Clichés
(Mykel Board's March 2021 Blog)
YOU'RE STILL WRONG..
You’re STILL Wrong
or
Mykel's
March 2021 Blog/Column
Clichés
by Mykel Board
We
just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle
and engage in unconventional living.
--Christopher McCandliss
I write this in front of my
cheap HP hooked up to an ancient monitor and an even more ancient
keyboard. I’ll
squeeze
out 500 words before I allow myself dinner and TV.
In the
old days, before numbered
impeachments and
numbered COVIDs, I watched very little television. Now with
scam
subscriptions to Netflix, and Amazon Prime… plus the miracle
of
ROKU… I can’t get away from it.
It’s
been years since I sat with a TV dinner in front of a TV. Now, it’s
every night I don’t have Drink Club… or a
meal with
one of two non-cootiephobic friends… one a
super-cook…
the other a walker who loves to eat out.
King Cuomo...
happily (for
me) in
trouble for forcing corona-sick
people into nursing homes and then lying about how many died there…
has just opened the bars and restaurants to 25%... with
name, temperature and contact address requirements.
I’m Dirk Diggler. I live in Times Square. I can’t fake my
temperature. The
bars
fake it for me.
One
thing about
watching
TV again… Whoa…
the
commercials. SUVs,
car insurance comedy
skits,
supplemental medicare plans, a few pizza and fast food chains, and
lots of razor and vaginal
blood-stopping ads.
Not
at all like I remember them... not filled with white guys playing
doctors… or lawyers… or anything.
Are there
any white
guys at all? Maybe it’s a mix and I’m just seeing it different…
fresh
eyes.
Google tells me 60% of Americans are white. Let’s say half those are men. So 30% of the commercials should have white guys in them. I watch a dozen commercials… keep track of the honkies… there are 4. 4/12 = 1/3 = 33%. That’s about right! So the problem is me! Just the change in the way I see TV makes me fall all over myself with racial correctness and pity poor whitey.
But
wait, there’s more!
One commercial catches my attention
above all others. There is a black woman, hefty... in the sexy way
black women are hefty... standing
against a plain gray
background… hands folded at her crotch. She looks directly into the
camera and says,
“I
never say CAN’T. That’s a word I never use. Anything you want to
do, you can do. You’ve got to believe in yourself and….”
Huh?
That’s the same crap my father told me when I was a boy. It’s the
American ideal. The Nike Just
do it.
That’s still here? With all this disease and killer cops… They’re
still peddling this You
can do anything you really want to do
shit???
NO
YOU CAN’T!
I
fantasize kidnapping that lady… forcing her at knifepoint up the
stairs to
the
roof. Pushing her to the edge.
“You can do anything you want? I bet you want to flap your arms and fly as you head down past those windows below. I bet you REALLY want to be able to pigeon down and and rest lightly. You can do it, right? You can do anything you want to do, right?”
Then I push her
over the edge.
I’m
5-foot 3-inches tall… pushing 80 years old. No
matter how much I REALLY WANT
to play center
for
The
Wolves… I CAN’T DO IT. You
can do anything you want is
a cliché older than I am… more
American than a revolution...
and it’s WRONG.
There’s another cliche I want to pull the rug from under. QAnon and its pals get banned from facebook, twitter, and amazon. The censorship is so strong that even censorship-free sites are censored by their carriers.
“Mykel,”
says liberal Lucy, “that isn’t censorship. That’s done by
private companies. The first amendment only applies to the
government. These are corporations.”
“Yo Lucy!,” I
reply, looking at her breasts, “there’s a difference between
censorship, free speech and the first amendment. Corporations can
and
do censor…
same
as the
government.
AntiFa can and does censor… same as the
government… one is covered by the constitution and the other by the
principle of free speech.”
“Yo Mykel,” says Lucy, not looking at anywhere in particular. “Free speech does not mean free from consequences.”
Flash
to Pyongyang,
North
Korea: Kim Jun Un, is explaining what a free country North Korea is.
People are free to work, play government-approved games, and say
whatever they want to say.
The
Pyongyang
Daily News is doing “man on the street” interviews to let the
citizens know how their neighbors think. Citizen after citizen
explains
how s/he’d
never want to live anywhere else…. How the great leader has built a
great nation. One man, Park Sum Nut, says, “Yes, the People’s
Republic is great… It’s amazing that one little guy with a bad
haircut can create such a strong power.”
An hour after publication... police arrest Park Sum Nut... bring him to Kim Square in the center of Pyongyang. A crowd builds… people know something is up. Park… face bruised and bloodied… is pushed ahead of a phalanx of cops. When they reach an old metal gate, two of the lead cops shove the young man against it… chain his wrists… his ankles. They rip off his pants… underpants. One cop grabs him between the legs squeezing… pulling down on the hanging organs. Another cop has what looks like a sheet full of ground beef. They smear the contents on Park’s exposed equipment. A smell of meat on meat rises in the square square.
Kim
Jung Un appears on a balcony, just to the right... on the edge of the
square.
“Now!” he says, “release the dogs.”
The next day you read a quote from the Korean leader. “We have free speech here in North Korea, but free speech does not mean free from consequences.”
YES,
IT DOES!
If
speech has consequences, it’s not free. If
you can go to jail for yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater…
what happens when there REALLY IS a fire? You’re
afraid
to tell
anyone about it.
I
walk up Broadway toward K-Mart. My clothes and plumbing are falling
apart during the plague.. I need to shop for repairs. I wear
my Julian-gifted plague mask. Other pedestrians super-size their
social distance from me.
Look! There’s a 30-something woman… blond hair… sun-glasses in February… and a mask? No, TWO MASKS! I can see from the double ear-straps… one of those blue paper ones... close to her face… then a large black one on top of it. You know this is just the first (second? third?) step. Next comes three masks… Social distancing of 6 miles… bars open for one customer every 30 minutes… time to drink up, pay and leave... restroom closed because you don’t know who touched what in the meantime.
When I get home, I post the adventure on facebook. Why am I surprised by friends who tell me they’ve been wearing two masks for weeks? Some wear a mask at home… even though they live alone. Several my age tell me how they’ve been up all night trying to get a vaccine... clicking the make an appointment button every 10 minutes... for hours. No success. They try again the next night.
One
woman
leaves
her mail in the sun for a day before she opens it… figuring the sun
will bake the cooties off the envelopes.
“You can’t
be too careful, Mykel,” she tells me.
FLASH TO THE
WORLD AS IT COULD BE
I
walk up Broadway to K-Mart. This is right after the new helmet laws.
Pedestrians risk a $50 fine if they don’t wear helmets while
walking. Falling snow… construction debris… you never know what
can
fall
from above. Wear
your helmet!
Helmets
protect YOU!
is
the slogan… you see it on all the TV stations, along with the usual
imploring:
Stay
safe! Don’t ever touch anyone for any reason!
At the corner of Third Street and Broadway I have to wait. The crossing gate has snapped shut just as I reach it. CLANK! Christmas music plays through the speakers while cars pass and pedestrians cross the other way. After two minutes of I saw Mommy looking at Santa Claus (safe socially distant) the gate opens and I cross to the other side.
You can’t be too careful?
YES, YOU CAN!
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]
–>More leisure in COVID dept: The Guardian reports that a Hamburg university is offering “idleness grants” to applicants who are committed to doing nothing.
The University of Fine Arts in Hamburg advertises three €1,600 scholarships to applicants from across Germany. The applicants have to convince a jury that their chosen area of “active inactivity” is particularly impressive or relevant.
The application form consists of only four questions: What do you not want to do? For how long do you not want to do it? Why is it important not to do this thing in particular? Why are you the right person not to do it?
–> Too late for Donny dept: The craft site Sticker Mule is offering to change your tweets into framed art. All you have to do is upload the URL of your tweet and the company will reproduce it… large… and give it a wooden frame. The cost? A mere $35… plus $10 shipping.
–>
You
CAN be too cautious redux dept: According
to a Sept 2020 Washington
Post story
(strangely under-reported
),
more
than 134,200 people died from Alzheimer’s and other forms of
dementia since March. That is 13,200 more U.S. deaths caused by
dementia, compared with previous years.
A
Washington Post analysis of weekly death data from the CDC found
about
13,200 excess deaths due to Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Says
the Post: Overlooked
amid America’s war against the coronavirus is this reality:
People with dementia are dying not just from the virus but from the
very strategy of isolation that’s supposed to protect them. In
recent months, doctors have reported increased falls, pulmonary
infections, depression and sudden frailty in patients who had been
stable for years.
–>
Thanks dept: I want to
thank my sister, Gayl, for putting me on her Amazon Prime account,
and my Guyanese pal, Gavin, for giving me Netflix, and my
facebook friend, whose
name I can’t find, who sent me the Roku remote and receiver. Ain’t
charity wonderful?
See
you in hell… again,
MB
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:
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.
Rock-writer
and historian extraordinaire, Jim Testa, has continued his great zine
online. Jersey
Beat
is
still going!
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.
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.
I have a very occasional blog about how rich people are just like us… same needs, same desires, you know. You can read it 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
