Of Course It’s Bad, Look Who Did It OR Mykel Board's August 2025 Blog

 

   

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

BOING! or Mykel's December 2024 Blog: YOU'RE STILL WRONG

 

BOING! or Mykel's December 2024 Blog: YOU'RE STILL WRONG

You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's

December 2024 Blog/Column

BOING!

Satori is a brief flash. Suddenly the light breaks through. For a short timeless time we experience eternity in its unmanifest form.  
                                                                                      – Frederick Lenz

Sometimes a revelation comes with a flash of heavenly light and a booming voice and sometimes it is jotted in a sun-bleached spiral notebook.
                                                                                    -- Jeffrey A. Lockwood

I don’t know how I missed it… must be a new one. At least a dozen people.... in the middle is a guy… early twenties… shirtless… barefoot… in jeans… five people around him. Running their hands over his body… up... down… across his chest… stopping to caress a nipple… watch it harden. Another two pairs of hands between his legs… one pair around his calf, the other higher… on the inside of his thigh… higher… moving toward action central. A hand moves up... strokes his fly… the bulge behind the hand becomes bulgier. The fingers of that hand fiddle at the top of the zipper… slowly slide it down… move back up to the metal button at the top of his jeans… The other pair of hands reach up hook over the waistband… pull down… pants and underpants together… moving slowly… until BOING! Up it pops, now revealed… hard and ready for action. Me? My action is spent, and needs a bit of cleaning up.

That’s what I want to write about this month. That BOING moment. The instant that gets me off. In American haiku and Japanese zen they refer to the Aha Moment. Christians call it an epiphany. The Buddhists say satori. It’s a second… or sliver of a second… where you realize something or think in a way you’ve never thought before… a kind of revelation.

I’ve had several in my life… but all too often I let them go and though I learn from the moments, I lose the experience… the thrill… the fun of that second. Part of the problem is not recording the moment… not putting virtual ink to virtual paper and training my muscle memory to use what I’ve just discovered.

In porn, BOING moments appear in every decent segment. I shout BOING from the bed just as it happens… that flip of the flesh baton… and often relieve myself exactly then. But, even without orgasm, those moments in everyday life change me… sometimes giving me insight… understanding… that I’ve never had before.

FLASH TO THE PLATFORM OF THE 6 TRAIN… UPTOWN TRACK. As a New Yorker, I know enough that the end cars are the emptiest and the middle cars are the fullest. During the crowded day time, I stand at the end of the platform, knowing that I’ll likely get a seat. At night, I stand in the middle of the platform, knowing in the fuller car that stops there, I’ll be much less likely to be mugged.

It’s about 4:30 in the afternoon... peak of pre-rush hour traffic. As I go down the stairs, I see that the train is already at the platform. I run to the front… the first car... where the engineer sits. Today, that engineer leans out his window as I stand in front of him. I can see that that car is nearly empty. I lift my leg to step in.

“You may want to move to another car,” says the engineer.

“Thanks, but this is fine for me,” I answer.

He shrugs as I step inside.

I take a seat by engineer’s compartment and look around at the nearly empty car. Sitting on the other end of the car is a naked man. A black guy… late 20s… early 30s. Sitting on a narrow seat. Good parts hidden between his legs… no BOING moment here. A few other people sit singly around the car. No one is talking… or even looking at anyone else.

STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS booms the voice over the loudspeaker. Just as the doors start to close, a white guy… truck-driver type... pries them apart and enters the car. He takes a seat at the end of one of the long benches against the train wall. The doors do not close, but open fully and we sit there. The white guy… shaved head, some kind of working class work clothes… stands up and stands right in front of the naked guy. He shouts at him… gestures… points his finger.

The naked guy takes a pair of gray sweatpants from the seat next to him… slips into them. The white guy continues his harangue. The now not-quite-naked guy stands and shouts back. My punkrock-wrecked hearing prevents me from understanding the words exchanged. All I can tell is that the semi-naked man is losing his patience and begins to stomp around the car. My cheek muscles tense in ever-growing fear.

The bald white guy continues his barrage of words… but slowly backs away from the now-shouting-no-longer-naked guy. I stand and head for the still open doors. The few other passengers in the car do the same. We leave and walk into the next car where a few seats remain… not empty, but with room to squeeze in.

I squeeze into a narrow space forcing the man-spreading guy next to me into a more closed-knees position. Finally, the doors shut and the train chugs north to Astor Place. A respectable-looking… lightish skinned black guy with a gray goatee... sits across from me and says something. I cup my hand behind my ear in the universal sign for HUH? He speaks louder, tilting his head to indicate the car we just left.

“That’s why I voted for Donald Trump!” He says with the verbal exclamation mark clear at the end of his sentence.

BOING!

FLASH TO UNINTENTION: I had planned to avoid politics in this post. But in order to get that BOING, I have to bring them into the mix. First some history: My analysis of the election went something like this:

There were two sides in the election. One side was a radical group of outsiders... extreme and unafraid to express that extremity. Aiming at Americans who were fed up… who wanted change… and wanted forcefulness and principles. The other side was a group of people with no principles… changing willy-nilly to fit what they perceived to be the mood of the audience. No ideas to offer except Vote for us because we’re not them.

The radicals won.

I still think that was largely true, but at this BOING moment I realize there’s more. Fear and anger… mostly stoked by the press… sometimes by real-life chaos… by a naked man in a subway car. People are angry. They don’t want more of the same… they don’t want wimpy here today changed tomorrow solutions. They want big changes NOW. Their fear needs a cure.

Get it Mykel? It’s not (only) a bunch of rebels who want the government to take money away from poor people, throw “aliens’’ into concentration camps, and keep women barefoot and pregnant. It’s ordinary people just fed up with what’s going on around them. It’s everyday folks with no ideology or political bent… but they want SOMETHING DONE. They want some control over their lives… or… if not control… they want stability. They want to be able to walk into a subway car and NOT find a naked man sitting there. They watch the news and see reports about some crazy guy stabbing strangers with a kitchen knife and they wonder who’s next.

The reasons for the Trump victory are many. We each like to frame it our own way. With the reasons we like substituting for the reasons that are. People voted for Trump to oppose abortion… whoops, most of the pro-abortion ballot initiatives PASSED. So that’s not it. People voted for Trump because they wouldn’t vote for a woman. Whoops, Trump’s key cabinet positions were given to women. And on and on.

Just wait for the BOING moment. Maybe you’ll learn. That grey-goateed man gave me mine.

Ah, here’s another BOING moment… and it involves a train. It happened a couple years ago, but the memory of it returned to me as I was talking with a couple Indians (red dot, not feather) at the Bleecker Street Bar. (Not on Bleecker Street, by the way.)

Maybe I wrote about this before, but it fits so well into this theme that I need to do it again. I’m in Mumbai. Staying with the friend of a friend. You’ve probably seen the pictures of Indian trains… people grab onto the outside of the train as it travels from place to place above ground…. Hanging off the car like Mardi Gras dancers hang off parade floats.

On either side of the doors on Indian trains there are metal poles… parallel to the doors… perfect for hanging on to once you’ve climbed up a step or two toward the doors. (In India, the trains… at least THESE trains… have doors that never shut.)

I’ve just walked to the station… shocked and pissed off at the way people on the street will push me out of the way in order to pass. I get so angry at being pushed, that I push back… once… but really hard. One guy nearly falls to the sidewalk. Boy, did I feel good. That’ll teach him a lesson.

Back at the station… the train pulls in. After a few people enter the car, I jump up… on the second step… grab ahold of the poles… lean back and prepare for the ride… but whoa… the poles are greasy… likely from the sweat of the hundreds of others who have grabbed onto it during earlier train journeys. I feel myself tilting back. Losing my grip falling backwards… likely head first onto the platform. Will I die in India? In Bombay? The train’s engine has started… it will move any second now… flinging me to the side.

Then I feel it. A pair of hands under my ribcage on the right side…. Another pair of hands holding tightly on the other side. The two sides working in tandem lift me into the air… completely off the trainsteps… suspended… shifted away from the train and set down… a whole Mykel Board… alive and well on the train platform. Heroically saved by two strangers who missed their train… two anonymous heroes. BOING!

Instant awareness. The gentle nudge out of the way comes from a crowd culture, and a fixation on time. But the people here… yes the people… the people are great… deserving of respect rather than a glare of hostility… They are ready in a moment to give up something for the benefit of a stranger. NOW I get it.

One more… It must’ve been a quarter of a century ago… or more. My father then was my age now. Like mine now, his body was starting to fall apart. He, like me, was post-prostate and not enjoying it.

“Mickey,” he says to me, “I just don’t get it… the piss urge. I can walk around all day… drink a beer… or two. No problem. But as soon as I get within a football field of home… I can’t hold it. Psssshhhhh. Blam! I just have to let go.”

“But Dad,” I say. “You know that means it’s psychological. If the urge hits hard when you near a familiar crapper… you know the urge comes from your head, not your bladder.”

“Tell that to the Depends,” says Dad.

BOING! Just knowing that something… pain or piss-urge… is psychological, doesn’t make it hurt less or the urge less urgent.

My 50-year old self never realized that. I figured that once you know that something is psychological… I mean really know and believe it… then you have control over it. BOING! THAT’S WRONG. All those medical tests… with control groups. They’re just wrong. Scientists call it The Placebo Effect and in most medical tests… BOTH the placebo group and the “real medicine” group get better. Just because something is “only” in your mind doesn’t make it any less authentic than if it lies in the scar tissue of your prostate.

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]

–> Pet Peeve Dept.: CNN reports that shit frequency affects general health… or responds to general health. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk POOP! Since when did that baby-word come into general (and medical!) use? Feces and defecate I can put up with… they sound medical… and shit is shit. But when mainstream news organizations start using baby talk to avoid taboos… It just makes me want to pee pee on them.

→ BOING! Pee Dept: No, Boing Pee is not a city in China. It’s one of those ahah! Moments discovered by travel writer, Rick Steves. He talks about post-prostate incontinence as a way to understanding. His view is different from Dad’s. For him, it wasn’t understanding the psychological vs the actual medical problem… For him, it was about understanding women. We all know that the girls gotta go… and they worry about laugh-pissing, cough-pissing, fart-pissing… Things that boys never think of… unless it happens to them. I never before thought about what it must be like.

→ Kenya Contacts Wanted: I finally bought my tickets. I’ll be going to Kenya via London in Feb-March of next year. Stay tuned here for reports. Right now, I’m looking for contacts and info about Kenya. I can’t find one Kenyan restaurant in New York City! I don’t even know what Kenyan food is like. I’m trying to learn a little Swahili. When I was in my 20s and had a memory and the ability to hear stuff, I could pick up languages like a dog owner picks up dog poo. Those skill are gone. In my experience, Africans are the best in the world at language. Most Africans I know can speak three languages (trade language, colonial language and local tribal language) before they sprout pubic hair. So, I should be able to get by in English.. but I don’t want to. Nimejaribu angalau Kiswahili kidogo. If you have any Kenyan connections, please connect me. Give my email address freely to any Kenyan you might know. mykelboard@gmail.com. I hope I can hold it until I get to the airport.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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.

Here's a start:

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’Brian 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. mykelboard@gmail.com

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH? Mykel's October 2024 Blog

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

The Truth! or Mykel's October 2024 Blog: YOU'RE STILL WRONG

You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's

October 2024 Blog/Column

THE WHOLE TRUTH

If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!

--Mark Twain

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

– J. K. Rowling

Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around.

– Frank A. Clark

Somewhere in the south of France an invasion has come from somewhere in the north of Africa. A row of tanks… just left the warship… works its way from Marsailles toward Paris. Somewhere in the middle of that row… not the exact middle… maybe a place best described as forward middle… is a tank with a driver and two gunners.

The line of tanks stops … somewhere in an open field… maybe a farm. It’s quiet here in the late afternoon. The driver stands to open the hatch at the top of the tank. He’s a young soldier… mid-twenties at the latest. He reaches up to push the hatch open. As the young man stands... his right arm above his head holding the hatch open… a whistling comes across the sky. Then... an explosion… several. One of the little missiles hits the open hatch… explodes… blowing the man into the air… separating the man from the arm that opened the hatch. Carrying the man up and away from the tank… into the field. A pool of blood next to him makes a Rorschach pattern destined never to be interpreted. The next little missile hits the tank dead on… blowing the gunners inside into little pieces.

The now one-armed tank driver awakens on a cot in a field hospital. He barely notices his transfer from there to a truck… filled with portabeds… several of those lying on the beds moan loudly. A few scream out in pain. Others are dead still.

FLASH TO Emma Silverberg now looking into her mirror. She sees how her neck wrinkles where it meets her chest. There’s a little hollow in that spot… shaped like a sideways eye. She reaches behind her neck with her right hand… grabbing the skin of her neck… pinching it between her palm and fingers… watching the ugly little pocket disappear as the skin pulls tight.

“Maybe if I taped it,” she thinks. “Duct tape would hold… it holds everything.”

I’m imagining this as I sit in her living room waiting for her to meet me for dinner at Arby’s. I’ve been visiting her for almost ten months now. It’s part of a program called VISITING NEIGHBORS where lonely people who want company meet and go out to eat… or see a movie. Sometimes they need help getting around. Usually, they just need company.

Emma is slightly older than I am… just past eighty. It’s easy to see that she used to be a beauty. Her eyes remain bright blue and though the lids wrinkle on them, those eyes show an intensity that clearly melted the hearts of dozens of young men… and maybe women.

She did not grow fat in her old age, but I can tell that her weight shifted. Her breasts drooped. Her muscles turned soft and flabby. She still dresses like I imagine her dressing 50+ years ago. Tight black sweaters, short slinky skirts, shoes with heels so high and thin that, more than once, I’ve had to catch her in a stumble. It’s time for a change. I know that. And this evening I’m going to tell her.

She’s coming down the steps now. Gripping the banister tightly to keep her balance. She’s dressed like she always does, except tonight, she wears dark stockings with a single seam up the back… from ankle to that small area I’m unable to see.

“How do I look?” she asks me.

I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry Emma,” I say. “But someone has to tell you… You’re older than I am but you dress like a teenager. People laugh behind your back. They’re annoyed when you stumble in front of them in your too-high heels...” and I go on.

FLASH TO CALVIN, SITTING ON HIS MILK CRATE ON BLEECKER AND LAGUARDIA “Yo Calvin!” I say to him, “You been waitin’ for me?”

He laughs. “I’m always waitin’ for you,” he says, “or somebody else who’ll give me a dollar.”

I fish in my watch-pocket were I keep my homeless single dollar bills. I pull one out and hand it to Calvin.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to face a very stern-looking woman, about 40. She frowns… pulling her eyebrows closer together… wrinkling her forehead.

“Why do you give him money?” she asks. “He could be working. You’re keeping him on the street. Let him get a job…. Do something.”

She walks away in a huff... like I’ve insulted her. I hope I have.

HANG ON: That story about the tank commander is true. That man was my father. The story was right from my one-arm dad’s mouth… I wasn’t there, but I believe every word of it. The story of Emma and my comments to her was a lie… made up on a bus on its way to from New York to Boston. (We’re almost in Danbury as I write this).

The third story, about Calvin, I’m not sure of. I remember somebody somewhere complaining about my giving money to street people, but the details are lost on me. File that one under I Don’t Know.

That’s what I want to write about this time: TRUTH… during this last political month… charges of truth and lies hurl back and forth like missiles in a battlefield. I’m here to tell you IT DOESN’T MATTER.

ASIDE: I’ve often written about my friend Dawn. We’ve known each other for around 40 years. Our opinions overlap: she’s a Democrat. I’m a social-libertarian. She’s a feminist. I’m a social-libertarian. She’s interested in the possible. I want the impossible. In any case, I respect her as a deep thinker… and one area we agree on is TRUTH. We both think the made-up Mykel mistreated the made-up Emma. Her feelings, her pride, her self-esteem are more important that THE TRUTH. My father’s dead now. The truth won’t hurt him.

AN EXAMPLE OF TRUTH AT IT'S WORST

=====================
This blog will be posted a month and a few days before the presidential election. I predict a Trump victory. Most of my readers will be happy to know my predictions are usually wrong. I, of course, will be voting for SID YIDDISH, as I have in most every presidential election since Harry Truman.

As I write this, the election has turned into a bunch of LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE charges and counter charges. An army of fact-checkers calls out each side when one side says it advocated SHIT, where in TRUTH they advocated FUCK.

“I built a wall to keep out migrants,” says Donny the Trump.

“I helped draft legislation to make it hard for illegals to stay here,” answers Kamala the African-Indian.

“I helped draft legislation to make it hard for illegals to stay here,” answers Kamala the African-Indian.

No one says, “Let’s open up. Let’s let people go where they want to… live where they want to.” Oh no. That’s not realistic. (Code for able to be true.) Fuck realism. I want the impossible.

I don’t care if George Santos is really a gay son of holocaust survivors. I love the way he urged fellow-Republicans to come out of the closet. I love his creativity in making up an entire life: schools, jobs, personal history. These… er… trump any notion of TRUTH. His falsehoods are better than the truth can ever be.

FICTION is/can be more accurate than TRUTH… and it can reveal a greater truth than the truth itself.

“I stopped American jobs from going to China!” shouts Don in his brag about saving factory work.

“Together with President Biden,” counters the former and possibly future Prosecutor in Chief, “we have created more jobs than any president in the history of America.”

“No one should ever work.” is the opening sentence in a book by Bob Black called The Abolition of Work. Bob Black gets it. He tells both sides to fold the truth… the realistic…. the possible... into a long thin tube… and shove it up their collective asses. He does not talk about what’s real… likely... not even what can be achievable… but he’s right!

I don’t care if the Civil War was about slavery… as modern historians say… or only about not losing territory… as Abraham Lincoln said. It doesn’t matter which is true. Slavery had to go.

TRUTH is sometimes important… it’s how we learn and how we transfer knowledge… but it’s not the MOST important.

Like in my fictional account with Emma Silverberg, compassion is usually (always?) more important than truth. During that awful presidential debate there were “fact checkers” galore looking to catch a lie here or there. Who checks the fact checkers?

After the debate, factcheck.org wrote: Trump repeated his false claim that everyone — liberals and conservatives — wanted to end Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion.

That’s not true. Trump’s claim was that liberals and conservatives wanted THE STATES to decide about abortion rights. This may or may not be true, but the “fact” reported by factcheck is false.

Factcheck also said: The vice president claimed Trump’s economic policies led to “one of the highest” trade deficits in American history. But the annual trade deficits during the Biden administration have exceeded those under Trump.

Even by Factcheck’s own account, Harris said ONE of the highest trade deficits… not THE highest. It is likely BOTH had one of the highest. The fact-checker lied.

We could go on... but why? Why have a fact check at all? Why not just assume from the get-go that both sides are lying, and that there are things more important than the truth… especially compassion, vision, and goals… even if those goals are impossible... what people would call lies... they’re still more important than THE TRUTH.

Where are the compassion-checkers. Where are the source-checkers… what the source says may be fact or conjecture. Isn’t it more important to know if the source wants the same things you want? Where are the language manipulation checkers? The ones who value meaning over truth. The ones who catch the trick in I never shot John Smith… but you did stab him to death.

DONALD TRUMP: These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality. And we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast.

KAMALA HARRIS: And let me say that the United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported.

COMPASSION CHECK: Bing: Lack of compassion-- BOTH candidates: People come to our country because conditions in their own country… often caused by US policies… are so bad they need someplace better. They are Emma Lazarus’s Retched refuse from foreign shores. Kicking them out is like kicking away a dog huddled under a roof to get out of the rain. It is pure cruelty… true or not.

KAMALA HARRIS: What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy

SOURCE CHECK: It is likely TRUE that Goldman Sachs said that. But do you want a country run by Goldman Sachs? Do you want Wall Street making the decisions on what’s a good economy and what’s a bad economy? Do you want a view of a “strengthened economy” where the stock market is up and the streets are ever more crowded with homeless people?

KAMALA HARRIS: And now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care

LANGUAGE CHECK: Is abortion “healthcare?” Nowhere in the world is it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide healthcare. There are different definitions, however, on what healthcare is. Sometimes, abortion is clearly healthcare… where a birth can lead to the death of a mother, for example. Trump said he supports abortions in that case. In other cases, abortion may be provided by a healthcare worker, but it is not healthcare… except maybe mental healthcare, I’ll give it that.

Don’t get me wrong. I support abortion. Just walk down the street. You’ll see dozens of reasons to support abortion. There clearly should have been more of them… so many missed opportunities… But don’t call it healthcare just because a doctor does it. Is a facelift healthcare?

Get it? In national politics like in everyday interaction, there are things more important than the truth. I don’t care if Donald Trump improved the economy more than Joe Biden did. I care about what each consider an economic improvement. The truth is secondary (tertiary?). I don’t care if Kamala Harris came from a middle-class background and loved her nanny. How will a woman, who, for most of her life, worked to put people in cages, think of me if I end up on the street… needing to steal bread to eat for a day?

Catch words: extremism/ist leftwing, rightwing, fascist, authoritarian, communism/ist, air strikes… these are all ways to manipulate the language... truth or not.

Sometimes the truth is important, but, more often, there are things that matter more.

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 in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

→ MAYBE IT’S THE FUGU DEPT: In Japan, the number of people aged 100 or older has hit a new record – 95,119. Most of the centenarians are women, The world's oldest person, Tomiko Itooka of western Japan, is 116. Japan's oldest man, Kiyotaka Mizuno, 110, told local media that he has "no idea at all about what's the secret to my long life.”

→ BEFORE YOU WERE BORN DEPT: In the 1950s and 60s, nuclear weapons were considered insurance of peace through the theory of M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. If you destroy me, I’ll destroy you, so we’d better not start anything.
    I haven’t heard that term in ages. But I did hear of a new “Global Strategy Company” a national full-service political consulting firm with expertise in government affairs, public relations, and electoral politics. You probably guessed right. The name of the company is just perfect for politics 2024:

More at: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#sent/KtbxLwgsxqWWLGLgRcRcqFZqjlxngZhkHL

→ BETWEEN THE LEGS DEPT: The NY Post reports that men with small dicks, on average, earn about triple what men with large ones earn. Since, elderly rich men get more nookie than elderly poor men… I hope the rumor spreads… just like her legs. Truth or not, for someone pushing 80, it’s certainly a better hook than my bank account.

→ SPEAKING OF SHORT DEPT: Our (unwarranted) obsession with truth is best exemplified by a website that says (among other things): Napoleon wasn’t short, Marie Antoinette didn’t say “let them eat cake,” and no witches were burned during the Salem witch hunts. That’s another problem with “the truth,” it keeps changing.

See you in hell, redux,
Mykel Board

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:

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.

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

Here’s an update on the current URL for Sid Yiddish’s Dating Game (type) entry.

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.

And for a quiet smile and a much needed break for you and the dog, try G.C. Adams’ YouTube entry.

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