IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE or Mykel's June 2026 Blog/Column

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

JUNE 2026 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board

IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

It suddenly occurred to me that not one person who has successfully committed suicide has lived to regret it.

-1-Mykel Board

Alcohol is a social lubricant that brings people together. It allows people an excuse to bond and socialize, and there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.

– Dr. Mehmet Oz

The latest research shows that alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco,”
– World Health Organization-1

Unlike burgers, processed foods such as hot dogs are classified as a Group 1 carcinogens. Consuming the artificial compounds found in most hot dogs can increase cancer risk. The same can be said for char-grilled burgers, which contain more carcinogens than burgers cooked on a frying pan on top of the stove. But the level of carcinogenic substances in burgers is far less than in hot dogs.
--World Health Organization-2

So drinking alcohol is as carcinogenic as eating hot dogs.
-2 – Mykel Board

I lie naked on the operating table. I’m in that state halfway between sleep and fully aware. I feel some sort of restraints on wrists and ankles. Each seems to be attached to a different corner of the table.

I squint my eyes open and focus on a couple of surgeons. One of the doctors smiles paternally.

“You’re doing the right thing, Mykel.” He says to me, reaching between my legs. “Those glands have helped destroy the world. And they’ve encouraged sex. You know that science has proved that sex causes so many diseases. Every case of syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis and most cases of AIDS and herpes are caused by sex. This operation will set you free. You’ll never have to worry about the dangers of sex, because you’ll never again have sex. You’ll be neutered and alive.”

Of course it’s correct to say that a person who doesn’t have sex will not contract an STD. Just as my quote at the beginning of this blog is correct in saying no successful suicide has lived to regret it.

But it is NOT logical to say that suicide CAUSES lack of regret any more than it’s logical to say that castration CAUSES the elimination of STDs.

I’m challenging the idea of cause and effect. Saying alcohol causes cancer, like saying sex causes STDs, is just wrong… or at best, misleading. One thing does not cause something else. Things happen for a combination of reasons… mostly too many to count. Something as simple as being shot with a gun caused him to die is just wrong.

How many people have been shot with a gun and DIDN’T die? How much does it count what kind of gun, where the bullet hit? If it was, in fact, a bullet and not a BB? How soon did our victim get treatment? And on and on. Hundreds of things have to happen in order for there to be an effect. The so-called effect is a combination of happenings and conditions –not the result of one thing causing another one thing.

I’ve written before of my hatred of science. Of how it’s wrong and how it never admits to being wrong… Though it completely changes its mind… it never says “we made a mistake.”

Science-based rules on alcohol are a great example of the failure of science. It was science that said two glasses of wine a day… especially red wine… was actually healthy. That wine provided your body with elements that improve brain and heart function and likely help control cholesterol.

Flash forward to the 2020’s. ANY alcohol is bad for you. Science says so. It’s just like x-rays and asbestos. “If you drink alcohol you will die!” say the health experts. Yet alcohol is and has been a part of every culture (except Muslim and Mormon) on earth. And the sharing of the liquid has likely SAVED more people than it’s harmed. Check out the quote from Dr. Oz at the start of this blog.

Science defies logic. And the reason is the myth of cause and effect. The reason for X is that it’s caused by Y. That’s wrong! The public urge to BLAME is the fault of the myth of cause and effect. And that myth has really nasty consequences.

A prisoner is released and commits a crime. He’s been in and out of prison. What’s the reaction? The cause and effect?

“It’s a revolving door! He should have more time in prison... not be let out. Freedom from jail CAUSES crime.”

BULLSHIT!

How can people even think that way? Lawbreakers are in prison. How does a longer time being surrounded by other lawbreakers make you less likely to be one? Logic should win this debate… NOT cause and effect.

You take someone who has pickpocketed a neighbor once. Throw him in jail with rapists, murderers and career thieves. What do you expect? He’s going to get some lessons in rape, murder and more efficient thievery. More prison time RESULTS in crime. It’s logical. Don’t give me statistics that prove different. Use your brain.

FLASH TO PRAGUE… 1972: (I’ve written about this before.) I’m 22 years old and am riding through Eastern Europe on a Dutch moped. Now that I’m here in Czechoslovakia, I want to visit one of my literary heroes: Franz Kafka. Yeah he’s dead, but I figure I can find his grave. I do.

As I stand in front of the grave, enjoying the irony of finding Franz buried with his dad, Hermann. (Kafka hated his father.) An older woman stops, looks at me and at the grave. She turns to me.

“Are you Israeli?” she asks.

“No,” I answer, “I’m not.”

“You are Jewish? Right?” she asks.

“That I am,” I answer.

“Well, I have a daughter…”

FLASH TO DINNER: The older woman has invited me to meet her daughter, a slightly chubby, somewhat sexy blonde. Her name is Tereza. We’re talking about religion.

“I’m an atheist,” says Tereza. “I know you’re a Jew. But I don’t understand how you can believe in God. If he lives in the clouds, he’d just step out and fall down. Any God would just fall down to earth.”

FLASH TO FACEBOOK IN RECENT TIMES: I post... asking my atheist friends to describe the God they don’t believe in.

The answers come back. “I don’t believe. How can I describe something that I don’t believe in?”

“I don’t believe in dogs,” I reply. “I can perfectly describe the dogs I don’t believe in perfectly: They’re about 10 feet tall and have six legs. They’re very furry… except for the tail. That is bare skin... marine green in color.”

“That’s not a dog,” comes the answer.

“It’s a dog I don’t believe in,” I reply.

Get it? If you don’t believe in something, you need to be able to describe it. Tereza’s old man who lives in the clouds is a perfect God not to believe in. She has an image and can describe it.

An atheist who can’t (or won’t) describe the God he doesn’t believe in, doesn’t know what belief is. His non-belief is not logical. How can you not believe in something if you can’t say what it is that you don’t believe in?

When I say I don’t believe in cause and effect the way science does, I define cause and effect as one thing or action that is directly –and usually immediately– responsible for the existence of another thing or action.

The Hiroshima atom bomb CAUSED the death of more than 140,000 people. The EFFECT of the smallpox vaccine was to completely eliminate smallpox.

Those are cause and effects I believe in. My objection isn’t the complete irrelevance of cause and effect. My objection is the seeking of cause and effect in EVERYTHING. Yes, certain combinations of things makes results more likely. The presence of alcohol, for example, makes unprotected sex more likely. And unprotected sex makes pregnancy more likely. But alcohol does not CAUSE pregnancy.

So it’s really not the concept of cause and affect that bothers me so much as it is the seeking of cause and effect where it doesn't belong... the illogic of trying to find a cause… or effect... where there is neither... and the further mistaking of cause for effect.

Imagine a pool table with bricks on it. The pool players take turns snapping a cue against a ball, only to have the ball bounce uselessly off the nearest brick. I’m a researcher, a scientist, studying the effects of bricks on billiards. To test my theory of cause and effect, I remove the bricks from the table and let the game restart. Pow! Five times as many balls go into the pockets as when the bricks are present. I have just proved that removing bricks from a pool table improves the performance of pool players.

From then on, I carry a bag of bricks with me to pool bars. Before my turn, I spread the bricks on the table… and then remove them. It’s cause and effect. I should have a high score. Removing bricks from a pool table guarantees a high score. NO IT DOESN'T. I tried it. It doesn’t work. It’s not logical.

Take warning labels… please. The Journal of The American Medical Association found that warning labels on cigarettes had NO EFFECT on the amount of cigarettes smoked. Lung cancer has decreased since the introduction of warning labels, but that decrease was mostly due to earlier detection and better treatment… NOT warning-label discouragement. Putting warning labels on cigarette packs is like putting brinks on pool tables… then removing them before you play. It does nothing.

Now the World Health Organization, in the name of science, is demanding that warnings be put on all alcohol, At the same time, they say alcohol is no more dangerous than hot dogs. In the past, science has urged two glasses of red wine a day for better health. Science had also, in the past, urged margarine to replace butter. More recent findings say there’s greater danger in polyunsaturates (can you say margarine) than in butter. Science was wrong! Wrong about margarine and wrong about alcohol.

Science may be the greatest villain in the cause and effects war, but it’s not the only one. As I write this, TV news reports that every candidate endorsed by Donald Trump has won the Republican primary. This is supposed to prove the EFFECT of a Trump endorsement. It’s not logical.

Picture this: there’s an election between Otto Kentrol and Jello Biafra for induction to the punkrock hall of fame. Otto is pissed off at me because I back Biafra. Biafra wins. Did I do it? If I back the person most likely to win, can I claim any credit for them winning? Did I CAUSE him to win?

Of course not! There is no cause and effect here. I haven’t proved my power by showing I can pick a winner in a contest where the winner is obvious. It’s the same in politics and music and life in general. It’s time to stop looking for causes and use logic and common sense to find solutions… not effects.

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...  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]

→ Web MD proves my point dept: On their website is a nice description of how alcohol is good for you. So before you put a health warning label on your can of Smuttynose, consider some facts… use logic… not stupid cause and effects.

→Cause and effect… whoops dept: Scientists in 1988 found that facial expressions have the potential to influence our moods: the more people smile, the happier they will be, and vice versa. In a last-century experiment, researchers asked participants to read The Far Side comics by artist Gary Larson, with either a pen held between their teeth (forcing a smile) or between their lips (replicating a pout). Results found that people who smiled reported the comics to be funnier than those made to pout. Researchers concluded that changing a facial expression can change mood, and termed this phenomenon the facial feedback hypothesis. But when another team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands conducted the same experiment, using the identical comics, the results failed to replicate "in a statistically compelling fashion". Evidently, the cause and effect relationship of smiling to feeling was wrong. You can read about this and other science mistakes at: Science Correcting Itself

→ A shitty story: This story is from my long-time pal Sid Yiddish. Evidently it’s true, and as with many such stories, is more fun in the telling than in the reality. You can read it here. Thanks Sid!

See you in hell
redux
MB

LINKS

New Links:

I’m happy to present the art of Sarah Thobe… who paints personalities as part of her portraits. Check her out at https://sarathobe.com/.

And it was great to hear from my very long-time friend, Fred Lonberg-Holm. Celloman extraordinaire. You can hear him at https://fredlonberg-holm.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of

Anthony Allen Begnal asked me to mention his Hardcore Conversation You Tube channel, and I’m happy to do so here.

Longtime scene/zinester Robb Roemershauser has restarted the Above Ground Zine Library. The Zine library doesn’t yet have an address at the location but, fell free to donate zines that you no longer want to the Aboveground Zine Library 2100 Sawmill Road Apt. 22-202, New Orleans, LA 70123. The Zine library will be located in the upper 9th ward on a busy street.

And the regulars:

My pal Matt Sheahan 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/  and 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

NO EMPATHY or Mykel's August 2023 Blog

   

No Empathy... or Mykel's Blog for July 2023

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's August 2023 Blog/Column 

No Empathy....    

by Mykel Board

“We are surrounded by people who appear to be happy, people who clap their hands and dance in the streets, people who sing for the pure joy of singing… and you think they don’t suffer? You think that they are somehow excluded from the battle of the human condition-- death, infirmity, lost love, poverty, crime and all the rest of it. We’re all half mad.”

--Robert Wilson

“There is only one way to understand a lonely bench in a park: Sit on it; watch whatever it is watching; listen to whatever it is listening to! Sit in spring, sit in winter, sit in summer! To understand something deeply, you need to live its life!”

- Mehmet Murat Ildan

[NOTE: All the people and events described in this blog are true. No names have been changed. No one is innocent.]

I’ve just left the cancer center. Prostate… what old men get. I’m an old man. Radiation surgery… cyberknife they call it. Five cybercuts in 10 days. Not painful… but requiring a weird diet of non-fiber food: white bread, popsicles, canned fruit. A double laxative at night… then a Fleet enema in the morning just to make sure nothing is left inside. After that, a half hour on the operating table.

Your choice of music while they cut. First was Dixieland Jazz. Then The Velvet Underground, Today: Patti Smith. I have other choices. At a hospital, I don’t want to ask for something dead: (Kennedys, Boys, Milkmen, Grateful). It might make the staff uncomfortable. Right now, they’re helping me off the table just as Patti asks if I know how to pony... like Tony Maroni.

I leave the building… on the street now. I need to find a post office. The Upper East Side… I don’t know this neighborhood. I’ll ask someone. Here’s a fellow patient, skinny guy… about half my age… just leaving the cancer center.

“Excuse me,” I ask, “do you know where there’s a post office nearby?”

“Sorry, I’m not from around here.”

“Thanks anyway.”

I ask a security guard… standing in front of the next building taking a smoking break. I love it: a smoking break next to a cancer hospital.

“I know there’s one close,” she says, “but I’m not sure what street.”

I thank her. Ah, here comes a very determined-looking woman… wearing a backpack… body leaning forward as if marching into battle… I approach her.

“Excuse me,” I say, “do you…

She snarls… shakes her head… waves her arms above her head as if brushing away a gnat attack. Stamps the ground... harder as she passes me and disappears around the corner.

I don’t get it? I’m 5 foot 3 inches tall… pushing 80 years old… barely standing after radiation treatment. Did she think I was going to attack her? I don’t understand the cruelty. All she’d have to do is say, “I’m sorry,” and then give an excuse. She wouldn't even have to stop. I just don’t get the inhumanity.

BOING! That’s it. That brings me exactly to what I want to write about. First some definitions (to quote Humpty Dumpty: words mean what I want them to mean… so don’t bother looking this up):

SYMPATHY is feeling sorry for someone. When someone dies you send a sympathy card. When you see a wounded animal, you feel sympathy. You feel unhappy because someone or something else is suffering.

EMPATHY is the ability to feel the emotions of someone else... to mentally put yourself in their jockstrap. To understand what makes them tiktok. To “get it” as if from inside another person.

You’re probably familiar with Jim Testa. He’s known for half a century of music writing… for supporting bands that nobody’s heard of… for supporting friends (including me) that no one else would dare support. A great human being. That’s why it hurt… when Jim said, “Mykel, I’ve known you for a long time… and one thing I’ve gotta say… again… is that you have no empathy.”

The remark comes after I say I refuse to be bullied by the language cops. I’ll say Colored People if it fits what I’m talking about… or if it proves a point. How is People of Color okay, but Colored People offensive? And what’s the problem with being offensive anyway?

“Mykel,” says Jim, “I’ll say it again. You have no empathy.”

FLASH TO CALVIN: Calvin sits on his milk crate… the color of the crate slightly lighter than his skin…. He gets darker in the summer. His back is against the side of the building that corners Bleecker and LaGuardia. He wears a black baseball hat, a plain gray t-shirt and bluejeans. On his feet, some kind of sneakers that are neither new nor fashionable. In his left hand is a plastic soda cup with a few coins on the bottom. He sees me from his corner… smiles and waves.

“Calvin!” I shout from across the street. “How you been doin’?”

I cross to talk with him. Simultaneously, I pull a single dollar bill out of the watch pocket of my jeans… where I keep my homeless money.

“You on your way to your favorite place?” Calvin asks me, nodding toward the Peculier Pub, my regular hangout.

“How’d you guess?” I joke, dropping the dollar into Calvin’s cup.

“You goin’ back to South Carolina this summer?” I ask.

“Mykel, are you kidding? You know how hot the summers are in New York? Double that for South Carolina…”

He interrupts our conversation to talk to some passing folks… all with purple NYU T-shirts… talking with each other… gesturing with their cellphones.

“How you doin’ today, folks?” He says, rattling the coins in his plastic cup. They keep walking… like he’s invisible.

Calvin and I talk a little more. My sister lives in South Carolina and we’ve talked about that before. Calvin’s family is from a different part of the state than my sister is.

“It’s almost like a different country,” he tells me.

I often think about Calvin. Where does he go at night? How does he get to South Carolina once a year? Hitchhike? Do people still hitchhike in 2023? What’s it like 20+ years after the last time I hitchhiked. What’s his life like? I can’t imagine!

FLASH TO MANNY: In a wheelchair on the other side of Bleecker… down a little bit.. usually in front of the CVS on the corner. About 50, a big guy... missing a few teeth on the bottom… I drop a buck into his plastic cup. Even though it’s nearly 90^o out, he’s covered from shoulder to knees in a blanket.

“Mykel,” says Manny. “ Gotta talk to you. I always see you hangin’ out with these Japanese guys… girls… whatever. Lemme warn you. Be careful of ‘em.”

“But, I like Japanese people. They’re smart and fun.”

“They act like they’s your friend,” he says, stealing a glance to the right and left. “But secretly, they hate you. They want to kill you. Take it from me… I know.”

What happened to this guy? Is he talking about the Japanese or Asians in general? Did he serve in Vietnam and end up in a wheelchair? Why would he say something like that? I can’t imagine why he feels like that. No clue to what it must be like to have that kind of fear and hatred inside... stewing as he sits in the heat and asks people for money.

FLASH TO KEVIN: If Manny is big and fat, Kevin is a monster. From neck to knees… rolls and rolls of it… His body is just a lump… a huge lump… any particular part: chest... stomach... back... ass… They fold into one another… just blobs… impossible to know where one part ends the next part begins. He’s like a huge mound of jello on a bench. Not really ON the bench, but dripping over the bench.

Kevin’s bench is in front of H-Mart, the Korean supermarket chain. I often shop there. Not expensive... good Korean food... good Japanese food at two-thirds the price of the Japanese stores. Kevin’s cup doesn’t get a dollar from me. I know him too well.

“Mykel,” he tells me twice a week... when I shop at H-Mart, “I don’t want your money. I know you’re going into that store. Bring me a Coke when you come out.”

I say to him, “Kevin, you say the same thing to me every week. I know you by now. You know they got a sign in the store… in the soda section… by the Coke. HOLD ONE CAN FOR MYKEL TO PICK UP FOR KEVIN.”

He laughs.

We shake hands… bump fists actually. I go into H-Mart… buy some frozen Korean pancakes, red miso, pork dumplings… and a can of Coke. I pay... walk out… freeze. Kevin is on his feet… leaning forward… yelling…. Both fists clenched at his side… the muscles on his neck throbbing.

YOU WHITE BITCH! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU WON’T EVEN TALK TO ME? DON’T EVEN SAY “I’M SORRY!”

And the rant goes on. He stands and shouts down the street at someone I can’t see. I’ve never seen him like this. He could have a stroke. If he were white, he’d be red in the face. I steal behind him… quietly set the can of coke on the bench… he’s still yelling not seeing anything but the object of his rage. I turn toward Houston Street and head home.

FLASH TO WILL: Will’s from Texas… Austin… BA in film from UT. He arrived in New York at the beginning of this year. His plan? Live on the street until he earns enough money to get a place of his own.

25 years old, Will is the thinnest of my homeless friends. He’s amassing his future fortune by working for DoorDash, a food delivery service that makes its workers compete with one another to score points for quick service and good ratings. Orders flash to cellphones close to either pick-up or delivery points. The first person to accept… provided he has a good rating… gets the job.

Will also makes money on eBay… learning and visiting thrift-shops… anywhere the subway goes… pickup up DVDs and electronic doodads… and “flipping them” on eBay… two to ten times their original value. Will travels the city wearing a huge backpack… for his deliveries and his thrift-store finds.

Will is a schlemazel. Two months ago, I saw him with a shiner… not the beer, but the black eye.

“What happened?”

“Mykel, it was weird… these two crackheads… they chased me. They wanted to mug me… I fought them off… screamed at them. One got me right in the face. Blam! It’s a little better now, but still hurts.”

“I’ll buy you a drink,” I tell him.

While waiting for orders from DoorDash, Will hangs out in a mid-town library. He’s got a laptop in his knapsack, and can connect and post on facebook. Today marks a week after the black-eye incident.

“I was attacked again… mugged… wallet stolen… all my money… at swordpoint!”

This is New York. People get mugged. I understand. But mugged at swordpoint? In the subway in 2023? That is impossible… or would be for anyone not Will.

“At least I still have my cellphone.” continues the facebook post. “I couldn’t survive without that. Doordash! What would I do?”

Give it another week.

“I fell asleep on the subway. Woke up… my phone was gone.”

Will sleeps on my couch once a week or so. I watch him planning his next day. After the phone is gone, he’s still planning… visit Verizon… it’s insured… get a replacement… how will they transfer the number? Where’s the nearest Verizon? We sit on the couch to work out the details. But I think: How can he do that? How can he keep going? He could easily move back to Austin where its familiar… easier… more friends than one old Jewish guy who’ll give up his couch once a week. What gives him the power to keep it up… and to smile and be friendly… and not to hate the world? I can’t imagine.

POW! it hits me… like a Fleet Enema. Jim is right. I don’t have empathy. I can’t put myself in other people’s jockstraps. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live on the street. I can’t see myself hating Japanese people. I don’t know how it feels to be confined to a wheelchair… to be black… to flip DVDs from the Salvation Armies. I think about that… wonder… but I can’t feel it. Yep, Jim’s right. I don’t have empathy. Sympathy yes! I live for sympathy. Sometimes I even feel sorry for people who are much richer than I am. But empathy? No, I just can’t do it.

Shit! It’s late. I gotta get to today’s prostate zapping. That enema... that music choice… I need to stop at the bank first. POW! Out of the house, down Broadway… what’s this. Some girl with an ID tag… she wants me to contribute to something… just to talk to me about children or animal abuse. She moves to block my path. I snarl… shake my head… wave my arms above my head as if brushing away a gnat attack. I stamp the ground harder as I pass her… not saying a word, and then, I disappear around the corner.

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]

→ Headline of the week dept: Speaking of homelessness. I saw this headline on the internet: Homeless Man With No Arms Stabs Tourist

I hope the tourist wasn’t Will.

→ Speaking of Will dept: CNN reports DoorDash is jumping on the speedy delivery trend. The company is now offering 10- to 15-minute delivery. Okay Will, you’re really gonna have to jump to it to pick up the food and bring it to the lazy shit who ordered it… in a quarter of an hour!!! Make sure you bring your pepper spray, though you might not have time to use it.

→ Pearls Before Swine dept: It seems that TickTockers have been promoting “Yoni Pearls,” small bundles of a variety of herbs. The idea is to insert them into your vagina (if you have one) to help improve odor, remove toxins and treat bacterial and yeast infections. “Reported side effects are, itching, dryness, stinging and cramping." I donno, I can think of better things to put in MY vagina.

→ I try to be a philosopher but I Kant dept:  This from a facebook pal of mine:

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, Lev Golinkin writes about how the Western (and pro-war liberal) media praise Ukraine fighters who have exactly the same philosophy as US white supremacists. And, as I still can’t figure out how someone can be Pro-Israel and Anti-Trump at the same time. Israel has more public places named after Donny than anywhere else on earth. In any case, there’s a nice letter from Bob Gris (no link, sorry) quoting the evil Alexander Haig who called Israel “the largest American aircraft in the world that cannot be sunk.”

Finally, there’s a nice discussion of Bernie Sanders and how this guy usually gets everything right.


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