You Are Not Responsible or Mykel's June 2023 Blog

 I Was Wrong or Mykel's Blog for June 2023

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's June 2023 Blog/Column 

You Are Not Responsible       

by Mykel Board

“A sign of wisdom and maturity is when you come to terms with the realization that your decisions cause your rewards and consequences. You are responsible for your life, and your ultimate success depends on the choices you make.” - Denis Waitley
               “Bullshit!” – Mykel Board (a lesson learned)

“A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”
            – John C. Maxwell

“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil.”
            – Sophocles

“You make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make you.”
                  – Maxwell Maltz

Check out young Mykel Board… not even fifty… hunting and pecking his way to infamy. Writing about getting mugged… leather jacket ripped from his shoulders... getting punched by some random homeless guy. “Ya got a cigarette bud?” Mykel shakes his head no. KABOOM. Fist to chin, driving the young man’s lower canine teeth into his upper lip.

Yeah I know he’s homeless, writes Mykel, Had a tough life. But we’ve all got problems, tough spots. We all don’t randomly sock people in the face… or rip the clothes from their backs. SOCIETY has to stop someplace and PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY take over.

What a load of horseshit!

Yeah, I WAS WRONG. I made a mistake. It took me 20+ years to realize it, but I got it now. Me and Sophocles… we gotta clean up our act. I’ve been right about so much. (Can you say Crassdriver?) But in this, I fucked up… missed something… and it’s time to correct it.

FLASH TO MORTON-WILLIAMS, my local super market: open 24 hours 7 days. I shop after sunset... fewer people to squeeze the fruit.

My carrier basket: bananas, mandarin oranges, organic blueberries... organic maple syrup, some almonds… unsalted of course… Now to the dairy aisle... yogurt 2% fat… then the meat organic chicken… $20 a pound… Do I care? I have food fuckin’ stamps. I can buy anything. Fish? Wild caught salmon, oh yeah.

On to the TV dinners.... I used to buy Amy’s. They’re frozen, organic, healthy... no sugar.. low salt. Just what the doctor ordered... Oops. Strike that. News report: Amy’s is shitty to its employees. Low pay… union busting… slave-labor hours. I pass them up. Move on to EVOL, a bit more expensive but Consumer Reports gives ‘em good grades… and I like their packaging, low-tech/homey-looking. Something chicken… something fish… full basket.

On to the cashier, Donna, my favorite. We talk about what’s on sale this week… what’s good... what sucks...what happened to Cafe Bustelo prices.

During the plague, I gave Donna a $5 tip… to thank her for taking such a risky job… and for being an essential worker. She knows me.

After registering my purchases, she waits for me to slide in the footstamps card, punch in my PIN number and then press PRINT for the receipt. On the bottom of the receipt they print how much I’ve got left in my foodstamp account and when the next payment will come. It’s usually about $150 a month on the 10^th .., good enough to cover almost everything… except beer. Donna sets the receipt inside the bag.

I take off.

“Good night Donna,” I say over my shoulder… leaving the store to carry the groceries home. “See you soon.”

It’s about a 10 minute walk from Donna to my apartment. Elevator up to the fifth floor… open the door and start unpacking my purchases.

I put away the food, stuffing the freezer...half-filling the refrigerator. Then I check the receipt. I figure I should have about $400 left in the account, with the other hundred fifty coming in the next day or two. I figure wrong: $327. The next payment will be in ten days… for $36.

Jezzus fuckin’ Christ! What happened? Benefit cut by near 75%. No change in my income (or maybe a little less)… I didn’t get any younger in the last year. $36 dollars???? That’s lunch at a New York diner… without the tip.

Overnight, my grocery habits change. Organic? I can’t afford that anymore. Maple syrup? Am I kidding? Time for pure high-fructose corn syrup. EVOL… are you kidding? I’ll stoop to HUNGRY MAN.

I can feel the plaque build in my arteries.

Jim Goad is usually right. I was a fan of his last century zine ANSWER ME! His book, Redneck Manifesto, was a combination of John Wayne and Bernie Sanders… though Goad would probably disagree. He was one of my influences during my time of personal responsibility. He wrote about FAT PEOPLE and how he objects to socialized medicine because he doesn’t want to pay for people who are unhealthy because they eat too much. That’s THEIR responsibility.

That’s wrong.

In the old days, caricatures of rich people always made them out to be fat.

Is Bill Gates fat? Jeff Bezos? Wanna see fat? Take the subway to any poor neighborhood. Eating thin… eating healthy... takes MONEY… You can’t do that on $36 a month.

And yo! There’s more to unhealthy than being fat. Muscles take steroids. STDs come to those who can afford whores. Cancer comes from cooking in teflon pots. Covid doesn’t come from your not wearing a mask. It comes from a virus that walked out of a lab in China. In America, YOU are the cause of your disease… but you’re not.

It’s more than even teflon, China, or steroids. It’s the social system… the income disparity... that’s responsible for your disease and your not being able to afford to treat it properly. You are no more responsible for diseases than you are for your height.

FLASH TO THE SUBWAY. I always keep about half a dozen singles in the watchpocket of my jeans. There are guys on the street… in the subway… who need a buck more than I do. Sometimes subway performers do something extra to entertain…dance… play mariachi, tell jokes... make people feel they’re paying for a performance.

Other times the beggars just stumble from car to car… drooling… asking for anything you can spare… anything at all. Sometimes there’s a looneybird... belligerent about it... shouting at people for not helping him… cursing the world because he’s alone… on the street… no home… no nothing.

Today, in this car, rides Daniel Penny. Penny is a former marine… not long out of service… went to high school on Long Island…not far from Hicksville, my hometown. He’s an ordinary young man who I hear went hitching through Central America while he was in college.

Also in this car is Jordan Neely, a sometime Michael Jackson impersonator… now a drooling hostile train beggar. I’d give him a dollar. The passengers in this car are not as generous as that. No one reaches into his watch pocket.

Neely gets angry… yells at them… maybe threatens them. “I’ll kill you… you white SOBs!”

Little kids cringe… maybe a baby cries at the sound of the yelling. Penny watches all of it…. Until he doesn’t.

“No!” He projects to Neely, “You’re not going to threaten these people. I’m going to save them... hold you so you can’t get out. They’ve done nothing to you and you want to hurt them. I will save them.”

Penny jumps up… wrestles Neely to the floor… wraps one arm around his neck… the other over his head… a chokehold… like they taught him in the marines… hold it until all movement stops… until you’re sure he won’t fight back. Got him… women and children safe… saved.” Neely dies.

In his mind, Penny’s saved the passengers. Protected them like the Marines protect people in the countries they invade. He’s a hero… No he’s not.

The demonstrations begin. ARREST HIM! HE’S A MURDERER! It’s the new white knee on George Floyd’s neck. I CAN’T BREATHE!

Subway stations fill with people. LOCK HIM UP! Protesters jump from the platform onto the tracks… risk electrocution… LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

Penny is in shock. He thought he was a hero and now he’s a villain. He shudda known.

When the BLACK LIVES MATTER marches began, I was on them. But, even then, I had an inkling of the real problem. I wrote that it wasn’t the police that were the problem, but POLICING. Cops don’t know how to deal with people except through violence. They learn that in cop school… during target practice. Throwing a cop in jail for doing his job may make some people feel better, but it won’t stop the problem until policing itself takes a different tack.

Now I think I was only part right. Yes, policing is the problem. But it’s bigger than that. It’s the idea of personal responsibility. That’s the problem.

You grow up in a society that seeks revenge. That says wrong-doers must be PUNISHED. That says INDIVIDUALS are responsible for their actions and it doesn’t matter where those actions come from. Hey buckaroos, get this: Individual fish are not responsible if they shit in the water.

Daniel Penny was acting like he believed heroes should act. Like heroes act in the movies, in TV news reports, in White House award ceremonies. Like Marines act when confronted with danger or when ordered into war. Daniel Penny acted like every marine in every invasion. They are doing it to defend America. To protect freedom. To shield the helpless. They are supposed to be the heroes. It’s the American way.

You don’t talk. You just kill the bad guy. Look at the government… and model of Correct Action^®. Russia attacks another country. Do you jump in to negotiate? Do you try to talk to both sides? Reach a compromise? You bet your rocket launcher you don’t. Instead, you boost your Defense (sic) Industry by giving away weapons of death. There’s trouble… the answer is KILL PEOPLE!

Get it? The villain is not the guy who pulls the trigger when he believes he’s in trouble. The villain is the culture that says that the way out of trouble is by pulling a trigger. The problem for revenge-loving lock-him-uppers is that you can’t put a culture in jail.

The question becomes: if there’s no personal responsibility, should you feel remorse? If you don’t CHOOSE your actions, then how can you feel guilty about them?

NO! That isn’t the question at all. Of course you should feel guilty. But you should feel guilty for being a sucker. You should feel guilty for separating your garbage and thinking that “every little bit helps” in recycling. SUCKER!

Recycling is a scam. It’s a trick to make you feel YOU’RE RESPONSIBLE if you don’t wash off that plastic container and put it in the specially marked bin. Recycling is a plot to make you not feel guilty about consumption. It’s okay to buy shit as long as you recycle the shit package. It’s YOU who is responsible, they say. Not Pepsi. Not the plastic sealed, plastic containered yogurt companies.

So it is with welfare. It’s okay to object to free money. If you work for money, why shouldn’t everyone work for money. WRONG QUESTION: The right one is: if they get money for NOT working, why shouldn’t you get money for not working? Ask the culture. Ask about the American Way. Don’t blame the victims. WE’RE the victims.

It’s time to give up the personal responsibility idea and look at who/what’s REALLY responsible. We need to shift the blame from you and me to THE CULTURE, THE POLITICIANS, THE NEWS MEDIA, THE RICH. It’s time to realize that neither the choker nor the chokee are to blame. It’s time to realize they’re both on the same helpless side.

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]

→ Mighty Christian of Y’all Dept: People Magazine reports: Oklahoma State Representative, Jim Olsen helped defeat a bill outlawing corporal punishment of retarded kids. His logic? THE BIBLE! “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” Kids, you can’t lust for them, but you can sure beat the shit out of them.

→ A Problem I’ll Never Have Dept: The British newspaper The Independent reports that British TV will air a documentary about people with very large penises. The documentary titled Too Large for Love, shows a “hidden minority of men who have an extra-large penis that is ruining their lives”.

→ Anything Fun is Bad for You Dept: Of course, this had to come. New research finds that muff-diving causes infection... a perfect example of blaming the individual. It’s not the perfumes, “sanitary” napkins, artificial lubricants that cause vaginal infections? No! It’s tongues! She gets sick.. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. PLEASURE MAKES YOU SICK. 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.

This time there’s fine op-ed style editorial about the US proxy war in Ukraine.

You’ll also find a great investigative piece showing what we all knew from the beginning about the INTERNATIONAL cover-up of Covid’s origins.

And finally, a slightly different point of view than mine, but a related piece about the subway choking.

You can read more, or even subscribe at: https://www.thenation.com/



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