Mykel's Other Blog: July 2020

Friday, July 17, 2020

You're Still Wrong: Mykel's July 2020 Blog Vol. 2 THE TRIP

YOU'RE STILL WRONG..

MYKEL'S JULY 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 2

The Trip

by Mykel Board

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
--Winston Churchill

History's lessons are subtle lessons, inviting us to remember and forget selectively, and therefore are much better than psychiatry's where you're forced to remember everything. --Richard Ford

I sit in the almost empty waiting room of Mandela Airlines at Marcus Garvey airport… the smaller of New York City’s two major airports. I’m on my way to Sitting Bull, the capital of Ohio. Why go from New York to Sitting Bull?

I’m glad you asked me. I’ll be spending the rest of this blog explaining. It has to do with a sex partner, a pubic hair and a lot of legal problems.

I’ve arrived for my flight three hours early, as is my wont. I hate to do things last minute. I like to just chill at the airport reading, writing, talking with strangers. Today, of course, half the concessions are closed, and despite my rather ordinary mask, no one wants to talk with me. I fantasize it’s because they know who I am.

FLASH AHEAD: the plane is airborne. The masked flight attendant walks the aisles handing out soy nuts and small bottles of Poland Spring.

“Excuse me uniformed person of interest,” I say to the one handing out the goodies, “would it be possible for me to order a cocktail?”

“Certainly passenger C12,” comes the answer. “What would you like?”

“Could I have a Russian of Color?” I ask. The perfect combination… vodka and coffee… oh yeah!

The drink arrives a few minutes before landing, so I have to gulp it down… sipping is soooo much better.

After deplaning, having my temperature taken, my internal passport checked (I’m coming from New York… a safe state.) I’m allowed to enter the main terminal.

My gender-fluid lawyer, Harvey Epstein, is waiting for me inside. I wave and walk up to the professional. We bump elbows.

“Harvey,” I say, “it’s good to see ya. Been a long time.”

“Yeah, Mykel,” says Harvey, “tell me about it.”

“How ‘bout over a drink?” I suggest.

Harvey smiles and walks me out to his car, a large Cadillac SUV.

We end up in my kind of bar… a couple dozen taps, wood tables with names, hearts, and bodily organs scratched into them… a grizzled bartender with an Irish accent… and waitpersons who look like they’ve been cut out of porn magazines.

We order a couple of bottles of Modelo de Color and sit at one of the tables.

After clinking our glasses, and taking the first sip, Harvey folds his arms, leans on them, and says in the tone of voice that--- in the movies-- means CONSPIRACY.

“You really sexually intercoursed yourself up with this one, Mykel,” says Harvey. “It sounds super nasty.”

“You don’t know how nasty,” I answer.

“Let me get this right,” comes the answer, “your.. er… partner for the night left an unintentional gift in your bed. Is that right?”

“Let me give you the background,” I say. “I was visiting a friend at Crispus Attucks U….”

“That school in Obama, Kentucky?” asks Harvey.

I nod and continue. “They were having a seminar on punk rock and a friend invited me to be a part of a panel called “How Punk Rock Nearly Ended All War and Disease.”

Harvey gets it. “So you were supposed to be the contrarian, right? The guy who says NOTHING almost ended all war and disease, right?”

“You got it,” I say.

“I even prepared,” I tell him, “Did my reading, took notes, made a Powerpoint presentation… Showed how there are still wars all the time, and they didn’t end with the assassination of Donald Trump or the overthrow of Putin. The wars, the conquests continued. Remember when there were more countries than Israel in the Middle East? How ‘bout Covid-22? Why do you think we’re wearing masks 24 hours a day?”

The lawyer’s eyebrows raise. “That’s a pretty radical position, Mykel. Though there have been… er… outbreaks... even in North and South Kaepernick. But it’s kind of a stretch to call them wars and disease… even for you.”

“I don’t think like other people,” I tell my listener.

His eyes look heavenward. “You gotta tell ME that? But Anti-Talk had other ideas, right?”

I nod.

“Yeah,” I say. “They did their homework too. Found out I was a member of The Siblinghood of the Knights of Voltaire…”

What I could see of his face turns into a big question mark.

“Voltaire,” I say, “that French person who never said, I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

“So Anti-Ta threatens to stop the conference if you’re allowed to appear,” guesses the attorney.

I nod.

“So the school cancels your appearance, and gives you no compensation,” Harvey figures out and continues, “So you were canceled and depressed. So you picked up this… er… low cost person of the night… and the two of you go off to your hotel.”

I nod.

“And then, the housekeeper finds… er… a curly dark hair in the sheets and turns it in to the Anti-Ta leadership.”

“You’re smart,” I say, “you shudda been a lawyer.”

I get a laugh in return. The lawyer continues, “So now they’re after you… and you want me to get a restraining order, right?”

I nod.

“They’re still threatening you, right?”

I nod again.

“I know that’s whitemail and illegal and all that,” I say, “but I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Well,” says Harvey, “in the famous Supreme Court decision MeToo vs MeNeither, Chief Justice, Ginsburg, in her ouija board- sent decision, famously wrote, A horse is a horse, of course, of course. And no one can talk to a horse, of course, which has been interpreted time and again in your favor in cases like this. I think we can win this case, but it may go all the way to the Supreme Court in Chappelle before it reaches a decision.”

“It’s important,” I say. “Every day people are trying to change the books, change the heroes, change what people believe.”

“You know, Mykel,” says Harvey. “You can change the trappings. You can change the language, but you can’t change the reality of history.”

“Tell me about it,” I answer.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com

→ No credit for the bass player dept: KTAL reports that a man in Louisiana was caught on video swimming in the indoor aquarium at Bass Pro Shop in Bossier City Louisiana.

According to the Bossier City P.D., Kevin Wise of Slidell has been charged with criminal damage to property.

His reason for jumping into the tank? Hitting 2000 likes on TikTok.
I support the guy. It certainly makes as much sense as tearing down Columbus statues for 2000 dislikes on Twitter.

→ Click here to prove you ARE a robot dept: Reuters reports that the Japanese baseball team the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks been using dancing robots to replace Corona-restricted fans.

Before their most recent game against the Rakuten Eagles, over 20 robots danced to the team’s fight song on a podium in the otherwise empty stands.

Two different robots, including SoftBank’s humanoid robot ‘Pepper’ and others on four legs like a dog, stamped and shimmied in a choreographed dance that is usually performed by the Hawks’ fans before games in Fukuoka stadium.

Some of the robots wore Hawks caps and waved flags supporting the team. The Hawks won 4-3.

→ Ya just can’t win dept: In the 1960s and 70s we were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam… BRING THE TROOPS HOME! We yelled. Johnson wouldn’t listen. Next president, Nixon, after some horribly stupid bombing, finally ended the war, bringing the troops home.
Now, Donny Trump is bringing the troops back from Afghanistan. And the Democrats are cheering. Nixon without the bombing!
Yeah, right.
The same people who complained that Americans shouldn’t be the Cops of The World are now saying… KEEP THE TROOPS IN… MAKE WAR NOT LOVE!

I guess you can social distance in war.

→ NY Post, best-written paper in NY dept: The New York Post whose strong point is not accuracy, hits again with its real strong point: writing skill.

Headline of the month from July 8: Oregon Man Driving Stolen Car Crashes Into Woman Driving Another Stolen Car

Pretty good, but not as good as the one about the reports of the Donald Trump dossier where Donny asks a woman to piss on his face.

That headline? YELLOW JOURNALISM

With writing like that, who cares if it’s true or not?

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

And another Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

NEW: Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

– See you in hell,

Mykel

Wednesday, July 01, 2020

YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. MYKEL'S JULY 2020 BLOG VOLUME 1 OR SACRIFICE by Mykel Board

YOU'RE STILL WRONG..

MYKEL'S JULY 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 1

SACRIFICE

by Mykel Board

Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. --Viktor E. Frankl

Love is not a feeling of happiness. Love is a willingness to sacrifice.

--Michael Novak

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.
--Albert Schweitzer

The Aztecs use an intricate knife. Its wooden handle curls in on itself… so it bulges at the back, like a huge snail with its tail attached to the blade… and the blade… ah the blade. Not metal but stone… heavy, nearly a foot long… chipped to two razor sharp edges and a needle tip point.

Pan back from the knife. Up… up… up… until both pyramids… sun and moon come into sharp focus. Pan closer… Shift to the Sun Pyramid...Flat topped… 248 steps...base to the top. A priest waits at the top of the pyramid. At the bottom, hundreds of people gather. You might think it was an Apache pow-wow for all the feathers, though the blue and gold chest plates and loin cloths might make you wonder.

At the front of the crowd, a mother holds her daughter’s hand. The child, about 10 years old, looks up at her and speaks.

[I translate for readers who do not speak Aztec.]

“Mommy,” she says, “I’m scared.” Tears drip down the side of her face. Mother releases the girl’s hand to wipe away the tears.

“Don’t be frightened,” says Mother. “It’s a sublime thing you’re doing. You’re bringing us health, good harvest, a happy future. You’re doing great things for us. You should be proud, not scared.”

“It’s time,” says a man, dressed slightly different from the rest… more gold… with a headpiece that somehow looks Egyptian.

“Yes,” says the mother, “it’s time…. and remember it’s a beautiful thing you’re doing for all of us.”

Mother takes her daughter’s left hand with her right. Together they climb, step-by-step, the 242 steps of the pyramid. At the top, Mother brings her virgin daughter to a little wooden platform… constructed in the center of the flat space on the top of the pyramid.

“You must lie down now,” she says to the girl. “I will leave. The priest knows what to do. Remember... I love you. And you are doing a great thing.”

The little girl sniffs back a sob, clenches her teeth, and closes her eyes. Tears form under the closed eyes and drip down the sides of her head. She lies down.

The priest kneels next to the platform. He holds the stone knife in both hands.

At the base of the pyramid, people shout. “Huitzilopochtli! Huitzilopochtli! Accept our sacrifice. We love you! Grant us peace and good harvest.”

Hands open, the priest raises the knife toward the sky, as if showing it to God. Then he takes the handle in both hands, and, holding tightly, plunges it into the chest of the little girl.

She screams... a high horrible scream… a scream heard 247 steps below… as the blood flows from the girl’s chest down her sides… from the platform to the top of the pyramid.

The screams fade. The priest presses the knife back into the young girl and slices downward… opening a slit… in the girl’s belly.

He sets the knife next to him, directly on the pyramid. Then… he reaches both hands into the slit. Finding the heart, he pulls down, and pinches off the veins and arteries that attach the organ to the girl’s body. When free, he raises the severed heart above his head… letting the fresh blood drip onto his body.

“This is for you, Huitzilopochtli,” he shouts to the sky, “Thank you for keeping us. Let this blood of a virgin be our sacrifice to you. Preserve us for another year. Give us a good harvest and victory in battle. Thank you, God. You are our savior.”

The people at the base of the pyramid cheer…. Then become quiet…. They are satisfied.

Barbaric?

That’s what you think… waiting at the base of your own pyramid. There is something human that demands a sacrifice. Soldiers are praised for making “the ultimate sacrifice.” We are urged to self-sacrifice… the firefighters website says, Self-Sacrifice Is A Firefighter’s Oath.

Parents sacrifice their freedom for the sake of their children. Pedestrians wear masks that sacrifice their comfort (and maybe their individual health) for the sake of the community.

But how about sacrifices like the Aztec little girl? Certainly we don’t sacrifice human beings for some vague principle, right?

You bet your stone knife we do. Our court system… the entire idea of “justice” is based on human sacrifice. Do you think there was any way that Harvey Weinstein could have gotten an objective trial anywhere in America? An innocent verdict would have caused riots. I don’t know if he was guilty or not. It’s my guess… but only my guess… that his accusers saw one thing and he saw something else. That’s beside the point.

Even if he were as innocent of forcible rape as I am of the Kennedy assassination, he still would have been convicted. The gods (goddesses) of #metoo needed a human sacrifice. They needed someone… (actually some ones… I count Bill Cosby among their victims) to be slaughtered on the pyramid… someone for the public to see… someone to bring them good fortune in their future ventures. Guilt or innocence have nothing to do with it.

Before Weinstein… before most of my readers were born… was the Vietnam war... a horrible American atrocity. US planes dropped firebombs on men, women, children… civilians all. Massacre was the name of the game as soldiers collected oriental ears as souvenirs.

In one place, Mi Li, someone caught it on film… hard to do in pre-cellphone days. An entire town massacred. The carnage caught by the camera.

Lieutenant William Calley, was brought up… court martialed… there were posters of the massacre. He killed babies! Though convicted, Calley only spent 3 years...not in jail, but under “house arrest”… like Martha Stewart.

There was outrage. How could someone get away with that? Calley was a murderer! He should spend the rest of his life behind bars. Hey buckaroos! He was a soldier. Soldiers kill people. That’s their job. But Calley was supposed to be the sacrifice for all the evil done by ALL the soldiers... the sacrifice to public opinion… That one didn’t work out.

It’s 2020 and you’ve seen the picture: Officer Derek Chauvin, his knee on the neck of George Floyd as Floyd chokes out “I can’t breathe.” I don’t need to reproduce the picture, you’ve seen it on every TV channel, on every page of social media, on every poster in every march. My pal, Bob Black, believes he’ll get off scot-free… or with a 3-year slap, like Lt. Calley. I think he will be both scotless and freeless.

I think he’ll be a human sacrifice to the gods of Black Lives Matter. A legal knife to the heart to satisfy the call for blood (under the term justice… another word for blood). From what we’ve seen, he is guilty. We certainly have more evidence than did the Harvey Weinstein jury. But that’s not the point.

After this sacrifice, people will cheer, then be quiet. Things will go back to what they were. Cops will be soldiers… whose job it is to kill. Nothing will change about police or policing. One person (maybe with a few others) will be offered up to the God of public order shouting at the base of the pyramid. They will be satisfied.

→ Music dept: The Boston Typewriter Orchestra has been performing its unique brand of music throughout New England since 2004 and will now be releasing its first vinyl album later this summer. Self-proclaimed conductor Tim Devin and a group of friends founded the ensemble as a joke. After premiering at Boston's Art Beat Festival, the idea took off. Using vintage machines to rhythmically clack, roll, spin and bang out "music," the typist-musicians say different models produce different sounds. "A Smith-Corona Galaxy 12 has a power space function that makes a nice metallic clang sound," explained one of the members.
I wrote my first column for Maximum Rock’n’Roll on a Smith Corona.

→ Something Fishy About This Dept: The Daily Star reports that a 30-year-old man turned up at Zhaoqing First People's Hospital in Guangdong, China, on June 3 suffering from abdominal pain. Doctors performed a series of scans before discovering a whole freshwater fish in the man's rectum.
How’d that get there?

The man explained that he had “accidentally sat on it.”
"Do you think I'm an idiot?" one of the doctors replied.

The spiny fins of the Mozambique tilapia had caused ruptures in the man's intestine and had to be removed through his abdomen by surgery.

→ The weirdest year in history continues dept: You may have heard this one on TV. A huge plume of Sahara Desert dust that drifted across the Atlantic Ocean has reached the southeastern United States.

This plume, which the National Weather Service (NWS) expects to blanket the U.S. Southeast and Puerto Rico, is the biggest in at least the past 50 years.

The dust outbreak is "by far the most extreme of the MODIS satellite record — our most detailed, continuous record of global dust back to 2002," tweeted Michael Lowry, an atmospheric scientist.

I wonder how long before they discover that the dust carries with it a new virus, spread through the eyes, that can only be stopped with a blindfold. Stay tuned for a state-by-state report on the blindfold laws. Actually, that might be cool. The REALLY blind folks would be the only ones who could get around!