(MRR 347) April 2012 Column... True Punks!

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

"You can tell how punk somebody is by how often they go to the post office.” --Kyle Nooneman

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.” --William Blake

Almost every month, I complain about the internet. Perhaps, though, like Blake's grain of sand, the world is contained somewhere in anything, even Facebook. Right now, I'm reading the Facebook group Old School Hardcore Kids. It starts me on the path to this column. Let's look at what it says.

From one post to another, when it's not YouTube videos of Agnostic Front, it's debate about what's real hardcore. On Facebook and in this zine... One month after the next... Letters columns and reviews... some debate rages... if not hardcore... at least punk. What is it? Who is it? And most importantly, who it is NOT? This column will settle that.

First... as you know from the myriad of editorials, letters to the editor, interview comments... if you allow your song to be used on anything that has corporate connections. IT'S NOT HARDCORE.

THE SCENE: Tom Vomit is in a crisis. He's been offered a job as a designer in the mega-evil ad agency, AD BOOSTERS. Tons of cash. The only problem: he has to make an ad for Walmart, the most evil corp of corpAmerica. He has one way out.

His band, the Decolators, has a song that Toyota wants. If he sells the rights to that song, he and his bandmates can live from the royalties. He won't have to take a job whoring himself to the corporatocracy. He can live from his music... his dream since he was a 14 year old punk rocker listening to Green Day. Music or evil corporate hell? What does he choose? He chooses music...and gets thrown out of the punkrock club because of it.

Get it Tom? It wouldn't matter if you got nothing from the song or if it's a benefit to save French anarchist bombers from the guillotine. If it's got a corporate logo^TM on it, it ain't punk-- and neither are you!

Of course, that doesn't go far enough. No matter how macho, shirtless, ripped the picture on the cover is, if the music is poppy, danceable (rather than moshable), or if it makes you smile and not grit your teeth and clench your fist. IT'S NOT HARDCORE!

 THERE'S MORE: no matter how nasty it sounds, if the musicians look like dorks... if the singer has glasses... or the cover shows a bunch of cute guys in Hawaiian shirts and porkpie hats... IT IS SOFT! IT IS NOT HARDCORE!

FLASHBACK. It's 1986: I'm in Bleecker Bob's... fishing through the cheap punk bin. At the next milk crate is Fairly Mulligan, bass player for the hardest band in New York: THE NEANDERTHALS. I pull a record from the case and show it to him. It's from 1982, a band called The Ancestors. I heard a lot about them, but never actually HEARD them. On the cover is a drawing of a guy in glasses wearing a tie. The name of the LP is FILO GOES FOR AN MBA. I show it to Fairly.

“Waddaya thinka this?” I ask him. “I heard of 'em but I don't know 'em.”

Fairly looks at the LP and just about spits.

“It's shit!” he says. “You can't be HARDcore and wear glasses.... and a fuckin' tie? Are you kidding? Somebody should kill that guy.”

I put the record back.

Flash ahead to 1993: It's GG's notorious last show, at the Gas Station in New York. Everybody knows about it. The chaos, the shit-slinging, the fatal aftermath. But what everybody DOESN'T know is what happened AFTER the show... at THE MARS BAR (RIP).

The scummiest bar in New York. It somehow managed to last well into this century. I've been there with Ivan Merma and Gilberto... post WTC.

In 1993, you took your life... or at least your balls... in your hand when you went into the place. Several of us refugees from the GG show go there to have a few drinks to recover from what we saw.

I walk into the bathroom. enter a stall, sit on the toilet and remove GG's shit from my jacket. I use the corner of my wallet to scrape. Then I wrap each stinky brown piece in a paper napkin. My plan is to sell the wrapped GG shit for $5... in front of CBs at the next hardcore matinee.

As I scrape, the door thumps. At first, I think someone's knocking to get in, but the door doesn't lock... just open it and come on in. Then there are more thumps, on the door... outside... everywhere. Only one thing sounds like breaking wood. That is breaking wood. I hear that sound. I also hear some groans... some “motherfucker!” Gunshots do not come, but they wouldn't surprise me.

A lull in the smashing, bashing, breaking, crashing, tumbling... I push the door open... slightly... The bar looks like the aftermath of a mafia hit. The back mirror is shattered... shards hang at odd angles... most of it on the floor and bartop. Not one stool is vertical... few are in one piece. On the floor, from my vantage point, I see the leather clad arm of someone whose body I can't see... the hand holds a half-shattered bottle of Olde English 800. Blood puddles on the floor under that hand.

I stick my head out a littler further. There on the bartop, in a grey hooded sweatshirt, unzipped, is K Rappo, singer for one of the hardest bands in NY: YOUNG PEOPLE NOW.

“Them walls are broke down, huh?” he says when he sees me crawling out of the bathroom.

“Waddaya mean?” I ask.

“GG ain't so tough,” he answers. “He says DRINK, FIGHT, AND FUCK? Hah, he's got it wrong. Hardcore is not about drinking or fucking. It's THE FIGHT. Listen, Mykel, get this straight. YOU ARE NOT HARDCORE IF YOU DON'T FIGHT.”

FLASH AHEAD A WEEK: THE NEADERTHALS are playing A7. They've broken up and gotten back together more times than a Hollywood couple. Great show, but that's not the important point. AFTER the show, I see Fairly Mulligan in the corner, breathing hard... showing off his chest. He spots me and waves.

“Hey Mykel,” he says. “I got something for you.”

Grabbing my hand, he pulls me into the A7 bathroom.

Now, I've been thirsting for his glutei maximi since I first saw him as a drummer for The Motivaters in 1980. Is he finally going to give up that anal hymen? My hopes rise like my penis when he pushes open a stall door. But then something strange happens.

Instead of dropping trou and bending over, he pushes on the back wall of the stall. It moves and we enter a secret room. 

It's dark. Before my eyes adjust I see nothing. A sound comes through the blackness... like a muffled pigeon chirp... or the struggling screams of someone whose mouth is duct-taped shut. Bingo!

As my eyes adjust, I make out a platform in the middle of the dark room. Tied down to that platform-- a limb stretched toward each corner-- is what looks like a naked white boy wearing black-rimmed glasses. It IS a naked white boy wearing black-rimmed glasses. It's Filo Zuckerman, singer from The Ancestors.

“See him?” asks Fairly... as if I could miss him. “He thinks he's hardcore. No tattoos and the songs? Titles like You're the One, and Silly Girl. Nothing about UNITY or THE CREW or AMERICA. Just love songs... and he calls himself hardcore?”

Something glints in Fairly's hand. I just see a faint flash before I realize that it's a pocket switchblade now plunged into the chest of the boy on the platform. It must have hit a vein, because blood spurts like a geyser... covering Fairly's face and chest.

Stabbing is not enough. Fairly slices downward and then flings the knife aside. With both hands he reaches into the slit and pulls out Filo's still beating heart. I can barely keep from fainting at the gore. Fairly leans over the pulsating cardiac, I watch him take a deep bite. It seems to explode as the blood-engorged organ spews red everywhere.

Chewing, then swallowing, Fairly looks at me. His face covered in blood like a kid's face... covered in blueberries after a pie-eating contest, Fairly looks at me and smiles.

“Mykel,” he says. “You're not HARDCORE until you've eaten human flesh.”

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]

-->Apology dept: I don't answer letters in the letter section. That section belongs to the readers. I have this column. It's not fair if I have the last word both places. Here, I want to answer a letter and to apologize for an error. I quoted Ron Paul on Muammar Qhaddaffi. Though the quote was from the Ron Paul website, Ron did not actually write it. I missed that. Still, written by RP or not, the quote is correct in its analysis of why that great Libyan was killed.

-->Oh that again dept: Another letter was about my column comparing a coach's sex with some kids to Apple/Steve Job's exploitation of thousands of Chinese workers, including several who committed suicides because they couldn't take the pressure. I asked why the former got all the press and attention while the latter was clearly more evil.

      The MRR letter ONLY attacked my “belief that there is nothing wrong with a 50 year old man having sex with an 10 year old boy.” It made no mention of the Apple-caused deaths. I guess it proved my point.

-->It's not as bad as you thought dept: This Week Magazine reports that the break of the “housing bubble” is not what it seems. While homes valued under $1 million have fallen an average of 1.5 percent in value over the last year, fear not. Homes valued over $1 million dollars have risen 0.7 percent in the same time.

  Says real estate economist Stan Humphries, “Luxury is the best-performing segment of the housing market right now.”

-->But they can watch us dept: The Freeman website reports that: In at least three states (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland), it is now illegal to record an on-duty police officer even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

     The legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where “no expectation of privacy exists” (Illinois does not.) In practice this exception is not being recognized.

-->Anarchy in Bloomingdales dept: Anarchist News Dot Org reports that the Axe perfume company is making a new fragrance. You guessed it Anarchy Perfume. (Does it smell like tear gas?) One of the commercials for it is: A female police officer chases a masked jewelry thief through a sun-drenched cityscape. Sprinting, he pulls off his mask, sheds his jacket and dumps his bag of loot; she throws off her police hat, undoes her utility belt and drops her weapons to the ground. She’s no longer a cop; he’s no longer a criminal. They stare at each other with unbridled desire. The words “Nothing will ever be the same again” appear on the screen, followed by the warning “Anarchy is coming.”

Can Eau d'Punk be far behind?

--> If it takes the blood of one Christian boy to make 40 matzohs, how many matzos can you make from 143 Christian boys dept: Kyle Nooneman, whose quote starts this column, sent me this from the Huffington Post:

Parents of students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Ga., are outraged at the school district's using examples of slavery in math word problems, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

    The word problems in question include references to slavery and "beatings." 

   Here are some examples:

   "Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how many would each slave pick?" and 

   "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"

-->I wish he were right dept: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie attacked President Obama as encouraging a nation that “places comfortable lies ahead of difficult truths” and a person who is trying to “divide the country by demonizing the wealthy.” If only it were true! The wealthy ARE demons. Much more than Muslims or non-working people or old people that the Republicans are trying to demonize. Obama, unfortunately, could never be so good as to demonize the right people.

-->That's so ghetto dept: Kyle also sent me this one about Microsoft. They makes this mapping app to keep drivers out of dangerous neighborhoods. In modern American cities, this means places where there are a lot of Negroes or Hispanics.

Since most urban crime is between people who know each other and not random drivers, one critic of the app suggests:

A more useful app would be for young black men to be able to map blocks with the highest risks of their being pulled over or stopped on the street by police," he said. "That phenomenon affects many more people than the rare occurrences of random violence against motorists driving through 'bad' neighborhoods."

I say, yeah, but the guys being pulled over by the cops usually can't afford iPhones to use the app on... unless they steal them.

-end-

(MRR 346) What America Needs is JOBS!

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

"The crucial reality is the need to sell your labor to capital in order to live, the need to carve up your personality for sale-- to look at yourself in the mirror and think, "What have I got that I can sell?" --Marshall Berman

It was something I ate. Bang. Stomach ache, I can just make it... I hope... It musta been the Korean food... Seemed so healthy... mushrooms... kim chi with sesame seeds... even tofu ice cream for fuck's sake. Pow! A belt to the stomach. I'm gonna explode.


On the way to the bathroom, I grab today's mail. I'll need something to read while the food makes its painful progress through my intestines. 

Ah, made it. Not quite ready to let loose though.

I pick up the mail.

First, THE NATION... my usual bathroom reading. Lefty enough to be interesting. Alexander Cockburn who's almost always right. And book reviews better than the books they review.

This issue reviews a book about the mind. The author of the book is a neurosurgeon who splits peoples brains in epilepsy operations. Then he does experiments on the split brainers. His experiments convince him that people don't really have free will. We act, he says, spontaneously. Then we use free will in rationalizing the act.

The reviewer asks “if people lack free will, why did the surgeon make them sign “consent” forms before the experiments? How can you consent to anything if you don't have free will?” Smart guy, smart ass. Right up my alley.

Ow! Ow! Ow! The brown muck makes it's way up the right side, across the middle, down the left, almost... almost... Fuck, stuck right at the key point... begging release... yet unreleased.

I check out the NATION'S front cover. Getting Priorities Straight. It's about how Obama sold out to the Republicans (what a surprise!) by making the debt the number one issue. Says THE NATION, “it should be JOBS!” Let's have another WPA like during Roosevelt. Let the government hire people so they can earn their own living... not have to take handouts... give people the dignity of earning their own way... put Americans to work.

Yeah, pouring tar on highways. That'll give 'em dignity... or black lungs.

Enough! I put the magazine down and open a letter from something called ACE. I'd think it was a hardware advertisement but for the blurb on the front of the envelope. EMPOWERING THE HOMELESS. Hmmmm. What does that mean? Register them to vote? Give them a place to live, regroup and get something decent to eat? Um, no...

ACE program participants-- who have all spent time on the streets or in prison-- now sweep our sidewalks, bag our trash, and shovel our snow.

That's empowerment? Empowerment means giving people power over their own lives. What does ACE give people power over, a plastic garbage bag?

The Republicans, they want jobs too. Take the oil pipeline through Canada... please.

This from another NATION report:

Republicans used the payroll tax measure to push for quick approval of TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL pipeline project, backed by labor unions but opposed by environmental groups.

The legislation requires Obama to approve construction of the pipeline from Canada to U.S. Gulf of Mexico facilities within 60 days or declare it is not in the national interest. Obama wanted to take a year, beyond November's elections, to review the project.

Republicans argued the pipeline would create jobs at a time the nation is suffering from an 8.6 percent unemployment rate.

"The president says he wakes up every morning thinking about jobs. This morning, the Senate took action where the president has punted," said Republican Senator John Cornyn.

Meanwhile, Libertarians call on the government to stop all welfare programs, and let people find their own jobs. Stand on their own two feet. Instead of handouts, they should work and find dignity in any job.

The problem, they say, is the minimum wage. It's too high, a strain on business. If you pay people 25 cents an hour, think of how many more you could hire! Newt Gingrich wants to end child labor laws. Hire kids at four dollars an hour. Fuck school. What do they learn there? Maybe poetry or art. Is that gonna get them a job?

What about cripples? They can wheel on their own two wheels.

Get people out of school. Get 'em off welfare. Cut unemployment insurance. Work! That's what freedom's all about, isn't it?

Just at this moment, I release. Relief-filled brown splats into the toilet. Pow! Like a beershit. I can feel it in my ankles. It's wonderful.

Wiping myself, I use nearly a whole roll of tissues. Still, I seem to have missed something. I feel a little prick... like a small stone in a sock... I reach a finger into a particularly deep anal fold. There it is... I scrape through with a fingernail... another scrape... Something catches between the nail and the finger flesh... got it! I pull it toward my face to examine it. A sesame seed, from the Korean food last night. What a relief!... Then it hits me.

Jobs! People need jobs. There must be hundreds... no thousands... millions... of people who need dingleberries fished from their anal folds. I'd certainly pay $2 for an anal fisher. Think of the employment possibilities

The new company, At Your Anal Call. All those homeless people, welfare moms, kids who only like poetry or music. All those old folks who no one else will hire. Here's a chance for them to earn money... learn pride in work... make other people happy.

Their $2-a-berry dingleberry-picking will do more than give them enough money for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. It will give them pride in doing it themselves. It will teach them the dignity of earning their own way.

Set up charges will be low. There will be little equipment to buy. The only expense will be advertising the service... and the 39 cents of the $2 fee that will actually go to the dingleberry- picker.

I got it! I'll let the government-- and foundations-- advertise for me. It's a company liberals and conservatives will both love. They'll shower me with cash. It should be easy... a piece of cake... er... Korean sesame.

I call the libertarians at the Cato Institute.

“Hello,” I tell 'em, “All Power to the Koch brothers and private enterprise.”

“All power to capital,” comes their reply. “What can we do for you?”

After a bit of explaining, I'm switched to a Mister DeLoit. I explain my plan to him.

“That's a great idea!” he says. “We'll contribute five million bucks to help you set up the project. Then we'll create a front grou... er... charitable organization, do a mass mailing, encourage people to support people standing on their own two feet...”

“Actually,” I say, “the work requires some kneeling...”

“Wise guy!” he says. “Now where was I... oh yeah, keep the government out of people's business. Let people earn their way in a free society. Start at the bottom. Learn the value of hard work and a dollar. Go from dingleberry picking to... to who knows where? Might even open a chain of pizza parlors... right? The sky's the limit.”

I nod into the phone.

“Now who should I make the check out to,” he continues. “And where should I send it? ...”

Well, that was a fruitful phonecall. Next I call THE NATION, that bastion of left-wing thinking.

“Hello,” I tell 'em, “all power to the people... especially the workers.”

“All power to labor,” comes the reply. “What can we do for you?”

After a bit of explaining, I'm switched to a Ms Jackson. I tell her my plan.

“That's a great idea,” she says. “The government can subsidize your organization... maybe make a contract. It'll be like Roosevelt and the WPA. Jobs, jobs jobs. Of course the workers will have to make a living wage. Your $2 an hour for the extreme effort of dingleberry-picking is much too low.”

“I understand,” I say. “How 'bout if we double it?”

“Excellent,” comes the answer. “We'll be creating real jobs. Useful work for workers who really get their hands dirty. And there are no plastics, chemicals or other environmental hazards.”

“There may be occasional gas,” I say.

 “Wise guy!” she says. “Now where was I... oh yeah. We could set up a lobby to encourage the government to hire dingleberry-pickers. We'll explain it's a public need. We'll contact the unions. Let them organize a Brotherhood of dingleberry-pickers Local 584. Get some government protection. It'll be like the WPA during Roosevelt's time. Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!”

It sounds like she's having an orgasm.

I clear my throat.

“Sorry,” she says, “I got carried away.... Anyway, you've got a great idea. We'll form a front group... er... Political Action Committee... to push the idea. Americans for Jobs Now, we'll call it. How much do you need? Will three million hold you over until we get things started?”

“I think I can get by on that,” I tell her. “It'll be a struggle, but I can do it.”

“Ok,” she says, “we'll make it four. I'd like to give more, but times are tough, you know.”

I thank her and hang up.

Okay, maybe there's something to this JOBS thing after all.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.coym) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]

-->Inspiration dept: For those who are just learning about anti-workism, the best source is the great essay by Bob Black. Called, The Abolition of Work, it's available for free on the internet. Just google it.

-->Ultimately THEY control it dept: San Francisco's BART subways system is the first American government agency to block internet use to discourage dissent. On August 11, 2011 BART cut off cell phone and internet access in some stations. They believed those stations would be targeted by protesters demonstrating against a transit shooting by transit police. It worked.

-->As if you need another reason to vote 3rd party dept: Obama has signed a law invalidating the constitution. The law allows indefinite imprisonment... without trial... a violation of the most basic law of any free society. In the U.S. the law violates the “due process” clause of the Constitution. Obama cast it aside...like his promises to close Guantanamo.

-->God or jail, which is worse? dept: In September 2011, Police Chief Michael Rowland of Bay Minette Alabama, announced a new program. Called "Operation Restore Our Community,” non-violent offenders would have an option of paying a fine, going to jail or attending church weekly for one year. At the end of 12 months, their records would be wiped clean. 
 There are not many religious choices in Bay Minette: several Protestant churches, one catholic, no synagogues, no mosques, and no B'hai temples. So it's off to the evangelicals... the good thing about it is that prisoners will learn what every goyish kid learns: church is a punishment. Jews learn that synagogue is a punishment. 

-->Government training dept: Wired Magazine revealed that, at the FBI training center in Quantico Virginia, new employees are told, "the more devout a Muslim is, the more likely he is to be violent." Sounds like a Christian to me. The same training material characterizes the prophet Muhammad as a "cult leader," 
 In a surprise move (When Good Things are Done by Bad People), Senators Joseph Lieberman (Israel's 100% patsy) and Republican, Susan Collins, sent a letter to the US Attorney General complaining about the training. They called it "inaccurate and even inflammatory." They're right. What got into them? 

-->Where there's a will there's a hustle dept: Hallmark Cards announced a new line of "cards for people who have lost their jobs," The cards come in six designs. It's not clear if any are congratulations cards. 

-->And if there's an attack did God allow it? dept: The Kentucky Court of Appeals said it's okay for Kentucky to give official credit for its homeland security to "Almighty God,” and put that credit on all official correspondence. Now, if there's a terrorist attack in Kentucky... who's responsible for the FAILURE of that security? Not that I'd advocate such a thing. Who me? God forbid! 

(MRR 345) Penn State vs Apple a not so rosey bowl

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

for MRR 345, February

by Mykel Board

aka  Mykel continues his Steve Jobs attack, enlisting the Penn State football team to help.

“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.” Proverbs 26:11

I lie naked on on the bed... gasping... my mouth half open to let air in and out. Each breath hurts. My lungs whistle as they struggle for air. I'm going to suffocate. Half blind, I feel for something to clear my nose in. A cloth... soft... white... a t-shirt turned inside-out as if worn and discarded. I can vaguely see GG Allin through the material... I don't care... I pull the crumpled t-shirt to my face. Using what little lung-power I have, I blow air out my nose. BLLLLLAAAR! BLLLLLAAAR! BLLLLLAAAR! For a second I breathe. Feel the air through one nostril-- like mint on a spring day.

I look at the yellow glob of snot in the t-shirt. It's flecked with red... blood... looking like veins in a leaf... nourishment for the pus... a living organism, that'll drop off the cloth... onto the floor... and start crawling. It doesn't.

The fantasy of crawling mucus doesn't last long. The snot I didn't expel has lodged itself in my lungs. I gag... cough... gag again... manage to pull myself up... to my elbows. The coughing doesn't stop... deep heavy coughs... below my lungs... into my stonach... more gagging... I'm gonnna choke on my own vomit... like Jimi Hendrix.

I can just roll out of bed and crawl slowly toward the bathroom... too slowly... Before I reach the toilet, I cough hard enough to dislodge the food in my stomach... taco salad... shot of ouzo... nacho chips... with beef and cheese... all in various degrees of digestion... all pouring out of my mouth onto the tile floor.... not pouring, but spraying... hard... onto the floor... up and out my nose... everywhere... with enough force to splatter... to splatter my hands... my arms... drip down my face... hang in strings from my beard.

Green... gray... yellow... white... clear... this too, flecked though with tiny rivulets of blood... it's not over... more coughing... violent... puke... not like a beer puke... not like a fever puke... puke without nausea... a hard puke... coughing food from my stomach... inhaling the puke and coughing it out again ... spraying the floor like a machine gun sprays Iraqis.

The fluorescent light in the bathroom brightens the viscous mess on the floor.

Flash to a locker-room in Pennsylvania: A big, smiley gray-haired man is naked, kneeling next to a pre-pubescent, also naked. The kid is a white boy, with a shock of brown hair, falling Justin Bieber style, over his forehead. He lies on a wooden bench. He too is naked.

The grey-haired man lowers his buck-toothed mouth over the boy's crotch. He laps, starting low, between the legs... he raises one eyebrow to watch the boy move from limpitude to youthful stiffness. Then he takes that stiffness into his mouth...

I don't know if that's what happened. The coach says he only “horsed around with” the boys. It could've been nothing more than sharing a shower.

You (think you) know the story. You saw it on TV. TV news and the press have turned the adventure into something more disgusting than my vomit on the bathroom floor. They spray it in your face whenever you turn on the TV. The latest, in Pennsylvania: Jerry Sandusky, the defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team is charged with sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year period. The man played football at Penn State and was a coach there for 32 years — 23 of them as the team's defensive coordinator.

Along with him, Joe Paterno, the long-time football coach-- and the winningest coach in college football-- and several other people were fired. No trial... except in the press.

Sandusky talks about showering with the kids and “horsing around,” which means things like snapping towels... not things like licking testicles.

A Janitor had reported Sandusky in 2000... saying he saw something lewd in a college lockerroom shower.

What is the coach charged with? Seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. What the fuck is involuntary deviate sexual intercourse?

We get more. More spew from the press... right and left... from tsk-tsking conservatives who say that's what happens when you let GOD out of your life... to tsk-tsking liberals who say that's what happens when sports and its idea of winning is the only thing take over.

Excuse me while I puke.

Did the kids complain? Was there an injury? A visit to a doctor? None of that.

Where's the crime?... I'll tell you.

Flash to Zhengzhou in the Henan Province of China: On the 25^th floor of an anonymous factory building. It's slave labor. Workers forced into 12-hour days, at about 50 cents an hour. Chung Tang, about 25-- but looking 50, has been working for 36 hours straight. He's forbidden to speak to his co-workers... he couldn't anyway... he has to put a circuit board on some pegs. One every seven seconds. If he misses, he's fired... out on the street.

The smell of chemical solvents permeates the air. They use the chemicals to etch circuit boards. They also etch lungs. It's painful to breathe. Straight thinking is impossible. The man's brain is fried from the work and the chemicals. After work, he drags himself to the single room he shares with five other workers. Not today.

All he can do is count. 36 hours... ten more boards and he can go home. Nine... Eight... Seven...

His supervisor walks to him.

“You have more,” he says. “There is a new order. You must stay.”

A scream wells up in Chung's throat like vomit wells up in mine. It escapes. AAAAARRRRRRR!

He pushes past the supervisor heading for the window. He jumps. He dies.

It's just another day at the APPLE FACTORY. Another few million iPhones assembled and ready to go. Another worker out the window.

Meanwhile, in America, the Steve Jobs worship continues, despite revelations that Foxconn, their Chinese contractor, operates such a horrible sweatshop that 12 workers jumped out the windows, killing themselves. The crisis is so deep the company installed safety nets between buildings to catch the jumpers. No shit.

Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), a Hong Kong-based workers’ rights group, released a report about Foxconn. It details the exhaustion of 12-hour (or longer) shifts, the alienation from not being allowed to speak to co-workers, and the frenzy of a rapid just-in-time production model that has workers putting in a phone motherboard every seven seconds.

With conditions worse than prison hard labor, workers see no alternative to a flying leap out the window.

Two stories:

One: seven young guys who may or may not have fucked a football coach. Two: a dozen people a killing themselves rather than facing Apple's working conditions. Which is worse? Sex or death? Apple or Penn State?

Look up the answer on your iPhone. Me? I gotta go throw up.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog readers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]

-->NOT dept: My defense of, and support for the Occupy folks (in last month's column), looks like a direct answer to Lefty Hooligan's column about how they're too tame. It is not. Because of the advance deadline, I had not read Lefty's column before I wrote mine. Not that it would change anything. He's wrong. I'm not.

-->How they keep a majority dept: It's clear that MOST Americans support the Occupy folks and would as soon vote for Jerry Sandusky as any 1%-Republican. The only way for the Republicans to keep control of Congress is to prevent people from voting. So, that's what they do.
      In Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, voters will have to show photo IDs to vote. Ten percent of the citizens of those states do not have photo IDs... mostly poor and young... the same people who would wish the Republicans a good ass kicking! Hmmmm.

-->Imagine ordering the cops to do that? Dept: NY Police commissioner Raymond Kelly has ordered his cops to “follow the law” when making arrests for pot. Until that order, cops would routinely stop and frisk people (mostly young, mostly black) and then, when they found weed, claim to the court it was in plain sight. Cops are now prohibited from doing this.
    Hmmmm, strange how the rest of us have to follow the law all the time, but cops (finally!) only have to do it when making pot arrests. And that's a NEW rule.

-->Fire me, please! Dept: HP CEO Leo Apotheker was fired for disastrous performance for the company. He was replaced by failed California gubernatorial right-wing candidate, Meg Whitman. (Fat chance I'm gonna buy anything HP!) Don't feel sorry for Apotheker, though. His “termination benefits” are valued at 31 million dollars.

-->On my turntable dept: So Shut-Up Records sent me a buncha stuff that laid on my cabinet for months. Then WOW!!
       I guess you guys know THE STUN GUNS. I'm out of the vinyl loop... I shouldn't be. This colored marble piece of vinyl is so strong, it gives me a hard-on! Quick find me a a locker-room in Pennsylvania!

-->Mentioning it again dept: It should be a requirement that every judge spend at least six months in jail. Then he'd know what he was doing when he sentences people to that hellhole institution of new slavery.
     I've written before about Waldo, my artist jailpal. He will draw you a picture from a photograph, or his mind. For free. I used one of his (me licking a Japanese samurai sword) for my Facebook profile pic. Just write to him and tell him what you want. He's got a lot of time. Waldo c/o Ryan Homslay #747267, MCDC 1120 SW Third Ave., Portland OR 97204

-->Get on the List Dept: It's always a good time to be a spy. How can you fight the badguys if you don't know what they're doing? Wikileaks? We need 300 million Wikileaks.
      A front group called United in Purpose, is supported by a couple California venture capitalists. Among them Ken Edred, a wealthy Republican donor, and Reid Rutherford, who, when not working for the Christian right, beats doors to promote solar power. (Yeah bad guys like solar energy too!)
     The purpose of United in Purpose is to data-mine, forming a database of “every unregistered born-again and evangelical Christian and conservative Catholic in the country.” What happens to that list is anybody's guess... but it shouldn't be.
    What to do? Register with a Christian conservative group. Put your name and email address on some stupid Right to Life petition. Send for information from The 700 Club. It probably won't take much to get on the list... then see what happens. Let me know what you find out.

-->Who wudda thunk it dept: Ok, buckaroos, guess who said this, “Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on government action apply. Individual famlies must set their own rules, without imposing what the State thinks parents ought to do.”
   Is this the ACLU? The National Coalition Against Censorship? NAMBLA? Nope! It's our own maleficent Anthony Scalia, the most totalitarian and evil of the Supreme Court justices. But this broken clock was right once! He wrote the statement in his opinion rejecting the California video game censorship law. Credit where it's due.

-->What happened? dept: For awhile I was getting a buncha those kind of DVDs from fans. (I love that rub it all over me one from Justin and Samantha.) For the last month, or so, things have... er... dried up. Keep 'em coming! On the edge (but LEGAL!) of course. As always (Mykel Board POB 137, Prince Street Station, NY NY 10012). Don't send me links or attachments. I just delete that stuff.

-->Sure it was an accident dept: Yahoo has apologized for blocking the delivery of emails that contained a URL related to the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations.
    Yahoo admitted that it blocked the emails pertaining and issued an apology on Twitter, saying that the blockage was “not intentional.” The mega-corp blamed its spam filters for stopping emails that contained the campaign website OccupyWallStreet.org.
    Not intentional? Yeah, right.

-end-

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