Nothing But The Truth or Mykel's Blog for December 2022

 

Nothing But The Truth or Mykel's Blog for December 2022

  

Nothing But The Truth

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's December 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable. – Bertrand Russell

Truth is a goddess upon whose altar we have laid down our lives, but truth without gentleness, without mercy, without kindness, without love, is a pile of bones rotting in the midday sun.

--Larry Livermore

Truth is sacred, and if you tell the truth too often, no one will believe it. – G. K. Chesterton

They are evil people, the press, the media, they are bad people, and nobody, nobody lies like they do. – Donald Trump

Postmodernists are skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. It considers "reality" to be a mental construct. – Wikipedia

********************

I lay naked, face up, on the rough plywood plank. My wrists are fastened by leather handcuffs to the top corners. I’m bent in half… Ropes pull my knees pull tight against my shoulders. My thighs press my chest. Two sets of hands push down on my belly… and again. Each hard push just grazes my bladder forcing a weak stream from between my legs… settling in a growing yellow pond in my navel.

“Come on, Mykel! Shit!” shouts the one who presses the hardest.

Then….

Hold on! Speaking of shit. Stop the bullshit. You know this is all made up, Mykel. Just a bunch of bullshit… lies.

Fuck! I’d recognize that voice anywhere. It’s the voice of Literary Device^®. I wish to hell she’d shut up. Busting in, right when I’m trying to set the mood.

“What the fuck?” I yell at her. “I’m just about to get to the coprophilic orgasm and you have to break in. Why?”

“Because it’s a lie, Mykel,’ she says. “You literally have to make shit up to prove your point. Why can’t you stick to the truth?”

Even though she’s an asshole, somehow Literary Device^® provides an introduction to what I want to write about.

This month it’s

THE TRUTH

What is truth? My email in-box today has a petition from Common Cause to ask facebook, twitter and penislength.org to “fact-check” all posts, and presumably ban the ones that don’t tell the truth. (They also want to ban “Hate Speech,” but you already know how I feel about that.)

Did you know Joe Biden shaves his pubic hair? Fact check that, buckaroo! Donald Trump likes golden showers. Is that the truth?

I know what’s happened to me. That’s the truth, right? Maybe not! Even that can be a lie. See false memories. There is no way to know what is truth and not. In everyday life, we have to live as if we know the truth… whether we really know it or not. We have to take one step after another assuming “the truth” that the ground will continue to support our weight as we move forward.

Is THE TRUTH something you see or experience personally? How many satanic cases went to court because cops convinced witnesses of what they didn’t see, but believed they saw?

I sit and type this… a vague smell of melting wax comes into my nostrils. I feel a tinge of pain in my neck… on the right side. I guess my head must have been in the same position too long. The left side of my neck itches… as does the bottom of my right foot. A piece of the skin around my left testicle has somehow curled itself under my leg and is beginning to ache.

These things are TRUTH for me. Can anything else be truth?

Is science truth? Some people worship it like a God.“It’s science,” they say and that’s that. Like "It's in the Bible." for the religious.

Newton’s science was undone by Einstein. Then Einstein begins to unravel in a sea of uncertainty and randomness and Quantum Mechanics. Einstein tries to fights back… even bringing God into the mix with his famous quote: God does not play dice with the universe. But the Quantum says she does.

Science... that method of thinking... has unleashed at least as much harm in the world as religion. Can you say atomic bombs, plastics, Tuskegee Experiment, poisonous fertilizers, Cyanide, germ warfare, Thalidomide… the list goes on. Still it claims to have a monopoly on truth.

In 2022, science has become politics, with Democrats urging mask-wearing (and political contributing, of course) in order to fight the “anti-science” Republicans.

 “Stop Mykel,” comes the voice of Literary Device^®, “sure science has done some fucked-up things, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the best way to discover the truth.”

You’re right, L. D. But science has other ways to show it’s falsehoods. It proves it’s not true by turning on itself. Science that explains how the sun goes around the earth is replaced by science that says the earth goes around the sun. Science that says antibiotics cure disease, is replaced by science that says, disease builds an immunity to antibiotics. Science changes… goes back… contradicts itself… finds exceptions. If truth is anything, it’s always true. Science is a lie waiting to happen. 

FLASH TO SEASON TWO BETTER CALL SAUL: Jimmy McGill is scamming a bunch of old people in an assisted living home. He walks into Brenda’s apartment with a box of cookies.

“Oh Jimmy,” says Brenda. “You’re so wonderful. You never forget me.”

Jimmy sets the cookies in front of her. “It’s because I care about you,” he says. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do with all that money from the lawsuit? Go on a cruise maybe?”

Brenda is the “class lawsuit representative” and makes the decisions about whether to accept a settlement, or hold out for more money. If she accepts, Jimmy will have big bucks coming. He has persuaded Brenda and she signed the papers.

“Oh, I don’t know, Jimmy,” says Brenda, “the other people around here are angry at me. They don’t talk to me anymore. All my friends have left me. They think I sold them out.”

“They’ll come around,” says Jimmy.

They don’t. They hate her. She’s lonely... unloved.. where she used to be the queen of the club.

Flash to the next episode, Jimmy sacrifices the case… more than a million bucks.. to trick the group into loving her again. It’s complicated… like life. Jimmy is scum. Jimmy is a hero.

There’s more TRUTH in those two episodes of TV fiction, than there is in an entire year of Scientific American. People… life… the world… It’s complicated, deep... changes from one minute to the next… from one place to the next… from one culture to the next.

I’ve written about binary thinking. How pro-Trump people will excuse… or justify his abuse of immigrants. How they’ll explain away his clearing of demonstrators so he can have a photo op with a Bible. How he used a drone in a political assassination. Anything bad about Trump is not true because Trump is Good.

Anti-Trump people explain away his pardoning of thousands of non-violent locked up people. They call his opening of communications with North Korea, “a trick.” Anything good about the guy is not true because Trump is Evil.

Take a proposition: Trump is Good or Trump is Evil… and your job is to prove that proposition is right. For you, the TRUTH will be what confirms your opinions, your culture, your preconceptions.

“Ok come on,” says Literary Device^®. "2+2 = 4. That’s TRUE. 2+2=5… That is NOT true. Always. Anytime."

No it’s not. In Roman numerals II+II=IV. If that is TRUE, then 2+2 should equal 2V.

Okay, so what is THE TRUTH? Maybe it’s not something that always reflects outside reality. Maybe it’s just a tool that helps make predictions.

I sit at my desk, continuing to type these words. It’s cold outside… 39^o (4^o C) my eyes burn from the dry air. I reach for the half-filled coffee cup sitting on the edge of the mousepad. My hand settles on the handle... index finger on top... middle finger sliding slightly down... through the handle… vagina-like.

With the support of the ring finger on the same hand, I lift the cup to my lips. If I release my grip, the cup will fall… likely breaking into foot splintering shards… the hot liquid splashing against my bare legs.

Gravity is useful knowledge. If I drop something, it will fall down. It helps in my daily life. I can avoid broken dishes and locating that battery I just dropped out of the dildo. Gravity is truth. If you drop something it falls… oh wait, helium balloons…

Gravity is not truth. It is a useful way of predicting what will happens, but sometimes it’s wrong. Sure science can explain away why things don’t ALWAYS fall when dropped. But do we need that? Is it important? Isn’t truth only useful when it helps us make decisions or prepare for the future?

Why worship it? How is believing in science any different from believing in the virgin birth?

“Okay Mykel,” says Literary Device^®. “Whatever truth is to us, that’s what we should communicate. Whatever we believe is true, we should be responsible and pass that on the way we see it. That’s called being honest.”

FLASH TO HAPPY FACE NURSING HOME: 90-year old Mary Sunshine stands in front of me. She’s modeling her new dress... white with little Hello Kitty faces polka-dotted from shoulder to shin. She twists and turns on her feet as best as she can… first this way, then that.

“How do I look?” she asks.

“You look like shit.” I tell her. “You’re old and ugly and there’s nothing you can do about it… except maybe with twenty grand’s worth of plastic surgery.”

Tears form in Mary’s eyes. She sits down… hangs her head like a defeated boxer.

“How could you do that to her?” asks Literary Device^®. “That was so cruel!”

“But it was the truth,” I answer. 

Get it?

Truth is bullshit. A kind of truth may help you decide how to live your day-to-day life… but for every ten prevented spilt cups of coffee, there is one escaped helium balloon.

Human feelings, complexity, emotions, culture, avoidance of inflicting pain, these values are more important that the truth. Believing in them is more important than in believing in science… or the truth.

You atheists… you who say there is no God… you make a God out of science… science where the next day it admits it had it wrong and TODAY it has it right. Instead of judging Is it useful? Does it make someone feel better? Will it help? You instead judge IS IT TRUE?

Well, to again quote a great man… YOU’RE WRONG!

See you in hell.

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.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]

→ Cancel Culture Strikes Again Dept: This from the National Coalition Against Censorship. One of the few organizations that recognizes censorship from all sides. 

Wanna bet that the folks who are protesting this play are NOT the same folks who are protesting Transfolk Story Telling Hour?

→ A Tasteless True Story Dept: The Japan Times reports that Japanese convenience store Lawson is testing a new candy that tastes like emptiness. "Aji no Shinai? Ame," or "Tasteless? Candy," apparently has a slight odor but almost no flavor. The makers are hoping that people who use candy just to keep their mouths and throats moist will appreciate the flavorless variety.

 → Biting The Dust Dept: Punk rockers and other music folks will know that Keith Levene, best known as the guitarist for Public Image Ltd died this month. (November). What’s left out of most of the obituaries is who remains.

When living in New York, Keith married Lori Montana, sign language girl for my then band ART, THE ONLY BAND IN THE WORLD. Lori now lives in New Jersey and I see her not often enough. Their son, Kirk, along with his mom, is one of the most important people in my life.
    Keith ditched his family when they moved to Los Angeles. After several decades Kirk and Keith reestablished communications. Kirk got to speak to his father a couple hours before Keith died. Keith could not answer Kirk’s end of the conversation, but, according to Kirk, he could grunt in acknowledgment. Says Kirk, “It was a happy grunt.”

See you in hell, redux,

MB

THE NATION AGAIN

I’m a long-time subscriber to the The Nation. It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely, when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends” would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.

The October 17 issue has a great article by Laura Kipnis, one of my heroes. Her wonderful book Against Love put words to my long-time feelings. In this article, she debates the question Is Masculinity Worth Saving? Her answer? Yes! Especially because Masculinity includes wearing sensible shoes.

The November 14 issue has a column by Yale Prof David Bromwich called Hating Russia. It’s a superb calling out of Biden and the media for supporting the war machine by building anti-Russia hatred. Speaking of Joe Biden, there was another Joe who had similar anti-Russian views… though his last name was McCarthy.

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:

Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachlorette!

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 ANTISEEN... 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.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

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

A Touching Sentiment or Mykel's Blog for November 2022

  

A Touching Sentiment

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's November 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

They injected a cold germ into people, and found that those who had more hugs had a better immune response to the cold virus. And then studies showed that if you get hugged before a stressful condition like giving a speech or doing math problems, people do better. Performance is better if you’ve been hugged before the stress. – JONATHAN JONES (reporting on psychology experiment)

Physical touching is one of the clearer types of sexual harassment. Many courts have reasoned that physical touching is more offensive than verbal harassment. – Kokozian Law Firm

Physical touch is one of the main ways we express and receive love, and for millions of people, this is their primary love language. – Pastor Joe Wittwer

Don’t touch me, I’m NEW WAVE. – Mykel Board

It’s a tight squeeze. Post-Covid airlines… overbooked, lines from here to eternity. I wait on one, my print-out in one hand… my Secure ID^® in the other. In front of me is a white shirted blue sports jacketed man… head bent down, thumbing away on his iPhone 14. Behind me is a somewhat chubby man in his late thirties standing next to a somewhat chubbier woman around the same age. With them is a boy about 10… wild… running… chasing his younger sister. The children run very close to my legs.

“HIYAAAH!” yells the boy pushing the girl forward. She lands next to my right leg. Her bright dress, sweeps the floor, picking up the shoe scrapes of dozens of annoyed travelers.

“Jamie! Stop it!” yells the man, calling my attention away from the prone girl.

Then I feel it. A kind of pulling on my leg… first aware of it on my belt, then the pantleg itself. I look down and see the little girl. She’s using the cloth of my pants to hoist herself up to standing. Then comes the voice. This time it’s the woman who speaks.

“Madison!” she yells, “Never do that. Don’t ever touch a stranger.”

Mom changes her focus to me.

Bringing her eyebrows together, she looks like she’s going to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” she says to me. “This is the first time in an airport for the children… and the first time since Covid that they’ve been around other people. They don’t know how to act.”

“No problem,” I say, reaching down to help the little girl to her feet.

“No!” shouts the man, sounding panicked, “I’ll help her. Thank you.”

And he walks over to the little girl, picks her up, and walks her gingerly to her mother.

When I was in my 20s I penned the “song” Ugly People With Fancy Hairdos, for my first “band,” ART, THE ONLY BAND IN THE WORLD. One of the lines was

Don’t touch me, I’m NEW WAVE.

Now, nearly 50 years later, I’m still fascinated by touching… how it works in different cultures, and how people are dying from lack of it.

When I was a 20-something, I remember seeing a reprint from an information booklet given by the US military to soldiers shipped to Vietnam. The book talked about Vietnamese culture and what soldiers had to look out for.

You’ll often see Vietnamese men walking on the street holding hands with other men. This is not a homosexual gesture. It is simply a way for Vietnamese men to show friendship.

You get the implication? If it WERE a sign of homotude, then it would be perfectly logical to take offense… and you’ve got a gun, Buster.

It’s one of the many things that got me interested in Japan. As a Jew, I was used to being touched. Jews… and Italians… and even the French... are all over each other. Hugging, back-slapping, poking in emphasis…. It wasn’t strange at all that Andrew Cuomo used as his defense I’m not a pervert. I’m Italian. It’s not only family, but strangers, new acquaintances. Sex --the most involving kind of touching-- comes easier to us than to the goyim. (I’m NOT including Italians among the goyim.)

OLD JOKE:

Q. How do you get a Jewish American Princess to stop fucking you?
A. Marry her.

NOTE: The Hasidim (the Jews with the curly sideburns), do not like men touching women who are not their wives. But even among the Hasidim, same sex people will be touching all the time… and you’ll see men dancing together, holding hands. Nothing sexual, just the joy of skin.

Not growing up a Hasid, reading about boy-boy hand-holding in Vietnam was a shock to me. As a kid, I saw Jewish guys with their arms around each other… even tweaking a nipple in jockish play.

When I first go to Japan, I have the feeling that the Japanese never touched each other. Their greetings are bows, not handshakes. In public places, it is taboo to touch another person, unless s/he is a family member. Or so I thought.

Then, I get drunk.

I’m in an izakaya… a small Japanese bar, where strangers drink beer and sake and eat food off of sticks. I’m out with the boss of the local Toyota office, and several of my students… new employees of the company.

A couple beers and a couple more sakes into the night, I feel a hand rub up my back to my left shoulder… then a squeeze.

“Sensei!” comes a voice very close to my right ear. “Thank you for working with us.”

I look over. It’s the boss… half hugging me… half using my body as a cane to support his drink-weakened knees. It startles me, but I like it. I put my arm around his shoulder, lift my glass of sake and say KAMPAI! We drink.

Looking around the room, I see people draped over each other like capes over the arms of matadors. It’s just sooooo great!

When I later ask my Japanese friends about it, they tell me about skinship. That’s the importance of having physical contact… not necessarily sexual, but physical… for true friendship. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: the act of intimate, non-sexual touching between very close (usually same-sex, but can include both genders) platonic friends. It involves acts such as holding hands/arms, hugging, and kissing on the cheeks.

My impression was just wrong. The Japanese lack of touching is not because it’s a touchless society, but because it’s a society of formality. Everything has a politeness level. If I’m speaking with an important person on business, the word I is watakshi. If I’m speaking with someone I don’t know, I is watashi. If I’m speaking with casual acquaintances and every day pals, I becomes boku. If I’m with my close pals at a bar, I is ore. Just like the language shows degrees of formality, touching shows degrees of formality.

But wait! In Japan, there’s more. It’s hadaka no tsukiai, aka “naked friendship.”

“Mykel,” says the boss, “you have to join me in Hakone. Drink sake from a floating bamboo boat. Stand naked in a hot spring, under the sun or stars, feel the heat….” I don’t remember the rest... as the image of being naked with the boss is somewhat unsettling. But it’s not the first time I would have uncomfortable nudity.

FLASH TO FINLAND: 1986. I’m here studying the language. I’ve heard it’s the most difficult in the world… I feel like a boxer… challenging a champ. (Finnish won, by the way. I just couldn’t get it!) A friend in the town where I’m staying invites me to visit his family. I walk into his house. He introduces me to mom, dad, and his sister Enny.

The house is toasty warm. My friend takes me into what looks like a small bedroom. “You can leave your clothes here,” he says, taking off his own clothes. Hmmm, this is a benefit I didn’t expect. But wait… it’s not for wild sex. It’s for a sauna.

It’s then that I find out that every Finnish family has a sauna. (Sauna is, in fact, a Finnish word borrowed into English.) So you visit your friend at home, take off your clothes, then sit naked in the sauna with your friend, his siblings and his parents. It’s just like shaking hands. Sitting there, I pretend it’s the most natural thing in the world. Now I realize, it is.

FLASH BACK TO JAPAN: Yes! Being naked together is the way to create deep friendships. Touching… skinship… is on the path to nakedness. Jeez, do I love Japan.

And now I find that America is becoming what I THOUGHT Japan was. The governor of New York is pushed out of office with charges of forcible touching. Actor Kevin Spacey is charged… almost 40 years after the fact, with touching in a simulated sex-act.

Touching, even in playfulness, is taboo enough to go to court.

What touching do we have left? We used to have a slight sliver of touching in the custom of handshaking… skinship in its meekest form. But even that is in trouble in 2022.

One of the great tragedies of COVID is the elbow bump greeting. Until the plague, the only time strangers touch skin-to-skin in America is shaking hands… a very brief, but real, skin contact. To lose that is to lose our humanity.

And it’s not only touching, but humanity itself... physical presence… that’s in danger. How can you NOT lose your humanity if your view of humanity is through a cellphone screen. How can you care about what you do in war… or in peace... if you’re just a drone away from murder.

Joe Biden sends non-humans to murder in the middle of civilian populations. First a car filled with AID workers.

“Oh, sorry about that one. We’ll try again.”

Then a top leader of some rebel army group we don’t like. BINGO… we got him. But let the Russians drone Ukrainians… How could they do such a thing?

I’ll tell you how. THEY isn’t people. Only the receivers of the souless strikes are real people. Drones are machines… like computers or cellphones. They can never experiences skinship.

When the Japanese attacked American warships in WWII, it was PEOPLE who were fighting people. The Wind of God (Kamikaze) was a human being in an airplane... making a commitment... keenly aware of what he, personally, was doing to “the enemy.” Me (us) and them.

Today’s war only has THEM.

The world needs more nudity. More awareness that other people have bodies… flesh… real skin. Humanity needs more touching, more skinship. The way things are going, we’ll all become the drones.

See you in hell.

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.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]

→ A touching video dept: The web reports –with horror– Another video of Joe Biden touching a girl has surfaced. The website says that Biden “has made a habit throughout his political career of placing his hands on women.” I know. He is NOT Italian… but still, come on! “Placing your hands on” some is NOT a bad thing. In fact, until recently, Christians thought of it as a kind of healing.

→Speaking of Sex Dept: A study in Indonesia found that Criminalizing sex work in low-income settings like Indonesia decreases earnings of the female sex workers and increases the prevalence of STI infections. 
    The results should have been obvious before the study even started. The anti sex work “feminists” actually hurt women and other sex workers. You wanna talk human trafficking? Take a look at the farms, not the brothels.

→Speaking of Drones Dept: Mark Hamill, the original Luke Skywalker, has let the WARS part of STAR WARS go to his head. He’s now pushing for Drones for Ukraine.
    Says Hamill, “Very simply, Ukraine needs drones. They define war outcomes, they protect their land, their people, they monitor the border, they’re eyes in the sky. I was really shocked because they give me these updates at least two or three times a week about what’s going on and they said they’ve received over 500 drones since I started this.”
    Now there’s something to be proud of, right?

See you in hell, redux,

MB

THE NATION AGAIN

I’m a long-time subscriber to the The Nation. It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely, when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends” would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.

One article is about the return of polio. My friends tell me that it’s the “anti-mask right” who make arguments about the dearth of natural immunity. Liberals know that masks and isolation are really good for people. This from the article I just linked to.

It was modernity that gave the polio virus a chance. As hygiene improved, collective immunity faltered.

Another article talks about big tech evils and how tracking algorithms aid anti-abortion efforts. My liberal friends, however, would rather have big tech censor people they don’t like, than protect people they do like.

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:

Sid Yiddish! There’s a great interview with him on YouTube. You can check it out here.

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.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

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