YOU'RE WRONG
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
NOTE TO EMAIL/WEBSITE READERS. I shortened this column by one ENDNOTE in order to meet new MRR length requirements. That endnote is in brackets at the end.
You're Wrong An Irregular Column by Mykel Board
"People seem to have unconsciously assumed that their lives' desires are unattainable. So, instead of fighting for themselves, they end up fighting for an ideal or a cause, which gives them the illusion of self-activity "
--Anonymous & Anti-copyright
"You got your pit poop, your pap poop, your potty poop and snappers. Then you got hair burners, ass-rippers, bubblers and squirtguns."
Otto's talking about farts. Divided, categorized, classified, labeled, and laid out. He's spent years making the list. The names roll off his tongue like big white droplets roll off of mine.
"There're pippy farts, blasters, sbds and spare pops. You got your TNTs, pants stainers and slow thunder."
"Uh, Otto," I say, "don't you think that's a bit extreme, having a name for every kind of fart?"
"Those names set me apart," he says. "I am what I am because I can name farts."
"Besides," he adds, paraphrasing Barry Goldwater, "extremism is no vice."
Time and space shift: It's 1998. I'm in London with Ms. M. More fun than my last fiasco, Ms. M takes some risks, doesn't complain about my hygiene and does the nasty. She's a vegetarian, but neither a preaches nor an extremist.
We're in Compendium Books on Camden High Street. I've been here before, but not for a long time. They've changed. Now they divide their books according to the race and gender of the author. There's a Hispanic Male section. Another one's for Hispanic Females. Then you got your Black Males, Black Females, and lotsa others I can't remember. Humans categorized as carefully as Otto categorized farts. Besides being racist and sexist, it makes finding books damn hard. Not only do you need to know the author's name. But the author's race and gender as well. I could understand this in apartheid South Africa, but in Lefty England? Why?
It's fanaticism. The store wants more than to accommodate all kinds of people. It wants to make sure you know they accommodate all kinds of people. So it divides them like farts, and posts them on the shelves.
Fanaticism abounds in England. Take animal rightists... please! Many of them actually welcome highways and the destruction of forest land. Why? Because it will make hunting more difficult, that's why.
The writer of the quote beginning of this column said, "I've met people who've become celibate to avoid distractions to the struggle for animal liberation." Some fun.
He also points out that animal fats are in rubber tires, most glues, and photographic film. To avoid them all, you'd have to return to the 16th century. No one wants that.
Well, maybe. The Winter '93 issue of The Vegan magazine recommends the Catholic-approved "rhythm method" of contraception. You see, even latex condoms contain a milk protein. The rhythm method doesn't protect against AIDS. It doesn't even work as birth control. Yet, these animal rightists will risk people's lives to achieve their goals.
"Like religious zealots," says Anonymous, "they bash their cruelty-free handbook bibles over their friends' heads saying, 'You're not vegan enough! Suffer more! The animals are!'"
The scene is London. Local punk rockers break into an unused building. It's filthy. They work for days cleaning it out. Sweeping, setting rattraps, shovelling debris. A squat is born. They set it up as a place for anti-fascist meetings, anarchist video showings and lefty liberation.
The Animal Liberation Front doesn't like those rat traps though. Oh no! They published a detailed letter about the location and security of the squat. Just what the local cops need. Worse than that, one of the animal rightists says someone should firebomb the place! That'll teach them, right?
Cut to Scotland. Ms. M and I are hitching out of a town near Lockerbie, crashsite of a plane bombed by another fanatic. British food has caused more of a gas build-up than usual. I cough loudly, trying to cover what I expect to be a snapper. It turns out to be a bubbler. The cough makes it worse-- almost a leak.
Aside: I've long wondered why old folks fart more than youngsters. Is it looser sphincters? Worse digestion? Degenerate hearing, so they can't tell an sbd from a blaster? It could be all those, but there's another possibility. That is, they just don't care.
For old folks, there's no one to impress. No points to be made. No nookie to be scored. Old folks are free to fart, take their teeth out, scratch, anything. They have nothing to lose. Maybe it won't be so bad when I'm old-- not just elderly, like now. End of aside.
It only takes us a couple truck rides to reach the ferry from Stranraer to Belfast. We're off to visit a pal of mine at the site of the troubles. As a way of avoiding the Catholic- Protestant war, I consider making a t-shirt with JEW written boldly across the front. My pal Mark, an American who lives near Belfast, says it won't help. They'll only ask if I'm a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew.
Once in Belfast, after a fish and chips lunch (Ms. M only has chips), we take a tour of the warzone.
"Just keep your mouth shut, Mykel," says Mark. "In America you risk a fist to the jaw. Here, it's a bullet."
"Me? Make an inappropriate comment?" I say. "Come on. Consider who you're talking to."
Ms. M looks at me incredulously. Mark shakes his head.
First we go to the main Protestant street. I forget the name, so I'll call it Luther Road. Every few steps, we come across another mural. Guys in masks and guns. Huge letters saying DEFEND THE UNION and other calls to war.
The street is quiet. There are a few pubs, a few shops, few people walking. I see a shop sign that strikes me as funny.
"Look," I say, "Family Butchers! Does that mean they don't stop with Jr., but go on to cut up mom and dad too?"
Mark kicks me hard as the owner of the shop has just come out. A few steps further he explains. "Mykel," he says, "the most fearsome unionists have a gang. It's called The Butchers of Luther Road. I think you just insulted them."
It's time to leave the area. We head for what I'll call Pope Street, the mainstay of Catholic Belfast.
Garbage blows along the gutters of Pope Street. Unlike Luther Road, lots of people walk here. A few young women, green kerchiefs tied around their heads, push strollers along the sidewalk. They stop to talk with each other, ignoring us as obvious tourists. A pack of kids, filthy faces, torn clothes, stands on a corner. Ranging in age from about 5 to about 12, they run towards us when they see us. Resisting the temptation to take flight, we slowly walk toward them.
The kids surround us. A red-headed boy, about eight years old, asks, "Hello, where are you from?"
"We're from America," I answer.
A chubby girl, about 12, stands looking at me with her hands on her hips. Sizing me up, she reaches for my fedora. Trying it on her own head she asks, "Are you a kewboo."
"What's a kewboo?" I ask in return.
"Ya can speak English, cancha?" asks the girl. "If yer from Amerka, you know kewboo. It's the guys who ride 'orses, rope kews and shoot badguys and all."
Mark changes the subject, putting on an Irish accent that sounds more Scottish to me. "This yung man hair, and his wee girlfren, they're lookin' ta see some wall paintings. Now, you wouldn't be knowing where they could be found, wudja?"
"I know. I know." says the chubby girl, handing me back my hat.
"I know. I know." says the redhead boy, racing around in a little circle. From there, the tour begins.
From mural to mural, they take us. Fewer guns on these, more "memories of the dead and the valiant."
Mark whispers to me. "They're hiding the violent ones," he says.
As we walk, a little blond girl no more than five, points down the street. A black car, built like a Brinks truck, is travelling in our direction.
"Excuse us," says the chubby blonde.
The kids run toward a nearby lot and pick up stones. As the car passes, they hurl them at it. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The stones hit against the side of the car and bounce into the street. The car's back door swings open as it speeds away. There inside, sits a young man in combat fatigues. A rifle rests on his lap.
When the car passes, the red-headed boy is first to turn back to us. "We hate them," he says.
Now, I'm one of the few people in the world without a solution to the problems in Northern Ireland. It parallels the Middle East. Northern Ireland is Israel. The Protestants are the Jews, trying to keep their little bit of land in the midst of surrounding Catholics/Muslims.
Like the Middle East, the land was divided in two. In Ireland the North is Protestant, the South, Catholic. The Catholics left in the North, however, don't like it that way.
"Why don't you just move to the South if you don't like it?" say the Protestants.
"BOOM!" say the Catholics as they use terrorism to try to get their own way.
"BOOM!" reply the Protestants, using terrorism to keep things the way they are.
Lefty knee-jerk support of the Irish Republicans has always struck me as odd. The IRA supported Hitler. He was anti-British. They get MOST of their money from American police forces. Still, American lefties support them because they're violent-- and fanatic.
By now you've figured it out. This is a column about fanatics. More exactly, it is a message to fanatics. To you vegans, you punk purists, you Catholics, Muslims or Jews. You lefties or righties. Fundies or atheists. To all of you who believe that extremism in defense of YOUR ideas is a fine thing. You are scum. You are the lowest. You have no lives, but only causes. You are empty shells pretending to be human. I don't buy it.
The day after our tour, Ms. M and I leave for Dublin. I want to hitch. Ms. M insists we take a bus. Maybe it's a good thing we do. It helps us leave earlier.
Later that day, in a town just Northeast of Belfast, "The Real IRA" explodes a bomb in a busy marketplace. Twenty-six people are killed. A real ass-ripper.
ENDNOTES:
--> Shorter than usual dept: To make room for such thrilling reading as band self-promotions disguised as interviews, the MRR cabal has dictated that we columnists shorten our tomes by 20%. (There goes my only long asset!) That means I'm killing a lot of endnotes. Since I'm leaving for the Orient soon. I may submit a column that's ONLY endnotes, to fill in for that month. If I have to cut anything to meet the length requirements, the FULL text will be available via email and on my website. To subscribe to my columns electronically send a SUBSCRIBE request to me: MykelB@ix.netcom.com. You can also check in at my website at: http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/. Don't forget to sign the guestbook.
--> Much of the animal rights information, as well as the initial quote, come from a pamphlet called Animal Liberation: Devastate to Liberate or Devastatingly Liberal? It's information is incredible, though its analysis is wacko. You can get a copy for $5, from DS4A, Box 8, 82 Colston St, Bristol, BSI 5BB, ENGLAND
--> The Senate is about ready to pass a flag-burning amendment. Nope, not one that'll require it, but one that'll prohibit it. If you don't know why this is a bad idea, check out the website of People For The American Way at http://www.pfaw.org/ Even if you think flag-burning is a bad idea (I do), you sure wouldn't want to amend the constitution for it. Call your Senator now!
-->Irish Vinyl Dept: Ms. M and I found a halfway decent record store in the less than halfway descent town of Dublin. Called Road Records, they've got a buncha stuff including... well, you can see for yourself on www.groov.ie\road.
--> A Grain of Salt Dept.: Ms. M also sent me this article clipped from the journal of the American Family Association. It advocates boycotting American Express because they favor homos over Christians. Most interesting in the article is that the journal explains that the homo organization GLOBE is Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees. They never decode the initials of the Christian organization, SALT. Could it be Soldiers Against Lesbian Tactics? Or Straight Assholes Liking Tush? A free GG Allin ROIR CD to the best guess. Send guesses to me via email at MykelB@ix.netcom.com.
-->I like smart troublemakers dept: Negativland has gotten in trouble again. This time, caused by the notorious Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA, the same folks who brought you record warning labels, have now introduced Pressing Plant Intimidation. They found that Negativland used samples on a future project. The RIAA told the pressing plant NOT to press the CD. If they did, they said, they'd be libel to a lawsuit on copyright infringement. This is the first time a non-financial force has stopped a recording before it could be pressed. It is censorship, as pure and simple as if done by a government agency. According to Negativland: it should be pointed out that, contrary to what the RIAA would have you believe, top-40 major- label recording acts DO NOT CLEAR ALL THEIR SAMPLES. Such huge acts as Nine Inch Nails, Beastie Boys, Beck, Public Enemy, Soul Coughing (sic) and many others only clear those samples that are RECOGNIZABLE. If they're altered or mutilated enough so as to be unrecognizable, almost no one bothers to clear their samples or pay sampling clearance fees. The supposed industry wide practice of clearing ALL your samples is simply not followed. It's all done with a nod and a wink. When they are cleared, it has nothing to do with ethics or the law. It only has to do with what you think you can GET AWAY WITH. If these acts were honest about all the samples they REALLY use, then, according to the new guidelines of the RIAA, none of their CD's could be pressed any longer either. You can see what the RIAA has to say. You can also get their fax and phone number (hint, hint). The RIAA website is at: http://www.riaa.com. If you want to contact Negativland, they're at: www.negativland.com. Don't forget, there's no final "e" in negativ.
[-->It pays to advertise dept: Ms. M further sent me an article clipped from her local paper. It tells of inventor Michael Samonek who created a special molding kit he calls "Clone Your Own Genitals." For realistic coloring, he uses peach Jell-O and condensed milk for light skin, black cherry and condensed milk for darker. I say, why clone? Should you be able to design your own?]
--Mykel (mykelB@ix.netcom.com) http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/
