YOU'RE WRONG 

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

I was madder than the anarchist who yelled "down with cops," then got mugged and had to call the police to save him. It was nasty. A team of tough men against a bunch of smiley tinsel towners! It's bad enough that someone named "Dallas" is going to manage the Yankees, but the Mets loosing to fat Tommy's butterball boys? What a disgrace! The world series will be as thrilling as St. Louis against Kansas City. I'll be sitting on the edge of my seat (and nodding off) for this one!!

Fortunately, a bit of comedy picked up my spirits after the baseball disaster. It was inadvertent, on the part, of all things, a vegetarian. Remember Mench Meier, the well-meaning eco-freak I wrote about last month? He told me the funniest thing I've heard in ages and now I offer it to you.

You know the classic veggie stumper. You ask them why it's better to kill hundreds of plants than to kill animals. It is a logical argument that usually stops them cold. Well, this veggie thought he came up with an answer.

"You're right," he said, "it is just as bad to kill plants as it is to kill animals. But. . . " he smiled as if he got me on this one, "since it takes sixteen pounds of plants to make one pound of meat, you are actually SAVING plants by eating them. You see, if you eat a pound of meat you're eating sixteen pounds of dead vegetables, but if you eat vegetables directly, you only kill one pound of them."

I sat stumped for a second. Then I laughed. The "logic" of what he was saying was so twisted, it beat the old Abbot and Costello baseball routine. (I think WHO should've fielded that seventh game for The Mets.)

Here's what was implied by what Mench said: when you kill an animal, it stops eating. When it stops eating, it stops killing plants. If you eat a pound of meat, you eat sixteen pounds of plants. If that pound of meat were still living, it would go on consuming plants at the rate of sixteen to one. By killing the animal that you eat, you are saving all the plants that the animal would eat had it lived. So by Mench's logic, the MORE meat you eat (actually, the more animals you kill), the more plants you save. This was funny enough, but it got better when I pointed this out to Mr. Meier.

"That's not right," he said, a bit flustered, "dead animals don't eat plants, but that doesn't mean you have to eat THEM."

Just the picture of a world strewn with dead animals, uneaten, rotting on the ground, was too much. I could see farms littered with dead cows and chickens-- all killed to save the grass and wheat. I could see a field of dead pigs, lying with their throats slit to save helpless ears of corn. Rivers filled with dead fish, floating belly up, killed to save the world's algae and plankton. Laughter exploded out of me like a fart after beans. A laugh like that is just what I needed to save me from thinking about the horrors of an all-California World Series. I'm not sure if eating vegetables makes you funny or it just makes you stupid-- but I'm glad somebody does it.

So, we've got the thrill of a stupid World Series and the thrill of stupid vegies. If your collective hearts can take it, I want to write about a third thrill: the presidential election.

I'm writing this on October 15. There's about three weeks till Bush-day. I will vote either for Ron Paul, on the Libertarian ticket, or Gus Hall, the eternal commie candidate. Of course, I dislike commies as much as the next guy, but I figure every commie vote in the U.S. is a vote for trouble. And I LOVE trouble.

Bush's TV commercials almost make me want to vote for The Duke. "I believe in a gentler America. . . " PULLL. . . EEZ! Give me soyburger if you want to make me gag! Still, it's not enough to lever a vote for the eyebrow man.

I really don't care who wins because I figured out what's going to happen. When Nixon ran against McGovern, the press knew all about the Watergate stuff. Nobody believed it, though. They assumed it was just election propaganda.

Then, after the election, the Watergate shit hit the Woodward and Bernstein fan. Nixon was impeached. Right now, with Americans so riled up about drugs, the same thing is going to happen to President Bush. After the election, all this stuff about Bush approving the selling of drugs to fund the Contras is going to come out. People will be outraged. (Although all the facts are already known, noone believes them.) Bush will impeached It'll be President Quail by 1990.

Because of the national debt and the ineptitude of Quail, the economy will crash like a Gilman Street stagediver. Quail will get the blame. The Republicans of the late 80's will be like The Republicans of the late 20's. In 1992, the Democrats will take over. They'll get us into a nice foreign war to bring us out of the depression. And they'll stay in power for a quarter of a century, just like the last time. That's my prediction, anyway.

"But what about the Supreme Court?" cry my friend who are pulling the Dukakis lesser-lever-of-two-evils.

That is a problem. The only two good guys left on the court are in their eighties. Presidents Bush and Quail will probably get to replace them. But, in a way, a right-wing court may not be such a bad thing. At least it'll teach the feminists a lesson.

All through America, local feminist groups have teamed up with the TV preacher right to fight pornography. In Minneapolis and Indianapolis among other places, they won. OK girls, now it's time feel the prick of your actions. You worked with those guys, now see what it's like living under them. You used the rightwingers to get PLAYBOY removed from Seven-Eleven. Now have a taste of them as they remove abortion clinics. You supported them as they passed tougher laws against prostitution and child sex. Now suffer through their tougher laws against against lesbianism and women's rights. You buttered your bread. Now you'll have to sleep in it.

Between the election and the playoffs, this month could've been a total loss, but: Every once-in-awhile a Goddess comes a long. You know, a girl so overwhelmingly captivating that you'd disembowel your father, or suck off GG Allin just to talk to her? There's not a lot of these Goddesses, often they disappear or do stupid things like marry singers from Holland. They are as rare as Dead Sea Scrolls and a hundred times as valuable. Early this month I saw the BAR B QUE KILLERS, a band from Canada. The girl who sings lead for them is such a Goddess. I tried to talk to her after their set at CBGBs.

"I thought you were great." I stuttered, as I often do when I approach the unapproachable.

"What about the rest of the band?" she asked. They were all standing there.

"They were very competent." I said, without taking my eyes off her. Unfortunately, she seemed to have less trouble taking her eyes off me. As a matter of fact, that was the last I saw her for the rest of the night. But I had my glimpse-- the month was not to go thrill-less. If you see her, give her my regards.

Oh, I guess there were a few other thrills-- all music. I got to see some great bands, like RAPEMAN, RITUAL TENSION and ROYAL TRUX. I also listened to a couple of gems-- cassettes by STINKY FINGER (a male version of THE YEASTIE GIRLZ) and one by MY SIN (the missing link between MINOR THREAT and THE BUTTHOLE SURFERS). Tomorrow is PRONG and LUDICHRIST at CBGBs. THE INSTIGATORS tour schedule said they were supposed to play, but they're not. Too bad, I would have had a lot of fun with those Crassbrits! My electronic computer pal from Illinois, Simone, , asked me what it was like to live in a town with a scene. Hey, Simone, this is New York-- a town with THE scene.

Okay, that's it for the meat of this month. There is something I want to suggest here in print. With the new expanded format, MRR has more space to add stuff. I suggest a reader's poll, like Flipside's. (Flipside's poll was a bit off the wall, though. People said that the best album cover ever was the SEX PISTOLS and BIG BLACK???! It's obvious that the best album cover ever is POISON IDEA's "Kings of Punk". But I guess you already know that most people are wrong.) My offerings on questions for the first survey have to do with a profile of the kind of person who reads MRR.: Age, gender, sexual orientation, musical orientation, political orientation, race, bands loved/hated, preferred lubricant, when you expect to outgrow the zine, etc. Anybody have any other suggestions? --No. That's a suggestion I will NOT take. I've tried, but I can't reach.