Grits Up In Flames or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's March 2022 Blog

 

Grits Up In Flames

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's March 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

 Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves
- Laura Esquivel

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
- Tennessee Williams

Do not go gentle into that good night... Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
--Dylan Thomas

It’s a candle in a jar… aromatherapy… brown letters, on the outside: VANILLA Invigorating. The plague: tired me out… fucked up my body… my sleep. With a drink or two before bedtime I sleep badly… fall asleep around 1:30AM... wake up after 2 hours... piss... jerk off... play Spider Solitaire until I lose ten games… back to for two… maybe three.. more hours sleep.... repeat. If I don’t drink before bedtime, I don’t sleep at all. 

I nap during the day. Sometimes around noon... sometimes after lunch... sometimes around 9PM. I’m usually tired... fuzzy thinking… can hardly move. 

It’s 11:00AM… still naked from my late wake-up… no energy to dress…  I stumble to the kitchen... make my morning coffee. Electric perk: half coffee… half turmeric, pepper, and cinnamon. 

I stand facing the paper instructions for cooking grits. I thumb-tacked them to the cabinet door. I love grits. They’re tough to get in New York. I love ‘em with cheese or shrimp...or… When you find them, they never have instructions. You’re American right? You should just how to cook grits. It’s in the blood. I don’t know. Tell me and I forget. It doesn’t matter now. I’m too tired to cook.

The  coffee is ready… perked to a dark brown. I pour it into my Life should be a journey… not a race coffee cup and bring it to my table… a rotating double tiered table, I found in street trash. On one end, I have my Skype class computer, external monitor, remote mic and video. On the other end is a blank spot for a plate and a glass.

When I sit down, I spot the candle and figure I’ll invigorate myself. I’ve got to teach a Skype class at 12:30… I need the energy. I reach for the candle… open the top… see it’s almost used up. An eighth of an inch of wax on the bottom, slightly more along the sides of the jar. 

I take the spoon from my coffee and scrape the side wax to the bottom of the jar. Then I light the wick. It glows faintly… goes out. I try again. Another failure. Maybe the wick is too old… de-wicked. I shove a kitchen match (one of those on a wooden stick) into the wax at the bottom. I use another match to light the wooden wick. It flares up… bloofff… burns down to the wax… and goes out. 

This is pissing me off. 

You fuckin’ stupid candle. I’m smarter than nearly spent aromashit in a jar. I’ll show you… you moronic blob of white wax. 

I grab a metal ashtray from on top of the file cabinet. From the trash I take a random piece of paper… a form letter from Nancy Pelosi… asking me for money. I tear it in quarters. One of those quarter-pieces I soak in the lighter fluid I use to remove price labels from books and records I sell on eBay. 

I pour the wax fragments on top of the paper and squirt a dash of lighter fluid on top of that. I set the ashtray on my Epson printer… far from any paper. Better safe than incinerated, right?

I light the matchstick wick. POOF! Into flames… burns down the stem… POOF! Into flames… big flames… flames bursting out and up… an upside down rocket engine… yellow... red… spots of blue…ashes everywhere… over the printer… onto the bookshelves… great gobs of fire. 

Using my bare hands, I whack at the errant flames… EEEEAAAAH!… an eyebrow set alight by the flaming ashtray… I slap myself to put it out… a brittle singe on my face. A toxic smell slowly fills the air.

I try to pick up the metal ashtray… move it to the kitchen sink… YAIIII! My fingers sizzle against the heated steel. It won’t move… embedded in the melted plastic of the printer top.

I run to the kitchen… a spatula… I’ll slide it under the burning tray… pry it loose… enough to get it to the sink. There… slide it under the burning ashtray. It doesn’t slide. Push… push harder… CRACK! Something gives… it slides… off the printer onto the wood floor… flames splashing out… I dance to stomp on the burning droplets… smoke rises from the floor around the ashtray. 

Back to the kitchen… a pot holder… an oven mitt… back to the main room... grab the now towering inferno of the ashtray… smoke rises from the oven mitt.. POW! Into the kitchen… throw it in the sink… more splashes… the flames… filled with new oxygen reach for the stars… not the stars but the paper with the grit instructions… hanging on the cabinet door… up in flames… burning the bottom then flaming across the page to The Cheese part… then The Shrimp… ashes rain into the sink while flames reach for the ceiling. 

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! FIRE! FIRE! 

The smoke alarm… I can’t deal with you now… you piece of shit. JUST SHUT UP! I grab it from the shelf... smash it to the floor… step on it. Then back to the sink.

I reach through the falling ashes to the faucet… the handle… pick up a filthy chili bowl from the sink… run the water… into the bowl… SHPLOW! Throw the bowl full of brown water onto the grits-flaming cabinet… refill… SHPLOW! Onto the spouting sputtering spewing ashtray… FSHHHHTTTT!… The water turns to steam… More water… more steam… Then it slows… the flames sputter… turn to smoke…  thick black smoke… like those chimney pictures in Greenpeace ads. I cough. My nose runs. I feel the smoke alarm crunch under my sneakers. 

Acid tears force my eyes closed… I squint… peer hard… like looking through my neighbor’s drapes. Smoke no longer pours out of the ashtray. Only a single black thread rises from the tray… a snake charmer… at the end of his show. I fold a sheet of paper towel, and use it to push the smoldering ashtray under the faucet… and turn on the water. There’s a hiss… and then only the sound of water. 

As I sink to the floor… exhausted… breathless… I begin to feel the pain in my charred fingertips… the burn of smoke in my eyes… the ash in my nose. I lay supine on the floor… a thin stream of something black drips from the corner of my mouth.

This is it… but only the start. The next day: I’m cooking soup for lunch… homemade... rice, bean, and chicken soup… with a dash of cooking sake… and yesterday’s leftover ramen. As the soup simmers, I watch OnePunchMan… A Japanese parody of super-hero animation… great graphics and funnier than a fart in church. 

What’s that smell? The soup!! Boiling over… grab the wooden breadboard… on the table in front of the TV… grab the pot… off the stove onto the breadboard. A can of Dogfishhead 60 minutes from the refrigerator… and bang… plop down to watch OnePunchMan complain to his disciple, the cyborg Genos,  about scoring worse than the part-robot on the mental section of the hero test. Of course the bald man aced the physical part.

The episodes are only 24 minutes each… made for TV with lots of space for commercials. So when this episode comes to an end I walk back into the kitchen to get some desert. It’s then that I see the flame on the gas stove… still lit… burning… never shut off from when I took the soup to the other room. There it is… on the stove top… naked and burning… a gas flame. 

But wait! There’s more… 

In the modern world, gyms don’t have keytags anymore. They work by your phone number. You give your phone number to the usually attractive guy/gal behind the plexiglass near the entrance. S/he types it into the computer... tells you your name... you nod… or say something witty… s/he smiles and waves you in.  

Today, it’s a skinny long-haired guy… either clean-shaven or one of those beauties who never needs to shave. 

“Six four six six seven four seven zero one eight.” I say. His fingers are quick on the keys. 

“Nothing like quick fingers,” I tell him.

He smiles… then frowns. 

“I’m sorry, Sir,” [Note: there are few things I hate more than being called “Sir”]  he says, “you’re not in the system.”

“Eat me!” I don’t say. “Then I’ll be in your fuckin’ system.”

Instead, I realize that I gave him the wrong number. Six months ago, I gave up my landline after 30+ years. [I’m now convinced VERIZON is the most incompetent company in America.] The number I gave the cute boy was a bastardization of my old phone number and my newer cellphone number. Just odd pieces of each… mish-moshed together.

“I’m sorry, kid,” I answer, “I fucked up. My number is… and I give him the right number. But the memory confusion is scarier than a bedbug.”

Add these adventures to my newly acquired inability to simply move something from one place to another. Use my hands to pick up the lava lamp… KERPOW… my elbow knocks the air purifier from the table onto the floor. Grab a bottle of Rittenhouse Rye (I shit you not. That’s the real name of the booze!) from the liquor cabinet… KRAAAASH… the bottle of Everclear falls… smashing into a hundred pieces in the sink. Add water to the humidifier… SPLOOOOOSH! The seal loosens. Water pours down into the space where the electric cord joins the machine…. ZZZZZZZ! FLASH… lights out… short circuit. 

And so it goes… The Star Trek captain? The singer for Black Flag? The name of the street beggar on Broadway… the one who sinks to his knees in front of his wheelchair? What you call that little indentation that extends from under your nose to your upper lip?  I forget… forget… forget

Usually the answers come back to me in an hour… two… the next day. Sometimes never. But the reality is that I’m losing it. Drugs? Genes? Booze? Alzheimer’s? Enlarged prostate? Don’t test me… I don’t want to know. I will not go gentle into that good night. 

It’s late. I’m tired. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try something invigorating. Maybe I can get one of those aromatherapy candles. 

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]

→Proof dept.: Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction usually makes a better story. In case you were wondering if I made it up… as I often do. This one was real. Here’s a picture of the printer top after its run-in with my invigorating candle:

 → You happy you got your legal weed? dept: The website Gizmodo reports that a man in Thailand, using scissors, “completely amputated his penis” apparently due to an episode of “cannabis-induced psychosis.” The man regained his mental facilities after being admitted to the hospital and most of his injuries were “successfully treated.” Doctors, however, weren’t able to reattach the lost several inches. That’s probably lucky for future generations.

→ What the fuck? It’s money! dept: MSN reports: A mother told police that she was waiting at a store's self-checkout line with her one-year-old son who was sitting in the shopping cart.

    The mother said a woman approached her and commented on her son's blue eyes and blond hair. The stranger said she had $250,000 in her car, and offered to buy the child with it. The mother said she wouldn't sell.

Mom waited for the woman to leave the store before heading to the parking lot, where she was confronted again.

The stranger began screaming at the mom... saying if she wouldn't take $250,000 for him, then she would give her $500,000 because she wanted that baby. Mom still did not sell.

See you in hell, redux,

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.

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

Then They Came For Me aka Mykel's Post-MRR Column Number 15

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

Post-MRR Column Number 15

by Mykel Board

"Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of a man asleep.” Henry David Thoreau

First they came for the smokers, and I did not speak out— because I was not a smoker. Then they came for the senile, and I did not speak out— because I was not senile. Then they came for the football players and I did not speak out— because I was not a football player. Then they came for me. --Mykel Board

I don't make it. Both hands cupped over my mouth, I run to the bathroom. I don't make it. Stomach contents... volcanic... force themselves upward... an enema in reverse... chunks of chicken... pieces of potato... whole croutons-- just the way they looked in the bar avocado dip-- spew themselves upward... through my esophagus... filling my cupped hands... spilling over... catching in my beard... dripping on a trail through my fingers.. SPLOTCH... SPLOTCH... SPLOTCH... from the bedroom. The food forces itself upward like liquid, not percolating, but exploding... upward with such force it fills my nose... overflows... my nostrils drip beer and buffalo wings. Sinuses cramp with calamari.

Finally... the toilet. I open my lips and let the primal ooze splash in. My packed sinuses ache... a huge pressure... I grab my nose from the top, spray out... nothing... harder... a green drop... the size of a pea... dribbles from a nostril. It IS a pea, mixed from the same gravy used to make chicken pot pies for decades... centuries... millennia.

No time to consider it. Here comes another heave... a giant fire hose... a brown gray mix up-chucking into the toilet with such force that the splash covers my face... my neck... my naked chest. Dripping with my own vomit, I sink to my knees. Barely able to keep my dripping face above the water in the bowl, I heave again... nearly drowning in the backsplash. I won't get drunk again. I won't get drunk again. It's just common sense.

Ok buckaroos, I've been writing for about 50 years now. MUCH of that writing has been rants against common sense, self-evidence, logic.

“Everybody knows that women make 80¢ for every dollar men make.”

“It's just logic that second-hand smoke is bad for your health.”

“If you only earn $1800 a month you can't afford a trip to Japan... It's common sense.”

All those and more are just wrong! If EVERYBODY knows it, it's probably wrong. Remember how everyone knew that margarine was better than butter. You know how many people DIED from that? Remember how everyone knew that you had to arm the Taliban in Afghanistan? It protected us from COMMUNISM. See what happened?

IN PRAISE OF SMOKING

Bottom of the eighth, two outs, Jeter on third. The Yankees are down 4 to 3. Teixeira’s up. Damn! He's barely hitting at the Mendoza Line. Yeah, he's got a bunch of homers... but. STRIKE ONE. Just as I feared. Swinging at something way out of the strike zone... Ever since his wrist injury... STRIKE TWO. Fuck! I don't need crystal balls to tell him to TAKE that next pitch. He's trying too hard. He's trying to make everything a home run. He'll... STRIKE THREE.

And now comes a public service commercial. A man's talking... not talking exactly... he's got one of those external voice boxes against his neck. A hole in his neck vibrates as he speaks. I used to be a smoker, until... Pissed off, I shut off the TV missing the ninth inning.

FLASH TO LATER THAT NIGHT: I'm looking for those lost videos on YouTube. There were only eight or so shows. Roald Dahl's WAY OUT... better than the Twilight Zone. On the screen, in that stupid side column are public service videos... one aimed at teens:

We can be the generation that ends smoking.

Jeezus fuckin' Christ. In the 60s, people wanted to be part of the generation that ends WAR. These days, they go for a bit more totalitarian goal. I wonder, if, in the 1920s there were posters saying WE CAN BE THE GENERATION THAT ENDS DRINKING.

I see anti-smoking propaganda plastered on internet sites, on subway posters, on billboards. Even the government gets in the act. I see it reflected in New York laws against smoking in parks... even if the park is just a slab of concrete at an intersection. Buildings are banning smoking by tenants... in their own apartments. The wildest logic... ignores everything EXCEPT smoking.

“Statistics show that children from buildings with more smoking have higher incidence of cancer and emphysema than children from smoke-free buildings.” What the fuck?

How 'bout that rich white folks tend to smoke less than poor folks. How 'bout that buildings with smokers tend to be closer to factories or frackers than buildings with non-smokers? Naw, that's not important. Yeah, right.

While smoking is (barely) legal... this is the time to act. This is the time to START SMOKING! If any one thing symbolizes the loss of freedom, it's the loss of the right to smoke. If any one thing symbolizes rebellion in America in 2014, it's smoking. Smoking is the great Satan of activities. It is the only legal (for now) way to flout convention... to say

I REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE MYTH THAT I CONTROL MY DESTINY. I REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE LIE THAT IF I GET SICK IT'S MY OWN FAULT... OR THE FAULT OF MY NEIGHBOR WHO SMOKES. I REFUSE TO BUY INTO THE LIE THAT MY BAD LUNGS ARE NOT THE FAULT OF CORPORATE AMERICA AND THE SHIT THEY POUR INTO THE AIR AND WATER, BUT RATHER SOMETHING I DO MYSELF.

More than this. Smoking in 2014 attacks the entire idea of Your comfort is more important than my freedom... The easily offended society... The whiners who call for the boycott of everyone they disagree with. The censors who, instead of answering free speech with speech, answer it with calls to end that speech. The bullies, who in the name of stopping bullying, bully people into keeping their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves. The totalitarians who say that my emotions are more important than your art... who can't walk away or put something down because it triggered emotional distress. The single act of lighting up a cigarette is a proclamation as loud as any protest poster that says. I AM AN INDIVIDUAL... AND I WILL NOT COWER.

IN PRAISE OF ALZHEIMERS

"Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.” --Franklin Pierce Adams

With age comes senility--- that disease of forgetting. Maybe it's not so bad.

I've written before about how the 70 years since World War II is enough time to FORGET ABOUT IT! So much evil has been done in the name of that war... from genocide to opera censorship. So much continues to be done. I've written plenty on that memory... and there are other things to forget

In Texas, they still Remember the Alamo and use that mudhut... a holdout in a war FOR slavery and AGAINST an innocent nation... a war that was nothing more than a land grab. Texans don't want you to REALLY remember the Alamo. You should remember it THEIR way. I say FORGET IT.

In the South, the Civil War still plays hard and anyone from George Bush Senior to Bill Clinton is a carpet-bagger. Remember the some-fucking-thing is the rallying cry of so much death and destruction, that just hearing those words should be an instant code to tell you blood's a-comin'.

Remember the Armenian holocaust. Remember the Lusitania. I cannot forgive... forget... absolve...release... relent... accept... bury the hatchet... let bygones be... let it go... let it pass... wipe the slate clean...

Remember means I can do what the fuck I want to you because someone, someplace did something to my ancestors. Remember means revenge. Revenge triggers counter-memories. I remember what you did to them because you remembered what we did to you.

Jews and Germans. Hatfields and McCoys. Clan Chattan and Clan Kay, Hamilton and Burr, Stalin and Trotsky, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, Snoop Dogg and Iggy Azalea. I donno. To all of 'em I say forget about it. It's OVER.

What you do starts NOW! If I fill a bag of dogshit, light it and put it on your front porch, that's NOW! You called my mother a slut 4 years ago? It's over!

IN DEFENSE OF FOOTBALL

“Female violence toward men is pervasive, although largely denied. Or if it isn't denied, it's excused. When a man insults or hits a woman, it's 'abuse,' but when a woman insults or hits a man, it's 'assertiveness.” --Jim Goad

“Feminism is very much like egalitarianism and if you believe that we are all equal then you are a feminist. " --Internet Website

Two months ago, I wrote about Robert Anton Wilson's book, Cosmic Trigger III. In that book, Wilson mentions violence in the movies. We always hear Christians and feminists complain about how movies cause Sandy Hooks or random street violence. What goes unmentioned-- except by Wilson-- is how that in (almost?) every major U.S. movie since the 70s, a man is hit by a woman... from the slap across the face to real ball busters.

My sister's house-- Rosh Hashanah eve.:The meal is finished. The Tsimmis is just settling in my stomach. 5775... a nice palindromic year.

“Hey Mike,” says my sister (the only person in the world who calls me Mike). “You want to watch some TV before you go to bed?”

Since I don't own a cable-connected TV, I figure why not? It'll teach me some references from Modern Culture^®. I can drop them in a column and people will think I'm up-to-date.

“Sure.” I tell her, settling myself in front of a TV that's bigger than my apartment. “What's on?”

“You'll love this show,” she says, flipping the channel to something called (I think) The Modern Family. It has all the current memes: the gay couple, the divorcees, the dysfunctional siblings. Shows like this are one of the reason I DON'T have cable TV. There's a scene... outside a restaurant... a guy and a girl-- she much younger, but still legal... his wife in the series, I think. He says something. She slaps him across the face, then grabs his chin and kisses him smack dab on the mouth. My sister laughs.

Could you imagine if the roles were reversed? Could you imagine an older man, slapping a younger woman across the face, then grabbing her chin and kissing her full on the mouth? The tyrants from Social Justice Warriors would be all over them. Boycott the sponsors! Shut 'em down. How could they allow... Violence against women!! Jeezus fuck! But this violence passes with a laugh.

What's the reality? Why is there a Violence Against Women bill, but not a Violence Against People bill? Why is the harassment of women in the military a more important issue than the military itself-- murdering hundreds of innocent people thousands of miles away?

Another YouTube video... this one of a hotel lobby. A young black woman hits a big black guy and they get in an elevator together. Flash to inside. Again the woman hits the guy... this time, he hits back. She's down. But what gets reported? RAY PRICE attacks his fiancée. Her initial violence isn't mentioned once (at least not that I've found).

Ray Price is found guilty of domestic violence. Not guilty in a legal court, but in the newsprint court... in the broadcast court... he's guilty. He's big and black so he MUST be guilty. Right?

“Hitting a woman is not something a real man does, and that’s true whether or not an act of violence happens in the public eye or, far too often, behind closed doors,” says President Obama.

Football to Get Tough on Domestic Abuse, headlines every paper in America. That is not EQUALITY. That is gender supremacy. This is Guilty until Proven... forget the proof! GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.

Okay, let's get this straight. I HATE football. It is war in miniature... a glorification of organized violence. It's played by idiots and controlled by jocks. Yet people are surprised that football players are violent???? They're SUPPOSED to be violent. That's their job!

All that doesn't change EQUAL PROTECTION. Idiots have rights too! That includes the right to a trial and a presumption of innocence. It includes the right for both parties to say: FORGET ABOUT IT. IT'S OVER. LET'S MOVE ON!

But we won't move on. We'll run around in circles. Cheering violence, then condemning those who are violent (especially to women). It makes me sick. Excuse me while I run to the bathroom. Maybe I'll make it this time.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me 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 by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

(Sorry buckaroos, no endnotes this time. The column, itself, takes up too many words this month. You can check out several endnote-type postings on my clippings blog.)

-end-