A Touching Sentiment or Mykel's Blog for November 2022

  

A Touching Sentiment

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's November 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

They injected a cold germ into people, and found that those who had more hugs had a better immune response to the cold virus. And then studies showed that if you get hugged before a stressful condition like giving a speech or doing math problems, people do better. Performance is better if you’ve been hugged before the stress. – JONATHAN JONES (reporting on psychology experiment)

Physical touching is one of the clearer types of sexual harassment. Many courts have reasoned that physical touching is more offensive than verbal harassment. – Kokozian Law Firm

Physical touch is one of the main ways we express and receive love, and for millions of people, this is their primary love language. – Pastor Joe Wittwer

Don’t touch me, I’m NEW WAVE. – Mykel Board

It’s a tight squeeze. Post-Covid airlines… overbooked, lines from here to eternity. I wait on one, my print-out in one hand… my Secure ID^® in the other. In front of me is a white shirted blue sports jacketed man… head bent down, thumbing away on his iPhone 14. Behind me is a somewhat chubby man in his late thirties standing next to a somewhat chubbier woman around the same age. With them is a boy about 10… wild… running… chasing his younger sister. The children run very close to my legs.

“HIYAAAH!” yells the boy pushing the girl forward. She lands next to my right leg. Her bright dress, sweeps the floor, picking up the shoe scrapes of dozens of annoyed travelers.

“Jamie! Stop it!” yells the man, calling my attention away from the prone girl.

Then I feel it. A kind of pulling on my leg… first aware of it on my belt, then the pantleg itself. I look down and see the little girl. She’s using the cloth of my pants to hoist herself up to standing. Then comes the voice. This time it’s the woman who speaks.

“Madison!” she yells, “Never do that. Don’t ever touch a stranger.”

Mom changes her focus to me.

Bringing her eyebrows together, she looks like she’s going to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” she says to me. “This is the first time in an airport for the children… and the first time since Covid that they’ve been around other people. They don’t know how to act.”

“No problem,” I say, reaching down to help the little girl to her feet.

“No!” shouts the man, sounding panicked, “I’ll help her. Thank you.”

And he walks over to the little girl, picks her up, and walks her gingerly to her mother.

When I was in my 20s I penned the “song” Ugly People With Fancy Hairdos, for my first “band,” ART, THE ONLY BAND IN THE WORLD. One of the lines was

Don’t touch me, I’m NEW WAVE.

Now, nearly 50 years later, I’m still fascinated by touching… how it works in different cultures, and how people are dying from lack of it.

When I was a 20-something, I remember seeing a reprint from an information booklet given by the US military to soldiers shipped to Vietnam. The book talked about Vietnamese culture and what soldiers had to look out for.

You’ll often see Vietnamese men walking on the street holding hands with other men. This is not a homosexual gesture. It is simply a way for Vietnamese men to show friendship.

You get the implication? If it WERE a sign of homotude, then it would be perfectly logical to take offense… and you’ve got a gun, Buster.

It’s one of the many things that got me interested in Japan. As a Jew, I was used to being touched. Jews… and Italians… and even the French... are all over each other. Hugging, back-slapping, poking in emphasis…. It wasn’t strange at all that Andrew Cuomo used as his defense I’m not a pervert. I’m Italian. It’s not only family, but strangers, new acquaintances. Sex --the most involving kind of touching-- comes easier to us than to the goyim. (I’m NOT including Italians among the goyim.)

OLD JOKE:

Q. How do you get a Jewish American Princess to stop fucking you?
A. Marry her.

NOTE: The Hasidim (the Jews with the curly sideburns), do not like men touching women who are not their wives. But even among the Hasidim, same sex people will be touching all the time… and you’ll see men dancing together, holding hands. Nothing sexual, just the joy of skin.

Not growing up a Hasid, reading about boy-boy hand-holding in Vietnam was a shock to me. As a kid, I saw Jewish guys with their arms around each other… even tweaking a nipple in jockish play.

When I first go to Japan, I have the feeling that the Japanese never touched each other. Their greetings are bows, not handshakes. In public places, it is taboo to touch another person, unless s/he is a family member. Or so I thought.

Then, I get drunk.

I’m in an izakaya… a small Japanese bar, where strangers drink beer and sake and eat food off of sticks. I’m out with the boss of the local Toyota office, and several of my students… new employees of the company.

A couple beers and a couple more sakes into the night, I feel a hand rub up my back to my left shoulder… then a squeeze.

“Sensei!” comes a voice very close to my right ear. “Thank you for working with us.”

I look over. It’s the boss… half hugging me… half using my body as a cane to support his drink-weakened knees. It startles me, but I like it. I put my arm around his shoulder, lift my glass of sake and say KAMPAI! We drink.

Looking around the room, I see people draped over each other like capes over the arms of matadors. It’s just sooooo great!

When I later ask my Japanese friends about it, they tell me about skinship. That’s the importance of having physical contact… not necessarily sexual, but physical… for true friendship. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: the act of intimate, non-sexual touching between very close (usually same-sex, but can include both genders) platonic friends. It involves acts such as holding hands/arms, hugging, and kissing on the cheeks.

My impression was just wrong. The Japanese lack of touching is not because it’s a touchless society, but because it’s a society of formality. Everything has a politeness level. If I’m speaking with an important person on business, the word I is watakshi. If I’m speaking with someone I don’t know, I is watashi. If I’m speaking with casual acquaintances and every day pals, I becomes boku. If I’m with my close pals at a bar, I is ore. Just like the language shows degrees of formality, touching shows degrees of formality.

But wait! In Japan, there’s more. It’s hadaka no tsukiai, aka “naked friendship.”

“Mykel,” says the boss, “you have to join me in Hakone. Drink sake from a floating bamboo boat. Stand naked in a hot spring, under the sun or stars, feel the heat….” I don’t remember the rest... as the image of being naked with the boss is somewhat unsettling. But it’s not the first time I would have uncomfortable nudity.

FLASH TO FINLAND: 1986. I’m here studying the language. I’ve heard it’s the most difficult in the world… I feel like a boxer… challenging a champ. (Finnish won, by the way. I just couldn’t get it!) A friend in the town where I’m staying invites me to visit his family. I walk into his house. He introduces me to mom, dad, and his sister Enny.

The house is toasty warm. My friend takes me into what looks like a small bedroom. “You can leave your clothes here,” he says, taking off his own clothes. Hmmm, this is a benefit I didn’t expect. But wait… it’s not for wild sex. It’s for a sauna.

It’s then that I find out that every Finnish family has a sauna. (Sauna is, in fact, a Finnish word borrowed into English.) So you visit your friend at home, take off your clothes, then sit naked in the sauna with your friend, his siblings and his parents. It’s just like shaking hands. Sitting there, I pretend it’s the most natural thing in the world. Now I realize, it is.

FLASH BACK TO JAPAN: Yes! Being naked together is the way to create deep friendships. Touching… skinship… is on the path to nakedness. Jeez, do I love Japan.

And now I find that America is becoming what I THOUGHT Japan was. The governor of New York is pushed out of office with charges of forcible touching. Actor Kevin Spacey is charged… almost 40 years after the fact, with touching in a simulated sex-act.

Touching, even in playfulness, is taboo enough to go to court.

What touching do we have left? We used to have a slight sliver of touching in the custom of handshaking… skinship in its meekest form. But even that is in trouble in 2022.

One of the great tragedies of COVID is the elbow bump greeting. Until the plague, the only time strangers touch skin-to-skin in America is shaking hands… a very brief, but real, skin contact. To lose that is to lose our humanity.

And it’s not only touching, but humanity itself... physical presence… that’s in danger. How can you NOT lose your humanity if your view of humanity is through a cellphone screen. How can you care about what you do in war… or in peace... if you’re just a drone away from murder.

Joe Biden sends non-humans to murder in the middle of civilian populations. First a car filled with AID workers.

“Oh, sorry about that one. We’ll try again.”

Then a top leader of some rebel army group we don’t like. BINGO… we got him. But let the Russians drone Ukrainians… How could they do such a thing?

I’ll tell you how. THEY isn’t people. Only the receivers of the souless strikes are real people. Drones are machines… like computers or cellphones. They can never experiences skinship.

When the Japanese attacked American warships in WWII, it was PEOPLE who were fighting people. The Wind of God (Kamikaze) was a human being in an airplane... making a commitment... keenly aware of what he, personally, was doing to “the enemy.” Me (us) and them.

Today’s war only has THEM.

The world needs more nudity. More awareness that other people have bodies… flesh… real skin. Humanity needs more touching, more skinship. The way things are going, we’ll all become the drones.

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]

→ A touching video dept: The web reports –with horror– Another video of Joe Biden touching a girl has surfaced. The website says that Biden “has made a habit throughout his political career of placing his hands on women.” I know. He is NOT Italian… but still, come on! “Placing your hands on” some is NOT a bad thing. In fact, until recently, Christians thought of it as a kind of healing.

→Speaking of Sex Dept: A study in Indonesia found that Criminalizing sex work in low-income settings like Indonesia decreases earnings of the female sex workers and increases the prevalence of STI infections. 
    The results should have been obvious before the study even started. The anti sex work “feminists” actually hurt women and other sex workers. You wanna talk human trafficking? Take a look at the farms, not the brothels.

→Speaking of Drones Dept: Mark Hamill, the original Luke Skywalker, has let the WARS part of STAR WARS go to his head. He’s now pushing for Drones for Ukraine.
    Says Hamill, “Very simply, Ukraine needs drones. They define war outcomes, they protect their land, their people, they monitor the border, they’re eyes in the sky. I was really shocked because they give me these updates at least two or three times a week about what’s going on and they said they’ve received over 500 drones since I started this.”
    Now there’s something to be proud of, 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.

One article is about the return of polio. My friends tell me that it’s the “anti-mask right” who make arguments about the dearth of natural immunity. Liberals know that masks and isolation are really good for people. This from the article I just linked to.

It was modernity that gave the polio virus a chance. As hygiene improved, collective immunity faltered.

Another article talks about big tech evils and how tracking algorithms aid anti-abortion efforts. My liberal friends, however, would rather have big tech censor people they don’t like, than protect people they do like.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

Here's a start:

Sid Yiddish! There’s a great interview with him on YouTube. You can check it out here.

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

Chill! or Mykel's Post MRR Column no 47

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

POST MRR COLUMN NUMBER 47

CHILL!

by Mykel Board

No great theater director ever said to an actor, “Okay, this scene calls for some real emotion, now go out there and give me lots of offendedness.”...If I'm sad, I cry. If I'm happy, I laugh. If I'm offended, what do I do, state in a clear and sober voice that I am offended, then walk away in a huff so that I can write a letter to the mayor?

We take offense at chewing with one's mouth open as well as, say, using an ethnic slur. While I like to think that it takes a lot to offend me, I don't personally believe people that people shouldn't feel offended. I just wonder what the context is. Can one be equally offended by someone's elbows being on the dinner table, senseless police shootings and the fact that Seahawks threw the ball on second and one?

– Paul Beatty

SCENE ONE: Central Park, NYC August 15, 2004. Dawn S is walking through the park with her seeing-eye dog. It's a hot day in August... New York Summer. One of the few ways of getting out of the heat... without the electrical expense of air conditioning... a walk in the park. The trees... the reservoir... the lack of concrete... The park is a respite from the city heat.

Dennis, the seeing-eye dog, is a yellow lab. A big lumbering beast... half-dog half-yeti... bold... but friendly to those who know him. Dawn and Dennis are on that diagonal path that leads from the 59^th street fountain north to the lake. Dawn sits on a bench just where the path begins. Dennis sits on the path itself. After a few minutes, Dawn stands to walk on.

Sensing the general direction, Dawn tells Dennis, “Go!”

The dog guides her north.

In less than 100 yards, Dawn feels a tap on her should. She looks up... into space, as she doesn't know where the tap came from.

“Excuse me?” she says.

“You should take your dog inside,” comes a very austere-- animal-rights-sounding female voice... somewhere to her left. “Your dog should not be outside in this weather.”

“I'm just enjoying the fresh air and vegetation,” answers Dawn.

“But you can't tell how hot it is,” returns the voice. “You're blind.”

SCENE TWO: Los Angeles sometime last year: The local Chinese community is becoming so used to the stereotype Chinese driver that they made stickers... like those caution signs you see on scary looking metal boxes.

As you might guess, it isn't long before the complaints come. That sign is racist, offensive. It should be banned... and the first and main complainers? Offended White people.

SCENE THREE: Bill Maher answers a call to work in the field in Nebraska. “Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house nigger.”

There are outraged calls for his firing. Bang! He apologizes for offending. Meanwhile, Paul Beatty, the guy I quoted at the beginning of this column, wins the Man Booker Prize (like a British Pulitzer) for a book with more mentions of nigger than a Klan rally... or a Hip Hop concert.

SCENE FOUR: Gyu-Kaku Japanese Barbecue May 18, 2017. It's my friend Mei's birthday. We're seated at a long table with two grills built in. While grilling... I talk to my friends about RAPEMAN, the notorious Japanese comic that is actually a hilarious parody of superheroes.

By day, Rapeman is a Junior Highschool teacher-- his Clark Kent identity. By night, he's a caped crusader (from the waist up)... raping the bad girls to turn them good. Rapeman is for hire, and the money is used in local charities... especially an orphanage.

“Good deeds through penetration,” is his motto.

I have a copy of the manga with me. I pass it around to the curious Japanese who have never seen one before. (I pride myself in knowing more about Japanese culture-- traditional and popular-- than most Japanese know.)

Both Americans and Japanese look at it with curiosity... except Sadako (name changed to protect the guilty). She glances at the book and throws it across the table. “How many times have you been afraid you were going to be raped?” she asks me.

I'm shocked. This is a satire... a parody making fun of superheroes. It isn't about rape. I'm so taken aback I bullshit... Well, that's not true... It doesn't take a whole lot to get me to bullshit.

“When I was in the Cub Scouts,” I lie, “there was this patrol leader... and in Albania... when I was kidnapped.”

“Well, women have to face this every day,” she says. “It's not a joke to us. You're saying it's okay to rape people. You're giving permission to rape.”

“It's a comic book!” I plead. “Just a comic book. I'm not giving permission for anything. It's just a wild Japanese comic book unimaginable in the Christian west.”

“And I'm offended,” she continues, “I'm offended for two reasons. I'm offended because you joke about rape... and I'm offended because you look at Japanese people as little jokes. Oh how cute, that wacky culture. You look down on us.”

“What?” I'm too shocked to say, “I LOVE Japanese culture. I LOVE Japanese things. I love Japanese movies, manga, haiku, screen painting. I have more Japanese friends than I have American friends.”

People who know me know I believe Japanese culture is one of the greatest cultures in the world. Certainly greater than anything American culture has to offer (except maybe rock'n'roll).

Yes, part of the reason I love the culture is that they're free of the burdens of Christian (or Jewish) guilt and can explore a kind of wild side that would be completely out-of-bounds for Americans... It's American culture I look down on... not Japanese culture. Actually, I'm 5” 3” tall. I don't look down on ANYONE!

But she's offended... she throws $10 on the table (not in the barbecue pit)... and walks out.

Ok, Mykel. We know the routine. You take some shit from your life... or someone else's life and then tie it all together with some wacky philosophy that connects completely unrelated events as if there were some cosmic order... where things are constructed just to PROVE YOUR POINT. So, what's the point?

The point is CHILL!!!

CHILL!... a wonderful command asking for calm in the midst of self-created hysteria... CHILL... Relax in the midst of offendeditude... CHILL.. Breathe deep instead of getting huffy.

CHILL!

I'm a Jew. I laugh at holocaust jokes.

I'm 5' 3” tall... I sing, Short People Got No Reason to Live.

I'm 72 years old: I smile when people ask me why I'm not dead yet.

Old people texting:

BFF: Best Friend Fainted

BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth

CBM: Covered by Medicare

FWB: Friend with Beta-blockers

LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out

GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!

Even punks are offended... How can that be? Punk was CREATED to be offensive. It's essense is being offensive from Beat on the Brat With a Baseball Bat to Let's Lynch the Landlord.

Nowadays, punks are the most easily offended. Call someone a Pussy and that punk rock girl will throw a Bikini Kill record at your head.

NOT ONLY ARE THEY “sensitive” but they think they know YOUR sensitivity... what you feel and don't feel. What's in your mind... what's behind your motives. They think, with religious fervor... though most are not religious... if only you could realize THE TRUTH... you'd be sensitive in the same way.

That wacky animal rightist thought she knew that a blind person wouldn't realize the day was hot. Their overriding concern with the poor dog, made them completely unaware that there was someone attached to that dog. They were offended by the dog in the heat (though they themselves were comfortable in it), and that huffitude took over all sense of reason.

That sensitive white girl who complained about the Chinese Driver stickers, thought she knew what was in the mind of the Chinaman on the street. Her overriding concern with race and nationality, made her completely unaware that the Chinese themselves were absorbing-- and negating-- a stereotype.

That Japanese girl who accused me of promoting rape and denigrating Japanese culture thought she knew my motives for being so fascinated with Rapeman. Her over-riding concern with nationality and gender made her completely unaware that the point was satire and inventiveness... nothing to do with nationality or gender. She was offended by the comic book (a comic book, for God's sake!), and that huffitude took over all sense of reason.

Sometimes the old cliches are right. Most obviously sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. If they DO hurt... the hurt is minor, not permanent, and necessary for life in a free world. It's even better to take the words, give 'em a twist in meaning... then claim 'em for yourself. That's what homosexuals did with queer. What the punk band, New York Niggers did with Nigger. What The Hip Nips did with Nip!. If you take a word and make it cool, the word loses its power to hurt you. 

Short? Old? Jew? Egomaniac? Oh yeah. Those words are MINE! I own them. Now let's see you use them against me.

You too (and the world) can learn how to destroy the effects of words with other words... or by taking them in and turning them around.

That takes time... In the meanwhile, calm down! Laugh at yourself. Relax. Learn that making fun is FUN. Give it. Take it.

CHILL!

(What does Nazi Santa give naughty kids for Christmas?

Jews.)

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

-->Is that a panel in your pocket or are you marginalizing me dept: The University of Michigan was seeking student input about redesigning their hundred year old building.
Anna Wibbelman, former president of Building a Better Michigan, an organization that voices student concerns about university development, stated that “ minority students felt marginalized by the quiet, imposing masculine paneling” found throughout the 100-year-old building.

        Oppressed by quiet... and wood paneling. Pretty sensitive, huh?

-->Meanwhile in Maryland dept: A group of Maryland teachers displayed posters showing white, black, yellow and other colored women working together... and just being friends. School administrators ordered them removed. Why?

       Said the administrators, “They express a negative view of Donald Trump.”

-->Speaking of a crank call of sensitivity dept: Jordan Haskins, a Republican state councilor was sentenced to probation and sex counseling in May after pleading guilty to eight charges arising from two auto accidents in Saginaw, Michigan. Prosecutors said Haskins described "cranking," in which he would remove a vehicle's spark-plug wires to make it "run rough," which supposedly improves his chances for a self-service happy ending. Haskins's lawyer added, "(Cranking) is something I don't think we understand as attorneys."

Wanna bet?

-->Now's your chance dept: The new wiki Censorpedia is looking for input on censorship from all fronts. By government, by school, by crowd, by boycott... any way. Just go and report it... this is something that has been a long time coming. I just hope it doesn't get censored.

-->Keeping the pressure on dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel concerted effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. He forwarded me an answer to a letter MRR printed where the editors excuse my firing not as censorship for content, but because I “refuse to answer letters in the letters section.”

         That's a lie.

       In any case, please send comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL. Let me know how they answer. MRR also has a facebook p age. You might want to let them know how you feel.

-end-

If you're interested in my travel writing (not updated recently) check out http://mykelsdiary.blogspot.com/

You can read some of my classics as far back as the 70s at: http://mykelsoldies.blogspot.com/

I also have some random postings including several on how rich people spend their money. Those are at: http:/mykelsclippings.blogspot.com

See you in hell!