You’re STILL Wrong
or
Mykel's August 2025 Blog/Column
Of Course It’s Bad, Look
Who Did It
by Mykel Board
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ – Lewis Carroll
The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Chrysanthemum growers, you are prisoners of your chrysanthemum.
--Yosa Buson
“Eeeewww, it’s like a little doggie dick… not dick-looking at all… just a crotch volcano.” Ashley is complaining. Evidently “some cute boy” she brought home last night was uncircumcised. That was too much for poor little Ashley.
“I want a helmet,” she tells me. “A fireman’s hat.. Not a fuckin’ flesh cone.”
“So did you do him?” I ask.
“I kicked him out,” she says. “Waddaya think? I want something like that up my twat?” Tears well up in her eyes. “It took me two beers before I got someone to sit with me. Cool-looking… sort of Asian… with good enough taste in music to be at Arlene’s Grocery.” [NOTE for non-New Yorkers. Arlene’s Grocery was an actual grocery store that has since turned into a low-key music venue. Cool place if you’re in town.]
“A banana, maybe?” I ask.
“HIS banana!” She answers… “that’s the whole point of this conversation. HIS banana!”
“That’s not what I mean,” I answer. “Japanese… maybe all Asians... call Asians who act like white people bananas. You know, yellow on the outside… white on the inside.”
“I could never figure out that yellow stuff,” Ashley answers. “They are the same color as white people… different eyes… a shorter nose… but skin? It’s the same as yours or mine. They’re like us, but sexier.”
“I know what you mean,” I say. “I think it’s the lack of body hair. Just smooth skin… smooth white skin.”
Ashley nods. “But those dicks! Those hard little sausages… they need to have that taken care of!”
“What was his name?” I ask.
“Something like Kenny, I think,” answers Ashley. “An
Asian version of Kenneth.”
“Maybe Kento?” I say,
“that’s a common Japanese name.”
“Could be,”
answers Ashley. “That’s good enough. From now on we’ll call him
Kento… or Ken-dick or something. Ken-lousy-lay, for all I care.”
“How could you say “lousy lay?” I ask. “You didn’t screw him, did you?”
“Of course not,” comes the answer, “but I’m sure he wudda been a lousy lay if I had the balls to do it with him… and there’s more. He claims he’s an artist… a painter. Can you imagine an artist with a foreskin?”
FLASH TO NOW: I sit at the desk in my apartment here on Bleecker Street… having introduced my theme of the month, I need to know how to connect it to what I REALLY want to write about. You may have heard rumors… read on facebook… seen a blog… noticed the graffiti on the restroom wall… overheard a conversation with Larry Livermore… read those last issues of MRR.
Mykel Board is a Trumpist. He supports Trump. Mykel gave a blowjob to an ICE agent. Mykel has turned into a fascist. AJ Weberman was right. Mykel Board is a Nazi.
I voted for Zohan Mamdani. I support the total abolition of prisons. I favor open borders with entrance or leave of a country as easy as crossing the street. I believe in universal free healthcare, high taxes for the rich, free food and homes for the poor. So am I a Trumpist? Like Humpty Dumpty, the name callers make it mean whatever they want to. And where does the twisted call that I’m a Trumpist come from? I’ll tell ya. It comes from the same kind of thinking that says a guy with an uncut dick can’t be a good artist. For now, I’ll call it Kento Thinking.
What is Kento Thinking? I’m glad you asked. Kento thinking is if you find one aspect (or several aspects) of a person repulsive, unkind, or illogical, then EVERYTHING that person says or does is repulsive, unkind or illogical. You don’t judge the words. You don’t judge the actions. But having judged the person, you struggle to find ways to make any of his/her words or actions fit into your image of that person.
“Mykel, you’re not being fair,” comes a voice I’d know anywhere. It’s Literary Device aka L.D.. who somehow feels free to butt in no matter what I’m writing about.
“You’re talking about Donny The Trump here. Right?” says L.D. “He’s the guy who sent the government troops to quash free-speech in LA. He gave a secret police force permission to kidnap and deport people… without trial. Take ‘em from the street, from court houses, from school. POW! Ship ‘em off to a torture camp in El Salvador. You’re talking about a guy who takes away food stamps and medicare so super-rich friends can have tax cuts. Right?”
“Of course,” I answer.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. But I’m also talking about a
guy who started human relations between the US and North Korea. Who’s
tried to foster (with on and off success) ceasefires in Eastern
Europe and the Middle East.”
“You mean the guy who got played as a chump by Kim Jung Un,” says L D. “The guy who failed in Gaza and Ukraine. The guy who stopped taxes on tips, because the huge bonuses his rich friends make are tips. The guy who stopped taxes on overtime, because his friends who don’t clock in as it is, need another tax break for their accountants.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” I shout to LD. “No matter what he does, because he is DONNY TRUMP, it must be bad/evil/stupid… even if it’s not. It’s like an artist cannot create great art if he has a foreskin.”
“Look Mykel,” answers L.D., “you commit the same crime you accuse others of doing. You’re boycotting Target because they don’t give preferential treatment to those who need it. You don’t buy Amy’s Organic because they had bad working conditions and they laid off a whole factory. You didn’t even start buying again, when the boycott ended…”
“It ended?” I ask, “I didn’t know that.”
“Of course you didn’t,” says
L.D., “You just put Amy’s = bad
in your brain and never checked it again.”
“You mean,
I’m the bad guy?” I ask. “Like Charles Bronson in Death
Wish?”
L.D. nods… and disappears, as is his wont.
Lesson learned… for now. From now on, I will try to understand other people’s motives. For every fault, I’ll look for a virtue. I may not find one, but the act of looking ennobles me… or if not that… it at least acts as a crowbar to pry open that Kento Thinking box… so that I can get a look at it. It might be my own prison.
So let’s go back to Kento’s dick. What’s wrong with a foreskin anyway? I have my tribal marking… a red-brown scar around the shaft. In 2025, it no longer only signifies Jew or Muslim… In America everybody does it. Those who want to avoid the religious or tribal meaning say it’s “for health reasons,” but countries where circumcision is common are no healthier than countries that keep the tag on.
Besides, that little skin is fun to play with, and no uglier than a cone vs pyramid. But there's more to this than aesthetics. There is a value called equality. In the US, boys are routinely cut before they leave their birth hospital. No question, no objection… So much for the boys… how 'bout the girls?
Female
circumcision is
now called “female genital mutilation.” The WHO defines the
practice as "all procedures that involve partial or total
removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the
female genital organs for non-medical reason" And guess what…
it's BAD! "How could they do that to a girl?" people ask.
"Ït's
so barbaric!" answer the same girls who are disgusted when they
find their just-picked-up partner with an extra flab..
Of course, complete genital removal is nasty business. But, most female circumcision is no more than taking a bit of skin off the top… just like male circumcision. What's the big deal?
The big deal is that this happens to girls…women... and women are a fragile protected species. They are the ones to step on that cloak laid over the mud puddle by THE OTHER species.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!" shouts L.D! "You're doing it again... what you accuse others of doing. You're making giant generalizations from a clitsworth of information. Yeah, I know when armies fight hundreds are killed but few in society complain. Armies are mostly men. But when the protected species are injured… women and children… oh… how horrible. I've heard that story from you before… Don't forget. I've known you since Jr. High school."
Wow! He got me. "He's right. If it's done to men, it's okay. If it’s done to women, it's not okay." That’s my opinion of society in general… but it's not so simple. Here I am talking about the evils of making sweeping judgments, and the sweeping judgment broom has just hit me in the balls.
Of course it's more complicated than boys vs girls. That's not the point of this post, but it's a (the?) point of life. And it's what I'm complaining about. We pick people we don't like, and instead of looking at their actions, we decide a priori that if we don't like X then X is a bad person and any action done by X is bad… and anything X does that appears good or valuable must be done for some hidden motive because X is bad.
Sometimes girls are the honored gender and sometimes they’re at the bottom of the privilege pole. Here, L.D. is right. Not him personally (I'm not even sure he is a HE), but his criticism. There is more than a big picture… There is an infinite picture. Of course we can't explore all the possibilities, but we can leave ourselves open to discoveries by others. We can say our pre-judgements were wrong… or incomplete… we can ask more questions. For Jews circumcision is a tribal marking. For some Africans, a series of three cheek slashes is a tribal marking. For a Gen Z girl, a nose-ring is a tribal marking. All of these are mutilations… or not. We can think about that. But let's not judge that an action or a ritual or a favorite color or… or… or… is evil, or done with malintent because we don't like the person or the group or the aesthetic of the person doing it.
There are no simple answers… there aren’t even any simple questions. But this name calling, binary thinking, with us or against us, not only destroys thought, but also it imprisons us in a world of can’t say… can’t think… that opinion makes you a bad person. Yeah it imprisons us, but most of us can’t see the bars.
See you in hell,
MB
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 TO THE BLOG in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]
→AH AMERICA… YA’ GOTTA LAUGH AT IT DEPT: So Donny is in a new scandal. His base is turning against him. Is it his creation of a kidnapping squad that grabs people off the street and sends them to foreign jails? Is it the bromance between him and the Military-Industrial-Complex with the US military budget hitting a trillion dollars, while foodstamps and medicare are defunded? Is it his defunding of emergency and aid programs? No! It’s a more than two decades old birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein! Who cares? No crime on Trump’s part. No one killed or hurt. In civilized countries the letter would be laughed off as man-talk. But this is America… I can usually laugh at it, but every once-in-awhile it makes me sick.
→SUMMER LONG BALLS DEPT: Frankly, I don’t get enough views of other guys summer junk, so I can’t comment on the accuracy. But summer long balls seems to be a real enough phenomenon that news sites can write about it. Summer itch, I get. But any time, any year, there’s no part of me that gets longer-- summer or not. Let me know if it happens to you… pictures are appreciated… but NOT photos sent through your cellphone! Nothing is secure on a cellphone… even when “deleted.”
–> OH THOSE WACKY JAPANESE DEPT: Oddity Central reports that in Japan you can “rent a Grandma” for the equivalent of $23 an hour. Some cook and clean, but most are for show. I guess around the world, grandmas incite special feelings and can get things done that no non-grandma person can do. This article mentions a young woman who wants to break up with her boyfriend. She hires a grandma (presumably impersonating her real grandma) to accompany her as she breaks the news to the guy. She expects the grandma will keep the guy from losing his temper, and soften the emotional blow of the break-up.
See you in
hell redux,
MB
LINKS
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.
AFRICAN LINKS:
Albert aka Alberto Melody is the reason I went to Kenya. We met on facebook a couple years ago. He has a blog you should take a look at: Albertomelody.blogspot.com. Tell him Mykel sent ya.
Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him.
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.
Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners, best band name of the year.
Also
on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT
SHOPPERS.
Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the
US
Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD
in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video
around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the
lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it
here.
And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!
Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.
Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.
Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.
You
already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel
Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.)
Their online version is here.
The
Clean Boys
from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we
recorded as The
Bend-over Boys.
Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a
10-incher!
Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.
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
