YOU'RE STILL WRONG..
The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't happy with me because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. --Donald Trump
Spread the faith. God love you all. May God bless America and may God protect our troops. --Joe Biden
I limp to the post office in my brand new foot-steadying surgical shoe… the foot in that shoe wrapped in a “soft cast’... my daily 4+ mile walks on hold while some toe-connecting nerve repairs itself. My goal for now: cut down to 2 miles a day. That’s gonna be hard. Monday I walked 7 miles.
FLASH
TO MONDAY: I walk across the George Washington Bridge... from
Washington Heights, Manhattan to Fort Lee, New Jersey. The GWB is the
only bridge in Manhattan that goes to another state. I walk…
hugging the right side… dodging cyclists.
A metal
netting covers the bridge… from street level to higher than anyone
can climb. It’s clearly a late addition… a normal/jumpable
railing –now unreachable– lays
like an artifact, on
the far side of the mesh.
About half-way across the bridge... a public-service poster… Suicide Prevention Hotline. It makes me smile.
Here it is! Oooo lala! Ft. Lee... famous for its Korean food… cheaper and better than Manhattan. I look around. No one’s on the sidewalk. Outdoor tables are empty.
To my left: apartment buildings. To my right: something restaurant-looking… a red building with a few unlit Christmas lights. I cross the wide road from the bridge and follow it to the building: FRANCO’S ITALIAN. It’s closed. Chairs upside down on the tables inside.
I ask Google to find the nearest Korean Restaurant.
“Back to the bridge,” she tells me.
I shudda turned left.
Back I go, following the Google map. Turn left where I’d turned right... past more closed restaurants… Very few people walk the sidewalks. None look Korean. The shells of ethnic restaurants stick out like bones in a famine victim. It’s worse than New York… dark in the afternoon… a few tables outside… empty and forlorn in the fading light. It’s creepy.
Right here! Says the black dot in the red Google-balloon. There is indeed a restaurant. It says Chinese. I walk in. All the signs are in Hangul. I figure it’s gotta be Korean-style Chinese. I figure right. Mmmm boy!
Stir fry… enough to take some home… served Korean style, where one dish gets you half a dozen dishes, pickles, kimchi, mystery vegetables in little plates of their own… all spiced enough to make you feel the burn. I order something stir fried... best restaurant meal of the year. I pack up what I can’t finish... leave my credit card next to the empty plate… Put on my trenchcoat...
POW! One… two… three... punch to the gut. I the spice burn through every inch of my large intestine… building brown… trying to force its way out of my 70-year loosened sphincter. Pow! Off to the men’s room. There is no men’s room… just one restroom with one toilet. I flip the light switch. Nothing happens. With the door closed, I feel randomly for the toilet. Ah, there it is… Yes! Yes! Yes! I just make it… Hitting the bowl… missing the floor… I hope.
FLASH TO RIGHT NOW: A line of masked millennials winds itself down Broadway to Bleecker, then down the long block to Lafayette Street. Then it curls around Lafayette… goes halfway up the block.
I’m used to the lines. There’s a sneaker shop where Adidas and Nike release their newest scams to a waiting line of fanatics and eBay resellers. It’s a hobby... New Yorkers love to stand on line... especially 20-somethings. (For those of you off the East Coast… here we stand ON line… not IN line!) For those waiting, a long line shows the place is good… worth waiting for. Yep, waiting itself shows it’s worth the wait. These are the breadlines of the old Soviet Union… the welfare lines of the Great Depression… recast... upscale.
Today the wait is for City MD, an “Urgent Care” clinic. Usually it’s where people with lousy insurance go so they don’t have to pay hundreds for a hospital waiting room. Today they wait for a free COVID-19 test. Mostly masked, somewhat less than socially distant.. the cellphone-reading chirps stand there for two hours to have their noses stuck with a wooden stick. In half a week they find out if they’ve got it or not?
Whoa….
Let me see if I’ve got that right. People who think they may have
the plague wait on line with other people who think they may have the
plague, creating a mini-mob. The nose-scrapers test the crowd and
then find… surprise!… a higher percentage has the plague than was
recorded before the free testing. And tomorrow... there’ll be even
more.
What a surprise? A line of people who think they
have the disease turns out to produce more people who actually do
have the disease. Shocking! And what does that mean? LOCKDOWN
RETURNS… Restaurants close… the fear grows. More folks wait on
line to be tested.
My pal Troy tells me, in Japan, there are more suicides than Corona deaths. In the US, people are to afraid to kill themselves. Instead, New Yorkers engage in their favorite line-waiting activity to learn in a few days… that they didn’t have the disease a few days ago… but might have caught it by now and should stand on line again next week... for another test.
Meanwhile, bars and restaurants close at 10PM… and those who can’t pay their vacancy expenses… commit mom-and-pop-store-suicide. My favorite midtown Irish bar… and my favorite midtown izakaya… both dead from Covid… make that Covid FEAR.
I tell ya, I want to jump off a bridge… or at least move to Japan.
I write this November 21st. Donny Trump is still protesting the election. Frankly, I’d (slightly) prefer a Trump president to one who gets his funds from banks and the big drug companies. I’d prefer one with a vice president who keeps his door open when he’s with a woman, but closes it when he’s with another guy… to one who’s a cop. But it looks like Biden it will be.
In that case, he has a tough decision to make. He’s either got to pardon Trump of all crimes and get on with his HEALING THE NATION shtick… or he’s got to let the bloodlust go kablooey… satisfy the revenge-seekers... the ghouls… the vampires.
My bet’s on the “healing.” Joe Biden is Mr. Normal. He’s another old white guy who’ll keep things going just the way they used to go... nothing new or upsetting here… everything just like it was before. He’ll “re-engage America with the world.” That means dropping bombs on our “enemies” and giving weapons to our “friends.” That means Bill Clinton-like NAFTA and other “business partnerships,” making American consumers happy with cheap goods from those nice guys in China.
We’ll see a few nods to the cultural left. Some statues torn down... names changed, maybe some funds to convert mental health rescue from a police action to a… er…. mental health action. That would be a good thing. Maybe we’ll see a national Bad Cops Registry. I’m not sure about that one.
Gays
and lesbians will be just normal every-day guys and gals. They’ll
be able to protest homeless people begging in the neighborhood…
adopt kids to send to private schools… on vouchers… give spouses
the gift of shared insurance so their visit to “a specialist,”
will only cost them $80.
Laws will pass creating and
requiring new pronouns. The next billionaire will be transsexual…
employing hundreds of thousands of people… at minimum wage. Biden
will refill the prisons emptied by Trump. And the Democrats will
cheer him on… The Republicans will call him “a socialist” and
“soft on crime.”
And so 2021 will continue. You know a bridge without wire fencing?
- 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
→ Proactive Interference Dept: At the end of October, the New York Times reported (since updated) that Big Tech had plans if Trump lost the election and tried to “delegitimize the results.”
According toThe Times, Facebook has discussed a “kill switch” to shut off political advertising after Election Day, since the ads, which Facebook does not police for truthfulness, could be used to spread misinformation….YouTube and Twitter have also discussed plans for action if the post-election period becomes complicated.
Nothing like a well-thought-out preventative plan in detail to show there’s no conspiracy. Right?
→ New Normal Dept: The oddest thing about this real-life picture of a warning sign in Alberta Canada is that it’s not so odd. During the complete weirditude that is 2020, you’d just figure that somehow moose tongues spread the plague. Makes as much sense as standing in line with sick people for a COVID test, doesn’t it?
→ Remains of Bidet Dept: Cracked.com reports: The toilet paper shortage is causing more than just the obvious issues. Cities are concerned that people flushing non-toilet paper items like paper towels could royally overload sewer systems. Bidets are the most obvious solution to the lack of TP issue, and Amazon is selling out of them like crazy.
Then they predict: Once the hordes lust for butt paper is satisfied, and we have a stable toilet paper supply line again, lots of people are still going to have bidets. We're going to discover that they're not as scary and European as we initially thought and why uninstall one when the next toilet paper shortage could happen at any time?
Funny... because right now, the only public bidets I know in NYC are in the basement of The Japan Society. I have to admit, they are fun. And they’re adjustable so I bet girls find a special use for that hard spray! It’s all in the plumbing. Oh yeah!
→ Cancel culture redux dept: Thanks to my long-term pal, Jim Testa, for this from NJ.com. It seems that a local Starbucks fired a woman because she refused to wear a (gay) Pride T-shirt. Instead, she wore her usual uniform, saying the t-shirt violated her religious beliefs.
Betsy Fresse, of Newark, said her managers at the Glen Ridge Starbucks “assured her” that she didn’t have to wear the T-shirt during her shift. Two months later she was sent a notice that she was being cut for “acting in violation of Starbucks’ core values.”
Fresse said that being made to wear a Pride T-shirt as a condition of employment would be tantamount to forced speech and inaccurately show her advocacy of a lifestyle in direct contradiction to her religious beliefs.
She also filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which said it was unable to conclude one way or another if Starbucks engaged in religious discrimination.
I say, it’s the next frontier. Not only the corporate censorship so loved by the new intolerants, but FORCED speech. I can understand a uniform saying whatever management wants as a condition of employment… but then a quick switch with out warning? No fuckin’ way!
What? Boss? I have to wear an I HEART BILL CLINTON t-shirt to work???? Are you kidding?
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.
Rock-writer
and historian extraordinaire, Jim Testa, has continued his great zine
online. Jersey
Beat
is still going!
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
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