You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's Sept 2020 Blog #2 or SCIENCE vs VOODOO

  YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. 

MYKEL'S SEPT. 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 2

OR

SCIENCE SHMIENCE

by Mykel Board

I used to go to a crap chiropractor who also did acupuncture. I poo-pooed it but whatever, I let her do her thing. During a visit, I was going through a bout of bronchitis. I used to get bronchitis twice a year, every year. She remarked on it and popped a needle in my chest. I rolled my eyes and laid down. I have not had a case of bronchitis in over 20 years since.
Jennifer Fogeliscious-Legof (personal letter)

If you take an ineffective sugar pill, at your sickest, it's odds on you're going to get better, in exactly the same way that if you sacrifice a goat, after rolling a double six, your next roll is likely to be lower. --Ben Goldacre in The Guardian

FLASH TO NEW ORLEANS, April 10,1861: Marie Laveau sits in her parlor in the city’s French Quarter. Marie is not French. She probably has some Haitian blood. In any case, she is among the few born-free Colored People in The South. She’s Colored by default, as it will still be in 2020, when mixed-race people either choose their color or have it chosen for them.

Marie’s abundant hair is covered… more wrapped than covered.. in a red and white cloth… hatpinned together along the seams. In her hands, she holds a doll… a kind of stick figure… made from straw... arms and legs divided from the torso by thread at the hips, wrists and shoulders and ankles... the head partially separated by another tight thread at the neck.

Marie takes a long hatpin from the cloth around her hair. She sets the pin between the legs of the doll… pointy side facing the crotch. She pushes upwards.

Just then... a hundred and sixty-two miles northwest... on a plantation where the Colored People are still slaves.. a handsome young slave screams… grabbing between his legs and falling to the ground.

FLASH TO FEBRUARY 2020: 80-year-old Marsha Goldstein is up at 6AM. She struggles to pull on her compression socks and fix her prim skirt. Pushing one hand against the wall, she limps from the bedroom down the short hall to the closet where she stores her walker. Propped on top of the folded metal support, is a half-empty box of rubber gloves… just purchased from CVS. Pulling out a pair of gloves, she struggles… one hand at a time... into them. Then she opens the walker.

It’s shopping day. Mrs. Goldstein has to stock up on chicken and vegetables for soup… maybe some noodles. Senior shopping hour starts at 7AM. The store will be freshly sterilized, chemicals sprayed over the produce and on the boxes of Captain Crunch. When Marsha walks in, a huge bottle of 80% alcohol hand-sanitizer waits for those dumb enough not to wear gloves. At least she doesn’t need one of those stupid surgical masks. You can’t breathe in those things… And scientists at the CDC say that Corona comes from surfaces… not from the air. Near the prunes, a man with dark eyes coughs. In a month, Mrs. Goldstein is dead.

FLASH to GERMANY 1960: A new drug has hit the market. Science has found a treatment for cancer, morning sickness, and maybe infertility. Germans discovered it and marketed it. Another medical wonder… a gift from science. Morning sickness… vomiting, nausea… one of the many pains of pregnancy… can be helped… finally.

Some women take the drug for infertility… an “off-label” prescription. Lo and behind, they have children. It works! The children, however, did not have arms, but a drug-induced birth defect that connects their cute little hands directly to their cute little shoulders. The drug is called Thalidomide.

FLASH TO 1979: Harvey DiPecora is fat. His doctor tells him to lose weight, lower his cholesterol, eliminate saturated fats from his diet.

“I gotta do it,” thinks Harvey. “That means that awful shit margarine… it’s like eating jellied snot. But I gotta do it to save myself. No saturated fat there. Just hyrdrogenated this and that. It’ll save me!”

Magazines and newspapers tout the scientific findings that any kind of non-saturated fats is good for you. Harvey believes in science.

Harvey’s toast in the morning… every morning… smothered in Blue Bonnet margarine. Everything’s better with Blue Bonnet on it.

Ten months later, Harvey dies of a heart attack. Scientists change their minds and say that trans fat is deadly… deadlier than saturated fats. Besides heart attacks, it “might cause or contribute to:”

Alzheimer's Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity, Infertility in women,

Major depressive disorder, Diminished memory and oh yeah, Acne. Check Wikipedia for details.

Every day during the lockdown, I watch daytime TV filled with ads for scientifically proven medicine, for blood pressure, psoriasis, a-fib … just take it once a day. But please note:

Dangerous side effects may include growth of an extra head, testicles rising into the large intestine, internal bleeding until it comes out of your eyes, inability to clip your toenails... and death.

It’s 4AM, I feel my body returning to me. There was some dream about a large Frankenstein-ish monster… naked… with a tiny dick… limp as wet spaghetti and about as thick.

“I’ll take yours!” The monster says, suddenly on top of me… pressing his fist into my stomach. I feel the pressure… the pain… As I wake up, the pain does not go away. I feel it in my stomach… and upwards almost to my throat. This is not the dream. This is reality... my GERD (Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease) acting up… waking me after beer and pizza… and I’ve run out of NUX VOMICA.

That disgustingly named plant is the key ingredient in the tiny homeopathic pills that keep me from getting GERD. My friends tell me homeopathy doesn’t work. They say it’s psychological… it’s all in my mind.

So fuckin’ what? Who cares WHERE it is? Mind? Body? It fuckin’ works! If I take the pills, I don’t get the pain. If I don’t take the pills I do get the pain.

“But,” comes the last ditch effort of those who worship science. “If you only stop the pain in your mind, it might keep you from getting the help you really need.”

By the help you really need, they mean those drugs that will cause you to grow another head. (Just a few months ago, Zantac, a popular SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN GERD medication, was recalled because it causes cancer.)

In science, your experience doesn’t count. That’s called anecdotal evidence. Only numbers count in science-- not people.

Would I take homeopathic medicine for cancer? Would I go to a voodoo priest if I were hit by a car?

Of course not. I’m not against medicine or science. I’m against the WORSHIP of medicine and science. I’m against thinking science has all the answers, and if it’s not SCIENTIFIC it’s not REAL. THAT is wrong. Homeopathy and voodoo are no less real than science.

And yes, science doesn’t always fail. Sometimes it gives us things that work… right out of the box… POW! Like… well… like the atom bomb. What’s wrong with that? I donno, but I think I’ll stick with Nux Vomica.

- end -

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

→ Love Science or They’ll Get You dept: For the first time ever, (over 100 years) Scientific American is endorsing a presidential candidate. Or rather, opposing one. Here’s what they have to say:
The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September.

Remember, you oppose SCIENCE at your own peril.

→ Aah, aren’t lower taxes making America great again? Dept: CNBC reports that nearly one out of five of the Fortune 500 companies paid NO TAX in 2019. These companies include: DowDuPont, United States Steel, Eli Lilly, Netflix, and our perennial favorite: Starbucks. I wonder how these corporations will say THANK YOU in an election year, don’t you?

→ Parody is impossible in 2020 dept: Yeah, MRR is dead, but its ghost lives on in the virtual world. I shit you not, but the MRR website diddlers have decided not to publish ANYTHING by white writers, unless they are writing about black artists.

Maxiumim what? That great fusion of black and white music created when Elvis Presley 69-ed with Chuck Berry... where Bad Brains and The Ramones played together at CBGBs… Where… ah you know the story.

Now, in a parody of the old MRR PC gone bonkers, they’ve outdone themselves.
Yes, MRR is dead… and now it’s deader than it ever could be, leaving only a virtual grave to piss on.

→ Speaking of pissing dept: CNN reports The city of Amsterdam is going green in an attempt to stop random pissing. The local council has installed eight hemp-filled urinals in the city's "wild peeing" spots.

The urinals look like traditional planters, with greenery sprouting from the top. But there’s an opening in the side. This is the target zone for the piss.

There are now 12 of the urinals in Amsterdam, inventor Richard de Vries, an environmental psychologist, worked with the council on the project starting in 2018, installing GreenPees in four hot spots in the center of the city.

"The result was there was a 50% reduction in wild peeing," said De Vries. "It was a great success."

My question? The Dutch are the tallest people on earth. Can the rest of us reach? And what about girls? Can they aim well enough to hit the spot?

--See you in hell! MB

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:

Here’s Richard 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.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

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

You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's Sept 2020 Blog #1 or INC. YOU!

 YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. 

MYKEL'S SEPT. 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 1

OR

INC YOU!

by Mykel Board

Think about George Orwell's two-minutes hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable. --Chuck Palahniuk

Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand. --Quincy Jones

Once upon a time, there was a king who had a ruby ring… but the ruby was scratched. A single line… down the middle of the jewel. The king called on all the grinders and polishers in the kingdom to remove the scratch. None could do it. An etcher approached the king. “I can fix your jewel,” he said. The king shrugged. No one else could do anything. What’s to lose? The etcher etched a rose into the ruby. The scratch became the stem of the rose. – Fairy tale told me more than once by my one-armed father.

Maybe it’s the Jew in me. Whenever I get one of those mailings for a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to anything… as long as I don’t have to pay “a fee” or “for postage and handling”… I’m there!

Flash to 1975. I’m living in my new apartment on 90^th Street on the Upper East Side. The Ruppert Beer Brewery on Third Ave disappeared ten years ago. A few ugly new buildings appeared in the rubble. The neighborhood is “changing.” I live in a railroad flat that used to house brewery workers. These tenements are called railroad flats because the rooms are all in a row… one into the other... like cars on a train…no hallway. You just go through... room to room.. until you get to yours.

In the mail… in a kind of corporate hip envelope… comes an offer to subscribe to INC. magazine. It seems like it’s written for budding entrepreneurs. I’m as budding as a blade, as entrepreneurial as Mahatma Gandhi. I am slightly more Jewish than Gandhi… and it’s 6 months FREE!

I send in my Sure, sign me up reply card… and before I know it, I get this magazine of people whose American dream is an office with big windows and nothing on the walls.

I can’t tell you one thing I read in that magazine. I can’t give you an iota of an idea inspired by that magazine… but I come back to it now, because I’ve come to LOVE the idea of incorporate.

On my couch for a month is Gavin Mendonca. We met in Guyana… where he’s from. Gavin has been touring the jungles of Guyana to learn indigenous music and INCORPORATE it into rock. He calls it Creole Rock.

It’s a shake and bake of everything together. Sure there are punk purist. Race purists. Libertarian purists. Homo and het purists. And those guys are missing out on something… something? Everything!

[Aside] For me, jazz is like toenails on a blackboard. I’m not talking about Dixieland Jazz with clarinets blowing music from old cartoons. That stuff makes me smile. I love it.

I’m talking about a quartet where every instrument is playing a different non-tune… they fight each other for a while… then one instrument screeches a solo… the audience applauds… then another instrument screeches a solo… more applause… then they fight each other with rising volume, until it’s over… and the audience applauds even more loudly.

I’d rather listen to Josh Groban than listen to that.

FLASH TO RIGHT NOW: Here I am, at a free (okay, okay, I know) outdoor concert. Locals from the neighborhood sit on folding chairs set up in front of a makeshift stage. A little boy, about 6 years old, and his sister, about two years older, run frantically back and forth in front of the stage as little kids are wont to do.

The group I came to see plays Zimbabwean music, with authentic African instruments… all the players are white. They’re quite amazing. Nora, the woman who invited me, has spent a long time in Africa learning the music and the culture. I love the way it looks... like Elvis singing “that black music.”

After them, come a jazz ensemble: guitar, synth, conga drum, bass. As they play, the little kids stop running back and forth. They look at the musicians on the stage. They freeze for a bit, then they walk. Not wondering, but heading right for the stage.

The boy stops in front of the drummer… a big black guy with a huge chest and arms like baobab trees. The boy watches him pounding a rhythm on the edge of the drum. Then the kid starts pounding… whacking away… on the other edge of the drum. I wait for someone from the audience to pick the kid up and take him off stage. No one does. Then, I wait for the drummer to brush the kid aside, maybe using a leg to push him away. It doesn’t happen. Slowly, the band incorporates the kid’s wild drumming into what they are playing.

Meanwhile, his sister is fascinated by the guitar. She sits in front of the guitar player, and watches him screech up and down on the fretboard. Occasionally, the musician steps on a pedal to add distortion, wah wah or some other effect. The foot motion draws the attention of the little girl. She watches the dance of the pedals. Then she reaches for the little knobs on those pedals… and turns them…. playing with them like they’re a toy. Turning one, twisting another, doing two at one time.

Does someone from the audience come to claim the little monster? Does the guitar player use her pedal foot to kick away the juvenile vermin? You guessed it. No! The guitar player and the entire band incorporate the freakish sounds into what they’re playing. They work around it... building on it... using it. I’ve never seen anything like it.

When they finish, I come away still not liking the sound of jazz… but loving the hell out of INCORPORATION.

- end -

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

→ Guyanese Incorporation Dept: You can hear some of Gavin’s fine work at these places. First, a Kaieteur Falls video where he sings in Patamona, an indigenous language. Then, a YouTuber with Sugar Cane, a multi Caribbean punkrock band incorporating everything! And finally a mixed version of a traditional Guyanese folk song.

→ My kind of humor dept: Reuters reports that ever since Covid-19 reached Cuba, a tall cardboard box with arms and legs totters around a Havana suburb, popping into the bakery or butchers, or browsing the newspaper stand.

This is Feridia Rojas, 82, who decided to build and wear mobile housing to shield herself from the virus.

“I am at home, what about you?” reads a message on her box, a nod to Cuba’s government slogan “Stay at home.”
82 years old???? Yes! It gives me hope.

→ Duh dept: The Washington DC health website has a special page on sex during the panic. On the page they list various sex acts and how they can spread the disease. Among their tips:

• Kissing can pass COVID-19. Consider not kissing anyone you do not know or who you are not sure has been isolated for 14 days.

• Rimming, or any sexual activity that involves putting the mouth on the butt/anus, might pass COVID-19. The virus has been found in feces.

• Condoms and dental dams may reduce contact with saliva or feces during oral or anal sex.

• masturbation is always safe sex.

Apparently, these guys don’t cruise the internet enough. You can read the whole cringeworthy report here. Masturbation ISN’T always safe sex.


 

--See you in hell!

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:

Here’s Richard 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.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here. 

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.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

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