Child's Play or Mykel's May 2024 Blog: You're Still Wrong

   

You’re STILL Wrong

Mykel's

May 2024 Blog/Column

Child's Play

by Mykel Board

Spare the rod and spoil the child

--Old Proverb

Discipline your children, and they will give you peace

-- Proverbs 29:17

The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

– Proverbs 29:15

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”

― Mortimer J. Adler,

===============

“Gooo gooo gah gah goo gah.”

Little Liam crawls from his crib to the door of his room. He babbles to himself… or to no one... as ten-month old babies are wont to do. This evening, Mom and Dad are off at the movies… Oppenheimer… and they’ve left Liam with Ashley, the 16 year old babysitter, daughter of Mr and Mrs Kosminski, friends of Liam’s parents.

Liam pushes his head against his bedroom door. It creaks open with a click… He pushes again. The door opens enough for Liam to crawl through to the hallway.

Meanwhile, Ashley is diddling her cellphone… simultaneously texting her love to her sweetheart, Dexter, and to her girlfriend, Brittany, describing Dexter’s attributes.

“You can’t believe how that guy’s hung,” types Ashley to Brittany. “God… think kielbasa!”

“Wow,” texts Brittany back.

“I love you more than Beyonce loves Jay Z!” Ashley texts to her boyfriend.

“For the same reason?” Dexter texts in return.

While Ashley texts, little Liam has left his room and crawls toward the staircase that connects the upper bedroom area with the living room and kitchen downstairs. As he approaches the staircase, his right arm slips over the top steps. His arm and shoulder slide down. The boy’s ten-month old brain is smart enough to figure this isn’t right. He backs up and changes direction.

Now, he’s headed toward his parents’ room. Liam tries it again… pushing his head against the door. Again it works. There’s something familiar about the room. Liam recognizes the big bed where sometimes he sleeps... nestled between his parents when he is being comforted by Mom and Dad on an especially cryful night.

But those two things –one on either side of the bed… What are they? Liam recognizes the color… black… but has no vocabulary to say or think it. He knows this side is Mommy’s side and that side is Daddy’s side. He crawls toward the black thing on Daddy’s side. There are some handles on the outside of Daddy’s black thing. They look like big toys… something to climb on. Liam crawls over to one of the tall black objects and grabs it.

It flops open. Inside is a smaller toy… made of metal… long on one side and curved… something like a banana… on the other. Down where the two sides meet, there is another little piece of metal with a second curved piece around it. Liam pulls himself up using the drawer and its handle for support. Then he reaches inside and takes the gun.

The barely-a-toddler now crawls toward the voice coming to him from the living room. The gun, held tightly in two tiny hands, scrapes along the floor… a trail of drool follows the child as he goes.

“I just love it when he talks to me like that,” Ashley, changing to conversation from text, is saying. Little Liam has no sense of meaning, he just hears the voice and it draws him like a magnet. Down the stairs… KERCHUNK. The gun pulls his arms... KERCHUNK… KERCHUNK… KERCHUNK. Step by step his little body follows.

To the living room… behind Ashley… gurgling loudly to get her attention, show her what he found when POW! BLAM!

A voice from the cellphone pleads… “Ashley? Ashley? Are you all right Ashley?”

FLASH AHEAD

At the trial, Liam is convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison… with no chance of probation.

The next week, Liam’s parents are arrested. Fantasy? Impossible? Well...

FLASH TO MICHIGAN... OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL 2021 A boy shoots two handfuls of students. KERPOW! KERPOW! KERPOW! More blood than a pro wrestling match. Four dead. Seven injured…

Two years later, the killer stands to receive the sentence for his crime… TERRORISM. What does he get? This kid… who when he committed the crime wasn’t old enough to have sex, to drive a car, to drink a beer, to smoke a cigarette, to vote… a little boy with a gun… What is this child’s punishment? LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE. The max… not the little boy max… but the big adult make-decisions-for-himself max.

Rosemary Bayer, the Democratic state senator from the district, says. “I’m not a doctor. I’m not a psychologist. But it’s never the kid’s fault.”

I can hear another voice now. It’s Literary Device calling to me. “Mykel,” she says. “It’s not the same. A baby has no freedom of choice. What happened with your imaginary kid was an accident. The kid wasn’t responsible for what he did.”

I answer, “Is a fifteen year old with severe mental problems responsible for what he did?”

[ASIDE: You probably know, I’m an abolitionist. I don’t believe inprisons at all. I think no one should be put in a cage and the fact that so many go back time-after-time proves prisons don’t work. They’re not supposed to. They don’t exist to prevent crime. They exist for REVENGE… and to feed the prison industrial complex. In fact, the only exception in the anti-slavery amendment to the constitution is prisons. But this is even worse!]

Yes, it’s a kind of prison for slaves. Someone without rights… a child… is thrown away for the rest of his life. Most children have the right to grow into their freedom. Fifteen year old Ethan Crumbley will never have that right. But wait… there’s more.

Mom and Dad Crumbly get charged with involuntary manslaughter. Think about that. INVOLUNTARY is without will… not by design… by accident. Can you imagine a crime that happens BY ACCIDENT? Isn’t the nature of crime that you have to commit it? What is COMMIT if not VOLUNTARY? Is a miscarriage involuntary manslaughter for the anti-abortion crew? I don’t know.

Ooooo but the parents ignored the kid. They didn’t realize he had mental problems… HOLD ON! IF HE HAD MENTAL PROBLEMS it was the DISEASE that caused the kid to shoot up the school. It was INVOLUNTARY, right? The kid is innocent for… besides being a kid… reason of INSANITY.

The fact that a penalty of LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT PAROLE exists proves that the purpose of prisons is not to “correct” or reform lawbreakers… but to PUNISH them. No that’s wrong too. The purpose of punishment is correction. You slap a dog on the ass when she shits in the house so she won’t do it again. That’s punishment. You make a kid finish his dinner or have what’s left for breakfast… cold… the next day. That’ll teach him to finish what’s on his plate every night. (My parents actually did this.) Get it? Punishment is a way of teaching.

LIFE IMPRISONMENT is not punishment. It’s not to teach. It is REVENGE… It is blood for the blood-thirsty. It is a throw into the lion’s den to please the crowd. The audience is family and friends of the victim… and they give the thumbs down. The press calls it closure. But the only closure is that cell door for the rest of that inmate’s life.

[NOTE: In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that it was fine to give kids a life sentence without parole. I wonder when the court will rule that it’s okay to let kids vote and screw. If they have to pay the penalties, they should at least get the privileges, don’t you think?]

As for the parents…

Their convictions confirm punishment for “repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train. They repeatedly ignored things that make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of their neck stand up,” the judge says. “Opportunity knocked over and over again, louder and louder and was ignored. No one answered. And these two people should have and sure didn’t.”

So NOT DOING is involuntary manslaughter… even without an inkling of the results of that not doing.

But back to kids… they’re the theme of this blog. Either they’re just people like adults or they’re sub-people not able to make their own choices. If it’s the former, then they should have the same rights as adults… sex, voting, smoking, drinking. If it’s the latter, then they are not responsible for their actions, and may be trained like an errant puppy… but not put away like someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

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 Better Solution Dept: The Associated Press reports: A teenager who opened fire at a central Indiana middle school in 2018, wounding another student and a teacher, will go to a residential treatment center, as ordered by the judge.
      The court ordered that the now-18-year-old be held in the Hamilton County Juvenile Service Center for 120 days while a probation department finds “a suitable secure residential facility” for him. Not the perfect solution, but better than a lifetime in the clink.

→ Throw the Whole Team in Jail dept: A strange internet site reports that in 2002 a thirteen-year-old hockey fan, Brittanie Cecil, was struck in the head by a traveling hockey puck while she and her family attended a local hockey game. Seated fifteen rows up from behind the goal, the puck hit her so forcefully that it fractured her skull. If that isn’t INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER (girlslaughter?), I don’t know what is.

→ But was it INVOLUNTARY dept: Among the most famous criminal executions is the 1916 execution of Mary, the Circus Elephant, who killed a homeless man temporarily hired as her keeper. Several other people have been killed by elephants since then, proving that the death penalty does not prevent murder… even for elephants. Mary, was tried, then hanged from a crane. Here’s the death photo. 

BACK TO THE NATION DEPT: The newest issue of THE NATION has a great column by Kali Holloway on why TikTok banning is such a bad idea. (As is most (all?) censorship.) It again makes me point out that THE NATION is the only lefty magazine I know that is often right (I mean CORRECT) about things.
Besides the Holloway column, there’s also a good one by Ginny Hogan (strangely, but slightly, different on the website than in the magazine) with the pull-quote talking about the up-coming presidential election.

We have our two candidates.
One of them is deeply uninspiring,
and the other is Donald Trump.

Time to subscribe, I’d say.

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:

I alreay posted my centerfold picture printed in the zine Trey Mayhem sent me recently. It’s called Murder and Mayhem and it’s also a record label Murder and Mayhem records. You can see the blog here. Or/and contact Trey at TreyofToday@yahoo.com

My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachelorette!

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 who has recently died in a motorcycle accident.

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. It’s hard (and costs money) to send him email. So. If you remember how to write a letter… send him one at: Kyle Nonneman, #16534211, Snake River Correctional Institution, 777 Stanton Blvd Ontario OR 97914-8335

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

HIT HARDER! or You're STILL wrong... Mykel's Blog for October 2022

 

HIT HARDER!

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's October 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

There’s nothing wrong with a screw that a hammer can’t fix.

--Mongolian proverb

An Indian grandfather is talking to his grandson. He says it’s as if two wolves are fighting in his heart. One wolf is vengeful and angry, and the other wolf is understanding and kind. The young man asks his grandfather which wolf will win the fight in his heart. The grandfather answers, "The one that wins will be the one I choose to feed.” — Pema Chodron

Violence is as American as apple pie – H. Rap Brown

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice. - Charles-Louis de Secondat

-----

It’s that scene where Al Pacino sprays the room with bullets. You know.. the gritted teeth, the flying blood, the… what the fuck? He dissolves, the whole scene dissolves into little boxes… stuttering picture… squares shifting… a jigsaw puzzle from hell.

I sit up… lean over … smash my fist against the side fo the TV. CHUMP! CHUMP! CHUMP! It only makes the picture worse. I get out of bed… pad barefoot to the kitchen… a frying pan… that should do it. WHACK! WHACK… A scar appears on the side of the TV. The black metal frame glints silver. Scarface has completely disappeared… just a gray screen… not black… the TV is on… but gray… refusing to show color.

To the closet! A hammer! WaTOOM! WaTOOM! WaTOOM! The TV glass cracks, sprays itself over the bed… Somewhere a small spark ignites.

Flash to someplace in Alabama: I can’t remember the town’s name… a small town. It’s on the news. A 20-something year old guy shot his family. Body count: Mom, Dad, older Sister, and much younger brother.

The sheriff is making a statement. “We believe we have the perpetrator in custody. He has a record… convicted of a crime with a gun. He only served a year for that crime. If he was still in jail, like he should have been, that family would be alive today.”

OUCH! I just slammed the heel of my palm into my forehead. How can people think that way? It’s like fixing a TV with a hammer if your fist doesn’t work.

If people commit crimes after being released from jail, it doesn’t mean that they should spend more time in jail. It means JAILS DON’T WORK! Jail takes away homes, jobs, friends, dignity. What’s left after getting out? CRIME! That’s what.

What it comes down to is that, in America, jail isn’t to cure or prevent crime. Jail is to make the victims of crimes feel better. Jail is about revenge… codenamed justice or being held accountable. Often it’s a training camp… and the only place inmates will feel comfortable in their future lives. Prison is HOME.

Now what happens when the victims become the judges and juries. Any idea of justice flies out the window like my errant TV.

Take the January 6 fratboy riot at the capitol. They’re planning to overthrow the government… with bear spray? They’re violent insurrectionists... with plastic zip ties? Seems to me that insurrectionists shoot people They use guns. Only one person was shot at the capitol… and she was shot by the cops.

Congressional trials by victims? You bet your horned hat. Congress will throw the book (and encourage local jurisdictions to throw several years) at these guys. Boo hoo hoo. Some congressfolks had to hide in a bomb shelter. Big fuckin’ deal! But the victims are the judges and jury.

FLASH: imagine that the newly formed Amazon Workers Union, has a rebellion... a piss-in... creating a stream of urine-soaked inventory to call attention to Amazon’s refusal to give time off for its drivers to use the bathroom. Workers rebel. Pissing on books and kitchenware and whatever else Amazon sends trucking through America.

Now imagine the pissers are rounded up… dicks and twats milked for DNA matching with what’s found on the products destroyed. And, get this, the jury is made up of Amazon’s board of directors. And the judge? You guessed it: JEFF BEZOS!

That’s what happened in Washington with the rioters. A couple windows broken… some furniture moved… that’s it! But a former president’s home is raided. One of the rioters gets 7 years in prison! News programs scream “It was revolution,” as if George Washington carried plastic twisties with him.

In 1968, in Chicago, the Yippies and others came together to wreck the Democratic Convention and call for REVOLUTION. I was among them. There was lots of publicity… no one went to jail. An no Democrat had to hide under their Chicago desks.

In 2022 Who conducts the congressional inquiry? Why the Congressfolks themselves. Anti-abortion, pro-Iraqi War, 90% Trump supporter and Congresswoman Elizabeth Cheney wields the gavel. Suddenly, she’s the heroine… the love of the Democrats. Principles be damned… THEY ATTACKED US! VICTIMS RULE.

REVENGE!

If this riot were in a school, you’d hardly hear about it. If it were at Amazon headquarters, you probably would be cheering on the perps! (I would be!) But in Washington, where the “victims” become the judge and jury, you switch sides.

Google “slap on the wrist” and you’ll find dozens of complaints about punishments that aren’t severe enough. Try “revolving door justice” and you’ll get the same.

REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE!

It’s not a Department of Corrections… but a Department of Punishment.

The calls for vengeance… usually known by its drag name justice… come from all sides. Depending on how the press frames the crime, those calls come from the left, right and center. George Bush the First was elected by videos of a black guy with an Afro going round and round in a revolving door.

More punishment. More blood! It’s the American way. The World Trade Center is destroyed by Saudis… Well, attack Iraq! All those people died. SOMEBODY’S got to pay, right?

In 2020, the black guy wasn’t going around a revolving door. He was under a cop’s knee. This time the calls came from the other side, but they were no less hateful and demanding.

Black Lives Matter is right. I marched on their first demonstration that year. I still support them. People need to see victims of crime… NOT to have revenge against the criminals, but to prevent the crime in the first place. It is so much more important to have awareness that some groups of people have been considered disposable, than it is to have one or two scapegoats for a system gone wrong.

You think the cries for Donald Trump to be “imprisoned for his crimes” are because people want him to be rehabilitated????

I remember when the cops broke into Jello Biafra’s house… tearing the place apart looking for pornography to help their case against a graphic record insert. We were rightly horrified that the cops smash the door to someone’s house without their permission... just tear up the place... steal documents… electronics, and then be free to use what they steal to press charges instead of being prosecuted themselves for the destruction.

But let it happen to someone you don’t like. And a cheer goes up. Let it happen to someone accused of fomenting false conspiracies. False conspiracies grow from the opposing side. Did you know that the FBI found Trump was selling US nuclear weapons-making instructions to the Russians? Can you get more evil than that?

Of course, no one found anything like that. The closest we get was a MAYBE that the president took home some papers on the nuclear capabilities of other countries… nothing about how to make atomic bombs with ammonia and old lightbulbs. But people will believe anything if it fits the narrative.

So the news stations that reported that the president took home American nuclear secrets apologized when they were proven wrong. Yeah right. Did you get calls from THE OTHER SIDE for something called the CONSTITUTION which says people should be secure in their homes? You bet your MSNBC you didn’t! HATE rules the day! More cheers and emails in my inbox telling me how wonderful Liz Cheney is and how much she needs me.

That woman is so cold that an ice cube wouldn’t melt in her ass. That woman, who according to PoliticsThatWork opposes taxing businesses, consumer protection, environmental protection, financial sector regulation, gun control, public health, humane immigration policy, labor rights and wages, lgbt rights, racial equality, taxing the wealthy, countering Russian interference, women's rights and supports big business, and war whenever possible.

She needs me?

People who should be opposed to everything she stands for… are suddenly in love with her. Why? Because she’s getting revenge on somebody they HATE. 

These days they say HATE is a crime. You can even be arrest for it. But the law-writers pick and choose their hate. You’re not allowed to do that.

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]

→ Four strikes and you’re out dept: As more states stupidly fight crime with baseball-like “three strikes and you’re out” laws, those laws make even judges cry.
    Timothy Jackson was caught shoplifting a $159 jacket from a New Orleans department store. At the time Jackson was a 36-year-old restaurant cook with a sixth-grade education and a drug addiction problem.
    Since this was not Jackson’s first offense, the Louisiana Court made use of his “criminal past”, (3 robbery-without-violence convictions, one as a child), and sentenced him as a fourth-strike offender.

The judge wrote, “This sentence is constitutionally excessive in that it is grossly out of proportion to the seriousness of the offense.” Unfortunately, she was unable to deviate from the mandatory life sentence without parole required by law.

→ Hey! That’s Jeff Bezos’ tuna dept: The ACLU reports that in Texas, in 2010, Larry Dayries stole a tuna sandwich from Whole Foods while wielding a knife. He had prior convictions for burglary and theft, so the sandwich incident landed him a 70-year sentence. Larry will be 111 at the end of his sentence.
    Yeah, sure he’ll be 111. He’ll be DEAD at the end of his sentence.

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. There are two articles in the current issue I’d like to recommend herel 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.

One article is a great one (though I disagree with some parts of it, of course). It’s about “How the US leads by helping other people kill each other.” There’s also a good one about Liz Cheney, with a slightly different point of view from mine.

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:

First take 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 again 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

BRAIN POLICE or Mykel's Post MRR Column no 52

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS

POST MRR COLUMN NUMBER 52

Brain Police!

by Mykel Board

Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” --Buddha

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. --de Tocqueville

What will you do if the people you knew were the plastic that melted, and the chromium too? WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? --Frank Zappa

Yo! Yeah, I'm talking to you. No, don't look over your shoulder... There's no one there. Yeah you! You... the echo of every tweet that agrees with you. You... the spewer of every fashionable idea that every one of your friends spouts... verbatim. You... the cop-hating language cop. You the safe-spacer... the spouter of thoughts you take for granted... but are wrong. Yeah, I'm talking to you!

FLASH TO PORNHUB.COM: Damn it! A search for bisexual Africans is one page long and it only has lesbos with guys. What's up with that? Where is the doggie-style girl on her hands and knees... one guy on either end... the black twinks kissing each other as the girl gives head to one and takes the other up the wazoo? Forward me the links... please!

Elena once asked me if I still could jerk off only to what's in my mind... if I NEEDED porn to get a stiffy... if I could use my own fantasy to spew the few drops my prostate has left onto that faithful purple rag that hangs next to the computer.

An interesting question. The facile answer is Of course I don't need porn. An attractive REAL LIVE naked person will work just fine. That is a cheat... and it's not the point. The point? Can I construct a fantasy in my mind... one strong enough to get me off? With no pictures... no text... no outside inspiration?

I can do it, if I fantasize about someone I've seen. I can have an orgasmic mental vision if the people are real. I can rise and stroke if I have an image in my head of someone substantive... a real LIVE person. But I cannot create from scratch. I cannot make a face... a body... a dialog... out of nothing... and then jerk off to it. I USED TO be able to do it. But now I can't. Is porn responsible for that inability? We'll talk about that later.

FLASH TO LAS VEGAS NEVADA: Stephen Paddock, an ex-serviceman, open-fires on a Country and Western crowd. Blau... blau. BlauBlauBlau.. A....aaaaa.aaaaaaaaaa...aaaaa...

Bodies crash to the ground. That ground quickly turns to crimson mud. A young woman tries to run from the shots... she trips over a corpse... near corpse?... she's down. Ratatatatat across her back. Two corpses.... Then more. By the time it's over, the body count is 59.

FLASH TO SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, TEXAS: Devin Patrick Kelley enters a church on November 4... He opens fire. Heavy artillery... through the pews... KERPOW! KERPOW! KERPOW! Bullet-torn victims from 24 months to 70 years old.. A sea of bloody Christians... come together to ask for God's blessing and this is what they get. Almost enough to make you think God is not such a nice guy.

FLASH TO NEW YORK... HALLOWEEN: I hate Halloween. Next to Santacon, it's my least favorite holiday of the year. In NYU-land... around the corner from my apartment, Halloween is an excuse for every closet-queen fratboy to dress in borrowed frills and stuffed brassieres.. and parade his drunken idiocy on the street. It's gotten worse since the costume cops make even this unacceptable (sexist, they say)... limiting approved trans-costumes to Superheroes ... and inanimate objects.  

The morning of this Halloween a rented truck in Soho plows into a group of cyclists and pedestrians. The driver shouts ALLAH AKHBAR or something like that. BLAM! Right down the bike path. PITUM! PITUM! PITUM! Like a ball in a bowling alley. Bikes and people fly through the air like bowling pins. Eight people die. 

You don't have to be Nostradamus to predict the reaction. MASSACRE... MASSACRE... TERROR.

Social Justice Warriors twitter up a storm:

On and on... a tsunami of righteous indignation. When I object, I hear that old 1960s refrain. Mykel, you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

I say: YOU'RE WRONG! The solution IS the problem.

FLASH TO HATE-CRIMES: Somebody scrawls a swastika on a tombstone in a Jewish cemetery. It's A HATE CRIME!! That means the perp goes to jail... for graffiti.

It's a dark side street in Greenwich Village. Two young guys... matching haircuts... walk down the street hand-in-hand. The sound of voices rings from behind.

“Let's get 'em!”

A gaggle of colored teens is on the homosexuals. A fist to the ribs... one to the head. One of the attackers holds one of the gay pair. Another reaches into the victim's pocket and and takes his wallet.

“Yeah, you homos... I need this more than you do.”

The colored guys are later arrested and charged with assault and robbery as a hate crime... sentenced to an extra two years in jail... just for the hate part.

FLASH TO JOHNNY CARSON 1960s:

Carson is playing THE GREAT CARNAC! Wearing a huge turban (politically incorrect in the 21^st Century) festooned with jewels, he takes a sealed envelope and holds it to his temple.

“And the answer is PETER PAN!” He says. Then he opens the envelope and reads:

“What do you use to fry a Peter?”

Next envelope:

“And the answer is Hi Diddly Dee.” And he opens the envelope.

“How do you say Good Morning to your diddly dee?”

Get it? Mind reading was a trick. A joke. Something that everyone knew was fake... an impossibility. That was 1965... Sometimes what everybody knew, nobody knows anymore.

Now, what's IN THE MIND is no longer a joke. It's not a parlor trick. It's a crime! TERRORISM, like a HATE-CRIME is in the mind of the criminal... not in the action. It is a thought crime. Your support for HATE-CRIME laws, makes TERRORISM laws possible. YOU... yeah you... give the okay to criminalize what people are thinking.

What makes the Muslim a terrorist while the white guys aren't? It's the same reasoning that makes a subway graffitier an artist and a swastika painter a hate criminal. It's the MIND.

Don't tell me there are other thought crimes. Crimes of intent. The difference between a killing by accident and MURDER. Intent requires SOMETHING in the mind of the perp... but it doesn't say what that something is. If I plan to kill you... that shows intent. If I stalk you. Follow your comings and goings... wait outside your door for you to show yourself... that shows intent. It doesn't matter WHAT the motive is... jealousy... fear... hatred... revenge... intent is the only requirement. It doesn't take a mind-reader to figure it out.

In the 21^st Century, things have changed. Where mind-reading was a joke, now it's deadly serious. People are going to jail... maybe executed... because of their thoughts! Because of what's in their minds.

You're pissed that the white guys massacred and the Arab was a terrorist! The reason is the thought, not the action. Terrorism is for political ends. The THOUGHT must be to make some political change. The massacre-makers had no politics. They were in it for the blood. More people died in the massacres, but the killers didn't THINK terrorist^® thoughts.

I've written before about my feelings on hate crimes. Now we see it reflected in terrorism. The same people who support hate crime laws, now complain about “unfair” terrorism charges. You... yeah you... you don't get it. You're the problem.

Once you allow MIND-CRIMES... once you allow the law to prosecute thoughts... what's in the mind... you unleash a terrible power. How many of my fantasies are illegal... and yours? How many women dream about getting raped... but would never want it in real life? What if there were penalties just for the fantasy? How many diaries... blogs... pre-bedtime jerk-offs... daydreams... nightmares are against the law... or will be?

Is my increasing inability to fantasize a reaction to increasing thought control? I donno, but it might be.

When we police thinking... we stop thinking. Americans suffer from lack of thinking enough. My inability to create a hard-on-inducing image from scratch is a precursor to ALL of our inabilities to imagine anything new, different, transgressive, strange.

The cliched answer to Why do they hate is? is: They're jealous of our freedom. As long as THINKING is against the law, we have no freedom to be jealous of.

--End of the Main Part--

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

--> I said it in the 80s dept: I found a link to a "song" I wrote in the 1980s that had similar ideas... called "terrorist." You can find it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqBBIxBYQ1I, but you might have to cut and paste, because Blogger is acting up today.  

-->Scalp em! dept: The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden has dismantled an anti-slavery artwork that tried to recreate the gallows Americans used to help enslave non-white people. Why was it dismantled? Indians!

      Protesters said it was traumatic “because it recalled the execution of 38 tribesmen in 1862.” Traumatic? That's the idea! But you can't talk to people about trauma... it may cause a traumatic reaction.

-->Leaving Absurdistan dept: By the time you read this I'll be out of New York on my yearly adventure to... someplace. This year I'm going to:

     1.Los Angeles from Dec 1 through the 7th

2. New Zealand from Dec 9 through New Year's Eve
3. Tahiti (Pape-ete) for a SECOND New Year's Eve (It's on the other side of the International Dateline, get it?) Till Jan 8
4. San Francisco Till Jan 14

If you'll be in any of those places let me know... and we can meet up. If you've got beer and a couch, that's even better.

-->Busy little beaver dept: There's lots to pimp this month. First, there's an essay I wrote (actually a version of an MRR column), about GG Allin's last show in New York. The book it's in is expensive, but great! Click on it for more information and Amazon ordering. Maybe you can get it used.

-->Something for the girls dept: I contributed a lot of photos, but they only wanted the ones that presented a “positive image.” So I think I have one picture in the book... even then, it's a fine inspiration and memory of a time when females did more than complain about being touched.

-->You're kidding dept: Those who REALLY know me, know that I'm a fan of haiku and senryu (more human, usually humorous, haiku). I don't mean those idiotic 5-7-5 internet joke haiku. I mean REAL stuff. Stuff that ignores 5-7-5 and goes for something deeper. For 25 years or so, I've belonged to The Spring Street Haiku Group. We do small chapbook anthologies. Here's the current one... and it's cheap. If you can't connect by clicking on the book, it's because I'm out of town. Try again at the end of January, or send a crisp $5 bill to me at POB 137, NYC 10012. I'll send you a copy when I get back.

-->Last With A Hard-on dept: Remember when homos celebrated QUEERNESS instead of pushing to be JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE? You can see me, Tom Jennings, Larry Livermore, Bruce LaBruce and the terrific GB Jones (among others). In the Queercore documentary... Here's a link to their facebook page. 

MORE PLUGS

If you're interested in my travel writing , 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

AND FINALLY

LINK TRADE:

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.

Here's a start:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog

• And another Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

• Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

• Sometimes I contribute to an interesting multi-talented blog called OgFomK Arts see me there!

• 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.

See you in hell!

--Mykel Board