The First True Post MRR Column

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

by Mykel Board

I feel like I've been freed from a strong and terrible master. --Socrates, when he found he could no longer maintain an erection.

-----------------------

“I want you to imagine your ideal vacation spot,” the anesthesiologist tells me. “Warm. The waves lapping. You're lying... basking in the sun. Nothing to do but relax and sleep.”

“My ideal vacation spot is a jungle in Africa,” I tell him, “with naked natives begging for a crack at my white little body.”

He chuckles.

“Shouldn't I be counting back from 100 or something?” I ask.

“You could try that,” he says.

“100... 99... 98...” I start. I get to 45.

“Something's wrong,” he says. “You should have been out by 89.”

“My arm is killing me,” I tell him.

He walks to where the IV is puncturing a vein in my arm. A clear, slightly viscous liquid drips from the vein onto the floor.

“Shit!” he says.

Not exactly what you want to hear from a doctor.

The surgeon speaks this time. “Bring it around this side,” she tells him. “Here, put it in his hand...in the back of his hand.”

The sleep doc walks the needle around to my right side. He pokes it into a vein in the back of my hand... tapes it down.

“100... 99... 98..” I say. I get to 92.

AUGUST 2013 It's been a few hell-months for me. Besides getting fired from MRR, I develop a hernia. Then, WITH the hernia (in my body, not as a tool), I have to move furniture so the bedbug guys can bedbug-proof the apartment. My neighbors have 'em. Soon, I'm suffering a bloody scalp where books and a heavy speaker tumble onto my head as I move a bookcase. A few days later, I lose a best friend, an Israeli, because I've posted a facebook article critical of Israel. Then, I have the hernia operation and awake with horrible pain... in my shoulder! I needed the Oxycontin for THAT! Not for my balls! Then, I find that the Oxycontin is stupidly mixed with Tylenol so that if I have a beer and take the pills my liver will dissolve. I can barely crawl out of bed. I can't use my stomach muscles to sit up. My shoulder pain won't let me use my arms to push myself up. Then, lying in bed, my apartment fills with red dust... like a Gobi sandstorm... so thick I can't see. (They're renovating the apartment next door and sanding down the bricks to make them look authentic.) Then, I start coughing from the dust, and the cough tears at my just repaired abdominal muscles making the blood trickle downward so my cock and balls turn black from collected hemoglobin. (Photos soon on flickr.)

My pal Wanda stops in to nurse me. She has the keys. We've been friends for more than two decades. Just friends... She's a lesbian, of course and she lives just down the street. It's a pleasure to see her leather-jacketed crew-cut self swagger in through the bedroom door. She brings me a cup of coffee from the Korean deli downstairs, and for some reason a bean burrito.

“I can't fart!” I tell her. “Gas just bubbles around my intestines... like a juvenile delinquent... just hanging out...no place to go.”

“It's a breakfast burrito, Mykel,” she tells me. “It's good for you. Let me microwave it up.”

FLASH TO TWO YEARS AGO. I'm with my top-tier pal Sid. We're eating at a Mexican place in some state that does not border on water. I order pig's cheek taco.

“Why do you always have to get the most disgusting food?” he asks.

“What do you mean disgusting?” I say. “How do you know it's disgusting? What if I like it?”

“I was just asking?” he says. “Just asking.”

BACK TO NOW: “Where's the microwave?”asks Wanda.

“I can't eat a burrito!” I cry. “I'm in pain. I can't fart. I'll explode.”

“I was just asking,” she says.

FLASH BACK TO SID AGAIN: This time we're couch-surfing together... somewhere in the South, I think. The hostess is a beautiful Latina. I can see both of us eying the parts she shows when she's leaving.

“Mykel,” says Sid, “do you ever think that you're too old for some of these girls. I mean, how can you expect anything more than a smile when you're old enough to be her father... her grandfather?”

“What the fuck?” I say. “Let a girl wiggle her ass and the insults start flying.”

“Insults? What insults?” says Sid. “I was just asking. That's all.”

RIGHT NOW: Yeah, I KNOW, just asking implies motive behind the question. Yeah I KNOW questions themselves can be irritating. (What's it like living your whole life as a short person?), insulting (Don't you think that people would have more respect for you if you didn't act like a 60-year old baby?), racist (Why don't Jews ever want to split the bill? ). and just asking doesn't make them any less so. But ASKING opens a door. Allows discussion. An answer, even if it's that question is :irritating/insulting/racist. It starts a dialog-- or should-- even if the dialog is about the question itself.

Lisa Carver (formerly Lisa Suckdog) posted in Facebook how she lost friends by simply asking if CLASS WAR was the same as CIVIL WAR. Just asking the question, lost her friends, probably with accusation of you're conservative, a sell-out, or who-knows-what else. She's not the only one.

Only in The Gambia have I met people who could talk about anything, answer any question with a smile and another helping of tea. Only they were not offended by the question, but offered a thoughtful answer without taking ANYTHING personally. This is NOT The Gambia.

Now, I'm writing my first column outside the yoke of Maximum Rock'n'Roll. I'm responsible to my readers, and them only. I'm gonna ask a lot of questions here. I hope I don't lose friends... but it's a writer's dilemma: ask the questions or BE NICE. The first choice will lose you friends. The second will make you a bad writer.

Some questions need to be asked. For all but two years after Timmy Y's demise, MRR has been ruled by a cabal of Iron Ladies. Like my Israeli friend who saw my criticisms of Israel as “permission to kill Jews,” critical questions about women at MRR are met with everything from vague hostility to charges of ENCOURAGING RAPE. So now that I'm relatively free, with friends, not a vocation, at risk, I will ask what needs to be asked.

FLASH TO BEDSIDE: Wanda sits on a step ladder next to the bed. She holds the coffee, with a straw for me to sip. I lay on plumped up pillows.

“Hey Wanda,” I say. “Can I ask you a bunch of questions?”

“Sure,” she says, “no harm in asking questions.”

“Okay,” I tell her, “but the questions might make you mad. I don't want to risk your pouring hot coffee on my testicles.”

“Mykel,” she says, “I've known you for 20 years. I don't think you could ask anything to offend me. Besides, you're only asking, right?”

“Right,” I tell her.”And even more. I don't want you to answer the questions right now. I want you to take 'em home with you. Sleep on 'em. Bring me some answers with my morning coffee tomorrow. You can ask me if you don't understand something. But don't answer. You can ask a question, but no comments until you think it over. Okay?”

She doesn't answer.

Wiseguy.

FLASH TO LAST MONTH: City Court. I'm here... called for jury duty. In the first case I'm called for, a drug possession case, I don't even make it to the jury box. The second case is a rape. I make it to the final stage on this one. It's a charge against a homeless guy, brought by a drunken college girl. I'd better not get on THIS jury. I might not survive.

During the person-by-person questioning, one of the prosecutors reads New York's definition of RAPE: Penetration, no matter how far, of the penis into the vagina... without consent. And I think, what the fuck?

If rape is defined as penetration, no matter how far, of a penis into a vagina, without consent... that means only men can be rapists and only women can be victims. Women cannot rape men or other women. Men cannot rape other men. If a woman is drunk she is considered unable to give consent... if she has sex, it's rape. If a man is drunk, it doesn't matter. Only the woman's condition matters. Is there another crime so divided that only one gender can be the criminal, and the other the victim? Could you imagine a crime where only one RACE could be the criminal and another the victim? What would that say about such a society?

BEDSIDE: “Okay Wanda,” I say. “The first question comes from some thoughts I had in court.”

“What were you on trial for?” she asks me.

Wise guy.

I explain the situation and ask her the question. She keep her composure.

“So you want me to go home and think about this? Right?”

“That's right,” I say. “Otherwise it'll just turn into a stupid argument.”

She nods, tapping her unpainted nails against the step ladder. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “You know I'm pro-abortion. Look around. It's obvious we need more of them. But there's something else. If abortion is legal, who should decide if the woman gets one or not? The father? The pregnant woman? If it's the woman who makes the sole decision (In my opinion, it should be), then why should she be able to sue for child support? If a man says, ABORT, but the woman says I'LL KEEP IT, then it's the woman's choice ONLY. Should the man be forced to pay for something he had no say in? If the baby were a 50-50 choice to make it and keep it, okay... split the costs 50-50. But if it's only up to ONE SIDE to have a baby or not, why should the other side pay anything?”

That's a lot to get out in one breath... too much. I inhale and my lungs fill with brick dusk. I start coughing. The pain is unimaginable. I feel like I'm going to split open. Stitches tear. My entire large intestine slide down the inguinal canal. At least it feels that way.

Wanda comes to the rescue, sliding the coffee-with-the-straw under face. I take a sip. Spit up all over my pajamas. Wanda gets a paper towel from the kitchen and pats up coffee. I'm breathing hard now. My lungs whistle with each breath.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I nod.

“Did you get that question?” I try to say, dribbling more coffee into my beard..

She nods.

“Anything else?” she asks.

I nod... and hold up a finger to tell her I'm trying to get my insides together. More gas rumbles through my guts. It presses against my anal sphincter in a desperate bid for freedom. Freedom denied.

I talk some more.

“If abortion is legal,” I say, “then a mother choosing to destroy her fetus is not a murderer. BUT, the law says that making a pregnant woman lose a baby, (say someone hits her in the stomach), is MURDER in the eyes of the state. How come? Either killing a fetus is murder, or it isn't? If it ISN'T murder, than why is the fetus destroyer charged with murder? If it IS murder, than why do mothers have the right to murder their children in the womb and not after they're born?”

“Does it matter that I'm a lesbian in answering all these abortion questions?” asks Wanda.

“Naw,” I tell her. “It matters that you're smart and you're a girl... It also doesn't hurt that you're here nursing me.”

“Okay,” she says, “Is there a way you can get more girls to nurse crotchety old men with hernias? I think it'll help make more lesbians.”

I laugh.

“OW! OW! OW! Jeezus fuck that hurts,” I groan, “Please, even a chuckle makes it feel like my insides are tearing themselves apart.”

“Okay,” she says, “you have more questions?”

“Yes,” I tell her, “Why are liberals outraged at U.S. MILITARY RAPE? Why is that more important than military murder? Why are we worried more about soldiers abusing each other, than about soldiers (or drones) murdering non-soldiers? Why is equality among killers more important than preventing killing in the first place?

“You finished Mykel?” she asks.

I can see that she's not very pleased.

“You're not going to hurt me?” I ask. “Roll me onto the floor, make cough, do something that will pull at my delicate sutures?”

“Of course not,” she answers. “What makes you think that?”

Then, she tickles me.

--------------------------------------------------

NOTE TO READERS:

Ok, I know that I'm not just asking. Behind each question is a motive. Maybe the question itself is the wrong question. But now that I'm free from the constraints of a strong and terrible master... er... mistress... I can ask these questions. Your comments are welcome, either on the blog, on facebook or in an email. Personal attacks, however, will be deleted and GODWIN'S LAW will be ruthlessly enforced.

I'm looking for civil rather than hysterical conversation. Maybe that's not possible on the internet. Maybe it's not possible outside of Western Africa. Let's see what happens.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email (god@mykelboard.com). Postal contact (send those... er... private videos..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003]

-->Credit where it's due dept: MRR finally ran a pro-Mykel letter and my letter to the editor where I explained the facts and lies of my being canned. They did it without mentioning my rather childish mis-spelling of the editrix, Mariam's, name. And so far, it seems that I've remained on their comp list. New issue, fresh as a daisy, in my PO Box. Ten punk points guys. As usual, I urge you to express your opinion about my firing to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com.

--> Salon reports that the Tennessee state legislature is considering a new bill. It would allow graduate student counselors to refuse to offer services to clients with "goals, outcomes or behaviors that conflict with the sincerely held religious beliefs of the counselor.”

The bill was created specifically for counselors to be able NOT to work with gay students, I hope some smart kid waits for a student who wants to become a priest!! No service for him, buckaroo! It's against her religion to service future priests!

--> The return of the anti-porn feminist monster or the what good is jerking off department: Just when you thought the beast was dead, it rises like a penis at a porn convention. AM New York reports that feminists now argue that internet porn is “rewiring boys' minds.”

That's bad for the boy, the report says, “Eventually his brain wires itself to everything associated with porn such as: Being alone, constant clicking, voyeurism, shock and surprise. This conflicts with learning about real sex, which involves interaction with a real person, courtship, commitment, touching, being touched and emotional connection.”

I'm not sure how much REAL SEX the report-writer has had, but a fuck of a lot of it doesn't involve courtship, commitment, or emotional connection. Prostitution and one-night stands, you know, are slightly older (several thousand years), than internet porn.

-->And who abolished slavery? dept: The Nation reports that England has fined companies hiring "interns" at zero dollars... er... pounds per hour. This is a violation of the UK minimum wage law. Several of the UK's leading universities are now refusing to advertise unpaid internships. These include Oxford, York, Leeds, Liverpool, and more. Check out InternAware.org for more information.

-->How do you spell Kangaroo dept: 3 years after hero Bradley-Manning was captured and tortured for WikiLeaks revelations, his trial finished in Meade, Maryland. Manning was being tried on charges including "aiding the enemy" that could result in life in prison or even the death penalty. The Obama administration continues being the worst in history at the persecution and torture of whistle-blowers and truth-tellers. As of this writing, they still haven't gotten poor Edward Snowden for revealing how the US has broken into Chinese government and company offices... while complaining about China doing the same to the US.

-->The Week magazine reports that Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has threatened to boycott US talks with the Taliban. The talks are scheduled in Qatar and the Afghan government is pissed because they wanted the talks based on a Taliban recognition of Karzai as the president. Karzai has threatened to suspend negotiations to allow US troops to stay in Afghanistan after next year. I wonder how long before Karzai will suddenly be struck with some kind of "incurable cancer." Don't these guys ever learn?

-->Thanks dept: My friend Sid Yiddish is one of the most inventive people I know. You can see his current radio project on facebook. His newest band is Sid Yiddish And His Candy Store Henchmen. Watch for them in a place of creative weirdness near you.

-->Downsizing dept: During the huge move for the bedbug prevention guys, I realized how much stuff I have. I'm almost dead, so I'll never get to it. Though I like it, I gotta ditch it. SO, here's a bunch of stuff I'm giving away. You've gotta fork over the postage, but the merch is free. You can see the whole deal at: http://tinyurl.com/MykelsFreeStuff. I hope you want some of it.

-end-

MRR Column 363 (Never published, never submitted)

[Note: Though, this column was written before I was fired, it was never submitted to MRR.]

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. --Woodrow Wilson

Work. Study. Get ahead. Kill. --1960's anti-war chant

Panic. The Smithsonian Magazine talks about a report that the US is only in the middle of world-countries in math and science-- especially women. The U.S. Department of Education starts a campaign to encourage more female participation in those areas. They make t-shirts: SCIENCE-- IT'S A GIRL THING. The campaign fails miserably.

Meanwhile, students find themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt-- student loans that will never be paid off. Why? So they can go to college and earn a degree to get “a good job” so they can earn enough money to pay off their student loans. Most will not.

The Economist reports: The cost of university per student has risen by almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983, making it less affordable and increasing the amount of debt a student must take on. Between 2001 and 2010 the cost of a university education soared from 23% of median annual earnings to 38%; in consequence, debt per student has doubled in the past 15 years. Two-thirds of graduates now take out loans. Those who earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011, graduated with an average of $26,000 in debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit group.

At those prices, who can afford to waste money studying USELESS subjects like art or language? No math unless it's accounting. No science unless it teaches you how to fiddle chemicals into something some drug company can patent for big bucks. Anything else is useless. It won't get you a job.

What is USELESS anyway?

In 2013, useless is not putting money in someone else's pocket. Useless is not consuming. Art is useless unless you sell it. Music is useless unless you create PRODUCT. Music is even tangential to music. Ask any band on tour... the big money-maker is the t-shirts. Nobody buys records. Nobody buys music.

Liberals push for university for all, so even the poor will have a chance to be educated... and get good jobs... and contribute to society (aka General Motors, Walmart, Citibank, Million Dollar Real Estate).

Conservatives want students to pay their own way. Borrow from the bank. Enrich Citibank, before they can even start working for them. Standing on your own two feet, they call it.

FLASHBACK: It's 1988, September. Classes are just starting. It's my first day of Gilyak. In the world, there are about 500 speakers of that language. I'm gonna learn it. This isn't a speaking class, though. It's a grammar class. We learn about the structure of Gilyak, how the grammar relates to the phonemes. Like in Mongolian and Finnish, they have vowel harmony. But unlike those two, the harmony isn't in the front or backitude of the vowels. It's in the height of the tongue position. We're lucky enough to have the world's leading expert on Gilyak teaching the course.

BANG! The HAND OF THE PRESENT reaches back in time. Slaps me on the back of the head.

“Yo Mykel,” says the VOICE OF THE PRESENT, “what the fuck are you gonna do with Gilyak?”

“Yo PRESENT,” I say, “why do I have to DO anything? Why can't I just learn something interesting? Just LIKE learning it... even if I forget it next year. Why can't I enjoy finding out stuff for itself? Learning is fun.”

“Because,” says the VOICE OF THE PRESENT, “you have to live in society. You're going to college for a purpose. You've got a life ahead of you... you're less than a third of the way through. How will this contribute to your future? How will Gilyak make you a better member of society? Get a job? Be productive? What GOOD is it? You'd better plan for your future rather than waste your time with fuckin' Gilyak.”

FLASH TO NOW: It's my niece's college graduation. She's got a B.A.... in marketing. She aced the class How to Do Business on the Golf Course. I shit you not.

I've taken the train to Delaware to attend graduation ceremonies. I stay at a Holiday Inn, right near the university.

I have a few minutes to explore town before pre-graduation dinner.

I make sure I have the stupid little keycard, close the door and head down the hall toward the elevator. I'm in room 44-- easy to remember: Reggie Jackson's number. The door to room 42 is not quite shut. As I pass it, I stop and listen. The sound of panting comes from inside. I nudge the door open with my foot, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Yep, there on the bed, an attractive young man rests a computer on his naked stomach. He's reaching behind the machine to stroke his short but alluring stubbiness. I watch quietly as my own short but alluring stubbiness hardens.

As in every piece of imperfect timing, at this point, the door squeaks.

“What the fuck?” he says, quickly putting himself together.

I recognize the VOICE. It's the VOICE OF THE PRESENT.

“Hey,” I tell him, “I know you.”

“What the fuck?” he repeats.

“You were jerking off,” I tell him. “Just lying in bed jerking off.”

“So?” he asks. “Like you don't jerk off?”

“But what's the purpose?” I ask him. “How will this contribute to your future life? How will this make you a better member of society? Get a job? Be productive? What GOOD is jerking off?”

Get it?

Universities used to be places of learning. You'd study things that were absolutely useless... in the job sense. You'd learn art, philosophy, interpreting Egyptian Hieroglyphics. At Columbia College, I took a course in the History of Violence and Pornography. (I aced that one.) Universities were places of agitation, socialization, give and take, pranks, and inter-racial drug-taking.

Now, most classes are given through the internet. Jerking off at home, rather than having REAL SEX. But jerking off with a purpose: to earn a degree, get ahead in life, get a job, contribute to society. AHHHRGH!

If you want to learn math because numbers are the most fascinating artificial construct. Fine! It's not much different from learning Gilyak. If you want to learn math because AT&T needs number crunchers or because the US Army needs to better direct its killer drones.. not fine.

If you study to get a “good job,” you are wasting your time. Not only your time now, but your future time. And you'll spend the rest of you life trying to convince yourself that owning THINGS... having an SUV or an Internet TV with 453 food channels... is a valid substitute for actually living.

What is it with HAVING A JOB? Why do we care what you can DO with that? How long before universities stop all of the Gilyak classes and instead offer Creative Accounting for Hiding Business Profit 101.

Okay. In today's American society, you NEED a job. You also need to regularly take a shit. But do you really have to go to college for either? And should your life be a vague goal of a “good job” (oxymoronic?) Or should you be LIVING NOW, enjoying knowledge for itself... feeling the bliss of each fart as it escapes into the atmosphere.

Yeah, you work because you have to. But that is neither a goal nor the a reason to study.

Besides, is ANY job better than the real freedom of NOT WORKING?

Instead of men asking for the right to stay home and take care of the kids... or just shop. Women demand EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. Huh? How bout the right NOT TO WORK. What kind of life is it when all your time is work? For what?

In the old days, women stayed home, did some shopping, cooking, cared for the kids when they weren't in school, watched TV, read books, took day classes. They lead real lives while their stupid husbands crowded into stupid cars or commuter trains to earn a sliver of the money they were making for someone else.

Now women want EQUALITY IN THE WORKFORCE. Why? Equality to what?

How 'bout forcing the idiots who WANT to spend their lives EARNING MONEY... those who live for greed... for riches... to pay for the rest of us?

Instead of creating a society where MORE women are entering the workforce... where MORE women are in executive positions... using their math or science to make money, why not create one where MORE men (and women) LEAVE the workforce... hang out at home... have a personal relationship with their kids? NO BREAD-WINNERS, because the bread shouldn't have to be won. It should be there for the eating.

In Scandinavia, where people are happiest with their lives, it's easy to get welfare. The rich pay up to 90% income taxes and they still live well. In America, life is hell, the rich are the devil, and you get no more protest than people demanding to burn equally. What is it?

The right to work? What about the right to learn? The right to adventure? The right to jerk off at your leisure? In China, people jump out of windows from the strain of building iPhones so you can instantly notify your friends of a cute-boy spotting. Is that your RIGHT? Is it right?

Is it worth giving your life to some corporate monster with MAYBE two days a week where you're not a slave-- to report a CUTE BOY? I don't think so.

We're asking the wrong questions. It's analagous to gay marriage.

In that case, instead of asking “Why do people have to get married at all?” or “Why does the government intrude in the marriage business?” or “Why does marriage give rights that singledom doesn't give?” Homos ask, “Why can't GAYS get married too?” AHHHRGH!

People should ask: “Since most work is dangerous, environmentally destructive, soul-destroying, useless, why do people have to WORK at all?” or “If women traditionally stay home, prepare and LIVE life, why can't men do the same?” Instead, they ask, “Why can't women earn the same money as men for the same work?” AHHHRGH!

Instead of asking, “Is Gilyak an Indo-European language, or is it related to Mongolian... or maybe an isolate, like Basque?”

People ask “Hey, I got this new nose-hair counting app on my cellphone. You want a link to it?”

Add your own AHHHRGH! here.

ENDNOTES: [You can subscribe by email (god@mykelboard.com) or view the blog (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) for live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Christians, ya gotta love 'em Dept: After the Connecticut school shootings. The Reverend Rob Morris, was reprimanded by the head of his church. Why? He attended a multi-religious memorial service with other preachers and rabbis. The head of the church said Morris shouldn't have attended. Why? By attending, he gave "the false impression that our differences with respect to who God is, who Jesus is, how he deals with us and how we get to heaven, really don't matter in the end."

Morris apologized.

-->The military, you gotta love it Dept: The Yale Herald reports than an associate professor of psychology applied for a federal grant to bring US Special Forces to campus. The professor wanted to teach them "interrogation techniques." He planned on having them practice on "someone they can't necessarily identify with." Who would he use to teach the techniques on?

"We could use New Haven immigrants from Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco and Nepal," suggested the professor. After student/alumni protests, the grant proposal was withdrawn.

And further on the education front:

-->Understanding is one thing we will not tolerate dept: From AMNewYork: an unidentified 10th-grade teacher at Albany High School assigned her students a "persuasive writing" exercise.

She told them to pretend their teacher was a Nazi.

The Albany schools superintendent later met with Jewish leaders and apologized saying "that's not the assignment that any school district is going to tolerate."

The teacher is facing disciplinary action that could include termination.

-->The Kids are All Right dept: The Progressive Magazine reports that the Atwood-Hammon Little League in Illinois is raffling off an AR-15 assault rifle as a fund raiser.

Little League commissioner Steve McClain says, "People from the media keep asking the same question: 'Is this tasteless?' I don't think so. It's all about the kids."

On the MRR front: the editors and their co-conspirators have tried a new trick: Blaming the Victim. It's ironic, because it's a pet shibboleth of feminists that MEN are guilty of this tactic.

“I'm sorry, officer, but I couldn't help myself. She was dressed so... so... slutty. I couldn't keep my hands to myself.”

So, here's the same tactic from the MRR powers. This is from an email to me:

First, you obviously have read not only Mariam's column, but Lydia's column as well, from the previous issue. Both have indicated how incredibly obnoxious and obstreperous you have been throughout this entire process. Lydia in particular has likened your attitude to hari-kiri, a kind of suicidal behavior. I noted the same thing in my own column, when I said you were behaving like "suicide by coordinator" and that your intent was to purposefully get yourself canned.

As usual, I urge you to express your opinion to me at my email address above and to MRR at mrr@maximumrocknroll.com.

THE COLUMN THAT GOT ME FIRED: MRR column for 362 June 2013

THIS IS THE COLUMN THAT GOT ME FIRED...

First a little background.

I was already in trouble Two columns censored and a lot of bad blood. The handwriting was on the inside of the stall. Two months ago, I'd written a column where I quoted someone else saying that using the word "colored" was like using the word "nigger." When that column was printed, MRR used asterisks to write "ni**er." The following column complained about that (among other things). I was fired for that complaint! Here it is:

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

 

THE COLUMN THAT WAS NEVER PRINTED... AND GOT HIM FIRED!

Q. Are you happy there are more black musicians and fans in American punk?

A. No! I hate it. At shows it used to be ONLY ME. I was THE BLACK GUY. Everyone wanted to be my friend and hang out with me. I was special. Now I'm just another dork.

--Black Punkrock fan interviewed in the movie Afro-Punk 2003

Baby got a hand; got a finger on the trigger. Baby, baby, baby is a rock-and-roll ni**er. Outside of society, that's where I want to be. Outside of society, they're waitin' for me. --Patti Smith

“Shit in my mouth!” I yell, “Shit in my mouth!”

I wonder if Shaniqua can hear me, sitting up there on my face... her ample buttocks one on each of my cheeks. Cheek-to-cheek.

“I can't, Mykel,” comes the voice above me. “I can't do it. I'm too...”

I push up my tongue and press it against her sphincter.

She tightens more, as grabbing my probing tongue and pull it inside her. I'm stuck!

“Puth! Hahth!” I say.

The sphincter opens slightly. I pull my tongue back into my mouth.

Then that tasty brown hole opens a little more. A tiny fart escapes. I suck it into my lungs. Another one... then there's a pop... well more like a FRRRRRRR_CLICK!

I sense rather than feel something more than a fart escape from that elegant round muscle.

I raise my tongue again. Lick around the same hole. There it is, something tiny... hard... flat... like a piece of eggshell, or digested plastic.

First salivating, then using my tongue, I force the object away from its sphictorious home and into my mouth. I try to judge the shape and texture. I... OUCH!! The tiny whatever-it-is slides into my tongue, cutting me. I feel the blood flow down my tongue tip... drip... drip... drip... into the back of my throat.

I push the ass on my face upwards, coughing from the blood. Running for the bathroom I spit red into the toilet. Shaniqua follows.

“Jesus!” I say, “What did you eat that came out and cut my tongue.”

“Hey Mykel,” she says. “It's punk rock.”

FLASH: We break into our oral-anal story with a news flash. Terrorists have attacked the Boston Marathon. Three people are dead, more than a hundred injured. Boston is in lockdown while the police go on a manhunt.

“We'll get them! We'll get them!”

More terrorists. Just what we need. A reason to expand SECURITY!

You are now entering Boston... please have your passports ready.

Oh look, there's gonna be be a TV chase, some bomb throwing... some arrests... brothers from Chechnya??? I mean didn't the US support Chechnya in the fight against those big bad Russians? Don't those terrorists watch TV?

Three people??? Three people??? Yeah I feel sorry for their families. I feel sorry for the 89 people a day killed in US traffic accidents. But THREE PEOPLE????

U.S. Government forces have killed A MILLION Iraqis since the turn of the century. It's the holocaust of the millennium. A MILLION!!! That's like the entire city of Dallas. Will you see it in the holocaust museum in Washington? I don't think so. Any manhunts? TV action shots? Naw, none of those either. No blood pictures. No death pictures. But compare THREE to A MILLION! I want YOU to tell ME who the terrorists are.

In the meantime, vengeful Americans, who have the least regard for human life of any of the 57 countries I've been in (and probably most I haven't) will assault and probably kill several Muslims or people they THINK are Muslims in a PAYBACK FOR BOSTON.

Yo buckaroos! BOSTON was a payback!

END OF NEWSFLASH:

I hear a click behind me. Shaniqua's i-Phone snaps a picture of a naked Mykel Board puking blood into the toilet.

“Just wait til THAT gets on Facebook, Mykel.”

Time's passed since then. When I check Facebook,I look to see if that picture has made its way there. So far, it hasn't. What has made it though, are a bunch of friends who have changed their Facebook photos to some stupid pink on red EQUAL sign. It takes me 2.78 seconds to realize this is a show of support for MARRIAGE EQUALITY. Oy vey!

I've written a fuck of a lot about why I'm opposed to MARRIAGE in general... especially as a government licensed and regulated institution. Of course I don't support gay marriage. I don't support ANY marriage. But this month, I want to take a punkrock view.

If (the MRR version of) punk is anything, it's about INDEPENDENCE. It's about NOT MAINSTREAM. The letters section alone is a litany of offal about how A,B,C, is SELLING OUT... going major label... mainstream. What's more mainstream than marriage? Working for a bank? Owning an SUV? I donno.

Homos used to be the outsiders... the exotic. The Andy Warhol mystique was so alluring because it was so homosexual. UNDERGROUND was homosexuality. Homos were free. They could talk about sex, have a ton of sex partners, did not have to live under the constraints of boring hetero humanity.

Flash to 1973. You're in the back room of The Stud... on West 10 Street in New York. It's pitch black. You enter from the bar... beer finished... you need both hands. You can smell the sex. Men crowded together. Seeing nothing, your hands guide you through the blackness. A brush against the back of your hand. A penis. Then another. And another. You grab one and stroke. Before long, a pair of hands at your crotch releases your own stiffness. There's a wet softness. A head between your legs. You reach and press it toward you as he sucks it in.

In those days there was homosex everywhere. School bathrooms, hiking trails, tall bushes in the park. Sex like heteros WISH they could have. Immediate, releasing, no consequences sex. Queer sex.

QUEER was strange, different, outside the mainstream. Queer was the freedom of anonymous sex. Queer was the place to be. The slow mainstream response to AIDS was because hets thought PAYBACK TIME. Homos were living the life hets WISHED they could live. AIDS gets even!

Now? Gay marriage! The worst of heterosexuality. The most mainstream, boring, piece of shit lifestyle... and they call it a RIGHT! JEZUS fuckin' KY-ed anus! Work for a bank if you wanna get married!

I wonder how long before the first GAY president kills his first hundred thousand people. See? Gays are just like everybody else.

Flash to 1977. CBGBs. Stiv Bators is on stage with bologna safety pinned to his clothes: neck to pants cuffs. He hangs on the microphone and tells those of us sitting at the tables, drinking our cheap Buds:

I don't need anyone. Don't need no mom and dad. Don't need no pretty face. Don't need no human race...

Yeah. That's us. We don't need anyone. We're the blank generation and we only have THIS. This little club. This little group of people with this little kind of music called punk rock. It's ours. THEY wish they had places like this. THEY pay $20 to go to discos and listen to records. WE have music like never made before. We are not like THEM.

1992: a movie comes out called 1991: The Year Punk Broke. It's about Sonic Youth and Nirvana. The punkrock joke at the time is “Yeah, Punk broke. Now someone's gotta fix it.”

What happened was it went mainstream. Punks hated the movie... not because it was bad, but because it put punk in the mainstream.

1994: Warner Borthers releases DOOKIE and sells millions. There's a huge backlash. Not because of the music, but because Green Day became mainstream.

Get it? Tough. There's more.

As long as black people have been in America, they've been outsiders. Slavery was a great dividing line between the inside people and the outside people. But outsider status did not end with slavery.

During the 1930s, 40s and 50s Negro was cool. Drugs, sex, homosex, poetry, jazz, these were the forbidden fruits of the outsider... the black outsider. Negroes lived like whites wished THEY could live.

When whites wanted to claim outside status, they hung out at black clubs... listened to jazz-- ni**er music. This was the stuff your grandparents were afraid of. Yeah!

Flash to 1960. My mother's talking to me about her weekend in THE CITY.

“Mickey,” she says, “we went to this place called Greenwich Village. It was scary. We went to a music club and there were all these colored people playing saxophone and drums. And in the audience mixed couples were making out.”

In 1960, I didn't know what making out was. I didn't really get mixed couples either. But it sounded so strange and exciting that I decided then, I wanted to be one... a mixed couple making out.

In the 1970s, black street talk incorporated the word NI**ER (without the asterisks) like homos incorporated QUEER. It was in everyday street talk. A celebration of the disturbing, the unacceptable, the outside

When Patti Smith, possibly America's first punkrocker, compared her outsider status to black folks did she say she was a ROCK'N'ROLL N***R? When that first NY black-fronted punkband blasted into CBGB in the 70s. Did they call themselves THE NEW YORK N***RS? Those asterisks (now required by the MRR manual of style) are mainstream. Civilized people don't use that word. Patti and the New York band were outside of society. They were not civilized.

(My pal Sid reminds me that 10 years before Patti, John Lennon/Yoko Ono's song Woman Is The N***r of The World, was performed once on TV. Then it was banned. No asterisks in that one either.)

The New York Times can write “N**R” (with asterisks). CNN can flash N**R (with asterisks) on the screen as a caption for something or other. It annoys the shit out of me that even MRR has taken what was liberating... outside... and filled it with asterisks. I gotta use 'em, though. It's a company rule!

But it's more than that. Being black itself has become respectable. Al Sharpton, once my hero, now says hip hoppers shouldn't use the word Ni**er because it's disparaging. Translation: It's showing its outsider status.

Today, we have a black president who, while not slaughtering quite as many as his predecessor, still scores in the hundreds of thousands. He maintains his office of religious affairs and bails out banks, rather than Social Security recipients. He's a president, like any other president (except my hero, Jimmy Carter). Mainstream as white bread, get it?

If punk is anything, it is being OUTSIDE the mainstream. It is the fly in the ointment... the hole in the condom... the anal eggshell that cuts the tongue. It's what everyone else DOESN'T like... or what they're afraid of. Mainstream? Popular? Everyday? That's just not p**k.

 

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. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->What the world needs now dept: YES! YES! And it's about time. Peru, whose LOS SAICOS are arguably the world's first punk band has finally created an ALL-GIRL DEATH METAL BAND! Muerte Ancestral! Contact Clara Herrara Novoa, Jr. Galeano 896, Santiago de Surco, Lima 33, Peru! Tell her Mykel sent ya!

-->Uncredited dept: Paul Abuse (aka Hohman) wrote to me about a old letter he sent me ten years ago. Then, he said that he wanted to change the name of MRR to Maximum Porn and have Ron Jeremy among the columnists. I completely forgot about that, but it's likely a subconscious memory that inspired my April Fools MRR column. I want to give him credit.

-->Irony on irony dept: So the Christian right wants prayer in school, creationism in science class, government support of "faith-based" organizations, state support of religious schools through voucher schemes... and they're at it again. This time the right-wing ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM (yeah right) is protesting a California public school for instituting a yoga program. Why are they protesting? They say the program violates the separation of Church and State.

-->Little Victories Dept: The private prison mega-corporation GEO will not get naming rights at the Florida Atlantic University stadium, home of the FAU Owls. The private prison group will soon make millions on the coming jailing of Americans without papers. It's called the DREAM ACT, though for many it'll be a nightmare.

FAU students formed an anti-GEO group called STOP OWLCATRAZ. They said that the school was “putting the families of their Hispanic students at risk of being detained in facilities that bear the same name as the stadium of their Alma Mater.” The bad publicity caused the corporation to withdraw its bid to name the stadium. 10 punk points guys!

-END-

Your comments are welcome. And your comments to Maximum Rock'n'Roll (mrr@maximumrockn'roll.com) are even more welcome.

MRR Column for #361 (Lots of Lincolns)

 

 

 

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

 

Originally from MRR #361, as it turns out, this will be my last column printed in MRR

"What we are facing is a conspiracy of sedition, division and destruction of our homeland." --Abraham Lincoln

It's brother against brother... looking at each other through gunsights. Terrible... just a dividing line in the dirt... puts... FIZZ! BING! A bullet enters his face, right at the right cheekbone. It tears a small hole as it enters-- like a large wart-- then it tears through the inside of the skull, coming out through the back of the head... a baseball-sized hole, brain spraying gray matter before the expression of surprise can leave the now-dead face.

“It's terrible. Terrible,” says the president. “The nation is torn apart, but we have no choice, if we're to preserve the union.”

Flash to Riverdale in the Bronx. I'm at dinner with friends-- at a friend's house: shrimp, macaroni with tuna, little pieces of herring with toothpicks stuck through them, flatbread with all kinds of toppings. There is a TV... bigger than my apartment... somehow fastened to the wall. On the TV smiles some dork in a Tuxedo.

Goddamn! It's the fuckin' Oscars. I was looking forward to missing the Oscars, like I miss the Superbowl, and Obama's inauguration. Like I've never seen ET or The Titanic. Like I can't tell Rihanna from Guyana. I live to be as divorced from popular culture as that soldier's brain is divorced from his head.

But here I am. Stuck like herring on a toothpick in front of Hollywood Hell in all it's stinking glitter. The guys on TV talk about some movies. Nothing I've seen, of course. I don't like movies with white people in them.

There's one about killing Osamu Bin Ladin, another about escaping from Iraq, one about a colored guy and slavery and one about Lincoln. War movies all... in their own way. I hate war movies.

I love gore movies. Severed heads and still-beating hearts. I love to watch guys screaming as their balls are ripped off. Gangster movies too: the Chinese mafia taking out a rival gang... fists and bullets. Pow! Pow! Achah! Achah!

But I hate war movies. They're too close to the real world. I don't need movies for what I get in the NY Times. Besides, they remind me of football.

And Lincoln wasn't only in movies about the world of 1860. He's in the real world of now. That soldier in the first paragraph wasn't from the Confederate Army. He was from Syria.

That quote at the beginning of this column? I lied.

It wasn't from Abraham Lincoln. It was from President Bashar al-Assad, of Syria. The two, however, are not much different.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” That is a REAL quote from Abe Lincoln.

I bet Assad would agree.

FLASH TO THE 1970s: Marshall Tito is my favorite Communist. He's the president of Yugoslavia and will be until 1980. He keeps the various ethnic and religious factions together... without war. Today you have Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovco, and who-knows-what-the-fuckistan. Under Tito, there was only YUGOSLAVIA. He organized the fight against the Nazis. Everybody loves him. He keeps the new country together without war... only with charisma and statesmanship.

Tito is the guy who gives both Russia and the U.S. a big middle finger. Then goes off to make friends with Egypt and India. After he dies, there is chaos and half a dozen tiny fighting countries.

Are there other Lincolns? You bet! A dime a dozen. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who kept the Shiites and Sunnis in check and created a unified whole from a melting pot of fractious groups. Also without war... until the Bushes invaded and there was chaos.

More? Mao Tse Tung was the Lincoln of China. The Tibetans, The Uigars. The Inner Mongols. They want to secede. Make their own countries. Seek their own destinies... the blue and the gray... It's a war that the current Chinese Lincolns continue to fight.

Vladimir Putin, the Lincoln of Russia, has been fighting the Chechnyan separatists since he took office. And there are more.

You get the idea. But what I want to focus on, with all this Lincoln hullabaloo, is why I wish the Confederacy had won the U.S. Civil War. Fuck Lincoln and his gold-plated Hollywood statues.

Imagine we have the USA and the CSA, a ragged border between the two... following the Mason-Dixon line... leaping upwards over Texas, and Oklahoma. Newer regions join the USA or CSA. California and Nevada stay independent.

The relatively small United States needs the relatively small Confederate States for its cotton, bourbon, tobacco and oil. The Confederate States needs the U.S. for manufactured goods and a few resources like salmon and lumber.

Occasionally, there are trade disputes. The South puts a tariff on paper from the North. The North has a quota... or high taxes... on tobacco and booze.

Slavery disappears in the Confederate States, like it did in the Caribbean, South Africa, and Brazil. The government will try to keep voting WHITES ONLY, and to maintain segregation. Like they did in the U.S. until the 1964 or South Africa until 1990.

World pressure will end all that, like it ended apartheid. By 1990, the world will celebrate the first Negro president of the Confederate States of America... probably before the first one up north in the U.S.A.

More importantly, because what is now the US is in (at least) two independent pieces, neither side develops the power the U.S. now has. The sides join forces for WWII because of Pearl Harbor. The rest of North America (Canada and Mexico) are anti-Axis as well.

Young Strom Thurmond, the 40-year president of C.S.A, threatens to withdrawal Confederate troops from the Pacific front if Truman goes ahead with his plan to drop a new fangled ATOMIC BOMB.

“I didn't want us to get into this war in the first place,” he says.

The bomb is never dropped. Japan surrenders anyway.

There is no Vietnam war. Although the U.S. wants to invade, the C.S.A wants no part in the invasion.

“We suffered our own invasion,” says C.S.A. president Strom Thurmond in 1966. “We don't want to be part of another one.”

After WWII, the CSA follows a policy of isolationism that would make Ron (or Rand) Paul proud.

Over time, the cultures develop along lines similar to the present. The CSA adopts Evangelical Christianity as the official state religion. The USA, following its constitution, maintains separation of church and state.

There are generally friendly relations between the two countries. People bunch in the North-- and in the new M.P.R.C (Mellow People's Republic of California). Texas Oil lets the CSA thrive, though the destruction left by the civil war, and the lack of advanced training of the former slaves, leaves a greater gap between rich and poor.

Something interesting also happens. Since the Civil War followed on the heals of the Mexican American War. The newly independent CSA says they had no beef with the Mexicans. The attack on Mexico was by the USA-- that country up North. California is already independent, so it's lost to Mexico. Arizona and New Mexico are just desert anyway. Who needs those places? Give 'em back to the Mexicans, the CSA urges the USA. We'll support Mexico until you do.

Thus a great new friendship is established between Mexico and the CSA. Travel between the two countries opens. No passports. No visas. As easy as crossing into Canada to see Niagra Falls used to be.

After World War II, the USA looks East, while the CSA looks South. Franklin Roosevelt, already pals with Stalin and Churchill, embraces Russia in a Grand Coalition. The USA continues to expand its welfare and social services and Russia continued to expand its personal liberties and access to pornography.

There's never a cold war. No one attacks the World Trade Center because the US does not have the power to wage the anti-Muslim wars that make Al Quaeda want to attack in the first place. The world becomes a happy and peaceful place from the end of the second world war, right until... well... right until now.

It all would have happened if it weren't were for fuckin' Lincoln. If only John Wilkes Booth were a few years earlier. The Oscars be damned.

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. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Is it only me? dept: ABC NEWS reports that the U.S. census bureau is dropping the word NEGRO starting in 2020. Now, all that's left is me and the United Negro College Fund. Quick, I'd better send a donation!

-->Jailbird pal Kyle sent me an article about Samsung TVs. Their build-in cameras allow outsiders to gain "root access" to the TV. Remember in the book 1984, at the end, Winston Smith finds the camera behind a picture in the wall of his apartment? Now, it's not only that bedroom picture you have to worry about.

-->Oh no dept: Could it happen in Scandinavia? Home of my favorite governments? Well, according to the local paper, Iceland will "become the first Western democracy to ban online pornography." Yep, official government censorship... like in China. I fear it's the beginning of the end. Watch the Republicans change their tune about the evils of Scandinavia once those blonds ban porn.

-->My kind of city dept: On Feb 4, 2013 Charlottesville, Virginia became the first city in the US to pass a resolution against the domestic use of drones. It also calls for Congress and the state of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information from domestic drone use from being introduced into a Federal or State court. Furthermore, they want to prohibit drones equipped with anti-personnel devices, so people can not be killed remotely.

Hmmm, killing people remotely, trial by missile, who'd want to do something like that? It's hard to imagine, huh?

-->Legitimate targets? Is that like legitimate rape? dept: Reason.com reports that a US Army officer said Afghan children are “legitimate targets.”

"It kind of opens our aperture," said Lieutenant Colonel Marion Carrington. "We're looking for children with potential hostile intent." he added.

-->Ah Michigan, how you've devolved dept: Progressive Magazine reports that Michigan lawmakers proposed an amendment to the state's income tax code that would allow pregnant women to claim their twelve-week or older fetuses as "dependents." These same legislators pushed to cut a tax credit that applies to actual already-born children.

-->School? Prison? What's the difference dept: Wired.com reports the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, suspended a student for refusing to wear a tracking device. It was a leg bracelet similar to the ones used on probationed criminals. Since the school's funding is based on student attendance, they use the trackers to prove students are in class. As of this writing, a judge has temporarily reversed the suspension.

-->Students with balls dept: Censorship News (www.ncacblog.wordpress.com) reports that the school administration of La Salle University told the student newspaper that they had to run an unflattering story about the school "under the fold." (That means the part of the paper that's hidden when it's folded on a newstand or in a newsbox.)

The newspaper, the COLLEGIAN, printed the next issue with a blank top half, except for tiny print instructing readers to "SEE BELOW." Ten punk points guys!

-----------------------------
You can see Mykel's almost functioning website at www.mykelboard.com.