it a $125,000 crime to furnish "sexually explicit" materials to a minor. This includes health-education materials and fiction. Booksellers would be liable, even if the minors were only browsing.

-->Life imitates art dept: Doctors at Bellevue Mental Hospital in New York have identified a new syndrome they call "The Truman Show Delusion." These, mostly young white men, believe they are the subjects of their own reality TV show. Some seem pleased, ready for the million-dollar payout at the end. Others seem upset.

One syndrome victim came to NY to climb the Statue of Liberty. He believed that he'd be reunited with this high-school girlfriend at the top, and finally be released from “the show." Hate to spoil it, buster. But there's only one way we get released from the show, and It's not by climbing... It's by jumping.

-->I missed the TOP TEN MRR issue. Actually, I submitted my ten early, but the MRR tyrants at the top rejected them. I didn't follow the rules, they said.

They told me my top ten had to be PRODUCT, something you could BUY. A drunken night on the town in Port of Spain didn't qualify. No UPC on that, ya see.

So, out of the front pages, here's my top ten for 2008-- four months late. (After the first two, they're in no particular order). No product here. Just the bands... and my life. :

1. Trinidad Wining

2. Trinidad Liming

3. WORLD WAR IX

4. KISSY KAMIKAZI

5. BLACKOUT SHOPPERS,

6. ENDANGERED FECES.

7. ANTI-EVERYTHING (Trinidad)

8. TRIGGER EFFECT (Canada)

9. SUCIEDAD DISCRIMINADA (Mexico)

10. @PATIA NO (Venezuela)

-->Obama or not dept: Good Magazine (Dec. '08) reports that 20 percent of NYU students recently polled said they'd give up their right to vote in 2008 in exchange for an iPod Touch. What I want to know is... where was McCaine on this offer? He shudda been handing out those iPods. He cudda won!