COOTIEPHOBIA or Mykel's May 2026 Blog/Column
You’re STILL Wrong
or
Mykel's
MAY
2026 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board
COOTIEPHOBIA
The only time I wash my hands is when I shit on them.
--George Carlin
I've heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.
--Rand Paul
There
is no vaccine against stupidity.
--Albert
Einstein
Okay buckaroos… from the quotes, you're guessing I'm going to write about vaccines. YOU'RE WRONG! At least not only about vaccines. I want to write about something I've seen more of in the US than in any other of the 72 countries I've visited. And that’s more that just vaccines.
FLASH TO THE PECULIER PUB ON BLEECKER ST: Eks and I sit in the back. I drink some exotic beer from the Czech Republic. She has a Michelob Lite. She puts a hand on my thigh.
“Mykel,” she says, “I’ve got to get rid of that last beer. It went right through me.”
I smile as she stands up, and walks to the ladies room. In a couple minutes she returns. “Everything come out okay?” I ask… with a smile.
“Mykel,” she says, “that room is filthy. It’s lucky I don’t have to sit down to take care of things.”
“You don’t sit?” I ask. “How do you do it?”
“I hover,” she says.
“What?” I reply. “Why don’t you just sit down?”
“Ewww,” she answers. “Cooties!”
FLASH TO THE SUBWAY… BLEECKER STREET STOP: It's unusually crowed today. Not rush hour… It's a Sunday! But the long steep steps from the street to the platform are packed. People going up have to push through the massive downward wave of tourists, students and locals. I'm surprised no one falls, although one guy slips on a step and catches himself with some fancy last-minute footwork.
Then I notice it. Despite the crowd, NO ONE is holding the rails. The two long metal tubes… there for safety… are unused. I remember my mother telling me: "Mickey (my childhood nickname), always hold the railing when you go down the stairs.” And these days, I use the railing to help me UP the stairs… pulling myself along. I grab the railing now. Lowering myself one step at a time. No one else is touching that railing…. Oh… oh… I get it: COOTIEPHOBIA.
FLASH TO THE GYM: I'm not fat. I don't really care about attracting folks who'll come up to me and say. Wow! I love the way your arms bulge and your chest presses against that WO HOP t-shirt. I don't even like being here… especially since cootiephobia has scared guys from using the showers… and most of the people here who do get naked… shouldn't.
I walk out of the locker-room and head for the ab/adductor machine You know, the one where you sit with these black pads between your legs. You then either squeeze your knees together raising weights inside the machine, or you put the pads on the outside of your knees and spread your legs against the weights. There's something sexy about that machine.
I check my notepad for how much weight I did on my last visit… 75 pounds. So I set the weights on 80 and sit down… the black pads between my legs. Then I feel it… the soft soak of some liquid from the seat through the bottom of my sweat pants.
I know what it is. Some cootiephobe… usually a Gen Z girl… has cleansed the seat of all her girly liquids… sweat, maxipad leaks… imaginary germs. She has wiped the seat and probably the handbars and maybe the weights… using the gym-supplied liquid from some PUSH BUTTON FOR SANITIZER machine near the entrance.
Yes, COVID has put these machines everywhere and too many people still use the slime they dispense both before and after they use the gym machines. Not only has COVID limited my joy in at seeing attractive naked bodies, but it has wet my pants… and not the way I’d like.
A long time ago, I asked Eks if she wipes the gym machines before and after she uses them. "Mykel," she answered. "I don't want to exercise in someone else's sweat."
“Why not?” I think, but don’t say. I know the answer: COOTIEPHOBIA.
Do bar pick-ups these days, stop in the middle of a fuck because they don't want to screw in someone else's sweat? Do wrestlers avoid wrestling in someone else's sweat? Do parents hugging their kids not want to hug in someone else's sweat? It’s a crazy legacy from COVID.
But COVID is only the latest and perhaps worst symptom of American cootiephobia. Cashiers in the deli still wear surgical masks. The butcher still wears rubber gloves to cut the meat. Grown men bump fists rather than shake hands.
And now… CVS tells me I can register and get 15 different vaccines all paid for by my AARP anti-cootie insurance.
FLASH TO VACCINE DISCUSSION: Normal people have one of two divergent views of vaccines. Either 100% for them (Bill Gates above) or 100% against them (Rand Paul above). I am not a normal person.
In the past, vaccines have worked. Polio and Small Pox are the best examples. But if we look at the logic of vaccines, we see mostly a medical cure for something caused by medicine in the first place.
In pre-vaccine times, you'd get a virus, your body would fight off the virus by creating antibodies that matched the virus and counteracted it. The antibodies stayed in your system after they beat the virus… so when the same virus hit again… your body was prepared for the fight.
When vaccines were new, the bad guys (viruses) weren't prepared for the onslaught. The vaccine anti-bodies, modified into injectables from natural antibodies, fought off the unsuspecting viral invaders.
Now, the viruses have learned to change their structures, adjusting themselves enough so that last year's body defense won't work against this year's virus. So guess what? You need another shot. And yet another one every year.
And what happens? Instead of the body learning on its own to fight the invaders, we have to teach it to do it… or worse… do it from the outside... chemically. Again and again.
My only sport in Junior and Senior high school was judo. My father wanted me to do some “normal” sports, but I was spazzy and the last one to get chosen for any normal gym team. I wanted to do a sport that was only me on one side and ONE ENEMY on the other side. Judo was it. Besides, the general idea of the sport is little guys using the strength and weight of the big guys against those self-same big guys. Kind of like viruses making anti-bodies to match themselves.
My theory is that kids are closer to nature than adults. Kids have an instinct that adults spend years on destroying. Kids’ bodies would be exposed to thousands of viruses... building up an immune system that allowed early European immigrants to America to avoid the same diseases they passed on to the American Indians… Those bugs from Europe the immigrants had but defeated through their own anti-bodies. The Indians were never exposed and had no anti-bodies to fight with.
Kids are naturally attracted to dirt. If a little kid sees a mud puddle, she'll jump in. Parents will shout “NO, DIRTY!” Scaring the kid from the source of so many powerful immunostimulants.
When I was a child, we had a "30-second rule." If my sister or I dropped some food on the floor, as long as we quickly picked it up, we could eat it. This was mainly for fruit, nuts, and other stuff that doesn’t change shape when dropped. I don't remember eating ice cream or spaghetti that had been in contact with the floor. But there’s plenty more than that I don’t remember.
I googled “30-second rule" to check if that's still the case for most American families. Google told me that the rule had been shortened to a "5-second rule" … but wait… that's not enough. Several health-related websites said ALL such rules were bogus. Like this one. They said even a little touch of food to the floor or… heavens to Betsy… a picnic apple falls on the ground… you shouldn't eat it at all. EWWWWW COOTIES!!!
One of the greatest evils of the modern world is DELIVERY. Door-dash, InstaCart, you know what I mean. Not only do those services increase isolation (have the joy of a restaurant without the “annoyance” of OTHER PEOPLE.) but they weaken immune systems.
Eating and drinking with other people exposes your body to all those things that build immunity. The people at the next table. The waiter who just picked up the dirty dishes from the people at the next table. The menus handled by who know who? Some restaurants these days have QR codes instead of menus. Just point your phone and click. Saving all those… those… COOTIES!
My apartment building is 2 minutes away (walking) from a deli, 3 minutes away from a Chipotle, 5 minutes away from two different poke bowl restaurants and ten minutes away from Chinatown. Yet every day I see delivery guys coming into the building with bags of food for the tenants. What the fuck?
I used to think that it came from laziness. Oh, it's so much work taking that elevator to the first floor and actually walking out of the building. But now I think it's COOTIEPHOBIA. People are happier in isolation… or with "one special person to share with" It's safer that way… NO COOTIES.
And then there's us. I'm talkin'about us old punk rockers. I'm talkin'about 20 years with a guitar player like the guy in Spinal Tap. You know, the one who turns up to ELEVEN. The wheelchair-bound get curb cuts to make it easier to roll across the street. Blind people get sidewalk bumps to tell them where the curb-cuts are. But we hearing-damaged don't get shit. Well, there are captions on the news programs if you have the right kind of TV… but they don’t work right. They're always behind the speaker… never catching up to his speed… even with a break for commercials.
So what the fuck do you think it's like for us to listen to someone talking through a mask? Alstabibble stapsudi sap minglaku? I get it, you're scared of some bug flying on the magic carpet of someone’s saliva flakes. But you think those masks will keep you bug free? The only people they actually help are street criminals, who now feel free to be masked without anyone looking twice.
You're too young to remember the Lone Ranger. He was a masked cowboy, who was A GOOD GUY. He wore a mask… OVER HIS EYES!!!! (Yes, there were slits cut out so he could see where he was riding the horse… named Silver.)
I look out my window onto lower Broadway. I see old factory buildings, now housing rich people, artists and… on the ground floor level, Nike and Adidas… face to face across the street. The Nike store just opened. There is a line of people waiting to get in and spend their money.
[NOTE: I don't know about other cities. But, here in THE city, for the last decade, it has become fashionable to wait in line to buy something. Clothes, ice cream, sneakers… any kind of shit… there are scores of people (mostly those 20-something females) forming a line from the door around the block.]
At first it seems like this is a rebellion against cootiephobia… a taunting to prove to people I am not afraid. A closer look, however, will show you that's wrong. The people on line (that's what we say in New York… not in line) don’t talk to each other… don't move up so Patty's front touches Brittney's back. They space. People who know each other make little circles in the line, using their bodies to fence off their group from the pry of a stranger. As the line moves up, the groups move together… keeping their distance from the next person or group that might breathe on them.
No, few of the waiting people wear masks… and I'm happy to see that. But they don't talk to strangers. And they never touch. As strolling people walk past the lines, the line standers squeeze themselves against the store windows to get away as best they can.
And what about porn? The ones where the naked extras don't want their parents to recognize them. Do they digitally block the mouths of the guys and gals? You bet your hard-on they don't. They block the eyes! A rectangle just under the forehead. If they blocked the mouth you wouldn't be able to see them moan.
But porn sites themselves are bitten by the cootiephobia bug. How many scat videos do you find on xnxx? How much ass-licking do you see on REAL turd-flecked asses rather than baby-wiped every-sphincter-visible brown holes?
As you read this, do you stop to pick your nose? Do you transfer the errant snot-hardened booger to your mouth… like any kid would naturally do? Of course not. Ewwww cooties!
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... 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]
→ Political Contest of the Year Dept: Ok, you got a contest that makes the world smile. Two politicians fighting to be mayor of an obscure French village. One is Charles Hittler. The other is Antoine Renault-Zielenskii. You CAN make this stuff up… but I didn’t. Check out the details here.
→
Cootiephobia
on TV Dept:
I
guess MONK was the TV show that was most concerned with cootiephobia.
Before becoming commonplace, it was considered a kind of
Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder.
I found an on-line meme that casts doubt on that disease as being
useful for a detective:
I'm
OCD about cleaning up. There's never any dirty dishes in the sink,
the floors are spotless, all the surfaces are wiped down. I even do
this if I'm visiting somewhere. If I see a fingerprint or a footprint
I just have to take care of it. It makes me a GREAT roommate... but a
TERRIBLE crime scene investigator. What
bugs me is that it's not a disorder anymore, but a way of life. At
least in the US.
→
The
Cost of Cootiephobia Dept:
Besides
the isolation caused by coodiephobia… there is real harm
done… especially to kids. Here
you
can read about the epidemic of children suffering eye-burns from
hand-sanitizer use. You know, spread it on… get itchy eyes… rub
those eyes.
→
FactCheck
Checks Facts: Dept
The
fact-checking site called Fact
Check,
has published a report that says basically. Yes, vaccines can give
you nasty side effects, but they’re still okay.
Among
their notes
are
findings on ADEM — “the autoimmune neurological condition linked
to first doses of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines.”
ADEM
involves inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, arising most
often in children following an infectious illness. It has a sudden
onset, with a full recovery in many, although not all, cases.
After
the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, researchers observed seven
ADEM cases
when they expected two. It
primarily affects children and can lead to symptoms such as headache,
confusion, weakness, and vision problems. You
can read all their findings here.
→ Still Scary Dept: On an unrelated topic. The magazine JACOBIN has a great article on the rise of the American Right Wing… without Jesus. I’s well-written, seems authentic, but scary as hell. You can read it here.
See
you in hell (redux)
MB
LINKS:
A few
new ones this time. [Note: a ton of computer problems. If you
sent me a link and I didn’t use it, that’s why. Try again and be
brutal with me]
My
pal Matt Shehan says: You
can link to my website - www.matthewsheahan.com
or my Substack - https://politenewyorker.substack.com/
. Matt is a great
musician and very funny guy.
My Kenyan pal, Albert Melody shares a facebook adventure in one of those great Kenyan national parks. Guess who he shared the adventure with!!! You can read about it here. Albert also has a blog at: Albertomelody.blogspot.com
Teddy Labato has a “lo-fi noise” link to his band Check it out.
It’s
About Time dept: Finally,
a book about
Hungarian
Punk put out by Puke
and Vomit records.
Great scene there and I was glad to have contact with bands
like Der Trottel and Tizedesz. Glad to have been a (very small) part
of that scene.
Here
are some other
contacts to make:
Teddy Lobato’s band can be found at https://www.facebook.com/THEBASSMANsPSYCHEDELICNOISE
Karl De Winton sent me a link to his bandcamp DJ stuff. https://share.google/5sTnXjgMkFbiWQvzA
NSFW… but that depends on your job.
Dan
Hetrick asked me “How 'bout us punk rawk programmers?”
And
offers http://merk.chat
Free chat for the people!
I’ve
talked about Bob Cutler before. But he has more to offer than
DYSTOPEKA
https://chrometuna.com/
https://theklusterfux.com
Riot Division makes its musical offering at: https://www.facebook.com/riotdivision
Barstool Revolution Zine is on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/people/Barstool-Revolution-Zine/61557909822199/
Rina
Borei shows
off her inflatable Octopus on
Instagram:
@oona.frost
Jim Testa, a long-time friend, journalist, editor, musician and wordsmith, has an interesting substack about music and more. You can find it here.
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. I’m glad they didn’t call it “anti-defense.”
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
