EVERYONE Is Above The Law or Mykel's July 2024 Blog Entry

   

EVERYONE is Above The Law
or
Mykel's July 2024 Blog
aka  You're Still Wrong

The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread. 

– Anatole France

“The law roasted her to death at a slow fire.
                        –Mark Twain in The Prince and The Pauper

Practically all laws, whether they forbid me to take your car, outlaw racial discrimination, or coerce the payment of taxes, impose somebody’s morality on somebody else. 
                     –Stephen L. Carter

--------------------

I stand with half a dozen people at the northwest corner of Broadway and Houston Street. A cacophony of horns blasts from the barely moving cars and trucks. If this were a symphony, every thirty seconds or so, a conductor would cue a VROOOM VROOOM screaming from motorcycles... and cars that wish they were motorcycles. No one looks at the traffic lights. The red-handed DON’T WALK sign hides behind the school bus blocking the crosswalk at the corner.

From our standing-at-the-corner crowd, an attractive young woman in twat-shaping shorts, steps from the curb into the traffic. Stepping hard… intentionally… she weaves her way through the cars to reach the divider in the middle of the street. Her move has given me the courage to try it… and I twist and turn my way to the middle divide. So does a mom pushing a stroller. Then a tourist trying to follow his cellphone map.

Slowly we wind our ways through the traffic until one by one we reach the other side of Houston Street. None of us notices or cares about the lights… and it’s the same for the traffic we’re weaving through. They don’t care either.

FLASH TO WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT: I tried asking Google (actually DuckDuckGo) how many federal laws there are. It turns out nobody knows. The last attempt to count them was in the 1980s. The result “was scattered among 50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law.”

Of course, there are also state, city, and local laws… new ones coming and going every day. The laws are constructed –some by accident, some by intention– so that EVERYONE will be a lawbreaker at one time or another.

I haven’t been in high school since 1968. It’s likely things have changed since then. When I was in school, Social Studies taught us that America was a Nation of Laws. Unlike dictatorships… like Russia, where HUMANS rule arbitrarily, in America everyone must obey the same laws. It doesn’t matter if you’re Al Capone or Jane Fonda. The law applies to all of us.

“In America, everyone is equal before the law,” Mr. Greenspan told us. “There is no aristocracy here… no dictatorship.”

Even then, I thought something was fishy about that idea. Al Capone was a gangster. The guy behind the machine gun that The Untouchables were always fighting. But what sent him to prison? TAX EVASION. He didn’t pay the government on the money he stole from those dead guys. It seemed to me that mass murder from the end of a machine gun was a more deserving crime than tax evasion. But that was the only way they could get him.

FLASH AHEAD TO 2325: A teenage Mikhail Boardinov is struggling against the body lock placed on him by Robocop4870-UB.

 “You are under arrest,” says the 4870… whose mellow voice is uncannily like that of HAL in 2001.

“What for?” asks Boardinov. “I know you don’t like what I say sometimes. But I have a right to say it.”

“Of course you do,” answers the Robocop. “This is a free country… You’re not in Russia.”

“Then why am I being arrested?” asks Boardinov.

“You know why,” says the Robocop. “You’re not being arrested for your beliefs or your writing. You’re being arrested for breathing without a license.”

“How do you know I don’t have a license?” asks Boardinov, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with my vocal opposition to the merger of AmazAppleGoogleSoft with the US government, would it?”

“Of course not,” comes the reply. “You know about climate change. You know how bad carbon dioxide is for the earth. Humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. You know that the law requires a breathing license for every citizen… and that all citizens must document at least 3 periods of one minute each day… where they stop breathing in order to help save the planet. You are a selfish bastard… not caring about the earth or anyone in it besides yourself… and if you had a license, you’d show it to me.”

FLASH TO 2024: As I write this, Donald Trump has finished his trial about paying a pornstar hush-money^®, but like Al Capone’s trial, the reason for the court is violation of some business expense reporting.

Donald Trump is an outsider. Before his previous term in office, he was without experience with the Washington politicos. He was a businessman and an entertainer. And he lived his life according to the rules of those professions. I can’t imagine a successful businessman who doesn’t have an accountant or lawyer he pays to fiddle the books. The pornstar makes the news. Few people know – or care – about the buisiness law.

In Florida, they’re bringing Trump to court for boxes of classified documents on the floor of his bathroom. No he didn’t piss on them, at least not as far as I know. He didn’t do anything with them except leave them in his house. And they raided that house. The Feds tore the place apart looking for… for whatever they could find. A little later they raided Joe Biden’s house too. Found a few classified docs. Poof! that was the end of it. No big deal for Joe, but Donny Trump had to go to court.

And now the Repubs are getting into the act. They can’t get Joe, so they go after his kid… cooking up a violation of some federal gun laws for an ILLEGAL purchase of a revolver... a decade and a half ago… and they’re still looking to dig up some law to prove the kid’s an undercover secret agent for Ukraine or someplace else in The East.

GET IT???

There are so many laws in this country that anyone at any time is guilty of violating something. The function of the law is NOT that all people are subject to all laws. That would mean jail for EVERYBODY. The function of the law is to provide a means for powerful people to GET those they don’t like. It allows good-old-boy cops to arrest black drivers going five miles over the speed limit. Not because they’re black (wink wink), but because THEY VIOLATED THE LAW. They were speeding. Laws allow colleges to break up peaceful demonstrations, not because the big donors don’t like the ideas of the protesters, oh no, ever that… but because the demonstrators were OBSTRUCTING. And that’s AGAINST THE LAW.

Mr. Greenspan was wrong. The purpose of the law is not to make some rules that apply to everyone equally all the time. The purpose of the law is to control or punish people the lawmakers don’t like. American elections have become not who wins at the ballot box, but who stays out of court… and the corollary, who stays out of jail.

Along with the US, other third-world countries have adopted the same system. Pakistan and Thailand have both jailed the “opposition,” using the law as an excuse. Nelson Mandela spent 20 years in prison in South Africa before JUSTICE finally beat LEGALITY and he became president.

Of course Donald Trump is guilty of violating the law. Every one of those people crossing against the light on the corner of Houston and Broadway was guilty of violating the law. Every person in the United States is guilty of violating the law… or a law… or multiple laws.

The law does not “hold violators accountable.” The law provides the violation to punish people out of favor with those in power.

See you in hell,

Mykel Board

LATE ADDITION: Just before I’d planned to post this, the Supreme Court issued a decision saying that “Presidential Immunity” means… er… Presidential Immunity. Much of the plot to let the courts, instead of the voters, decide the next president has been lost. That’s a good thing. Friends and regular readers know I’m a Trump agnostic. He’s done selfish and serve-the-wealthy things, Can you say cutting rich and corporate taxes? But he also kept us out of war, opened up a dialog with North Korea, and pardoned thousands of non-violent jailed humans. I don’t think his election will mean DEATH TO DEMOCRACY. Democracy has been dead a long time.

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]

→A FISH LAW DEPT: Hand-fishing without a license is illegal in Kansas. Anyone who plans to hand-fish must first get a hand-fishing license in addition to a hook-biting fishing license. Even with a license, however, it is only legal to hand-fish flathead catfish from sunrise to sunset June 15 through August 31 along the Arkansas River, all federal reservoirs beyond 150 yards of a dam, and the whole stretch of the Kansas River. Everywhere else, you have to keep your hands to yourself.

 → SPEAKING OF FISH AND HANDS DEPT: In Gainesville County, Georgia, it is against the law to eat fried chicken except with your bare hands. As for enforcement: in 2009, a 91-year-old visitor from Louisiana was arrested and charged for eating fried chicken with a fork. 

→ GETTING MARRIED ON THE WAY DOWN! DEPT:  Unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be fined or jailed in Florida. You know sometime, somewhere, a bachelorette parachuted on Sunday. It was her passion. Then, some unrequited state legislator decided to teach her a lesson. I’ll get you, you bitch! Take THIS law!

There are a ton more of these super-weird laws. You can google them. At first, they seem funny. But there’s something sinister behind all of them.

→ IT MAY BE A CULT… BUT Dept: I’ve been on the LaRouche mailing list for a long time. The cultishness and conspiracy focus have usually put me off them. But they are often so logical, and print news that you just can’t get elsewhere. This is a translation of part of a Putin speech… and it makes a lot of sense

See you in hell (redux)
MB

THE NATION AGAIN:

In the newest issue are a couple of worthwhile columns: There’s a good one by Adolph Reed Jr. It’s sumarized in this quote: Liberal policy offers sympathy to those sleeping on the streets, but stops fhort of giving the shewhere to live..

And there’s another good one by the often right, Jeet Heer, on the necessity of cleansing the Democratic Party of the remains of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, and building a true alternative to the Republicans. Also the column talks about the Dems abandoning young people (Hillary Clinton on young followers of Trump vs. Bernie Sanders fans: “At least they shave.”)

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions many I’d 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, superstar comic writer, Justin Melkmann and possibly the next vice-president of the US, Charles Bukkake.

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 on-line 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!

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.

Longtime writer, Randall Fleming, has a new book out about the reversal of flag desecration. In his view, the right And more generally it’s about political violence in the 21^st century.

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.

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

Throwing Away The Key or Mykel's January 2024 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's January 2024 Blog/Column 

Throwing Away The Key    

by Mykel Board

Sexual harassment at work... is it a problem for the self-employed?

– Victoria Wood

The liberal idea of tolerance is more and more a kind of intolerance. What it means is 'Leave me alone; don't harass me; I'm intolerant towards your over-proximity.
- Slavoj Žizek

Being desired is not the same as being harassed, and we do not have to punish or shun the person who sees what is special about us.

- Sarah Schulman

I’m not a pervert. I’m Italian.

--(former) Gov. Andrew Cuomo

Imagine a skeleton key… a metaphysical key… It opens locks others can never open. It opens doors… you can walk right in. Others wait for hours in the cold rain. It’s a key you always carry… You can’t leave it at home… You can’t forget it… No one can steal it… It’s yours and yours alone.

Would you complain? Would you say that the doors you open are dishonestly opened? Would you say that the doors… the treasure chests… the secret passageways... opened by the key... are unfair? Would you kvetch that the locks require a key in the first place? Would you grumble that others are allowed entrance by working for days… weeks… months to be let in, when all you have to do is have a little key insertion and BINGO, the lock opens?

Listen up ladies! You have the key. It rests securely between your legs. Free for your use… at least until menopause… often beyond. Yet you complain. A prominent producer wants to trade a little nookie for a starring role. What do you do? Throw the guy in jail. Put him and his walker behind bars for offering you a shortcut to fame. What did he do? Forcible oral sex????? The guy’s a cripple and he “forcibly performed oral sex”??? All you had to do was press your knees together and stand up. But why bother? Others have to work for their part… audition… do screen tests… wait weeks for a “maybe.” You have the key.

Work for the governor? Your chance to grow in politics… get ahead just by being nice. That squeeze… that hug.. you got… Oh my God, he pressed against my breasts… I’ve seen harder breast-pressing between two disgustingly hetero jocks greeting each other in a bar. You couldn’t put the guy in jail, but you got him to resign.

Then there's 

Stormy Daniels, who did better. Trump pays over $100,000 in a “non-disclosure” deal. What a bonanza… greedy Stormy discloses anyway. Then she accuses the president of “defaming” her and tries to get even more money! Can you get greedier? I’ll take your money then sue you while disclosing what you paid me for NON-disclosure. Ah the profit in #MeToo#... if you’re early. But let me tell you, girls, in your #MeToo#itude, you’ve ruined it for others.

From Theda Bara to Mae West, to Jane Mansfield to Bo Derek to Drew Barrymore. How many others fucked their way to the top? Marilyn Monroe screwed the President of the Untied States… and his brother! How many others followed the same path? All of them? Is that wrong? Evil? They’re sex symbols for fuck’s sake. Sex Sex Sex Fuck Fuck Fuck. Are you saying that someone who represents sex is wrong for fucking? We called them “sex symbols” for a reason. What’s wrong with you... forcing women to throw away that chance?

Maybe it’s too late. Maybe you’ve already ruined it for everyone... taken away the skeleton key.. the free pass used for decades by beautiful seductive women who want to play the part of beautiful seductive women. Want to make it in the movies in 2024? Go for an interview, fill out a few forms, just like ugly people have to do. No more shortcuts. Your fellow females have seen to that.

But wait! It gets worse. Believe the women! Is the new call… Right up there with It’s not WHEN it happened, but THAT it happened… a complete rejection of the concept of forgiveness I’m not a fan of the new mottos. I’m old fashioned. I like innocent until proven guilty, and this one by Confucius: Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass. but that thinking is sooooo last century.

Yes, you’re greedy scum. That’s clear. This is America and that’s the way things work here. But don’t call yourselves feminists… at least not in the sense of people who support women. You’ve ruined the most important benefit you’ve got. You’ve made it HARDER for women to get ahead… to make it big. A few of you will strike it rich with #MeToo#… more will be back in the mailroom with no way out. That’s what you call feminism.

I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ve never been a woman. [Aside: One of the few things in my life that I’m ashamed of is that I’ve never even worn a dress. Even those awful frat jocks wear a dress on occasion. On Halloween… or football celebrations… they are at least free enough to express their inner transgenderism. Once or twice, maybe… but they do it. Me? Never… and I’m ashamed.] 

I can imagine the harassment... sitting by yourself at a bar (though there are always the free drinks from strangers), walking down a dark street by yourself, unable to relax at that deserted place in the park, an unwanted pregnancy. Those are things that I rarely –or never-- experience. Womanhood DOES have its disadvantages. I’ll surely admit that.

But I’ve also never experienced a job offer traded for a blow-job. I’ve never been able to a get a better tip by showing more leg. I’ve never been able to shake my tuchus and get an extra $50 bill stuffed in with the Christmas bonus.

Those benefits of being a woman are being destroyed… by YOU… in the name of feminism you’re bringing equality instead of by raising up… by pushing down. Instead of by enjoying those few things that are biological perks of twat-endowment, you’re wringing cash out of them and then destroying them for use by anone else in the future. But wait.. it could (and will) be worse.

Some cultures, like the Italian and Jewish cultures, touch each other all the time. We hug greetings and partings. We make conversational points with a slap on the shoulder or the pinch of the knee. We’ll have an arm around each other’s neck.. gender ignored… just to show friendship.  

You’re killing that now. Both Andrew Como AND Joe Biden have been accused of inappropriate touching. Woody Allen and Steve Tyler too. I’m no fan of Joe Biden, but come on… he hugs kids? How many Hugs Not Drugs bumper stickers does it take to explain that hugging kids is A GOOD THING. In 2024, kids live enough in screen-induced isolation, from phone to computer to TV, Now they have to live where adults are afraid to TOUCH them. That means involuntary lifelong isolation… except maybe for sex. And then, touching WILL ONLY mean sex… not friendliness, affection, or mishpocha. And it’ll be YOUR FAULT. Plus, given the speed of technological development, I would be surprised if sex itself weren’t outlawed. Why go through that gross humiliation when you can be artificially and sterilely inseminated by a machine?

FLASH BACK: Groupies are a tradition in music. Musicians got laid. Ian Dury’s Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll was a report card of what everyone knew. Yet in this millennium, singers from R. Kelley to Michael Jackson to punk rockers I’ve never heard of are accused of sexual misconduct. Look! This is Rock’n’Roll… the only sexual misconduct is NO SEX!

Sorry, forgive the digression. It’s all related but not the point.

So what exactly IS the point, Mykel?

Shit, is that you Literary Device? You come to harass me… tell me its just about consent or maybe age and consent.

Do I need to give consent when Granma Board gives me a big hug hello? Or maybe only women need to give consent. Antioch College (now gone) reached the height to stupidity in it’s required consent forms of last century… with dozens of questions that must be asked and answered in the affirmative before moving from homeplate to first base.

1. Can I hold your hand?
2. Can I kiss you?
3. Can I unbutton your shirt?
4. Can I touch your breasts?

Each act checkmarked and okayed before the next. This was the 1990s, before hugs were bad and the press and all reasonable people laughed at the Antioch requirements. Are they coming back?

If I were of a conspiracy mind (I AM of a conspiracy mind), I’d say #MeToo#, the general re-demonization of sex, the concept of forcible touching, the abandoning of forgiveness under not when, but that, the monetization of “successful” sex-related accusation… and the Internet. All of this IS part of a conspiracy… a conspiracy of isolation. Divide and conquer… or at least control. Stay home by yourself. Don’t touch me! There’s nothing you can do with another human that you can’t do individually from behind some screen or other. Artificial Intelligence becomes the ONLY intelligence. Virtual reality becomes the ONLY reality. Quick, where’s the hemlock?

If I were just plain cynical (I AM just plain cynical), I’d say the complainers are just being selfish… wanting cash and fame… and they’ll sacrifice anyone else to get it. These days they have it easier than Marilyn Monroe did in the 1950s. They don’t need the extra inconvenience of undressing and dressing again. Plus, even ugly people can play. Maybe I was wrong in when I started this blog. Maybe the special key women have to blast their way to the top has not disappeared, it has only changed. Instead of a blowjob for a movie part, all that’s needed is some legal papers… and a muff. If the twat-key user plays her cards right, she won’t need the National Enquirer. Publicity? Read the newspapers in 2024. The New York Times has BECOME the National Enquirer. Entire political parties give news coverage and publicity to talentless women that other talentless women could have only dreamed of in the olden days.

Selfish? Well, if Mae West spreads her legs to become a little chickadee, that won’t hurt Bo Derek’s chances to use her money-maker to become a 10. But if some shlubess is rubbed by Donny Trump in a dressing room… and she uses the media and the courts to earn her fat dollared hold accountable (the drag name for REVENGE), then the chance for the next gal will be lost because of the touch-fear induced consequences. The #MeToo#-ers, the Stormy Daniels, the Rose McGowans, plenty more... those in first get the bucks. The harassment game is just like the stock market. You gotta jump in early. Right now, the average settlement for a work-related harassment is $53,000. Celebrity cases bring ten times that. But the accusers know… and don’t care… that they’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg. They get their money, and people… especially Americans… will stop touching one another ever again. It may be illegal for me to wish a special suffering on those accusers. That’s the ONLY reason I won’t do it.

Prairie Home Companion author and personality Garrison Keiler, puts his arm on a woman’s back to console her after hearing sad news. She accuses him of SEXUAL HARASSMENT. He’s fired from his job… where he’d worked for over 40 years. The nicest, kindest gesture. The touching of compassion gets thrown into court and the kindness is apologized for and punished. It’s just crazy.

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]

→ Note 1: Some of the ideas and their expression were inspired by a great book called The Invisible Generation by Jason Rodgers. You can find it on the Autonomedia webpage.

→ Note 2: To be fair, there is some controversy as to what went on with Garrison Keiler. You can Google it (DuckDuck Go) if you like. But you really don’t have to. I’m sure your mind, such as it is, is already made up.

→ Godwin’s Revenge Dept: It thrills me that the Israeli army has discovered the final solution to the hostage problem: KILL THEM ALL. It seems to me that was tried before and didn’t work. But those Hamas folks think they can intimidate with a couple hundred kidnapped women, children and (mostly) men? Hah, Mr Gaza! Just try intimidating with a bunch of corpses! We’ll fix that for you! Send in the corpse makers. As of this writing, there’s about 100 hostages left. Already starting on solving the problem, the Israeli army just shot three of them who were waving a white flag. Some evidence points to 8 more Israeli bullet-riddled hostage corpses. 97 more to go, I guess. Not to mention the 20,000+ goyish bodies scattered to the Gaza winds by Israeli forces…. Hey! I told you not to mention that!

→ I’m moving there dept: MSN reports that the chief of staff at Paraguay's Agriculture Ministry, Arnaldo Chamorro, was replaced after admitting he'd been conned into talks and signing a memorandum of understanding with representatives of a non-existent country. Chamorro told reporters that purported officials from the "United States of Kailasa" had told him the country was a South American island. I wonder if he’ll sue for harassment.

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:

Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachlorette!

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both. It’s hard (and costs money) to send him email. So. If you remember how to write a letter… send him one at: Kyle Nonneman, #16534211, Snake River Correctional Institution, 777 Stanton Blvd Ontario OR 97914-8335

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

I WAS FRAMED! or Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column

 I Was Framed ... or Mykel's Blog for October

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column 

I Was Framed!    

by Mykel Board

The instrument that measures all other instruments– the human nervous system– has its own laws, and one of them involves always seeing the results one wants to see until and unless something really startles the brain enough to reframe its experiences. --Robert Anton Wilson

Popular authors do not and apparently cannot appreciate the fact that true art is obtainable only by rejecting normality and conventionality in toto, and approaching a theme purged utterly of any usual or preconceived point of view. --Edwin Baird

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me. – Barbara Kruger

It’s slightly pornographic… or could be. Just three fingers... lady’s fingers clearly... but what’s between them? Is that a urethra canal? Could it be the centerfold of a “men’s” magazine? Will the Google gods post this behind a SENSITIVE CONTENT SCREEN? How about if we look at the picture another way? Maybe that can tell us something different about those fingers:

Flash to the motel room: The floor is bloody… The door hangs on one hinge… lopsided as if forced in from the outside… it was.. Lying on the couch is a woman… clothed only in her own blood. Her vacant eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. A man… scruffy… wearing a beat up overcoat... sits on a chair at the desk. On either side of him is a cop. One tall… macho looking.. a strong chin cleanly shaven. Squinting, the disheveled man can read DETECTIVE BASTINI. The other cop is somewhat shlubbier… beer belly just poking over the front of his belt. The name on his badge is not visible to the sitting man.

“You realize this looks pretty bad for you,” says Detective Bastini.

“But officer,” says the disheveled man, “you gotta understand. This was a set-up. I was framed!”

You got it buckaroos! I want to write about FRAMING! How our entire view of the world, of people, of good and bad… right and wrong... is all about framing. And framing is everywhere… what we see out of a window is framed… what we hear on the news… what we listen to in a punk club… what appears in store displays… It’s all framed. White-washing, green-washing, pink-washing, ad-washing, even face- washing… BUILD THOSE FRAMES!

Yeah, I’m going to repeat myself here. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. But in saying what I’ve said before, I’m going to frame it with a frame. Show how you’ve been tricked by what the frame let in the picture and what it kept out.

So says the Google search. I don’t have time to dig further because my stomach is begging for release… Last night was Drink Club and I’m paying for it now. Aaaahrgh! I feel like I’m being fist-fucked from the inside. The pain… the pain… the bathroom… the toilet… sit down… ahh… ahhh… aaahhhhhh! An explosion… splashing down with the force of a space capsule in the ocean. BLOOOF! BLOOF! BLOOOF! Feces-filled water splashes back up... dribbling drip… drip… drip back into the muddy waters below. No, I can’t see it, but I feel it… against both lower cheeks… and the back of my thighs. 

Ecstasy! Poetry in brown! I just sit a bit and enjoy it... closing my eyes to focus on the relief. Then the wipe… the double wipe… the pull up… What’s that? A hard-yet-squishy feel. I again pull down my boxers. A brown stain discolors the top… right near the elastic. A single dingle-berry... hanging by a hair… too high up to reach through the legs… still there. I have to go around the side… grope for it. Aaaah, if only I could pay someone to make sure I’d got the last one before pulling up. A pro to take care of errant hanger-ons… to save my underpants… and my embarrassment at the laundromat. But wait... a dingle-berry remover!!! I’ve created a job! All I need is someone to fill it. Get it? It’s easy to create a job, though likely it’ll be a shitty one. 

It’s the frame! If we only look at jobs… at how many people are employed or can be employed… we mistake the Mona Lisa fingers for the painting. If we frame it as happy people... fulfilled people… people able to live a good life… then Biden’s 6.6 million jobs are meaningless. 

MOST jobs are worthless. They contribute nothing and may do more harm than good. 

That guy sitting at his desk shuffling electrons to buy and sell stock… What does he contribute? The greeter at Walmart... the CEO of a tech corporation... the maitre ‘d at a restaurant… bookkeepers… corporate lawyers… insurance brokers… advertising copy writers… the list never ends. Framing “job creation” instead of “life improvement” skews the equation.

It’s sometime in the late 1970s. Milton Friedman has already won the Nobel Prize for his defense of the crime of capitalism. The local PBS station shows a short series where Friedman explains his theories.

A twenty-something me sits in front of the TV as Friedman walks around the streets of New York, talking to the camera. He passes a beggar.

“It seems cruel,” says Friedman, “but if we don’t support this man… if we don’t give him money… he’ll have to get a job. The state… other working people… will not have to pay for him”

I close my eyes… take a deep breath… wish for the beggar to jump up, slam a lead pipe into the back of Friedman’s head… grab his wallet and take off. “There’s your have to get a job, motherfucker!” And I smile.

I tell this story to my Ayn Rand-loving friends. “No Mykel,” they tell me, “That’s what the police are for. They catch the guy and throw him in jail.”

“Where he’s supported by the state… working people,” I answer.

WORK --more precisely HAVING A JOB-- is something that’s lauded by Communists and Capitalists alike. There’s dignity in having a job. And a gauge of any president’s performance is whether or not he creates FULL EMPLOYMENT! So, destructive and useless jobs are better than no jobs at all. NO THEY AREN’T.

Let’s move the frame. Let’s value the ability to enjoy life. The ability to help others enjoy life. Lets value a smile on a poor man’s face more than a billion dollars in Jeff Bezos’s pocket. If there were no garbagemen, who would take away the garbage?

Who takes it away now? Who removes the banana peels from your kitchen? YOU DO! The garbage is taken away because it needs to be taken away… not because there are garbagemen.

I can hear Literary Device complaining now.

“Forget about garbagemen, Mykel,” she says. “What about doctors? Teachers? Architects? Those things take years of study. Are you going to have everyone be her own doctor?”

“Not quite,” I answer. “But I can tell you that I get paid to be a teacher. It’s my job. I’d do it though, even if it weren’t my job. I love doing it”

There are enough people who love doctoring and teaching doctoring that –job or not– they’d do it. With so many worthless or destructive jobs gone, people will be able to do what they love. Think of all the kids that want to be doctors or firemen or athletes, but end up stock brokers or insurance salesmen as adults. Are they happy wearing their white shirts and ties... spending a third of their lives moving electrons from one computer to the next… I bet MOST people are unhappy in their jobs, especially the useless or harmful ones.

Move that VALUE frame. Value humanity... satisfaction... time... rather than having a job. You’ll get a much nicer picture.

FLASH TO The Every Little Bit Helps frame: I generate a lot of garbage. No, I’m not talking about this blog. I’m talking real, physical stuff. Junkmail… bills (always shredded and thrown out), old magazines, plastic containers from yogurt, deli sandwiches, styrofoam trays from frozen chicken… the list goes on. The only garbage separating I do is pulling out the deposit bottles and cans. I put those in a separate clear plastic bag and leave that outside for the street people who live on bottle and can deposits. Many of them are my friends.

According to Green Matters, only around 9 percent of goods separated for recycling are being recycled. But there’s the frame. If you separate your soup cans from your bleach bottles you’re part of that every little bit. You can go ahead and buy your Campbell’s 12 pack and your Costco size bleach bottle. You’re still doing your part. But if we expand the frame… include the rest of the Mona Lisa... we can see the whole picture.

We can see that there’s a relationship between feeling good about your consumption… and consuming more. It’s okay if I buy so much more than I need. More to throw away…more junk… I RECYCLE… so it’s all right.

NO IT ISN’T! Recycling encourages consumption. Consumption encourages waste (and corporate profits). In this frame, RECYCLING MAKES JUNK. Instead of framing the junk our consumption makes, why not frame the consumption itself? Instead of recycling, why not avoid buying in the first place?

FLASH TO the war in Ukraine. Oh, the bad guys invade. “We” have to help. It’s good guys against bad guys… a typical American frame… cowboy movies… war movies… comic books. The good guys need to defeat the bad guys… the invaders. Send in weapons… train the soldiers… beat the war drums… put up Ukrainian flags. Measure success like in a war movie. CHASE THEM OUT. MAKE THEM DIE. They lose. We win. What can be more American than “Winning isn’t everything… It’s the only thing?”

But let’s use a different frame. Let’s keep score… if score must be kept… a different way. Let’s use a GOLF frame, instead of a comic book frame. In golf, the lowest score wins. So players work hardest at getting the lowest score. How ‘bout if, instead of keeping score by advances and retreats and downed airplanes or destroyed infantry, we count dead people. The fewer dead, the better the situation. So if “we” want to get a good score, we provide negotiators instead of bombs. We offer cash, concessions, trades, to keep the number of dead low. We exchange the frame of winning and losing for one of dying or not dying.

NEXT FRAME INTRODUCTION: It’s called “pre-judgement” and includes one of my favorite idioms of the last decade or so. It too is an extension of the American good guy/ bad guy frame. That is, anything done by a badguy must be bad. If the cowboy wearing black picks up a a dog in scene one, he’ll shoot it in scene three. He can’t be NICE to the dog… he’s a bad guy. That phrase I love is Trump Derangement Syndrome

FLASH TO Miami beach: It’s crowded. Throngs wanting to get in their last wave before Hurricane Bruce slams the coast and ruins their fun. If you walk quietly in a corner of the beach, you’ll see what looks like a typical American family: a chubby balding man… gray chest-hair, a woman, obviously his wife, with bright red hair, obviously from a bottle. A boy and his younger sister play on the bright blue picnic blanket spread in the sand. The boy carries a plastic bucket and a little plastic shovel. The little girl is empty-handed.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear that they are speaking French. Maybe they’re tourists. With a peal of kiddie-laughter the empty-handed girl grabs the bucket from her brother and runs toward the ocean. The brother gives chase, finally catching up and wrestling the bucket free. Then he pushes his sister who falls into the increasingly violent waves smashing against the shore. The girl washes out to sea.

“Aide! Aide!” screams the father, as the little girl is rip-currented further and further from shore.

Donald Trump, passing by, hears the shouts. Not taking the time to remove anything but his shoes, he runs to the water and jumps in. Powerfully, he swims out to the girl, grabs her around the chest and… careful to keep her head above water... brings her safely back to shore.

TRUMP MOLESTS TODDLER AT THE BEACH is the headline in The Times the next day… along with a photo of Donny Trump in the water with his arm around the girl’s chest.

For so many people, Trump is incapable of doing anything right… of doing a good deed. If it appears good… pardoning non-violent offenders, keeping the US out of war, downsizing The Pentagon… there’s always some reason it’s BAD. Getting out of NAFTA and TPP… disastrous trade bills that would have allowed international trade with no oversight. Slave conditions unanswerable by the US courts. President Trump saved us from them.

No he didn’t. Come the answers. Those were good for trade… come the TDS answers… except for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC who also opposed the treaties when they were presented by the Dems… those treaties are left out of the frame.

And finally… briefly… a pair of frames I’ve written about before: the GENDER frame and the RACE frame. Seeing abortion as “a war against women” where most of the anti-abortionists see a war against murder. Or seeing street crime and armed robbery as BLACK street crime and BLACK armed robbery instead of POVERTY-INDUCED street crime and POVERTY-INDUCED armed robbery. Framing… framing… framing.

So please… face the wall and look at that picture. Take it down… open the back and spread out the painting so the unframed parts become clear. Then REFRAME it, so those twat-showing hands become the Mona Lisa.

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]

→ Framing Step-by-Step Dept: There’s a great step-by-step analysis of news- framing in the New York Times. It’s not published on any of the monopoly-internet sites, but you can find it here.

→ How you react DEPENDS dept: Many of you know that I’ve gone through radiation treatment for prostate cancer. Called Cyberknife, the treatment itself is painless, though expensive. But the cash expense is only part of the problem. I pissed in my pants on the way home from the last treatment. I’ve been wearing (and needing) DEPENDS ever since. I have daily brain fog and the only time I’m not tired is late at night when I should be sleeping. If cyberknife is recommended for you… consider it VEEERRRRRY CAREFULLY, before you agree to it. You have been warned.

→ Put A Bag On It dept: The Canadian Broadcasting Company reports that in an environmental move, rock climbers in British Columbia have been encouraged to use WAG BAGS, to shit in. The idea, you shit in a bag that contains deodorizing chemicals, and then carry the shit with you, out of the wooded areas where you dispose of it at home. Sure, that’s gonna happen. Yeah right.

See you in hell redux,
MB


THE NATION AGAIN

I’m a long-time subscriber to the The Nation. It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely, when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends” would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.

I found, in an old issue, a great argument against those who charge “What Aboutism” when others make points about a parallel issue outside the frame. The author’s basic (and correct) point of view is that the anti-whataboutism argument justifies hypocrisy.
Then there’s Thomas Graham who spots a little more subtlety in the Ukraine war than the media and the current war-mongers are showing.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

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

Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachlorette!

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com