TOXIC or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's Blog Sept 2021

 

You're Still Wrong: Mykel's  September  Blog... Toxic 

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

September 2021 Blog/Column

A Toxic Environment!

by Mykel Board

“I’m not perverted, I’m just Italian.” --Andrew Cuomo

“No one should ever work.” --Bob Black

“Capitalism is slavery where the slaves have to pay their own room and board” –Mykel Board

“I had complained to friends that the Governor would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs” --Lindsey Boylan

=======================

“I can’t breathe!”

“Quick, clean out his nose… I can see it... filled with coal dust. He’ll smother!”

Cough… answer, “I’m not putting my fingers in another man’s nose! That’s disgusting.”

“He’ll die! Get it? He’ll die!”

Virgil knees on the filthy mine floor. Tentatively, he puts an index finger into Homer’s left nostril… scrapes it around… pulls it out… black with snot and coal dust.

“Now the other one, fast!”

Virgil pushes his finger into the right nostril of the man under him… twists… then back… and again loosens a pile of black dust. The tip of his finger is coated when he pulls it out of the man’s nostril.

“Now push on his chest… hard… make him breathe.”

Virgil puts a hand on either side of Homer’s chest… pushes hard… again… a thin stream of black drool oozes out of the corner of Homer’s mouth. Another chest press… another black drool down the side of the man’s face… then a cough… then another cough. Tears run from the corners of his eyes to the black ground beneath his head.

“He’s gonna make it. We’ll fix up a side-tipper and get him out of here on the tracks. The fresh air will bring him back.”

“Can’t we get him a doctor?”

“Are you kidding? The boss’d kill us! That’s just what we need... a safety-hazard report at some fuckin’ hospital. Joe Biden already wants to shut us down.”

FLASH TO a huge farm... hundreds of acres... somewhere in the West...strawberries. Bare-handed and bare-headed... dozens of workers bent over… stooped,,, to pick the berries. They too cough.

“Ay, madre-mia,” says a 22-year old Maria, just starting to show her pregnancy. She coughs.

“No puedo hacerlo mas. Voy a morir,” she coughs again. It’s the Round-up… pesticide...carcinogenic… dangerous to a fetus as well as to the mother.

No time to worry about cancer now... earn that $7500 for a year’s work. Bend and pick… bend and pick… bend and pick.

Ay, me duele la espalda,” she says.

“Shhh!” says the next worker. “Screw your back pain. You want to pay for that baby? You want to get pushed back to Mexico? Don’t complain! At least you have a job.”

She doesn’t know it yet, but she also has cancer. Her baby will be stillborn. 

And there’s this, directly from the internet

Amazon delivery drivers are reporting working ten to fourteen hours in a shift. This is in part because drivers are not allowed to return any packages from their routes, meaning drivers can make over 160 stops per shift.

With the Mentor app constantly monitoring drivers, every stop has to be accounted for. That leaves most drivers with no time to use the restroom on their ten hour shifts. Drivers need to use public restrooms such as ones inside grocery stores, so if their route does not include an area that has such a location, drivers have to make a long detour that could cost them their job. Because of these strict measures, drivers report using empty water bottles in their vehicles instead of stopping to use the restroom

LeRoy Jackson’s truckseat has molded itself to his ass. He spends nearly 14 hours a day there. On the floor, in front of the passenger seat… in a basket… half-filled with piss… is a jar. It’s that time again.

Pull over… hate to waste a minute or so… but if you gotta go… Could do with a shit too… but this rig’s got spyware up the ass. Too long stopped… not making deliveries… and you’re outta there.

Just a quickie… pull over… pull it out… just over the lip of the jar. Aaahh aaaahhh, shit. Filled the jar, spilled all over the place… and I got a delivery… 17 minutes to make it… computer checked. .. Better pull out... haul ass… Now!

Off the shoulder... into traffic… fuck!!! Nooo! Nooo!!!! BLLLLANNNNG!

Ellen’s face hurts from smiling. Bad jokes… send it back to the kitchen… too cold… too hot… “Miss… excuse me Miss!” She smiles. On her feet all day… rushing from table to table… balancing enough dishes to compete with a circus juggler… She smiles. $2.13 an hour, the U.S. minimum wage for tipped workers. (Look it up) plus what the cheapskates leave on the tables… That’s it. She smiles.

On her feet all day, Ellen comes home beat… ready to go to sleep… to hit the hay. She’s working six days a week to pay the $2000 a month she needs for her one-room NYC apartment. On the seventh day, she barely moves.

She puts up with the tugs on her skirt… the food complaints… the no tips for bad food as if she were personally responsible for the cooking. Sometimes she can wiggle her ass for a few extra dollars… or wink at a regular who stands so close to her when he speaks that she feels the saliva spray on her face. His handlebar mustache and affected cape make him look like a magician. If only he’d disappear. He’s there every day and she wants to kill him.

She’s a robot, she thinks. Same thing… day after day… no… I guess not... robots don’t collapse exhausted. Back to work… “Hey miss,” the tug on the skirt… the wrist-grab of the customer when she hands him the bill… the smile she gives in return. 

Hey you! Got it? Yeah you… you Karen… you whiner who thinks that being touched on the back is toxic. People die from their jobs… lung cancer, skin cancer, exhaustion… death… That’s toxic. Having a brain-dead job just to pay the rent. That’s toxic. Working with coal, asbestos, insecticide… that’s REALLY toxic.

But for you… another person touches you?… eeeewwww cooties. Joking about boyfriends? Intolerable! The job conditions have to fit YOU rather than the other way around.

Those at the bottom… the miners, the truck drivers, the waitresses... can’t just quit and find another job like you can… They die from work or they die from hunger… or a firing squad in a nation you can’t imagine. Or they suffer for two dollars an hour or whatever else they can squeeze out of people they hate.

Let me tell you… You fragile little Faberge egg… YOU are the toxic one. You are the one who has others shaking in their Nordstroms from fear of saying the wrong thing or touching you any more than shaking hands… and even that… don’t you just bump elbows these days? Doing push-ups? Oh, the horror!

Yeah you… You know how many people WISH they could get a $20,000 raise by fucking the boss? And you’re complaining that he asked.

Andrew Cuomo is rich enough to find other things to do. But how much fear is he bringing with him anywhere he goes. How much do John and Jane Doe fear from doing or saying anything inappropriate?

All jobs are bullshit. It’s the nature of work. Yours isn’t hunky dory? Then quit and get another bullshit job. Work 60 hours a week shifting ones and zeros from one computer to the next. As long as no one speaks to you.. or (Goddess forbid) touches you… you’re okay. Then the work isn’t toxic, right?

You wear a skirt and high heels to work… and (get this!) he looks at you!! How will you ever recover?

Do me a favor. Sniff some asbestos before you go to sleep. Do it often enough and you’ll learn a bit about toxic.

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]

–> Can’t find a webpage dept: A great story on the deteriorating conditions in the mining business appears in In These Times the September 2021 issue. I can’t find it on-line, so try to get a print copy. Called Dying To Make A Living, the coal conditions the article reports on are just horrible. 
          Wait, a reader, Don Smith, has found a link to the article. Here it is: https://inthesetimes.com/article/contracted-coal-miners-illinois-injury-danger

–> Dying for a job dept: The World Economic Forum reports that more than 2.3 million workers die every year as a result of occupational accidents or work-related diseases. That’s the entire population of Houston, Texas... killed every year from WORK. The alternative? Ah, how many times have I referenced this? You should have it memorized by now.

–> Evil Governor dept: While the women of America are sticking their pins in Cuomo dolls, the former governor has used his last days in office to grant pardons to 22 immigrants who were at risk of being deported. "New York stands strong in our support for immigrant communities," Cuomo wrote in a statement.

–> Not related dept: This one is from the Darwin Awards… that distinguished group of intellectuals who award the prize to those who clean up the future of the human race by offing themselves in their stupidity. I like this one it because it highlights another pet peeve! Cellphone fuckin’ selfies. Besides describing the awardee’s adventures, the Darwin folks offer some great advice:

25 March 2017, Mexico: Standing on a truck on an airport runway, our Double-Darwin Award Winners, Nitzia and Clarissa, chose a regrettable location for a cell phone selfie. Ms. Corral, 18, and Ms. Miranda, 17, were attending horse races that were held on a track adjacent to the runway. The noise of the races and the desire for a new profile picture distracted the young women. They did not hear the motor of the descending aircraft, and the wing of the small plane that struck and killed them instantly.

People, wake up to the plain hard fact that a mobile phone is a deadly distraction! Mobile devices take our awareness away from the physical world, and the Darwin Awards archives are stuffed overflowing with testimony proving the tragic truth of this.

Cell phones will kill you! Put them away and allow your senses to receive input from tangible reality. Please share this regrettable cautionary lesson, a public service announcement, #yourdeathmatters

–>Speaking of cellphones dept: Apple will be putting spyware in its operating system. Ostensibly to combat kiddie porn, the spyware will be looking at your pictures and videos and reporting any nastiness it sees to “the proper authorities.” And what will it be doing with the information it gleans from those non-kiddie pix? Hey, what a coincidence, that Antifa demonstration I just filmed showed up at the FBI. Imagine that? How did that happen?
The Electronic Frontier’s details on this are here.

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

You're Still Wrong March 2019 or LOCK UP!

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel's Blog for March 2019
or

LOCK UP!

The prisoners assemble in the shape-up room. Standing at attention… most of them anyway… a few slump… in rows of twenty across… about a dozen deep. The warden is in front, addressing the crew.

“Okay, now listen up. New rules starting today,” he shouts in that kind of voice that means here’s an announcement and you’d better fuckin’ pay attention.

“This bag,” he says... holding aloft and shaking a cloth bag... like the ones in old cartoons. This one, however, is not stenciled with dollar signs. It jangles. It “is filled with keys. They are the keys to your cells... the keys to each section… and the keys to the jail itself… I’m here to distribute them.”

Inmate eyebrows frown in near unison.

“We’re downsizing and figure it’s a waste to pay someone to turn a key. You can just as easily do it yourself…. So, when I call your names, I want you to walk up here and collect your keys. You’ll sign your name in the book as having received them. If you lose them, it’ll cost you big… so don’t.”

“Excuse me, sir,” says a voice from somewhere near the middle of the crowd, “are you giving us the keys to our own cells? I mean, are you saying we’re going to lock ourselves in at night, and unlock ourselves during exercise periods and visits?”

“You got it, Einstein,” the warden shouts back.

There’s a low murmur among the men… like the walla walla walla background noises in movie restaurant scenes.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” shouts the warden. “Wait for your name to be called… then walk up here and get your keys… then go and stand back where you were….”

He looks down at a clipboard. “LeRoy Anthony!” he shouts. “LeRoy Anthony, come and collect your keys.”

A guy, late 60s, slightly stooped... walks from the far end of the third row… toward the warden. Meanwhile, the warden sorts through his cloth sack… looking at the tags on the keys.

HOLD IT! HOLD IT MYKEL… What’s the point here? What are you trying to prove? You think a prison would ever give inmates the keys and trust them to lock themselves in?

It’s that damn Literary Device. She just can’t keep her mouth shut… breaking in at key points… spoiling the flow with stupid questions and stupider statements of the obvious. Just when I’m setting the stage.

“Yo! Literary Device,” I say, “Give me a few paragraphs.. I’ll explain the point… and YES, I think inmates would lock themselves in by themselves. How many commit crimes just to get back in jail because they can’t handle the outside world? How many WANT to be there? How many would be on the street sleeping over a subway vent if it weren’t for prison?”

She (Literary Device), makes a sweeping be my guest hand gesture, like the doorman at an expensive restaurant… and says nothing.

FLASH TO 2019: I sit on my bed… laptop on a tiny… shaky… wooden table… The laptop shares the table with a postal scale, a cup of green tea, the empty DVD box of NYMPHOMANIAC VOLUMES ONE AND TWO… subtitled Forget About Love.

In the next apartment, Harry Back sits at his desk, finishing his business plan for a start-up company: Your Bedroom, Your Spaceship. Through the wall, I can hear the DINGS, PINGS, and BABOOS of his computer… every once in awhile... a heartily whispered SHIT! or YES! FINALLY!

BZZZZZ! It’s the door buzzer. Someone is trying to get in the building. They ring all the buzzers until someone lets them in. Barefoot, I pad over to the intercom and shout into it.

WHOWIZZIT? AND WADDAYA WANT?

“Food delivery for Mr. Back.” comes the staticky answer.

NEX DAW! I shout back. DIS IS D. YOU WANT C.

“Sorry,” comes the heavily accented voice, “I try once more.”

In a minute or so, I hear the elevator open and someone walking down the hall. My neighbor opens his door, mumbles thanks and quickly closes it again. The elevator closes… then more PINGS and DINGS from his computer.

FLASH TO The New York Post, December 6, 2018: It turns out millennials love Amazon so much, they’d give up sex or alcohol to keep shopping there. A new survey revealed 77 percent of millennials would go without booze for a year rather than quit Amazon, and 44 percent would forego sex.

It’s 2PM. I sit naked but for boxer shorts, and an old TRIBE 8 t-shirt. I type these words on my Lenovo laptop. A large sticker on the outside of the laptop shows a picture of an apple with a bite taken out of it. The apple is in a red circle. A diagonal red line runs through that apple. Yeah, I’m making a statement.

No classes today. I have a few minutes to spare. Yesterday, I couldn’t write before I had to catch the subway uptown. I taught until 9... as usual. Then out with my students. Thursday, was Drink Club. Wednesday was Drink Club Secret (no link to that one). Tomorrow, I’ll probably go see Jennifer Blowdryer at Otto’s… or else go out for dinner with an old girlfriend… one of many who my Midas touch has turned full-time lesbo. Tonight, though, I have some time.

I still hear Harry through the wall. I mute my beeps and pips… he doesn’t. I wonder if he has his pants on yet. He’s not that good looking, so  thoughts of him sitting at a desk in his underwear do not bring blood to my limp asparagus. I bet his computer doesn’t have a NO APPLE sticker on the front.

I wonder if he ever goes out. I know he works from home. On at least one of the few occasions we’ve met, he’s told me how lucky he feels that he can be in the corporate world and not have to put on a tie. He did not mention putting on his pants.

I imagine his life: He sits… possibly pantsless... at a high-tech desk... One with an actual keyboard tray rather than just pulling out a drawer like normal people do. Behind him sits a small table… swivel distance… so he can type… turn... eat… maybe watch television… swivel back and keep working.

Lightbulb burns out? Pull up Amazon… he’s gotta be a prime member… maybe super-prime if there is such a thing. BING! Lightbulb delivered… right to the door. Time for dinner…. Uber Eats… this time… Chinese or Indian? Indian… great, there in half an hour… Wow! Vindaloo you could die for… uh oh… speaking of dying… it’s kind of a heavy hitter.

Pow! Off to the bathroom… exploding toilet inevitable… Whoa!! Almost out of Charmin! Use that last bit and call CVS for an emergency supply. They deliver and it’s quick… they’re just around the corner. Better order a dozen rolls. That’ll take care of Indian, Szechuan, and a runny nose for a month… almost.

You’re gettin’ it, huh? It’s not a fantasy about prisoners locking themselves up… with the keys to their own cells. We already have that. I go to a punk club… the only people in the audience are recent immigrants who don’t have the delivery system figured out-- or-- THEY are the ones delivering all the stuff to the voluntary inmates… self-locked in their apartments The bars empty out around 10PM… Few people eat out any more… restaurants close… unless they’re just a window… for delivery only. Ms Literary Device, do you get it now?

People don’t leave home… not even to work. They lock themselves in their private apartment cells and turn the key. They think they’re CONNECTED to other people, because they see a few memes on facebook. They think they’re involved in the world, because they can watch a YouTube video of sheep-herders on the steppe.

Folks in modern times have less physical contact (the Japanese call it skinship) than jailbirds. Don’t jailbirds fuck all the time? Isn’t that where the original meaning of PUNK comes from? The Harry Backs of the world jerk off to XNXX and that’s what passes for sex. It’s safer that way, huh? No disease. No pictures from someone else’s cellphone to get them in trouble when they run for… I donno, City Council?

The Harry Backs of today don’t go out into the world… they expect the world to come into them. They don’t go to India… they have it delivered. They don’t shop… meet neighbors at the supermarket… handle produce… squeeze the fruit. They have it FRESH delivered.

Jews and Latin folks are famous for touching each other… for making bodily contact. I once read about a 1960’s sociologist who watched same sex pairs at a table in an outdoor cafe. Two WASP American men talked to each other for an hour… they touched each other once. Two Frenchmen talking touched each other 160 times. Two Puerto Ricans… 180 times. (The report did not include Jews… but I think it’s clear that there’s not much difference between Jews and Puerto Ricans.) Two Brits… NEVER TOUCHED in an hour of conversation.

But now? NO ONE will touch. The way we’re going, there will be no one to touch! We’ll just sit in our little cells, locking ourselves in… opening the door for home delivery… then shutting it quickly again. I’m fuckin’ glad I’m old and won’t live to see 8 million jail cells in New York City. Delivery please! But then again….

Shit! There’s the doorbell. Hold on a minute…. Oh hi, you must be from the escort service… Your name’s Literary Device??? Come on, you’re shittin’ me. Well, come in… Can I get you something to drink before we start?

- end 1-

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

→ I’ve been saying it for years… part one dept: I’m usually as interested in the Oscars as I am in the Superbowl... as I am in gardening or macrame. But this caught my eye from Pop-Buzz.com. It said,

After thanking his parents, the Academy, his cast and Queen, Rami stated: "We made a film about a gay man, an immigrant who lived his life unapologetically himself and the fact that I'm celebrating him and this story with you tonight is proof that we're longing for stories like this". The sentiment was sweet but fans were disappointed that Rami called Freddie "gay".

Bisexuality invisibility came the complaint. And going even further, the complainers pull out this 2005 study that questions whether straight (or gay) people exist at all.

          In the 80s, it took real OUTRAGEOUSNESS to outrage people… Today, publicly scratching your balls is enough to start a twitterstorm.

       There is something to learn from this, though. The evils of BINARY THINKING:

GAY or STRAIGHT.

Trump is GOOD or Trump is SATAN.

And its corollary,
YOU EITHER SUPPORT ANY SHITHEAD THE DEMOCRATS NOMINATE or

YOU PERSONALLY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR TRUMP’S REELECTION.

       The second facebooker I ever banned, I banned on the stupidity of his binary thinking. “Most of my friends are not white.” I wrote. “Mykel is playing the MY BLACK FRIEND card,” wrote the now-banned “friend”… as if the only two racial choices are WHITE or BLACK. Where the fuck does he live? South Africa?

        Binary thinking is too common for outrage… but it’s just about right for stupidity. You’ve heard me talk about that for years.

→ I’ve been saying this for years… part 2: An article in the Financial Times says that the vegetarian/vegan boom is a bigger boom for corporate agriculture than it is for the earth. Much of supermarket vegan food is genetically modified… usually so it can take heavier duty insecticides… which in turn pollute everything around them. Also, the harvesting of crops is done by petroleum-heavy tractors.. and processed by resource-using electricity. Cows and other animals are “harvested” on horseback.

          One thing the article does NOT mention is how veganism is bad for animals. Instead of choosing to purchase humanely killed /organically raised meat, vegans take their money out of the meat-voting pool. This means fewer meat-eaters care what they eat, which means less demand to raise animals humanely… So the farmers, antibiotic users, and legislators simply don’t care.

→Moving to Vietnam dept: I’ve often thought about leaving the US. It really is an awful place to live… a shithole country. My cousin voted with his feet and now lives in Thailand. I have plenty of friends who’ve ditched the US for places far and wide. I don’t know anyone who’s gone to Vietnam, though. But given that medical care is so bad here… there do seem to be doctors after my own heart on the other side of the world. Check out this Vietnamese doctor who successfully saved someone’s life by pumping beer INTO his stomach.

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 facebookme 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:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog
• And another Goldberg:goldberg.wordpress.com
• I post a blog for Kyle Nonnemon, in prison for a ton of shit. He's a smart guy, with a passion for industrial metal and a general detestation of humankind. You can read his blog at: apothelema.blogspot.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.
• And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his  Mishegas Master Blog.

CONTACT REDUX: You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group:

readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.