Mykel's Other Blog: October 2020

Friday, October 16, 2020

You're Still Wrong, Mykel's Oct 2020 Blog #2 or Head in The Oven

MYKEL'S OCT. 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 2

Is That Your Head In The Oven
or Are You Happy to See Me?

You’re STILL Wrong

Mykel's 1st October 2020 Blog/Column

by Mykel Board

[This will be my last semi-monthly blog. I find there are fewer readers. It’s more work. And I’m in no mood. Next month the blog goes once-a-month again.]

We die. That may be the meaning of our lives. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives. --Tony Morrison

You know how it feels when you’ve got your hands around the throat of someone you hate? You know how your fingers press against the neckback while your thumbs search out the bump of an adams apple? You know how when you squeeze, you can press your thumbs against that bump… one on either side… until something pops… then gurgles? There’s always a cough first.. then a tension… like an electric shock… then limpness… the head lolling… first right… then left... then down… chin to chest. You know how it feels when you release your hands and see that final slump… Thinking Yes! I did that! You little piece of shit… NOW, your life has meaning. Get it?

Sometimes I feel like sticking my head in the oven… the microwave oven. Sometimes I feel like walking down Broadway with an Uzi… and lots of ammo. 2020 has been a hell year for most everyone. Every day I dread email, facebook, or some other bringer of bad news. Who died? Who hates me? Who’s in the hospital? In jail?

My friends are dropping like beershit turds. Not (only) from the plague or from what happens when you get old and your friends do too, but from tightly wound tension... from the plague fear… from well, your other friends don’t want to see you so they must know something I don’t know. I’d better sequester myself too… at least from you.

I feel like Bojing Chow, the Chinese guy from Hubei (pronounced “Hoo-bay,” capital Wuhan) who works chopping suey for 10 years… sleeps in a hovel with his wife, family, and two other families… saves enough money to open his own hole-in-the-wall restaurant serving a Hubei favorite, Spicy Duck Neck. With the name Hubei Your Urges. The motif is a strange mixture of half-naked women and ducks.

Then comes the WUHAN virus. Then the lockdown… the closings… the sudden poverty. Bojing! Join me in my microwave… I’ll show you how to defeat the door-lock. There’s room enough for two.

I’m a social guy… the reverse of that cliché of I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand. Me? I like people. I like to be in the midst of them… to eat and drink with them… to talk with them… to be naked in a pile of them.

In “normal” times in New York, every Thursday night I have DRINK CLUB. We go to a different bar every week, eat, drink, talk. Maskless, we treat each other like human beings, sharing food, tasting this beer and that. Laughing… or singing out loud. Sometimes we hug each other.

The plague put the kibosh on that… at least for a few months. During the last month or two I’ve brought it back with outside meetings and sticking to the same bar every week. In pre-plague times, Drink Club had from 6 to ten people usually several Japanese, and a few Hispanics to kick up the spice.

We loved to kid.. to lie about how to say Cheers in our native languages. We teach the round-eyes that in Japanese, it’s baka yaroo. (Actually, that means you fucking idiot.) We teach the Orientals that, in Spanish, it’s besa mi culo. (Actually, that means kiss my ass.) In English it’s garlic cow. I’ll teach you where that comes from.

In Spanish, garlic is ajo. Cow is vaca (pronounced, you guessed it, baka). Ajo in Japanese is something like asshole. So Garlic Cow in Spanish is ajo baka which, in Japanese means stupid asshole. Get it? No one else will.

This silly playfulness helps bring us together... to make us laugh… to make us feel less alone.

In lockdown Drink Clubs, the max is 7 people… almost all occidentals… mostly old people. This further lend credence to my theory that old people fear this plague less than the young. Like I wrote a couple weeks ago, that’s what old people do. We don’t fear death. We die. But that doesn’t make the uniform group of white oldsters any more exciting.

I miss the languages, the joking, the name-calling. In Spanish, it’s common to call the hefty guy Gordo (Fatty). In America, in the early 1900s a famous actor-comedian (who came to a bad end) was called “Fatty Arbuckle.” In 2020, “Fatty” would be bullying. You’d probably be banned from Facebook.

In 2020, people’s sensitivity is knife sharp. Not only from PC-itude, but from the tension and fear caused by COVID... mine too. I wrote how I fb-blocked a long-time friend because he name-called me.

Come on Mykel! (Here’s where you slap me, holding the front of my shirt… by the collar… slap first the right cheek, then on the left.)

“You’re - Mykel - fuckin’ - Board.”

Say one word with each slap.

“You’re - gonna - block - a - friend - because - he - called - you - a - name? Who - HASN’T - called - you - a - name?”

Flash to Chinatown: I’m out with El, one of my few remaining friends. We’re at a Chinese restaurant… not Wuhan. El notices an error in the English language menu. One dish is labeled Chicken Niggits.

I laugh out loud. Take a picture. And BAM! Post it on Instagram.

Double BAM! In a few minutes comes a reply from another long-term friend. Yeah, she’s black, “So this is what it’s come to?”

I send an apology and delete the post. It doesn’t help. I haven’t heard from her again.

I’M SORRY!

And so it goes.

Blame? I’d love to blame. Everyone looks for someone to blame… as if this will help… Hurricane after hurricane… quick blame the oil companies and their climate change? Race riots? Blame anarchists and outside agitators. Police murders? Blame “a few bad apples” rather than a system that attracts and creates bad apples. Police being murdered? Blame thugs who are incited by the anarchists. Corona virus? If you’re a Trump supporter, blame China. If you’re a Trump-hater, blame Trump.

The problem is that blaming doesn’t work. I don’t feel better if I blame my friends for deserting me… I’m still friendless. Believe me, the only solution is the microwave. Right now it’s on the refrigerator… too high for me to reach just standing on the floor. Okay, I’ll use the step ladder.

POW! Exploding head! That’ll teach ‘em. Right? They’ll have nobody to blame but themselves. Now, where’d I put that step ladder?

- 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

→ In Everyday Life dept: In writing this blog, I learned there really is such a thing as Exploding Head Syndrome. Your head doesn’t actually blow up, though. You need a microwave for that.

→ Speaking of death department: Here are slightly edited versions of two emails I received from Kyle Nonnemen. They show the slave business aka Prison Labor… and how the prison system encourages people to keep quiet about their COVID symptoms.

Here are his last two emails to me.

+++++++++++++++++++

Message 1:

I can’t get out of my cell to call you. Corona virus outbreak lockdown status. Nobody gets out. They pop my door to give me nasty sack-lunches and a 15 minute shower once a day. Other than that, it’s 24 hour lockdown.

To prevent corona spreading even more than it already has, I took a corona virus test on 9-30, should get the results back by Monday. They stick a wooden cotton swab up your nasal cavity and it’s extremely painful.

If I’ve got the corona virus I'm getting transported to the quarantine hospice death ward they got set up at Coffee Creek. I got severe asthma, limited lung functioning from scoliosis and a lot of other damage to my lungs and Oregon Department of Corrections can’t afford high quality medical care.

So if I’ve got corona virus, I'm probably going to die from it. So when the Covid stuff first started happening, I wore a mask everywhere and didn't sit with any other inmates and primarily stayed in my cell. All the units in the prison were separated to avoid cross contamination.

I cleaned the mask all the time, sprayed stuff down with Virustat.Then, when the wildfires happened, I got stuck on a crowded sardine-can bus and then left outside in the in the prison yard for over 10 hours breathing in the toxic smoke, and ash from the fires. Then they crammed me into an open dorm unit, hundreds of inmates from all different units crowded together in one communal area.

In addition, Oregon state penitentiary where they evacuated us to, was previously declared a Covid hot zone. Now that they've brought everybody back from Oregon state penitentiary, the incubation period is over and now there's a really bad corona virus outbreak.

The Statesmen-Journal newspaper did a whole article about how bad the cramped conditions were at the state penitentiary and how people are infected from it.

That's why I asked you to contact some civil rights attorneys because if I test positive I'm getting shipped out to the death ward unit and you ain’t going to hear from me again. Lawyers can call me though.

Oregon D.O.C command staff are the reason this is spreading. No visitors come in. The prisoners don’t leave. It’s them bringing it in.

But whatever happens, is going to happen. I'm tired of living in a cage anyway.

so it goes.

all the best
kyle

Message 2:

They're transporting me to medical hospice death ward at coffee creek. With my asthma etc. I probably won't survive this. So you won’t hear from me again.

I just wanted to let you know what happened. Get a hold of the prison for funeral arrangements or whatever. I don’t know what they’ll do with my body.

Sorry for putting you through all this. Thanks for your support

all the best kyle

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.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album 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.

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.

I have a very occasional blog about how rich people are just like us… same needs, same desires, you know. You can read it 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

Friday, October 02, 2020

You're Still Wrong, Mykel's Oct 2020 Blog #1 or Old Is The New Black

MYKEL'S OCT. 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 1

OLD IS THE NEW BLACK

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

1st October 2020 Blog/Column

Eyebags

by Mykel Board

“Your face is marked with lines of life, put there by love and laughter, suffering and tears. It's beautiful.” --Lynsay Sands

“I don’t ever remember being afraid of “oldness” – Neil Gaiman

“I like the woman you became better than the girl you were. I like the story you’ve written on your face” -- Joanna Bourne

It’s the summer before the plague locks us in isolation. I walk down 32^nd Street, in back of the Empire State Building. Akitaki, my Japanese pal, tells me it’s easy to distinguish young Korean women from young Japanese women.

“They show more leg,” he says.

And it sure is legs galore here in K-town. If those skirts were any shorter, I’d be able to get a glipse of the whole camel! Hooeeey! I want to see those gals sit down. You know how normal females tuck their skirts down between their legs when seated? Well, these girls have nothing to tuck!

This one coming right toward me… her nose about an inch and a half from her cellphone. She’s directly in my path. That’s when I notice it… looking up… I see she has dyed her hair. So what? Korean girls do that. Japanese too, though not as much.

The punchline is, she has died her hair GRAY! At the last second, she sees me in front of her, my jaw slightly agape. She sidesteps me like a bullfighter and passes to my left. I turn to stare. Then I see it. There are a ton of ‘em. It’ a fashion! Gray hair on young ladies.

Have we done it? Have the boomers’ huge numbers, and vast political power made the trappings of old age DESIRABLE?

Holy Whistler’s Mother! I can see it now.

The fashionistas… white, yellow, black, brown, green, all the possible shades of girl. They’re talking about it.

“Oh Sadie,” says a tall slim woman who flips her wrist like a caricature of a gay guy. “I’ve just been bingein’ out in Sephora. They got it all.”

“Really, do they have that new wrinkle cream?” asks a shorter, but equally slim woman. “The one that crunches up your forehead to give that webby look?”

The tall woman nods.

“You bet they do… but there’s something even better,” she says. “I found this wrinkling creme… wow! Not only does it give you forehead creases. It deepens those crows feet next to your eyes, and get this...”

She moves close to her friend, as if they’re going to kiss. They don’t. The taller woman places her index finger under her left eye and pulls slightly downward.

“It gives you eyebags!”

Sadie is slack jawed.

“Yeah look!” answers the tall one. “I only used it once and you can see it already. The skin droops like I was 50 years older… it’s incredible!”

“What’s it called?” asks the tall one.

“Well, first I gotta tell you, if you wanna look 50 years older, it’s gonna cost you a dollar a year… but it’s worth it!”

“So what’s it called? Tell me!” Sadie is getting impatient.

“It’s Eau De Crone,” says the other girl.

Women’s cosmetics have taken off like no time since the sixties… and their job is to make women look like they were born in the sixties… or before. Tits a bit too perky? There’s Saggit Breast Cream. Arm muscles too smooth? Just rub on a little Waddles Skin Loosening Cream.

And it’s not only women! Today’s MEN also succumb to the aging game. Stores can’t even keep stocked with NoGain… the men’s natural-looking hairloss shampoo.

And prosthetics… a just-introduced prosthetic double chin… implanted over the the neck, which –along with a chin-reduction procedure– will make any man into a Mitch McConnell.

30-somethings with fake oxygen tubes up the nose. Teens with walkers. Ah the world could be such a different place. And leave it to the youth of Korea to start the whole thing off.

Well, I’m ready! And I don’t need to spend the fortune on cosmetics. I’ve got the receding… er… receded hairline, the wrinkles, the long nosehair. I’ve got the droopy oldman breasts, the creaky knees.

I’m going out to pick up some twenty-something sexpot who looks just like me! Now, where’d I put that walker?

- end -

→ Smarter Sex Laws dept: There are plenty of groups advocating for prison reform, especially in the age of COVID-AS-PUNISHMENT. But there are few groups advocating for the abolition of punishment AFTER prison.
Take the registries… please... especially the SEX CRIME REGISTRY, where, even after you’re released, you cannot start with a clean slate. Your crime follows you wherever you go. You are always guilty. Always unable to find a place to live or a job because YOU’RE A REGISTERED OFFENDER.

Knife attackers, muggers, and most violent criminals don’t have to register. It’s only SEX… because this is America… and SEX is bad in America.

There is at least one group that is fighting against lifetime punishment after prison. That is NARSOL. You can read their story here.

→ 2020, the Hell Continues Dept: I wanted to make mention of the death of longtime friend (since the 80s) and radio broadcaster, journalist, music geek, and all around great guy. Jan Sneum died in September NOT from the COVID-19 plague, but from a brain aneurism. He helped make Denmark my favorite country in the world… and was an all around friend to music and those who love it.

→ 5781, the Hell Continues Dept: On Rosh Hashana eve, the main voice of reason and compassion on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, died. My friend and blog editor, Marlene W., sent me information on how, in the Jewish tradition, it’s a mitzvah to die on the eve of the new year. Okay, I’ll accept that. But it’s still a sad and scary day for the rest of us.

→ I gotta do it dept: I wanted to leave politics out of this blog for once, but I couldn’t pass up this story from Reuters.
With incense smoke, flowers and photos of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Peruvian shamans performed a tribal ritual for the U.S. elections.
   Chanting and blowing a traditional Andean shell instrument, the shamans invoked the “Pachamama”, or mother earth, for the U.S. vote to take place in peace, without attacks or any witchcraft between rivals.
   The shaman teacher said, during the ritual held in a room of an old building in downtown Lima, that she was in favor of Biden.
   “That is why we are cleansing him. We have seen that they are attacking him with witchcraft, with a black doll, with a voodoo doll they are shadowing to remove him,” said she.
   “See you in hell!” said me.