An Irregular Column
Feb 2001 MRR issue 213
by Mykel Board
Chosen by lottery, she stands in an open
field. She wears a thin cloth dress. Brown
corduroy. She faces away from us. Glancing
over her left shoulder, head down. The skin
around her deepset eyes hangs in dark
circles.
A breeze blows two strand of her hair
straight up. One on the right, the other on
the left. I stand in the middle of a long
single line of people. There are at least a
hundred of us, maybe more. We're heading
toward the field where she stands. As we
walk, we pass two immense piles of rocks. On
the right are large stones. Each is twice the
size of a brick and twice as heavy. On the
left, the stones are smaller, about fist
size. Some have jagged edges. Most are smooth
as if from a beach.
During the march toward the front, each
person briefly leaves the line, going to the
right or left to pick up a rock. The person
at the front of the line, a jockish looking
young man, throws the first rock at the woman
in brown. A small one, it hits her square in
the middle of the back. Her shoulders fly
backwards. Her body bends, snapping her neck
back. The next rock, just grazes her right
hip, apparently doing no damage. A third
catches the back of her head. A dark stain
seeps from point of impact and creeps
downwards.
Behind me stands an earnest young woman,
about 19. Wearing pointy glasses and a white
fake-fur jacket. She holds a small rock.
"Which rock are you going to pick?" she
asks me.
"This is sick." I tell her. "I'm not
going to hurt that woman. She didn't do
anything."
"She was chosen," says the girl. "Even
if you don't throw a rock. She was chosen."
The next rock, a big one, slams into the
woman's left shoulder, spinning her
completely around. Immediately, another
smashes into her face. I can see her lower
jaw, completely askew, like a parody of a
gangster, talking out the side of his mouth.
That doesn't last long. The next rock,
small, but thrown hard, slams into the same
place. The woman's lower jaw is nearly
knocked off. It hangs by a sliver of cheek
skin, dangling from underneath of what's left
of her head.
Somehow the woman remains standing. On
line, the girl and I continue talking.
"I can't participate in that," I tell
her. "It's making me sick."
"You're a citizen," she says. "It's your
duty to participate. I know both the big
stones and small stones are evil, but we have
to choose the lesser of the two evils."
"I don't have to choose," I tell her.
"If you don't choose, then those big
stones are your responsibility. You should
let people see your small stone. It'll be an
example for them."
She runs out to the pile of small stones
and brings me back one not much larger than a
big pebble. It's smooth on all sides.
"Here," she says, "take this one. You'll
be doing the right thing."
By the time I get to the field, the
woman lies in a heap. A pool of blood, more
like a pond, rings her body. It's not longer
possible to throw the stones directly. Each
person has to fling her missile high and
watch it arc down onto the body. Our target
is not quite dead. Every stone still brings a
twitch, like a severed frog's leg shocked
with an electrical current.
Then my turn comes. I look at the
mangled pile of flesh and cloth lying on the
field. I look at the small stone in my hand.
"No!" I shout as loudly as I can,
tossing the rock against the pile.
"Stop!" shouts the girl who gave it to
me. "Don't do that! You're throwing away your
stone!"
*************
As I type this, I find myself distracted
by the skin peeling off my nose. I can hardly
breathe. My lungs feel like they've been
washed in snot.
I'm sick. A relapse brought on by a New
York tradition. Drink Club. Once-a-week, a
new bar every time. Me. Some Japanese
students. Teachers, Punk pals. Whoever shows
up.
Once a year I get a severe bad cough.
Awful hacking. Lung spilling. So strong it
pumps my stomach. Can't keep my food down.
Hack. Hack. Hack. SPEW! Alcohol makes it
worse. I shudda known.
There we are, at Otis bar. An art-on-the
walls place on the border of Hell's Kitchen.
I'll have just one more drink. Then go home
early. Hit the bed before the clock strikes
one. Toast. "Kampai!" Aaargh! Hack. Hack.
PUKE! Projectile. I try to cover my mouth,
but the evening's drinks, snacks, and
vitamins spew through my fingers. It's a
spray. Over everything. The table, the
luxurious arty couches, the floor, my pants,
the Americans, the Japanese. Recycled
alcohol. Tiny tacos. The day's lunch and
snack. Yellow liquid. Great gobs of red and
brown. Meat and vegetable.
Again. More coughing. More spray. They
jump. Everyone around me. Up on their feet.
Pushing away. Trying to hide their horror. I
keep my vomit-filled hands cupped to my face,
trying to hold back the multi-colored tide. I
run down to the bathroom. Let the liquid drop
from my hands into the toilet. Am so
nauseated by the sight of it dripping down my
arms, pantslegs, on my coat. It makes me
sick. I puke some more. Again. I think I'm
safe. Nothing more to go. Empty.
I wipe up as best I can and sheepishly
return to the crowd upstairs. Many have left.
(What a surprise!) The others stand up and
back off when they see me.
"It's okay now." I say. "I'm..."
I feel a piece of something inhale
itself into my left lung. A tiny prod to the
alveoli. Bang, another coughing fit. More
puke. Onto the Japanese students. I'm like a
junior version of George Bush Sr. vomiting
onto the Japanese Prime Minister.
George Bush Jr., that's me. That's also
my segue into what I really want to write
about.
As I type this, the legal wranglings in
Florida continue. We don't yet know who will
be our next president. It seems most likely
it'll be Bush, but you never know. I want to
write about the election. Who won doesn't
matter.
Actually, it's not the election itself I
want to write about, but the bravery and
cowardice in the voting (and not voting)
public. That means YOU, buckaroos.
My highest admiration goes to the non-
voters. Those who threw away the stone,
saying, "there are some sins I cannot
commit." Bravo to you. You are the great
keepers of the moral world.
I voted. It's in my blood. I've been
doing it for nearly 30 years. It's fun to
pull those levers. No hole punches here in
N.Y. I wanted to help Ralphie Nader get his
5%. I like the idea of the government
(Republicrats) giving money to someone who
wants to destroy it... at least in its
present condition.
While not as moral a position as
refusing to vote at all, voting for Nader at
least allows us to avoid throwing stones at
innocent people.
But I don't want to waste my precious
column inches defending. I want to condemn. I
want to haul that bloody corpse of an
election out of the field and make you look
at it. I especially want to condemn those of
you too cowardly to throw your rocks away...
or just throw them someplace else... not at
the victim.
Mostly, I condemn the girls, the
females, the vaginated class who were so
afraid that somehow the next president would
loose them the right to abort. Those little
cuties, quivering in their Doc Martins. They
threw the stones.
Though I don't yet know the outcome of
the election, I do have some facts.
The safe states all went as predicted.
N.Y., Texas, Utah, California, Massachusetts,
Washington DC, New Jersey, Alabama,
Mississippi and a bunch of others. Anyone in
those states who voted for Al Gore is a
traitor. Pure and simple. Even if you
preferred him to Bush, he didn't need your
vote. The winner-take-all electoral system
assured him of those electors. You knew this,
but you still voted for him. You voted for
the only candidate who voted against Federal
funds for abortion. You voted for the only
candidate who voted for Justice Scalia, the
bozoist of all the Supreme court bozos. You
voted for him because you were afraid.
Because you let Democratic party propaganda
scare you into thinking Bush would hurt you.
That Bush would "reverse Roe vs. Wade." That
Bush would appoint Jerry Falwell to the
Supreme court.
Does fear make you that stupid? Is your
brain lodged between your legs? Are you
unable to consider anything without labia or
a g-spot? Don't you know that presidents
can't appoint Supreme Court justices? They
can nominate them, but Congress has to
approve them. With an almost 50-50
congressional split, NO president is going to
be able to successfully nominate anyone more
controversial than Donald Duck.
Besides, the need for abortion is
gradually disappearing. The abortion pill is
only the first of a series of medical changes
that will make abortion as rare as lobotomy.
I only wish some of the Gore-voters got the
latter, instead of the former. Abortion will
become a medical problem, not a legal
problem.
That might take five years. It's right
now that counts. Right girls? It's the
chance. The chance that Bush might... I don't
know what, force you to wear a twat recorder
that automatically measures input and outgo
and sends the results to Washington? Why are
you so frightened??? Why are you willing to
vote for a man who supports teaching
creationism in school? whose wife is the
biggest enemy music has ever had? Whose vice-
president (until election time, of course)
supports school vouchers and more religion in
government than Pat Robertson? who voted for
the cellphone wiretap bill? Who helped
prevent AIDS drugs from getting to Africa?
The list goes on. What is with you, that
you're willing to throw such a large rock?
On the off chance that Al Gore will win
this election, we're even worse off. Because
of the antagonism brought by the closeness of
the race and the torturous recounting, the
next president will be inefficient, and a
one-termer. Mid-term elections usually give a
loss to the presidential party. This year,
because of the built-up hostility, it'll be
worse.
A Gore victory means strengthening the
Republican hold on Congress in 2002 and a new
Republican president in 2004. And we have YOU
to thank for it.
If we're lucky, Bush wins this. Due, in
some part, to those of us who voted principle
over fear. Then, we'll have a Democratic
Congress in 2002, and a Democratic president
in 2004. Doesn't that sound better?
Of course it would, if you had a shred
of logic in that womb-consumed mind of yours.
But you don't. Somehow you'll see Gore as a
victory and Bush as a defeat. Somehow you
make me sick. Excuse me while I get a drink
and cough it up.
ENDNOTES: [Visitors to my website:
www.MykelBoard.com or subscribers (email to:
god@MykelBoard.com) will receive a few extra
endnotes. There are just too many to keep up
with.]
-->Al Gore isn't the only one who profits
from fear. Groups like the Jewish Anti-
Defamation League, GLAAD, anti-racist groups,
and others live off of fear. If hate suddenly
disappeared, they'd have to invent it to stay
in business.
It's in the best interests of these guys
to see a racist around every corner, and a
homophobe hiding in every closet. That's why
it's so exciting when one of them has the
balls to say that things are really not so
bad. The following is a report from WIRED
online.
"There are no statistics showing an
increase in [hate-group] membership because
of the Internet," says David Goldman,
president of HateWatch, a nonprofit group
that monitors online hate. "Groups are moving
away from the idea of constructing these huge
Web pages that have very little payback."
Goldman argues the Internet has
increased the visibility of hate groups, but
not their power. In fact, the heightened
attention has instead been more of a burden
than a boon for these once-secretive groups.
"It's been extremely bad for hate
groups," he said. "They've been exposed,
scrutinized, and poked at. Hate groups have
always relied on anonymity and secrecy to
keep their activities
hidden from the public eye," he said. "But
the Internet is now publicizing their every
move."
Goldman says people who visit hate sites
are usually looking for racist material or
organizations. "The Internet is not very good
at getting that uninterested, uninitiated
person to commit to an organization," he
said.
Well, that's almost an admission. A fuck
of a lot better than Simon Wiesenthal and his
fear mongering.
--> Still wanna get married? dept. A North
Carolina law lets people collect big bucks
from the person their spouse ran off with.
Recently, the N.C. Court of Appeals upheld
one of the largest verdicts against a
spouse-stealer--the $1 million Dorothy
Hutelmeyer won from her ex-husband's
secretary.
"The message it sends to folks is very
clear: Don't break up the marriage," said the
president of a pro-family group in Raleigh.
"It upholds the idea that marriage is
something special and needs to be preserved
and protected."
-->Related to that dept: My pal Dallas writes
me that, in Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is
legally allowed to kill her adulterous
husband, but may only do so with her bare
hands. The husband's lover, on the other
hand, may be killed in any manner desired.
-->But consider the alternative dept: Also,
according to Dallas, the penalty for
masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation. He
did not say which head they cut off.
-->Wow dept: I thought you had to be dead
before you were reincarnated. Apparently not.
Iggy Pop is back. More like one of The
Stooges than today's crooner. Add a touch of
the MC5 and... well, it's enough to make Jeff
Bale shit. This is IT! The Flaming Sideburns
from Finland. On the amazing Danish label,
Bad Afro Records www.vow.dk/badafro. If
you've got any taste at all, you'll dig up
this CD. Now! Energy as high as the fi is
low. Wow!
-->A little bit of good news dept: The Kansas
school board members who voted to take
evolution out of the state's curriculum were
defeated by other candidates. These new
candidates pledged to return the monkeys-to-
men ideas. Of course, the ousted schoolboard
members prove that evolution is not a
condition which effects everyone equally.
-->If you're in New York, you can subscribe
to the drink club email list. Send a request
to drinkclub@mykelboard.com. Every week,
you'll get a notice about the time and
location of the next drink club. It's usually
Wednesday at 9:30, but you never know. I'm
almost always there. Even if I'm sick.
-->Welfare cheats dept: Folks are up in arms
about government welfare programs, and well
they should be. Make those guys work, I say.
Take the Sunkist corporation. Please! The US
taxpayers have given them $71 million dollars
since 1986 to promote their oranges in Asia.
That's MY money going to sell oranges to
people who should be growing them themselves.
Stop it now! Make those Sunkist execs WORK
for a living.
--> That'll teach them dept: A Pakistani
court sentenced a man to death the murder of
100 children. But death alone was not good
enough. The judge ordered that the man be
strangled in front of the victims' parents,
cut into pieces and the pieces thrown into
acid.
Three accomplices, including a
13-year-old youth identified only as Sabir,
also were found guilty. One accomplice,
identified as Sajjid, 17, was found guilty on
98 counts of murder and sentenced to death
plus 686 years in prison. The second,
identified as Nadeem, 15, received a 182-year
sentence, or 14 years on each of 13 murder
counts. The third accomplice was sentenced
to 42 years in prison.
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