"Liberals will blame guns. Conservatives will blame the culture."

--TV commentary on the Colorado school shooting.

For those who missed the start of this adventure:

I'm in Hawaii on the big island. My host Stevyn, is a cleanliness fetishist, who won't let me use the bathroom. The trip's been a disaster, though I had plenty of fun with the punks in Oahu.

My computer broke... twice. My 30 year old black leather jacket felling apart. Now this psycho friend-of-a-friend, living on the side of a volcano, gets up at 6:30 in the morning and BLASTS new age music. His nearest neighbor keeps a pet monkey-- in a diaper.

It's worse at night. He's in the other room. Mellow guitar music screams out at jet engine volume. The door to my dungeon opens. Stevyn walks in, a very serious look on his face.

"I found a coffee ground on my desk this morning," he tells me. "I don't want you to use my area for anything except cooking and taking a shower. That's why I gave you that back area. It's my work area. It's a little messier than my living area. (It's spotless.) That's YOUR area... Oh yeah, another thing. don't wash the dishes. I need to make sure they're clean. You just leave them. I'll wash them, not you... Oh yeah, another thing. You're going to have to do something about your coffee. The pot smells like hazelnuts. I don't know what to do.I don't have any pots I don't use, but I washed out the pot you used... twice... and it still smells."

Bad enough? Not quite. Just after midnight, on my third night there, loud talking wakes me up. Stevyn is on the phone.

His voice shakes as he speaks:

"I woke up at 3 AM. Pearl Jam was still blasting from his room.... In the kitchen... there was blood everywhere.... on the walls.... on the floor.... in the butter.... It was like something out of a horror movie."

Does he think he's talking about me? I don't want to find out. The next morning, I leave. A free place to stay is one thing, but this guy leads a life.... well.

I put on my TRIBE 8 t-shirt, my leather jacket and my backpack.

"I'll be back to say good-bye before I leave the island." I promise.

Yeah right,

I'm out of there. Packed up. Heading for the road. Thumb stuck out. Ready for the trip to Pahoa, a small town in the middle of the rain-forest.

For some reason, few cars cruise along the side of the volcano at eight in the morning. It's an hour before one of them stops to pick me up.

I soon discover that Einstein was wrong. Time travel is possible. About 10 miles outside of Pahoa, a blue Volkswagen microbus pulls over. Painted flowers decorate the side and roof.

Inside sits a somewhat chubby woman, her bare feet against the pedals. In back, riding with me, is her dirty-faced daughter wearing, like her mother, a long paisley dress.

Once in town, I discover everybody is like that. The girls, mostly white earth-mother types, have long kinky hair.

The guys have more facial hair than a chart of nineteenth century Presidents. Mellow music comes from a different coffee house every foot and a half along Main Street. I pass one that's playing "Riding that train... high on cocaine." Instead I stop in one where the mustached proprietor is playing a plastic saxophone. Sitting in a metal chair, eyes closed, he's lost in that inner jazz space.

I clear my throat.

It doesn't help.

"Groovy sounds," I say.

His eyes don't open. The puffed saxophone lips turn into a smile. He lowers the saxophone and half opens his eyes.

"Hello brother," he says, "can I get you something."

I look around. There is nothing there but coffee. No food.

No tea. Nothing but a counter with a coffee urn. In the back, I can see a bag of coffee, nothing else.

"Um," I stutter, not sure what to say. "I think I'll have some coffee."

"Far out, man," he says, pouring me a cup.

As you can imagine, life moves a bit slow in Pahoa. Not exactly my cup of tea... er coffee. I want adventure. Lava.

Spurting fire. Molten rock hissing into the sea. After the coffee, I thumb down to the ocean.

A car stops. A young man in a sport-jacket and open shirt opens the door. I tell him I'm going to the lava.

"I'll take you to the end." he says as if the words didn't ring sinister.

I get in.

In a few miles, the road ends. Just ends. There is a big pile of dried lava blocking the way. Just pow, there's the road, then there's a solid mass of black over it. The end.

I thank the guy. He nods, turns the car around and leaves me. It's on foot from here.

Later, I'll tell you more about that adventure. First, I want to talk about the bullet spree in Colorado. The news- commentator I quoted at the beginning was right. Texas conservatives convened a special group. It's purpose? To inform parents on how to tell if their children listen to Marilyn Manson. Colorado schools banned long black trenchcoats.

On the gun side, even Charlton Heston and the NRA took notice. They scaled back their national convention, ironically scheduled for Denver. No showroom this year. All that fire-power, it's in bad taste, you know?.

Who's right? The liberals or the conservatives? Of course, THEY'RE BOTH WRONG. But more of that later.

Right now, back in Hawaii, I pass the first warning sign on the volcano:

Warning: The parks department recommends that you stay in back of this point. It may be dangerous to proceed.

I walk on a bit. There are more people ahead. They'll die first if there's any danger. Then comes another sign, this one in bigger letters.

WARNING: STEAM EXPLOSIONS WHERE LAVA ENTERS THE OCEAN. Then in smaller print: Sea water explodes into steam and boiling water. Molten lava and rocks blast skyward. Blocks the size of microwave ovens are tossed as far as half a mile inland.

[Note: I'm a columnist and not a journalist. I therefore occasionally exaggerate, or even lie. But this is true! Dr.

Gazork! The parks department actually wrote "microwave ovens."]

Onward I trudge. Over the black rock. Passing holes where steam pours from the rock into the air. The next sign prints the entire first line in capital letters:

WARNING: V O L C A N I C F U M E S ! ! ! !

VOLCANIC FUMES ARE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.... they contain hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter.

Yo, what kind of matter isn't particulate? Still, it is hard to breath here. The air is... well, let's just say if I let off one of those major Jew-farts, no one would notice.

There are far fewer people here. Of those, many speak Japanese or German-- tourists with balls. More than me, it turns out. At the next sign, a huge one, I turn tail and head uphill, toward the top of the volcano.

WARNING: BENCH COLLAPSE. NEW LAND, CALLED A BENCH, IS FORMED WHERE LAVA ENTERS THE OCEAN. THE BENCH IS UNSTABLE AND CAN COLLAPSE INTO THE SEA WITHOUT WARNING. BENCH COLLAPSES ARE FREQUENT AND CONTINUOUS. YOU ARE NOW WALKING ON A BENCH.

I can put up with a little sulfuric acid. I can certainly dodge a flying microwave oven, but a collapse into boiling water?

No thanks.

So I head uphill, and uphill... and uphill. The black lava turns into a sparse wooded area, then a denser one. Ahead and slightly to the right, a dirt path cuts through the woods, leading upwards. And upwards. Right! Left! Right! A dusty climb, past burnt out trees and a small sign with an arrow: "Dead Forest."

Up and up I climb. Sweaty, thirsty, more alone than in the Gobi. Just me on this trail climbing a volcano. Each step is an effort. I want to just lie down and sleep forever. Right. Left.

Right. It's hot, blazing inside my leather jacket, boiling my brain blood beneath the fedora. I expect my transplant plugs to pop-- explode like a bloody volcano.

Then up ahead, is it a hut? A wooden structure? A mirage? I plunge onward, upward. Finally, I get to the structure-- a forest ranger station and giftshop. Giftshop?

You bet, volcano keychains and refrigerator magnets. I shudda stayed on the collapsing bench.

At least I'm not lost anymore. I ask one of the rangers how to get to a highway off the volcano toward the Kona Beach coast.

"It's all downhill" says the ranger. "Just follow that path."

He points to another dirt trail barely visible through some bushes outside the giftshop.

I follow that trail. Down it goes. Soon I'm overlooking the crater in the center of the volcano. Black, empty, it could be the moon. A deep plate surrounded by a monstrous circular wall.

Hot from lack of shade, as well as the lava that bubbles deep(?) beneath the hardened surface.

I keep on the trail, until it hits the crater floor. There it ends, on the dried lava plate I saw from above. There's no trail on the lava. Just lava. Dead black lava that could open up at any moment and drop me into a molten abyss... Look, there are rocks, in piles... obviously human-made... That must be the trail. I go from pile to pile, across the bottom of the crater.

Thin dry cracks crisscross each other like the lines on Charlton Heston's face. Over I go. To the other side of the crater, then, a bit to my left: the trail starts again... but wait. I'm on the floor of a crater, surrounded by the volcano top. How could it be "all downhill?" It can't. It isn't.

OK, let's shift, I'm off the volcano onto the road to the coast. Before long I'm in Captain Cook, a little town on the sunny side of the big island.

It's evening. I find a cheap hotel and am off looking for authentic Hawaiian food. Besides sex, beer, and strange adventures, the main reason I travel is to try new food. If it's weird, I'll eat it.

Now I'm at this authentic Hawaiian place, in a shopping center, eating "laulau." [Note number 2: The Hawaiian language likes to repeat itself. They double every word, or at least a syllable. That's why there's "lulu" in "Honolulu." The local fish is "mahi mahi." And "pipi" (pronounced "pee pee") is not what you make in the toilet. It's an animal that says "moo."]

Laulau is pork, wrapped in tea leaves, and then steamed.

They serve a giant portion, with poi, a pleasantly bland side dish with the general consistency of semen. Delicious.

By the time I finish eating, it's dark outside. I've got a long walk back to the hotel. Then it hits. The laulau has passed through my entire digestive system in a matter of minutes. As I walk along the highway, it begs to be released. It's not pipi that's aching to leave my body, but poo poo!

I head for the bushes, lower my pants and squat. Ahh, the joy of passing laulau. Heaven by the side of the road. I grab a few leaves to clean myself. Joyously empty, I walk back to the hotel.

I'm still a bit queazy the next day. But I stand, thumb out, on my way to the beach. My asshole feels like it's been cleaned with sandpaper. As the sweat begins to roll down the crack, the pain and itching get worse. I reach back to rub it dry, running my middle finger the length, That little brown hole is wetter and more viscous than I expect. I hand dry it as best I can, raising my middle finger to my nose after. (Don't we all secretly like our own smells?)

It's not long before a car stops. A dirty white Chevy.

SKINHEAD and H/W/H/C are spray-painted in black on the side.

CONFLICT blasts from the tape player. The driver is a big guy without much hair.

"Where you going?" he asks.

I tell him the name of the beach.

"Good," he says, "I'm going right near there."

And before you know it, we're off. I'm not worried. Hawaii is one of the few places where skinheads, skaheads, and punk rockers all get along with each other. So instead of cringing, I'm out to impress.

"Is that Conflict?" I ask.

He turns to me. "You listen to punk rock?"

I nod.

"Not too many people on the Big Island listen to punk," he says. "You're cool... And you like chocolate too, huh?"

"Whadaya mean?" he asks.

"You got a nice brown mustache.. and on your nose!" he laughs.

I wipe my hand under my nose. It's wetter and more viscous than I expect.

"Shit!" I say.

I'm right.

Whoops, I'm almost out of space. Well, leave Hawaii for the time being and maybe come back again next month.

To end, I wanna get back to Colorado. I wanna say how, in the debate between guns and culture, the culture crew is right.

But not the way they think.

Isn't it hilarious to hear Clinton and his fellow politicians lament about violence? They ask "how could it happen?" that these teens would solve their problems with violence. Meanwhile, they're bombing the shit out of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq to solve their problems. Yeah, I wonder where these kids could have learned that violence is the solution to their problems. Do you think maybe it WAS Marilyn Manson?

ENDNOTES: [Thanks to your protests, sit-ins, marches and church burnings, there are no longer length restrictions at MRR. All power to the people! Yeah! Still, visitors to my website: www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/index.html, or subscribers (email to: MykelB@ix.netcom.com) will receive a few extra endnotes.]

-->Now THAT'S a royalty dept: ROIR (611 Broadway, (411), NYC 10012 info@roir-usa.com) recently released a CD of Spanish Gypsy Flamenco. That would be weird enough. What makes it weirder is that the CD was recorded in jail. It was part of a Spanish government-sponsored contest. The winners got to be on the CD.

They also got 5000 pesetas, AND a reduced sentence! Wow! Freedom as royalty! I'll take that any day.

Here's the deal: I make a record. You give me 10 years credit. That means I can commit crimes costing me up to ten years in jail, and turn in my credit instead of actually serving the time. Like a Monopoly Get Out of Jail Free card. What a deal!

The ROIR CD is called TWO CRIES OF FREEDOM. And if you only like punkrock, you're not gonna like it. But then again, if you had taste, would you be reading MRR?

--> Mosquito Power dept: The sensual Ms. M from Appleton sent me a newspaper clipping about red harvester ants found in the soil near the Hanford nuclear reactor in Washington State. They were radioactive, as were local flies and gnats. Don't worry, when the cancer rate increases, they'll blame it on cigarettes.

--> My senility dept: I don't remember if I wrote this before.

But I got email from Henry Martin (Center of the World Productions, 301 N. 13 St., Ft. Smith AR 72901). He's doing a zine about prostitution and what it's like all over the world.

He's also "a horny bastard and would love people to send sex shit." Send him copies of the stuff you send me!

-->Kneejerk dept: I've often been amazed at how quickly people will jump on the CAUSE band-wagon. If it sounds right they support it, without investigating, or even thinking.

Imprimis, the newsletter from Hillsdale College, reports that highschool freshman, Nathan Zohmer of Idaho, asked his classmates and teachers to sign a petition. The petition was to ban the chemical "dihydrogen monoxide" which causes excessive vomiting and sweating. It also is a component of acid rain.

Inhaled, it is usually deadly. It contributes to soil erosion, decreases the effectiveness of car brakes, and have been detected in terminal cancer tumors.

Forty seven of the 50 students and teachers Nathan asked, signed the petition. No questions asked. Especially, not "What the fuck is dihydrogen monoxide?" If they had asked--or even thought-- they would have discovered the answer: water.

--> Though I'm not a fan of SCIENCE, every once-in-awhile it can be entertaining. SCIENCE NEWS (6.20.98) had a few nice stories, for example.

One was about a test on fruitflies. Geneticists found that a mutant gene variation makes certain flies more susceptible to alcohol. In other words, they get drunk faster than those without the gene. Scientists, in their infinite wisdom and humor, have named this variation the cheapdate mutation.

In the same issue is a story about "Male wester toads" that live by the philosophy "If it moves-- especially if it's big-- grab it and mate."

These toads will screw a male or female indiscriminately.

Who wudda thought that toads should be role models?

-->Remember that guy Jason, who did all those nice things for people? He promoted Hawaiian music and set up benefits for the homeless. How did God pay him back? Someone stole his video camera. The cops busted him for driving a motorcycle without a license. They arrested his galpal for an outstanding traffic violation. Then he broke his collarbone. Now, I hear, there's more. Jason wrote me:

"I was in an auto accident and the car I borrowed from an ex-girlfriend was totaled. I messed up my left knee too." Send your kind thoughts to the boy-- he needs them.

http://members.aol.com/Hwnexp/ 

--> It's a tough problem dept: Early this year, the IRS took away the tax exemption for Operation Rescue's central church. The reason? The group took out newspaper ads urging a vote against Clinton. The IRS said that tax-exempt religious groups cannot advocate for or against a candidate. The church said, it has a right to free speech and can advocate anything it wants. On March 30, the church lost in court. They had to pay taxes.

As a free-speech supporter and church-hater, that puts me in a difficult position. Which side do I support?

The answer is easier than the question. That is: The church IS entitled to it's free speech, but it is NOT entitled to tax exemption-- at all.

The government is looking at the law backwards! They say, "Congress shall make no law with regards to the establishment of religion...." means they can't tax the church. But that tax EXEMPTION is a law "with regard to the establishment of a church." It singles them out.

TAXING the church treats them same as anyone else. That is "no law."

Churches complain about granting "special rights" to homos... What about them? They've got more special rights than anyone else! How 'bout some equality around here.

--> Sad news dept: Annie Sprinkle is the godmother of the sex-is- good Women's Movement. She's a former porn star who went out and told people how great it is to have a cunt.

God, in a fit of womb envy destroyed her home in a fire. All her camera equipment, photos, negatives, everything... gone.

Despite this, she's most depressed about the death of her two cats. Watta woman!

Annie needs moral and physical support. If you admire the stuff she's done to make America a better place, send her email of support: amsprinkle@aol.com. She'll appreciate it. If you can afford it, send her some money too. She has to start all over.

Send your donations to: P.O.Box 396, Sausalito, CA 94965. Tell 'er Mykel sent ya.

--> Further disasters dept: I don't have time or space to describe everything that went wrong on the Hawaiian trip. One thing I didn't talk about was my visit to a nudist beach and how I lost my TRIBE 8 t-shirt there!! I was heart-breaking!

I appeal to you, good reader. If you've got one, preferably white on black with two angel-girls kissing, PLEASE SEND IT TO ME. I promise to publish your name, and mail you something good!

Just let me know what you want. As usual, I'm at PO Box 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012. Thanks

--> My pal Akiko asked me to spread the word, here's her announcement, though there's not much time! If you can get it in the mail by the 30th, I think you'll be OK.:

Friends Without A Border, a New York based nonprofit organization, is looking for artwork to be published in the 2000 Friends of Friends Calendar to benefit the Angkor Hospital For Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Guidelines:

- All art form are accepted

- Original art work must not exceed 2ft x 3ft (after 12 images are selected, we ask the artists to submit the original art work to our office for reproduction) - Send up to 5 SLIDES with a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope (prints are accepted for photographs)

- There's no theme, but generally heart warming images appropriate for a calendar for fund-raising for a children's hospital are selected.

- Artists whose work is selected will receive 10 copies of 2000 Friends of Friends Calendars (pretty good looking production!) and possibly a group show in a NYC gallery in 2000.

- Art work to be sent to:

Friends Without A Border

Attn: Calendar

140 West 22nd St., #11A, New York, NY 10011 - Inquiries to: Friends Without A Border tel (212)691-0909

DEADLINE:

Entries must be received by April 30, 1999

--> Band opportunities dept: Punkoholic Warzone! wants bands to contribute to it's VHS compilation and is also looking for "punk E-Zines" to link with.

You can connect with them at:

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Cabaret/2841 

--> What's a "Sanarchist" dept: I got email from: STAN878@aol.com. He sent me an ad advertising "The Sanarchist Cookbook"

The Sanarchist Cookbook is the new revised volume for 2000.

Completely revised and updated. It is a shocking, provocative how-to book written in an era when "turn on, burn down, blow up" were revolutionary slogans of the day. The author considers this a survival guide and gives detailed advice concerning electronics, sabotage and surveillance, with data on everything from bugs to scramblers. He also provides explicit information on the uses and effects of drugs, ranging from pot to heroin.

Now I know the ANARCHIST COOKBOOK was published in the early 70s and there are still copies floating around. Rumor is that the info in that book was so bad many thought it was written by a cop.

Well, if you're interested in Sanarchist as opposed to Anarchist, you can sent your payment of $11.95 to:

K.C. Smith

10 East Louisiana

Evansville, IN 47711

If you try any of the recipes, though, don't tell me about it, ok?

--Mykel (mykelB@ix.netcom.com)

http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/index.html