NO EMPATHY or Mykel's August 2023 Blog

   

No Empathy... or Mykel's Blog for July 2023

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's August 2023 Blog/Column 

No Empathy....    

by Mykel Board

“We are surrounded by people who appear to be happy, people who clap their hands and dance in the streets, people who sing for the pure joy of singing… and you think they don’t suffer? You think that they are somehow excluded from the battle of the human condition-- death, infirmity, lost love, poverty, crime and all the rest of it. We’re all half mad.”

--Robert Wilson

“There is only one way to understand a lonely bench in a park: Sit on it; watch whatever it is watching; listen to whatever it is listening to! Sit in spring, sit in winter, sit in summer! To understand something deeply, you need to live its life!”

- Mehmet Murat Ildan

[NOTE: All the people and events described in this blog are true. No names have been changed. No one is innocent.]

I’ve just left the cancer center. Prostate… what old men get. I’m an old man. Radiation surgery… cyberknife they call it. Five cybercuts in 10 days. Not painful… but requiring a weird diet of non-fiber food: white bread, popsicles, canned fruit. A double laxative at night… then a Fleet enema in the morning just to make sure nothing is left inside. After that, a half hour on the operating table.

Your choice of music while they cut. First was Dixieland Jazz. Then The Velvet Underground, Today: Patti Smith. I have other choices. At a hospital, I don’t want to ask for something dead: (Kennedys, Boys, Milkmen, Grateful). It might make the staff uncomfortable. Right now, they’re helping me off the table just as Patti asks if I know how to pony... like Tony Maroni.

I leave the building… on the street now. I need to find a post office. The Upper East Side… I don’t know this neighborhood. I’ll ask someone. Here’s a fellow patient, skinny guy… about half my age… just leaving the cancer center.

“Excuse me,” I ask, “do you know where there’s a post office nearby?”

“Sorry, I’m not from around here.”

“Thanks anyway.”

I ask a security guard… standing in front of the next building taking a smoking break. I love it: a smoking break next to a cancer hospital.

“I know there’s one close,” she says, “but I’m not sure what street.”

I thank her. Ah, here comes a very determined-looking woman… wearing a backpack… body leaning forward as if marching into battle… I approach her.

“Excuse me,” I say, “do you…

She snarls… shakes her head… waves her arms above her head as if brushing away a gnat attack. Stamps the ground... harder as she passes me and disappears around the corner.

I don’t get it? I’m 5 foot 3 inches tall… pushing 80 years old… barely standing after radiation treatment. Did she think I was going to attack her? I don’t understand the cruelty. All she’d have to do is say, “I’m sorry,” and then give an excuse. She wouldn't even have to stop. I just don’t get the inhumanity.

BOING! That’s it. That brings me exactly to what I want to write about. First some definitions (to quote Humpty Dumpty: words mean what I want them to mean… so don’t bother looking this up):

SYMPATHY is feeling sorry for someone. When someone dies you send a sympathy card. When you see a wounded animal, you feel sympathy. You feel unhappy because someone or something else is suffering.

EMPATHY is the ability to feel the emotions of someone else... to mentally put yourself in their jockstrap. To understand what makes them tiktok. To “get it” as if from inside another person.

You’re probably familiar with Jim Testa. He’s known for half a century of music writing… for supporting bands that nobody’s heard of… for supporting friends (including me) that no one else would dare support. A great human being. That’s why it hurt… when Jim said, “Mykel, I’ve known you for a long time… and one thing I’ve gotta say… again… is that you have no empathy.”

The remark comes after I say I refuse to be bullied by the language cops. I’ll say Colored People if it fits what I’m talking about… or if it proves a point. How is People of Color okay, but Colored People offensive? And what’s the problem with being offensive anyway?

“Mykel,” says Jim, “I’ll say it again. You have no empathy.”

FLASH TO CALVIN: Calvin sits on his milk crate… the color of the crate slightly lighter than his skin…. He gets darker in the summer. His back is against the side of the building that corners Bleecker and LaGuardia. He wears a black baseball hat, a plain gray t-shirt and bluejeans. On his feet, some kind of sneakers that are neither new nor fashionable. In his left hand is a plastic soda cup with a few coins on the bottom. He sees me from his corner… smiles and waves.

“Calvin!” I shout from across the street. “How you been doin’?”

I cross to talk with him. Simultaneously, I pull a single dollar bill out of the watch pocket of my jeans… where I keep my homeless money.

“You on your way to your favorite place?” Calvin asks me, nodding toward the Peculier Pub, my regular hangout.

“How’d you guess?” I joke, dropping the dollar into Calvin’s cup.

“You goin’ back to South Carolina this summer?” I ask.

“Mykel, are you kidding? You know how hot the summers are in New York? Double that for South Carolina…”

He interrupts our conversation to talk to some passing folks… all with purple NYU T-shirts… talking with each other… gesturing with their cellphones.

“How you doin’ today, folks?” He says, rattling the coins in his plastic cup. They keep walking… like he’s invisible.

Calvin and I talk a little more. My sister lives in South Carolina and we’ve talked about that before. Calvin’s family is from a different part of the state than my sister is.

“It’s almost like a different country,” he tells me.

I often think about Calvin. Where does he go at night? How does he get to South Carolina once a year? Hitchhike? Do people still hitchhike in 2023? What’s it like 20+ years after the last time I hitchhiked. What’s his life like? I can’t imagine!

FLASH TO MANNY: In a wheelchair on the other side of Bleecker… down a little bit.. usually in front of the CVS on the corner. About 50, a big guy... missing a few teeth on the bottom… I drop a buck into his plastic cup. Even though it’s nearly 90^o out, he’s covered from shoulder to knees in a blanket.

“Mykel,” says Manny. “ Gotta talk to you. I always see you hangin’ out with these Japanese guys… girls… whatever. Lemme warn you. Be careful of ‘em.”

“But, I like Japanese people. They’re smart and fun.”

“They act like they’s your friend,” he says, stealing a glance to the right and left. “But secretly, they hate you. They want to kill you. Take it from me… I know.”

What happened to this guy? Is he talking about the Japanese or Asians in general? Did he serve in Vietnam and end up in a wheelchair? Why would he say something like that? I can’t imagine why he feels like that. No clue to what it must be like to have that kind of fear and hatred inside... stewing as he sits in the heat and asks people for money.

FLASH TO KEVIN: If Manny is big and fat, Kevin is a monster. From neck to knees… rolls and rolls of it… His body is just a lump… a huge lump… any particular part: chest... stomach... back... ass… They fold into one another… just blobs… impossible to know where one part ends the next part begins. He’s like a huge mound of jello on a bench. Not really ON the bench, but dripping over the bench.

Kevin’s bench is in front of H-Mart, the Korean supermarket chain. I often shop there. Not expensive... good Korean food... good Japanese food at two-thirds the price of the Japanese stores. Kevin’s cup doesn’t get a dollar from me. I know him too well.

“Mykel,” he tells me twice a week... when I shop at H-Mart, “I don’t want your money. I know you’re going into that store. Bring me a Coke when you come out.”

I say to him, “Kevin, you say the same thing to me every week. I know you by now. You know they got a sign in the store… in the soda section… by the Coke. HOLD ONE CAN FOR MYKEL TO PICK UP FOR KEVIN.”

He laughs.

We shake hands… bump fists actually. I go into H-Mart… buy some frozen Korean pancakes, red miso, pork dumplings… and a can of Coke. I pay... walk out… freeze. Kevin is on his feet… leaning forward… yelling…. Both fists clenched at his side… the muscles on his neck throbbing.

YOU WHITE BITCH! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU WON’T EVEN TALK TO ME? DON’T EVEN SAY “I’M SORRY!”

And the rant goes on. He stands and shouts down the street at someone I can’t see. I’ve never seen him like this. He could have a stroke. If he were white, he’d be red in the face. I steal behind him… quietly set the can of coke on the bench… he’s still yelling not seeing anything but the object of his rage. I turn toward Houston Street and head home.

FLASH TO WILL: Will’s from Texas… Austin… BA in film from UT. He arrived in New York at the beginning of this year. His plan? Live on the street until he earns enough money to get a place of his own.

25 years old, Will is the thinnest of my homeless friends. He’s amassing his future fortune by working for DoorDash, a food delivery service that makes its workers compete with one another to score points for quick service and good ratings. Orders flash to cellphones close to either pick-up or delivery points. The first person to accept… provided he has a good rating… gets the job.

Will also makes money on eBay… learning and visiting thrift-shops… anywhere the subway goes… pickup up DVDs and electronic doodads… and “flipping them” on eBay… two to ten times their original value. Will travels the city wearing a huge backpack… for his deliveries and his thrift-store finds.

Will is a schlemazel. Two months ago, I saw him with a shiner… not the beer, but the black eye.

“What happened?”

“Mykel, it was weird… these two crackheads… they chased me. They wanted to mug me… I fought them off… screamed at them. One got me right in the face. Blam! It’s a little better now, but still hurts.”

“I’ll buy you a drink,” I tell him.

While waiting for orders from DoorDash, Will hangs out in a mid-town library. He’s got a laptop in his knapsack, and can connect and post on facebook. Today marks a week after the black-eye incident.

“I was attacked again… mugged… wallet stolen… all my money… at swordpoint!”

This is New York. People get mugged. I understand. But mugged at swordpoint? In the subway in 2023? That is impossible… or would be for anyone not Will.

“At least I still have my cellphone.” continues the facebook post. “I couldn’t survive without that. Doordash! What would I do?”

Give it another week.

“I fell asleep on the subway. Woke up… my phone was gone.”

Will sleeps on my couch once a week or so. I watch him planning his next day. After the phone is gone, he’s still planning… visit Verizon… it’s insured… get a replacement… how will they transfer the number? Where’s the nearest Verizon? We sit on the couch to work out the details. But I think: How can he do that? How can he keep going? He could easily move back to Austin where its familiar… easier… more friends than one old Jewish guy who’ll give up his couch once a week. What gives him the power to keep it up… and to smile and be friendly… and not to hate the world? I can’t imagine.

POW! it hits me… like a Fleet Enema. Jim is right. I don’t have empathy. I can’t put myself in other people’s jockstraps. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live on the street. I can’t see myself hating Japanese people. I don’t know how it feels to be confined to a wheelchair… to be black… to flip DVDs from the Salvation Armies. I think about that… wonder… but I can’t feel it. Yep, Jim’s right. I don’t have empathy. Sympathy yes! I live for sympathy. Sometimes I even feel sorry for people who are much richer than I am. But empathy? No, I just can’t do it.

Shit! It’s late. I gotta get to today’s prostate zapping. That enema... that music choice… I need to stop at the bank first. POW! Out of the house, down Broadway… what’s this. Some girl with an ID tag… she wants me to contribute to something… just to talk to me about children or animal abuse. She moves to block my path. I snarl… shake my head… wave my arms above my head as if brushing away a gnat attack. I stamp the ground harder as I pass her… not saying a word, and then, I disappear around the corner.

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]

→ Headline of the week dept: Speaking of homelessness. I saw this headline on the internet: Homeless Man With No Arms Stabs Tourist

I hope the tourist wasn’t Will.

→ Speaking of Will dept: CNN reports DoorDash is jumping on the speedy delivery trend. The company is now offering 10- to 15-minute delivery. Okay Will, you’re really gonna have to jump to it to pick up the food and bring it to the lazy shit who ordered it… in a quarter of an hour!!! Make sure you bring your pepper spray, though you might not have time to use it.

→ Pearls Before Swine dept: It seems that TickTockers have been promoting “Yoni Pearls,” small bundles of a variety of herbs. The idea is to insert them into your vagina (if you have one) to help improve odor, remove toxins and treat bacterial and yeast infections. “Reported side effects are, itching, dryness, stinging and cramping." I donno, I can think of better things to put in MY vagina.

→ I try to be a philosopher but I Kant dept:  This from a facebook pal of mine:

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.

This time, Lev Golinkin writes about how the Western (and pro-war liberal) media praise Ukraine fighters who have exactly the same philosophy as US white supremacists. And, as I still can’t figure out how someone can be Pro-Israel and Anti-Trump at the same time. Israel has more public places named after Donny than anywhere else on earth. In any case, there’s a nice letter from Bob Gris (no link, sorry) quoting the evil Alexander Haig who called Israel “the largest American aircraft in the world that cannot be sunk.”

Finally, there’s a nice discussion of Bernie Sanders and how this guy usually gets everything right.


You can read more, or even subscribe at: https://www.thenation.com/



LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

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:

Jason Rodgers sent me his book Invisible Generation… free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian (in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I find the book, I’ll give you some more details.

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 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

Home is Where... or Mykel's July 2023 Blog

  

Home is Where... or Mykel's Blog for July 2023

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's July 2023 Blog/Column 

Home is Where....    

by Mykel Board

The worst thing someone gets is isolated. Isolation is the darkest part of any condition.  – Annie Lennox

Other people may complicate our lives, but life without them would be unbearably desolate. None of us can be truly human in isolation. The qualities that make us human emerge only in the ways we relate to other people.           --Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

                              --Jello Biafra

My name is Hitori Bochi. I’m a third generation Japanese guy... in prison in Arlington Texas... nearly 20 years so far… I’ve lost count. The charges? FAILURE TO OBEY…. And attempted murder… with a pair of chopsticks!

Right now, I’m in a room… concrete walls… concrete floor… shit and piss hole in the middle. Another hole in one wall lets in sunlight. It’s higher than I can reach. From down here, I can only see sky, clouds, sometimes feel the splash of rain blown in from outside.

It’s punishment. The hole I mean… for contraband. A magazine under the prison mattress... erections and shaved twats. Forbidden to us. We need to stay full of cum… keep tension high. The strongest will rape… get their nookie any way they can. The weakest will pleasure ourselves… using CONTRABAND.. My asshole still aches from the rape.

Yo! Yo! Yo! Hitori! This is Mykel speaking. Can you hear me? You’re not going crazy. I just wanted to tell you what’s going on in the outside world.

I don’t care if you’re real or not. I got nothing else to do here except talk to phantoms… so talk away. What do you want to tell me?

What I want to tell you will surprise you. The world has changed. It’s become more like this concrete room you’re in. Not because people are forced into it. Not as a punishment. It’s what people want. They want a world without other people… without physical contact. They want a virtual world… an isolated world with communication only through machines.

But don’t people eat? Don’t they need to buy toilet paper? Don’t they go to movie theaters, baseball stadiums? What good is shouting SWING HARD at the Rangers’ batter if he can’t hear you? Are prices so high at the stadium that people stay home and watch it for free on TV?

It’s not free on TV anymore! You have to pay to watch the local teams. I’m a Yankee fan, but…

Fuck you! You’re a Yankee fan? Stop talking to me!

Ok, no baseball talk. I just want to let you know about how the world has changed. How the class system has changed from people who work in offices vs people who work in the field to people who work at home and people who serve them.

Remember how it used to be? You got up, put on your business drag, drove or took the train/bus to the office, spent the day doing mostly worthless work with your co-workers... complaining to each other, laughing secretly at the boss, hanging out in bars after work… It was called HAPPY HOUR for a reason. Even if you hated your job (most people did), you could enjoy the company of others.

So it’s different now? How could that change?

It started with that plague that came from China... spread quickly around the world… Lockdowns... restaurants and bars closed… the only people allowed out were called “essential workers.” Hospital workers: nurses, orderlies, janitors... cashiers at supermarkets, cops, firemen, postal workers… usually the lowest paid jobs. They were essential.

Doctors? What about doctors?

In hospitals, they physically existed. Most of the rest became “tele-medicine.” You saw your doctor though a phone with a built-in TV. No body touching… no breathing the same air. The plague eventually ended… or at least lightened enough to allow people to go out again. Most didn’t want to.

Some couldn’t. Companies, learning that employees could work from home, sold off their office space, down-sized, saved money on rent, electricity... gave their employees computers and said “Use your own heat and electricity to work. We’re not paying for that anymore.” No more happy hours. No more hangin’ out in the common room. No more other people.

Wasn’t there a rebellion? A demand to get back to work?

Nope. Most people LOVED working from home. No commute! No highway. No crowded trains. The wall between work and home... smashed to wallboard dust. People LIVED at work and they quickly fell in love with it.

FLASH TO HERE AND NOW: Hitori is still in the clink. I don’t know if he’s in solitary or back with his fellow cons and a big black prick up his ass. I do know there’s a protest movement… friends and families of the incarcerated… demanding an end to solitary confinement… and end to THE HOLE. I donno, they could just throw the guy an iPhone and everything would be just like you and me, right?

Me? I’m calling the EPSON PRINTER tech department… I get white stripes through my pictures… blotches at the edges of the page.

YOU HAVE REACHED…. PRESS ONE IF YOU WANT…. PRESS TWO IF YOU WANT… PRESS THREE…

Tech support is EIGHT. I press 8 in a fury.

ALL TECH SUPPORT AGENTS ARE CURRENTLY HELPING OTHER CUSTOMERS. YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US. PLEASE HOLD FOR THE NEXT AVAILABLE TECH SUPPORT SPECIALIST.

What sounds like old merry-go-round music plays through my headphones. Then it stops. Then it starts again… Finally, a woman with a strong accent (Indian? Philippine?) and a soft voice comes on the line.

“My printer is streaking,” I tell her.

“May I please know your name?” she asks.

“Mykel Board,” I say.

“Have you used our service before?” she asks.

I nod… then answer, “Yes, a while back.”

“Would you have the kindness to give me your phone number?”

Then I hear a scream… like a small child who has dropped a stuffed animal into the toilet.

“Tumahimik ka na!” shouts a male voice in the background… Aaah, it’s the Philippines.

At first I’m pissed off. My hearing is lousy… her accent is strong… the interruption is rude…. Then… a wave of sorrow washes over me, like champagne washes over baseball players after a world series win.

This poor woman is working at home. Her husband is taking care of the child. He probably lost his job during Covid. Now, instead of going to The Call Center, like my Pinoy friends did, the plague has forced her to work from home… squeezed into her 1 room house… answering phonecalls from pissed-off foreigners, while her baby screams in the background.

The sadness of this poor woman… trapped at home… living at work… What a tragedy!

But wait! The US government reports most people working from home here LIKE it. And it’s especially the rich, the educated and the healthy who DO it. The poor and the uneducated (often the same) are the ones riding bicycles on the sidewalk, delivering meals, groceries and vitamins to those rich enough to live in isolation.

Remember when the word InCel was an epithet? The involuntary celibate… the chubby guy with a neckbeard who never got laid… never left the house… spent all his time playing video games? Now, every unmarried person is an InCel. It’s not weird. It’s common. In order to have sex, you have to touch another person! Eeeeew Cooties!

America is not like the rest of the world. It is a jail, where the inmates happily go to the hole… and stay there by choice. Those who the society calls essential workers are in the bunk-bed cells… raped by Uber-Eats, DoorDash, and Amazon.

Americans watch movies at home, school their kids at home. Teachers teach “distance learning”. Learning? Yeah right. This is not learning. You can even study languages with no teacher at all. “Lessons” made up of bullshit where you can’t guess wrong. Besides, once you learn a new language, who are you going to speak it with?

Here's some artificial "intelligence" from the learn-Japanese website:

Meanwhile, stores close and lie empty or are replaced by UrgentCare centers or UrgentCare for Your Pets centers. Or how ‘bout a UPS office where you can call, they’ll pick up your package and the center will do the rest? You never have to leave home.

The stay-at-homes talk about convenience. It’s just sooo convenient having things delivered to your door. You never have to go out… face other people… shop in a store. See? Covid actually made the world better.

So fuckin’ sad.

The delivery folks are just as isolated as those they deliver to... on their bikes... in their cars or trucks. The country becomes 300 million people in solitary confinement... and they love it that way.

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, c/o Seidboard World Enterprises, 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]

→ Sign of the Cross(over) Dept: As a porn lover, I’ve always found it comical when het/homo stars are “caught” in other roles. Now I learn there is an epithet for that… especially het male actors who do a guy or two early in their careers. (Can you say Peter North?). The term is crossovers. There’s a great column about the gradual DE-stigmation (yeah!) of that term. You can read it here. I hope it’s true.

→ Add one more dept: I think Bill Maher is probably the celebrity whose politics are closest to mine. (Can anyone find my appearance on Politically Incorrect on the internet? I’ve tried all the keywords, but nothing pops up.)

Here he presents “The Cojones Awards” to people who stand up to cancel culture. He did, however, leave out John Cleese, who had the balls to refuse to cut the famous Loretta segment in the upcoming Broadway play that’s a Life of Brian adaptation. There will be protests.

→ Stop passing gas dept: Uexpress reports that protesters at the Massachusetts Statehouse demonstrated against climate change. People started shouting from the gallery. Then eight audience members turned their backs on the senators and mooned them. Ass cheeks were sharpied with the words "stop passing gas." The protesters continued with chants of "You're a senator, not an ass, why are you still passing gas," They were arrested and escorted out of the chamber. I’m waiting for Liz Cheney to start the hearings against them.

→ Ah masking, you gotta love it dept: This from Sky News: People in Japan became so used to wearing face masks during the pandemic that now they are signing up for lessons to teach them how to smile again.
    For three years or more, many people wouldn't be seen in public without a mask.
    With the government having finally lifted its face-covering mandate, many people realized they had forgotten how to live without them. Worse, they had forgotten how to smile.
    Now, at around $35 each. The Japanese can take lessons to bring back the habit.

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 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.

This time, The Nation writes about yet another reason to nationalize the banks… I only wish it were possible. There’s also a great article about the true influence of Nazis in the Ukraine who turned into heroes in the American press. And speaking of the US weapons-manufacturers prop, there’s a nice column by the often-correct David Bromwich. It includes the great quote: How close is Ukraine to Russia. How close is Taiwan to China? And how far is the US from both places?


You can read more, or even subscribe at: https://www.thenation.com/



LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

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:

Jason Rodgers sent me his book Invisible Generation… free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian (in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I find the book, I’ll give you some more details.

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 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