Mykel's MRR Column for #318, (November, 2009)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Mykel's MRR Column for #317, (October, 2009)

NOTE AND WARNING: This column was written for the MRR Queer
Issue. It is addressed to the "gay punk community," although
anyone can understand the criticism. It is somewhat
more graphic than usual.If you're squeamish, or have just
eaten, you might want to think twice about reading it. 
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

---

---

THE COLUMN:

All the ugly things, the things people expend so much energy denying, have more permanence than the sweet sucking-candy lies about equality and justice and everlasting happiness. Ugliness is God. --Jim Goad

First there's the rose. I don't know who put it there. But there it is. Lying like a sash across his chest. I didn't expect that. Agim was not the type to go in for roses. He was a punk rocker-- and now I find out-- a junkie. Punk rock, junk and roses don't mix.

Next to me is an older woman. His mother? An Aunt? I donno. She's dressed in black. Equally black circles surround her eyes. She forces a smile as I introduce myself and tell her how sorry I am.

I am sorry. Agim was the cool kid. A cute punk rocker with a weird name. He came from someplace in East Europe. He had a high squeaky voice. He often came out of the mosh pit bruised and happy. He'd shake his head and say nothing more than WOW!

About 20 years old, he had a smooth face that'd take years to grow even a jazz spot. I'd often had fantasies about burying the bologna between his light brown buns. It ain't gonna happen now.

This is my third open-casket, Catholic funeral. I'm not getting used to them. There's something creepy about looking at a dead person you knew when he was running around doing things. Like having your pet dog stuffed, mounted and set in the livingroom... with a bone in her mouth.

Weirder is the girl now standing by the coffin. I've never seen her before. Somewhat goth, with a long black dress, but it is a funeral after all. Still, she's got black fingernail polish and lipstick... not exactly Catholic. Her long flowing hair is NOT black, though. It's somewhere between brown and redhead- like Lindsay Lohan's.

She's not beautiful in the classic sense. A bit too thick in the rear. Tits petite and free hanging. Because of the way she faces the coffin, I can only see her in profile.

Behind the chairs that face the coffin, is some food. I head for it. Laid out on a small card table, there's Merlot wine and cheese, like at an art opening. There are also a bunch of little strawberry tarts and crackers next to a pile of meat-- maybe chopped liver. A plastic spoon sticks in the meat at an odd angle, like a chimney in a fairytale house. I use it to scoop some of the meat onto a cracker and then shove the combo into my mouth.

“I think that's not such a good idea,” suggests a voice behind me, to my right.

I turn. It's the girl who stood at the coffin. Her face is plain, slightly freckled.

“Why not?” I ask her, taking another meat-on-cracker in my biological urge to DEFY.

“Funeral meat is always bad,” she says. “I think they make it from the remains of other funerals.”

“That's disgusting,” I say, reaching for yet another cracker and meat. I spoon it on thickly, as if I were teaching her a lesson.

During our short conversation, the girl moves forward. She now stands with her hand tangling centimeters from my leg. She bridges the gap, stroking the inside of my thigh.

“My name is Wanda,” she says. Then her voice becomes a whisper. “Let's stay. Whatisname would like it.”

“You mean Agim?” I ask. “You don't know him?”

“I go to funerals,” she says, rubbing my leg less subtly than before, “and I want to know you... Follow me.”

I don't get a chance to introduce myself. I just follow as the strange girl leads me through the hallway to a small storage closet. The only possible way she could know about it is from being here before. I begin to wonder.

Wanda opens the door and gets in, sitting on the floor. She extends her hand. I take it and enter. Wanda reaches up and pulls the door shut.

In the dark closet, she presses her body close to mine. I press my hand on the inside of her thigh. Then, run it downwards. I smell an oceanic mix of bread and tuna. She tightens her thighs around my hand. The warmth radiates through my body. Agim, you're gonna get me laid... but it won't be you!

The faint light under the door goes out with the last footsteps of the funeral guests. We are alone.

“Let's go,” she whispers.

I start to unbutton my shirt. But that's not what she's talking about.

Slowly, Wanda opens the door, looks around and heads out. We're back at the coffin. It's closed now. Wanda pushes up on the lid and it creaks back to open. There's Agim. Looking eerily shiny in the tiny bit of light that comes from the streetlamp outside the window. The rose, slightly crushed, still lays across his chest.

“He looks fake,” says Wanda.

I reach in to touch his face. It has a waxy feel, like an apple on a supermarket shelf. I have the urge to scrape and see if the wax will come off under my fingernail. I do. It does.

Under that wax is a small spot, maybe brown. It's impossible to see color in the dim light. It looks like what I imagine cancer would look like. I quickly pull my hand back.

I look back at his face. His closed eyes. What's under those lids? Are the pupils staring straight out like a vampire? Or, are the eyes rolled back in the head, showing only white... like a zombie.

I again reach into the coffin, putting my hand on his left eye, thumb on the bottom lid, forefinger on the top. I tug on the lids but there's a kind of stiffness, as if Agim is trying to force his eyes shut against my effort.

I'm distracted by a fzzzz sound. I turn. Wanda is at Agim's crotch. She's opened his belt and now unzips his pants. Reaching into the open fly, she pulls out his penis. It's the first time I've ever seen the penis of a dead guy. Maybe it was proud in the day, but now it's shriveled and worn, with what look like bloody stripes up the side. The head looks like a mushroom-sized scab. I can't see it for long, though, because Wanda takes it into her mouth. She suck up on it, pulling the skin taught, stretching it. I think I'm going to be sick. I begin to choke. To heave.

“Here! Here!” whispers Wanda, pulling up her skirt and taking down her panties. “Do it here!”

She grabs my head and forces my face between her legs. That powerful Neptunian smell adds to the nausea.

That chopped liver. Those strawberry tarts. That glass of Merlot. Like a movie run frame by frame, I feel the slow motion rise of the vile mixture, from my stomach... to my throat... to my mouth... forced into my nose... and out. Out from my mouth. Out from my nose. Out into the hairy crater in front of me. The smell of vomit added to the smell of yeast and the smell of sea bass make me even sicker, I puke again and again, until I'm stuck in dry heaves.

“Now fuck me,” says Wanda. “Fuck me hard!”

She tears at my proper funeral pants, pulling open the belt, pulling down the pants and boxer- briefs in one fell swoop. I step out of them. But, I'm not quite ready yet. Ninety degrees. I'm looking for forty-five.

Wanda reaches between her legs and scoops up my fresh vomit. She rubs it back and forth on my ninety degrees. The smell cuts to my throat and sickens me. But it doesn't sicken my little friend who pops up like popsicle fresh from the deli case. Wanda sucks on the popsicle. Rubbing the vomit around my testes, Wanda sucks, then reaches around to press me deeper into her face. A puke-lubricated finger slips into my little brown hole in back.

I tighten the sphincter around her digits. That's the trigger.

“That meat.” I say.

Wanda makes some MMMMMMMMing sound around my penis. Then my bowels contract.

“Not THAT meat,” I say. “The meat that we ate. It's hitting now. I'm getting sick. I think I've got the shits. You were right!”

She removes her mouth from my medium-on.

“Shit!” she says. “Shit on me! Shit on Agim. It's the least you can do... and it's the most punk rock.”

She's right, of course.

I climb onto the coffin. Resting one knee on each side, I fear I'll lose my balance and the whole kit and caboodle will come tumbling down. Tough. I can't hold it anymore. I'm going to explode. I position my asshole directly over Agim's face. Wanda squeezes his cheeks. His mouth opens. I let go. A torrent. Not water, but not turds either. More like a thick paste. Brown toothpaste, with globs of this and that. Direct hit. Right over that mouth. Filling it. Spilling over. Up his nose. Onto his eyes. A great thick brown mass. The joy of emptying my stomach raises my staff. Pain released calls for joy.

“Suck me!” I breathe. “Suck me now!”

Wanda scrapes her hand against the corpse face, bringing up my fresh fecal paste. She rubs it up and down my hardness.

“Suck me!” I say, “I can't stand it.”

“Wait,” says she.

Suddenly, she is at the garbage can where we scraped the plastic cups and dishes from the funeral food. She reaches inside. I can't make out what's in her hand until she returns to the coffin. I climb down to take a look. It's a plastic spoon, probably the same one I used to eat the tainted meat.

“Share!” she commands, scooping some brown paste off Agim's face. Open wide.

I open my mouth and she pushes the spoon in. It's a foul taste... like... well, like shit. I gag, but swallow it down. She scoops some more, and puts it into her own mouth.

Gagging to hold down my own excrement, I choke out a, “More!”

Wanda answers by shoving another spoonful of shit into my mouth. And then returning to the shit-covered face of Agim's corpse.

Taking the plastic spoon, she presses the end against the dead kid's eye-socket. It slips, spraying shit onto the coffin lid. She tries again. This time the spoon sinks in, behind the eye, underneath. She pries upward. The handle bends. Then, with a little PTTT sound, the eye falls loose and hangs by a nerve along the side of his face. A few grains of shit fall into the empty hole.

Wada grabs the eyeball and gives it a tug. With a snap, it pulls loose.

“Yes!” I hear her whisper.

She takes the eyeball and inserts it in her cunt. Squeezing shut, she closes her eyes and moves those internal muscles that only girls can move. Her face is the picture of bliss.

“Now you,” she says, taking the eyeball from insider her vulva.

I know what she's asking for. I rest my hands against my knees and feel a light pressure against my anus. It opens and the eyeball is inside.

The new pressure against my prostate propels the little soldier between my legs to full attention. Wanda pushes me to the floor and straddles me. I push her off and climb back onto the coffin. Pressing hard to keep that organic dildo inside me. I again squat with my feet on either side of Agim's head. I lean forward, lower myself, and insert the head of my penis into the empty eye socket.

********************

This is the queer issue of MRR. What you just read is queer. You? You're as queer as a one-dollar bill. You had your chance. Your homosexuality could have been a ticket to queerdom. Being a homo used to be special, different, weird... Queer.

I remember people pointing and whispering He fucks boys. And now, Home Depot shows a couple of guys cooking breakfast together, plain as the cum on your lips... and it's your fault.

You've sacrificed your queerdom on the altar of “gay marriage,” and “gays in the military.” You prefer equality to queerdom. You can't have both. You've made your choice.

Your decision disgusts me more than a loose eyeball up my ass. You are more repulsive than vaginal vomit. How could you do it? Several years ago, I wrote You cannot be a man until you've been fucked in the ass. That was controversial... Queer.

These days, everybody and his mother's been fucked in the ass. Stockbrokers discuss anal lubes on their coffee breaks. It is not queer.

Queer doesn't say, accept me, I'm just like you. It says, watch out, buckaroo, because I'm NOTHING like you.

Yeah, I admire people like Matt B who are trying to make homotude queer again, but it's a lost cause. Like making Obama radical. We may wish it. But it ain't gonna happen.

We need a NEW queerdom. We have it. The necrophiles, the bestials, the coprophiliacs, the S&Ms, the pedophiles (who are so queer they can't even post their fantasies without being arrested!). The new queers should be in the face of every homosexual saying,

“We're here. We're REALLY queer. Get used to it... because you're not anymore.”

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. Subscribers will no longer get the columns before anyone else.]

→ The honeymoon is over department: Speaking of marriage. Slack-cutting time is over. Obama is proving himself to be just another Democrat, maybe the next LBJ... or worse. He takes over General Motors, allows the company to shift jobs overseas. Says the government wants a “hands-off policy.” Huh? That's my money you're using, I sure as fuck want a hand ON!
   Worse is Afghanistan. That war is getting bigger, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a Pakistan invasion soon. It's time for that big Washington anti-war rally!
    Hey hey Oh-baman. How many kids did you drop a bomb on!

-->Homos yes, Nazis no dept: While homo activists push for more gays in the military, other liberal groups push for exclusions... of "white supremacists.
    The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center is complaining about allowing "white supremacists and Neo-Nazis" in the military. Seems like these points of view are "bad" and shouldn't be tolerated. They are HATE.
    On the other hand, homotude is LOVE. So it SHOULD be allowed in the army. Makes a lot of sense in an organization whose main purpose is to kill people, huh?

-->Elsewhere on the homo front dept: A federal appeals court has upheld an Ohio law that limits picketing at funerals, preventing an anti-gay church from protesting at military funerals.
    The Rev. Fred Phelps believes God is punishing America for accepting homosexuality by killing soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He argues it is people's free speech right to carry signs with messages such as "Thank God for dead soldiers."
    The court said the anti-picketing law "serves an important governmental interest... at a funeral the mere presence of a protestor is sufficient to inflict harm."
    Sounds like the same rationalization they used for the round-up of demonstrators at the Republican National Convention in New York. Actually, it sounds like the same rationalization for the round-up of ANY demonstrators anywhere.

-->Elsewhere on the free speech front: The “Combating Defamation of Religion” resolution was passed by the UN Human Rights Council with 23 votes in favor and 11 votes against with 13 abstentions.
    The resolution was passed in spite of huge opposition from rights groups. The measure calls on the UN to "effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular."
    The Bush administration strongly opposed this resolution. It's unclear what the position of Obama is... but that's par for the course.

-->Partial memory department: The religious right wants Americans to remember that for some years Congress printed copies of "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" for its new members. But what's not mentioned is that this was Thomas Jefferson's version of the bible with all reference to Jesus' divinity and claims of miracles cut out.

-end-

visit Mykel's homepage here:

Mykel's MRR Column for #316, (September, 2009)

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
for MRR 316, September 2009
by
Mykel Board

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” --Winston Churchill

“As an Internet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” –Godwin's Law

 “Those who study history are condemned to live in it.” --Mykel Board

I'm madder than a Klansman whose wife bought colored-- instead of white-- sheets. My fucking boss. Accusing me of sexual harassment because I ask a female student to sew a button on my shirt. Telling me what I can and can't say in class. He's a fascist.

“I'm gonna take a picture of him. Then, photoshop on a little mustache and comb-over,” I say, “Post it in the teacher's lounge.”

I sit in Jennifer's kitchen. The kettle on the stove whistles. Jennifer walks over to it. Using a Motel 6 towel as a potholder, she picks it up and pours the water over some green leaves.

“Oh Mykel,” she says, “cut it with that Hitler stuff. Everything is Hitler-- or the Nazis. If you get too much cream in your coffee, it's the Nazis. Somebody takes your seat on the subway. They're Hitler. Give it up already.”

Kerpow.

News item: Will Smith finds himself in hot water with the Jewish Defense League. He told a Scottish newspaper that Hitler didn't mean to do evil, but rather, using "a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'"

The JDL denounced Smith's remark as "ignorant, detestable, and offensive."

In response, Smith issued a statement clarifying his position on Hitler as a "vile, heinous, vicious killer."

This column isn't (only) about Hitler. Though, he's probably the best example. Here are some others:

Wikipedia: The Armenian Genocide also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as The Great Calamity refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction (genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by the use of massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one-and-a-half million.

Wikipedia 2: In God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust 
Through the Centuries, Grenke quotes Chalk and Jonassohn with regards to the Cherokee Trail of Tears that "an act like the Cherokee deportation would almost certainly be considered an act of genocide today".

“The Indian Removal Act of 1830” led to the Trail of Tears. About 17,000 Cherokees — along with approximately 2,000 black slaves owned by Cherokees — were removed from their homes. The number of people who died as a result of the Trail of Tears has been variously estimated. American doctor and missionary Elizur Butler, who made the journey with one party, estimated 4,000 deaths.

From the Internet: The 1831 uprising in Southampton, Virginia was led by Nat Turner, who was himself a slave. Slave rebels systematically went from house to house killing about sixty whites before they were disbanded. In the suppression of the revolt, about one hundred African Americans died and authorities hanged sixteen more.

In Turner's lengthy autobiographical statement, he says that God led him to bring judgment against whites because of the institution of slavery.

NEWSFLASH: The bloodbath began when an 8-year-old girl attending a Christmas Eve party answered a knock at the door. A man dressed as Santa and carrying what appeared to a present, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face. Then, he began shooting indiscriminately as party-goers tried to flee.

By the time it was over, at least eight people at the party were dead and the house was torched. The gunman killed himself hours after exacting revenge against his ex-wife with the massacre at his former in-laws' home.

FLASH TO LAST WEEK: I'm at my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. I mine-sweep the tables for the dregs of the vodka bottles. Following me is my cousin, B_ who came in from Thailand. A man whose mind runs through the same trough as mine, he moved there after his wife dumped him. A new girlfriend (35 years his junior) later, he's in New York for the festivities.

“Hey B_,” I say. “Did you meet S_? She's over there and she's got a pair of lips on her that could suck a car engine out through a tailpipe.”

He looks over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says. “But I gotta keep away from her. We have a history.”

Flashback to 1487: It's 2 AM. You're in bed. You lay naked, face up, your knees pressed close to your ears. On top of you, Pablo lies with his tubular bell, pressed deep into your belfry. Your lips press against his. You feel each thrust, stretching that once tight sphincter into an open, welcoming ring.

Pain. Delightful pain, as Pablo bites into your shoulder, as 

he grunts to hold back the inevitable. Your own arm reaches around the back of your leg to pump yourself from the front, while Pablo comes up the rear.

BLAM! The doors smash open. You hear a shout.

SODOMIA!

A clothed arm curls around Pablo's neck. He's wrenched off you, thrown back against the wall. You smell the stench of your own body.

Then two hands grab under your shoulders, pulling you naked out of the room. Your feet scrape against the cobblestones as you're dragged through the streets. Your naked body comes to rest-- face-down-- in the basement of the cathedral.

You struggle. Something metallic smashes into your face. A warm liquid drips from the corner of your eye to the corner of your mouth. You taste the sweet saltiness of your own blood.

You're face down, in chains, handcuffed to a kind of pedestal. It pressed into your stomach, and feels like it will tear your hips apart.

Voices in Latin speak above you. Again, you hear the word SODOMIA!

Then you feel it. The Pear. You know what it is without seeing it. It's been your nightmare for years.

Now you feel it, the metal... like a clamp... pear shaped... shoved into your already bleeding rectum. A fist-sized metal flower bud at the end of a screw. It's massive. You'll die.

But not too soon... That's just the beginning... The screw is turned. Slowly, the clamp expands. Its petals open inside you like a flower blooming from a bud. Opening larger and larger. Your insides rip. Then they shred. Death can't come soon enough for you. Stop! STOP!

***************

Yes, STOP! Everybody's got their history. Everybody's got some saga that justifies being mean to someone else. Something 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 5000 years ago. Armenians, Jews, homos.

History is a grudge factory that justifies any atrocity in the name of one that passed. Conservatives want to kill Muslims in the name of 9/11. Palestinians want to kill Israelis in the name of land taken in 1967. Israelis want to ethnically cleanse Israel from Palestinians in the name of God who “gave them” the land 5000 years ago.

Get it?

I'm writing about history. Its abuse at the hands of every vengeful despot. It provides the all-purpose excuse for the worst atrocities. Its erection rises to impale everyone who is close, but different.

History. A bunch of guys killing other guys... written by the winner. Words in a book.

The Bible, the single most deadly book in the world, is a history book. It starts on day zero, and goes downhill from there.

Find a Jew. there's a holocaust museum. Talk to Catholics in Northern Ireland and you'll wait ten seconds before Protestant Oppression in Irish History pops to the fore. Talk to an anarchist? The commies, what they did to us in the Spanish Civil War. In Africa, tribal histories resurface every few years, along with severed limbs, and spilled intestines. People hate people they've never met. Why? History!

The solution is simple... and very New York. FUHGEDDABOUDIT!

Yeah. Ignore that history. Let it go. Armenian's 3 million, trumped by Jews 8 million, trumped by Stalin's 9 million, trumped by Mao's, I donno a billion? It's over. Start again. FUHGEDDABOUDIT!

The CIA tortured. G.W. Bush conspired. OK, show us the pictures. It's important to know the truth, but then LET IT GO!

The future won't right the past. “Justice” is the drag name for revenge. Call in the Alzheimer’s! Start every day thinking about what's gonna happen tomorrow. What you do now will make that day. Yesterday's over. You won't change it. Forget it.

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

-->Whoever said cops can't laugh dept: Ex-suburban Chicago cop, Drew Peterson, called into a local radio talk show. Peterson, in jail on suspicion of the murder of his third wife and the disappearance of his fourth, suggested a new on-the-air game: Win a Conjugal Visit with Drew. He did not say, however, if the winner would be leaving the prison alive.

-->Sometimes capitalism is its own best humor dept: The Aggronautix company has released GG Allin and Tesco Vee bobblehead dolls. Called Throbbleheads, the dolls will be a “limited edition” (yeah right) collector's item. The Dwarves collection is next. I shit you not. (But does the GG doll?)

-->Al and the Xenophobes dept: An organization calling
itself Repower America is spamming email from coast to coast.
Throwing Al Gore's name around, they're sponsoring a TV/YouTube
commercial promoting “clean energy.” 
 The commercial features some hick-looking actor, shucking hay
and walking in front of a horse. The focus? “We've got to stop being
held hostage by foreign oil.” And “we're still borrowing money to
buy oil from dictators who don't like us.” How about we're burning
in ways that kill God's green earth"
 Yeah, it's the new liberal strategy. Appeal to the worst in us:
Xenophobia and religion. Evil foreigners and God's earth. It' elected
George Bush, right? Maybe it'll work for the environment.
Sorry bub, I don't want to breathe clean air made for God and
against foreigners. You breathe it. It makes me sick. 
-end-

Go to Mykel's homepage here

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-

visit Mykel's homepage here: