Mykel Off His Meds or Mykel's December 2023 Blog/Column

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's December 2023 Blog/Column 

Off My Meds    

by Mykel Board

INTRO: I used to think it was evil... the end of humans who can feel joy, pain, itch and scratch… know what it’s like to piss in their pants. Evil! Without feelings, without awareness… Now, I’m in love. I’m talking about Artificial Intelligence. I’m talking about the ability to just ask a question about some obscurity and get an answer in plain English… not a link to something with MAYBE a partial answer and a lot of advertising.

I can ask, What is a common first name that can be used for men and women?

And my AI program will answer: A common first name that can be used for both men and women is "Alex". It is a unisex name that can be short for both "Alexander" and "Alexandra".

It’s not my favorite answer (I like LESLIE), but it works. It’s fast and without bullshit. I’m going to use Leslie in this blog, now that I’ve introduced you to THEM.

PART ONE: I want to tear my skin off. I want to dig my fingernails into my wrist, my neck, my leg… grab the skin, rip up... off… down to the muscle. Just rip away the itch, the bites, the creeping knowledge… like Freddy Kruger victims… that if I go to sleep, I will suffer horrors.

Doctor’s on vacation. The nurse-practitioner says it’s spider bites, not bed bugs… prescribes ointment, Zyrtec. Nothing works… I spray the bed with poison: DEET, OFF, Bed-bug killer. Nothing works. The fumes give me a chronic cough and make my eyes itch.

If I tell the landlord, there’ll be worse horrors. Send in the bug sniffing dogs. Pack up everything in the apartment. Throw away books. Leave for 2 days while the exterminators go through my piggy bank to see what they can get away with. And worse, I’ll be blamed for it. Allowing my homeless pal to sleep on the couch… my nephew… visitors from Japan. I pay $870 rent… you don’t think they’re looking for a way to kick me out?

I guess I could call an exterminator myself… not tell the landlord. Leslie says: Individuals can expect to pay between $300 and $5,000 for bed bug extermination, with an average cost of $1,750. Sure, what’s an extra couple thousand bucks on my $400-a-month teacher’s pay?

Ok, I’ll itch. My homeless pal… my guests… my nephew… Sid Yiddish... will suffer the scabs. The only alternative is to tear off my skin.

PART TWO: Me in 1933: Did you know that the government is infecting Negroes with syphilis so they can see what happens to ordinary people?

Literary Device 1933: Mykel, you’re such a paranoid pawn. So American paranoid. You know in 20 years all the conspiracies will be communist? In 90 years, all the conspiracies will be alt right. You’re just the beginning. Anything you don’t like will be a conspiracy. To quote you, You’re Wrong!

FLASH TO NOW: the syphilis experiments WERE a conspiracy. A real thing. An evil conspiracy, conducted by the US government (Public Health Service) from 1932 to 1972. Leslie tells me The experiments were carried out on a group of African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, who were purposely infected with syphilis. The goal of the study was to observe the natural progression of the disease when left untreated. The participants were not informed of their diagnosis and were denied proper treatment, even after penicillin became widely available as a cure for syphilis. Don’t you see you fuckin’ Literary Device? Conspiracies are real!

“But Mykel,” is the Device comeback, “because something is true, doesn’t mean EVERYTHING is true. In the 50s it was communism. In this century it’s TERRORISTS. Sure there may be conspiracies, but not everything is a conspiracy.”

For once, old Literary Device is right… well, partially right anyway. Right now, it’s true that anyone who finds a group of people they don’t like call that group’s actions A CONSPIRACY. Try to steal the last election? It’s a conspiracy of Trump supporters or Biden supporters… take your pick. Black Lives Matter? A conspiracy of Anti-Fa. COVID? A conspiracy of vaccine manufacturers.

A friend of mine told me that the 5G network antennas can cause cancer or some brain dysfunction. “It’s a conspiracy,” I reply. “I’ve heard.”

“No conspiracy,” she says. “Was it a conspiracy to say smoking causes cancer? It just happens… side effect –not conspiracy.”

I feel like shit for jumping on the bandwagon. SOME conspiracies are real. The Alabama experiment WAS a conspiracy. There have been secret plots to kill Castro… REAL conspiracy. I can’t be sure, but I’d guess most conspiracies AREN’T. They’re just similar people benefiting from the same action.

I’ve written before about how recycling encourages consumption. “You bought 40 individual bottles of water? Don’t you think that’s wasteful?”

“Wasteful? No! I recycle those bottles.”

Leslie says that only 9% of plastic is actually recycled. The rest goes into landfill… or bird-choking in the Atlantic/Pacific. I can tell you that ZERO percent of plastic NOT bought in the first place ends up around a seagull’s neck.

I’ve written about the recycling hoax before. But wait! There’s more!

EVERYTHING you do is used against you. I just got these two question on a recent survey. What are they trying to sell. A wind-powered router maybe?

Awww come on! But wait! There’s EVEN more!

FLASH TO THE PSYCH WARD: “Good morning Mr. Santos. It’s time for your medication. How’re you feeling today?”

“I dunno… I feel on the edge… not quite ready to make stuff up, but too tired to... you know… get out of bed.”

“Aww poor baby!” says the nurse. “Don’t worry Georgie. Allison is here. Take your lithie, bubeleh, and you can get right back to those big bad halls of congress.”

Yeah, I’m talking lithium. When I was running around breaking windows and sleeping 12 hours a day, lithium is what was in the bathroom bottle that I never used. Anyone who was off their meds was off their lithium.

Today, lithium is in everything. Teslas, that computer or cellphone you’re using to read this right now, e-bikes, where it explodes and has burned to death over 100 people in New York alone. There’s no end to lithium. It’s what powers the tree huggers.

Sure, use electric vehicles and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. You’re helping the earth. Where do you think lithium comes from? A touch from God to say thank you for saving the environment? Think again! (As if you thought in the first place.)

Leslie tells me that lithium comes from the same place OIL comes from. It’s dug up and spurted out. Lithium, like oil, is earth’s ejaculation… but without the balls to replenish it. “Brine extraction,” says Leslie, “is the most common method for obtaining lithium. It involves pumping brine from underground reservoirs known as salars or salt flats. The brine is then pumped into large evaporation ponds, where it is exposed to the sun and wind. Over time, the water evaporates, leaving behind concentrated lithium salts. The concentrated lithium salts are further processed using (deadly) chemicals.

Oh yeah, there is one other way to get lithium. NOT the same as oil, but the same as coal. Yeah, you plastic saver, lithium is MINED. The ore is dug up in mines, crushed and then undergoes a series of nasty chemical processes to separate the lithium from other minerals. One common method is called "concentrate roasting," where the ore is heated to high temperatures to convert lithium minerals into a more soluble form. The soluble lithium compounds are then leached out using other nasty chemicals. Don’t believe me? Ask Leslie!

And then what? After the lithium is made into batteries, those batteries have to be charged. Using electricity from where? Does your Tesla plug into its charger and use the power you supply by spinning the stationary bike parked next to the machine? How many humans’ skin melted away from cars alone? Leslie seems reticent to make a guess:

My knowledge only extends up to January 2022. As of that time, there have been instances of lithium-ion battery fires in electric vehicles, but the exact number can vary, and new incidents may have occurred since then. It's important to note that while lithium-ion batteries are generally considered safe, incidents can happen due to various factors such as manufacturing defects, damage to the battery, or external factors like accidents.

I can see the wealthier of you puffing out your chests. “Hah! I use solar power to power my electric charger. Take that Mykel Board contrarian.”

Yo! Mister environmentalist. What do you think is the main source of power in solar energy batteries? It’s LITHIUM! The same welled and mined chemical that’s dug up to put in your car battery.

Get it? It’s all a trick… a con… Your $200,000 Tesla, your solar roof, your recycling does nothing but encourage consumption. Your e-bike, your e-car, your solar-powered house. It’s marketing… the “e-” is no more “environmental” than the “X-” in X-ray is Twitter.

Lithium mining may not yet surpass the damage that coal mining and oil-drilling is now causing… but it will. And the Radical Chic, shown off by Tesla parading Steven King or Bill Gates is just so much free advertising for Elon Musk.

Environmentalism is a way for rich people to become richer. It’s a way to encourage people to consume more—guilt free. Spend more money! It’s good for the earth, they tell you. No, it’s not a conspiracy, unless capitalism is a conspiracy. Come to think of it…

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]

→ The Arab News reports that Islamic pilgrimages to Mecca now “resemble a trip to Disneyland.” The area has been overcome with “selfie fever”… the pilgrims bragging more than praying. Worse, “Mecca is often experienced more as a tour package centered around shopping malls rather than religious structures.” Capitalism can eat anything and spit it out any way you want it. Allah will not protect you.

→ The Japan Times has a fun story about Tosatsu, a Japanese shoe company. It seems they were making special shoes that included an upskirt camera in them. The wearer could use a toe to turn the camera on and off as the occasion calls for. Local cops got wind of the invention and were soon sifting through the company’s books to find, one-by-one, purchasers of the shoes. The charge: Aiding Voyeurism I wonder if binocular companies will be next.

→ On a more serious note: Bernie Sanders continues to show his sharp outlook and what SHOULD be called “political correctness” because it’s about politics, and it’s correct:

The horrific war in the mid-east continues. Here is a statement I released yesterday with my thoughts about a constructive path forward.

Gaza is a humanitarian disaster. No more aid to Israel without strong conditions.

Hamas is a corrupt terrorist organization which began this war by slaughtering 1,200 innocent Israeli men, women and children and taking over 200 hostages. Hamas has made clear, before and after October 7, that its goal is to destroy Israel. Under those circumstances, Israel absolutely has the right to defend itself.

While Israel has the right to go after Hamas, Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government does not have the right to wage almost total warfare against the Palestinian people. That is morally unacceptable and in violation of international law. Displacing 1.6 million people from their homes, cutting off food, water, medical supplies, and fuel, and killing some 12,000 Palestinians - nearly half of whom are children - is in violation of every code of human decency. It must stop.

The U.S. provides $3.8 billion a year in aid to Israel and the Biden administration wants $14 billion more. The Netanyahu government, or hopefully a new Israeli government, must understand that not one penny will be coming to Israel from the U.S. unless there is a fundamental change in their military and political positions. Among other conditions that must be imposed upon any aid to Israel are:

* an end to the indiscriminate bombing which has taken thousands of civilian lives and a significant pause in military operations so that massive humanitarian assistance can come into the region;

* the right of displaced Gazans to return to their homes;

* no long-term Israeli re-occupation or blockade of Gaza;

* an end to settler violence in the West Bank and a freeze on settlement expansion;

* a commitment to broad peace talks for a two-state solution in the wake of the war.

Thank you for reading

In solidarity, Bernie Sanders

→ Bonus:

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:

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

YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. MYKEL'S MARCH 2020 BLOG UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES (PT.1 )

YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. MYKEL'S March 2020 BLOG
Unintended consequences (PT.1 )

[Last month’s test –breaking the blog into weekly parts– was a near complete failure. It was at least an unpleasantry for several blog readers. So starting this month I’m going bi… weekly that is. Let me know if you think it’s better.]

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

March 2020 Blog/Column

Unintended Consequences

by Mykel Board

It is...highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.

--Ian Tattersall

Just do it.

--Nike

New York February 2020 The Black Sheep bar on Third Ave: I’m with my friends Richard, Miho, Hazem. We sit at a table next to the end of the bar. At the bar, God is punishing me for my eternal complaint about the girl with that voice. You know the one… she’s at a table one over from yours… squeally Long Islander… a laugh that can incite murder… drunk as a fish. It’s a rare night that there isn’t one to complain about.

Tonight, though, it’s all boys, a couple jocks and their fathers… or father figures… with guffaws from hell… glass-breaking loud. Probably from large families-- used to fighting to be heard. Right now each one yells over the others... as if this quiet bar required a chorus of alpha males to compete for attention. No girls here… just this stinking pack of machotude... making communication impossible among our multiculturals. I’m not going to complain to them, as any one of these guys is TWO of me.

Then I see it…a way out: right at the bar, in front of the loudest guy… wearing a white toque. (What is it these days wearing wool caps inside? And not only bald guys!). I walk over to the group… stand behind them… about an arm’s length away.

“Hey guys,” I say pointing to the beers in front of them. “Don’t you know that you can die from drinking that beer?”

“Huh?” asks the second loudest… and most annoying... a two-ton gray-haired guy in a bright red jacket.

“Corona,” I say. “Why do you think the virus has that name?”

“You’re full o’ shit,” says the man. “Corona is Mexican. The virus is Chinese.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but the whole problem started because Corona began to outsource its beer-making to China. The main factory is in Wuhan… where the virus comes from. It was the first thing closed after the outbreak.”

Richard, the only native English-speaker in our group, hears what I’m doing and pipes in from our table next to the bar.

“Yeah,” he says, “I heard about that.”

The others in the loud group, all drinking Bud Lite, move away from him.

I cough, then say, “I know about it because my boyfriend is Mexican and he told me his uncle works for the Corona company and was in China on assignment…” I cough again… trying to bring tears to my eyes. “He’s in the hospital right now in Mexico City. The first case of Corona virus in that country.”

I cough again and go back to sit with the others. Richard struggles to keep a straight face. In less than five minutes, the entire crew has left the bar.

In another five minutes, Mary, our regular Irish waitress comes over to us. She glances over her shoulder at a tall white guy with a scraggly beard.

“Mykel,” she says in a low whisper. “I think we’re in trouble. One of our regular customers complained about ‘a sick person who just returned from China.’ I think you guys had better leave until this blows over. I’m so sorry.”

FLASH TO Ulan Bator, Mongolia 1995… The air is breezy… there’s no humidity. Outside my apartment block is a field of dry dead grass. I run across that field chasing a small white plastic bag that tumbles in the breeze… edge over edge… like a girl doing cartwheels on the beach. The wind suddenly changes direction... I turn... twisting an ankle sprawling face down in the dry dirt. Pain… but not serious.

ネバーギブアップ say the Japanese. (The pronunciation is something like: NEBA-GIVU-AHPPU… I’m not shittin’ you.)

I get up… run/limp after the bag... stopped, for now... caught on a sprig of weed. I tackle it. Yes! Now, I have somewhere to throw my garbage for the week.

FLASH TO NYC 2020: In 6 days, single use plastic bags will be illegal in New York. Here, I generate a dozen times more garbage than I did in Mongolia. (In Ulan Bator, I had a plastic egg container that I brought to the market and refilled as I needed it. I carried groceries by folding my coat around them.) I refuse to buy garbage bags… I will not buy something to throw it away. Right now… before the ban… I use grocery bags for my trash.

So it looks like I’ll be chasing plastic bags down Bleecker Street, as they grow less and less common. In Mongolia, only the high-end stores –mainly for foreigners-- had plastic bags. I’ll need more here than I did there.

I open my closet door. On a rack inside the door are two dozen “reusable” carrier bags. Some I bought in an emergency when I needed something for a heavy purchase. Some were free bonuses for renewing my subscription to one or another liberal political magazine. Some were left by couch-surfers who just didn’t want to carry that shit around with them. I’ve tried to give them away, but the answer is always I’ve got tons of them. This will only get worse during the ban, as with each shopping trip, people will buy a new one.

The glut of thin plastic bags using a little oil to make will be replaced with a glut of thick plastic carrier bags using a shitload of oil to make. The small grocery bags that are reused for trash will be replaced by huge purchased trash bags used once and then thrown into the landfill.

The ban was well-meaning. The effects will be disastrous.

FLASH TO NEW YORK 1970s: 6AM the city awakens to the banging of Oscar The Grouch style garbage cans. KABOOM! KABOOM! The diesel garbage trucks are almost as loud as the cans themselves. Someone’s got to do something about the racket! People gotta sleep!

As is usual when there’s a problem… either someone gets killed or they pass a law… or both. So they pass a law. No metal garbage cans… or even rubber. It makes too much noise. You’ve got to take the plastic bags OUT of the garbage cans, pile them curbside, so they can be disposed of quietly.

While most new laws are universally despised, this one was loved… by the city’s rats. It used to be so hard to gnaw into those metal cans. Rats were visiting the rat dentist by the pack. Just awful… but now… three seconds to get through the plastic. Come on! It’s a food orgy… we’ll eat, fuck and make more rats! Wow!

We read about unintended consequences in history books. How alcohol prohibition created the mafia. How nuclear power destroyed Chernobyl and made the land uninhabitable. How the routine use of antibiotics created drug-resistant microbes… How the treaty ending World War One set the stage for World War Two… How starlings brought in to control sparrows became pests themselves.

It’s harder to find positive examples of unintended consequences. In the history books, in my life, and in the world.

An internet search gives me this example: In 1973 the Supreme Court declared (Roe v. Wade) that abortion was legal and could not be outlawed by the states. 20 years later the crime rate plummeted. One of the reasons? Unwanted/ abandoned/ not supported kids --instead of roaming the streets to become criminals-- were never born in the first place. Instead of building more jails, you keep jails from being needed in the first place.

There are, of course, other good unintended consequences. The scaffolding construction companies put up when repairing or cleaning buildings… in a rainstorm it’s a welcome respite. That light outside the doorway to keep muggers away from the shadows also keeps people like me from pissing in those doorways.

AND THIS JUST FOUND: In the German city of Kleve, the owner of a chicken that took 10 hours of training to appear in a movie was awarded the equivalent of $680 when a dog mauled it. According to reports, regular chicken wrongful death would bring the owner about $20. But because this one had acting lessons and appeared in a movie, the court ordered the dog's owner to pay much higher damages. Who knew acting lessons for chickens would be so profitable?

Are these positive unintended consequences harder to dig up because there are fewer of them… or are there just as many (or more) and fewer people notice?

I don’t know.

Then what’s the solution? There will always be unintended consequences. Seems like you’ve got some choices to make.

A. Before you make a decision, think about all the possible consequences and then choose the one that will have the best outcome… or at least do the least harm. Deal with the consequences later.

or

B. Don’t act at all. There are ALWAYS unintended consequences and the only way to avoid them is to do nothing to create those consequences.

or

C. Go for the Nike and JUST DO IT. Deal with the consequences -- unintended or otherwise-- when they happen. Of course, you’ll run into unintended consequences of dealing with the consequences. You can deal with them too when you get to them.

Am I going to tell you which way to act? Do I seem like the kind of person who tells others how to act? Ok, I will… but maybe later.

- end -

ENDNOTES AND LINKS will appear in 2 weeks. You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com.

You’re STILL Wrong Mykel's January 2019 Blog/Column "Eat This!"

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel's Blog for January 2019
or

EAT THIS, SUCKER!

Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions. --Michael Pollan

Back from the Deli… not India-- that was a few weeks ago... but the local place around the corner. Ham and cheese on a kaiser roll… I unwrap the plastic from the roll and take a bite of the sandwich… ahh the joy… I’m sooo fuckin’ hungry… but wait... it needs mustard. Ham, cheese, lettuce, on a roll… you can’t eat a ham and cheese sandwich without mustard. A little on the cheese… a little on the lettuce… close the roll again… yeah! It's the New York lunch of the goyim… and those of us who don’t keep all the rules.

CHOMP, CHOMP CHOMP…. a few more bites and the sandwich is gone… into near-future heartburn and further future loose brown turds. I lick my fingers before picking up the plastic wrap… Then I take a bite of it… pulling the wrap into bite-sized pieces. I feel the smoothness of the plastic inside my mouth… slipping over my molars… I grind it down… take a swig of seltzer to wash it over the back of my tongue. Then another bite of the plastic wrap. I use my tongue to separate the price label from the wrapper. Why bother? I swallow them both.

Weird fantasy? You bet your Nexium it’s not. Daily, Americans eat the equivalent of thousands of plastic wrappers-- or latex gloves. I don’t know about where you live, but here in New York… it’s the law that anyone who prepares food must wear latex gloves before touching the goods. Every sliced piece of meat… every block of cheese… every bunch of grapes… must be handled by hands encased in plastic. Change food? Put on new gloves. And you think that plastic stays on the gloves? You think that latex doesn’t contaminate everything it touches? You think you’re not eating fistfuls of plastic every day? Think again, buckaroo. Happy cancer, baby!

In most countries in the world people use skin. Naked hands-- usually washed naked hands-- but who knows?… Naked hands handle food in India… in Africa… in most of Asia. Go to Japan and find an expert sushi chef who wears hand condoms before molding that perfect fish to that perfect lump of perfect rice… yeah right. Skin... it only works with SKIN!

But here… in the US and maybe much of Europe… the body is DIRTY. Skin is DIRTY. It carries GERMS. Don’t touch it. Don’t let it touch your food. Cover it up… that’ll make it safe… The bare body is BAD! Avoid skin at all costs.

While New Yorkers debate a ban on plastic straws, they consume hundreds of thousands of plastic gloves… to cover the sin of SKIN.

In the Pacific… or the Atlantic… somewhere... there is a floating island of latex gloves. Fish are choking on latex gloves. Seagulls are dying from trying to pick real food from floating latex gloves.

Those floating plastic islands you read about... destroying marine life… they are not just plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. They are the tiny one-use bags dog owners use instead of a broom and dustpan to pick up shit on the street. They are millions of garbage can liners, because we don’t want to dirty the inside of our trash bins (oh how disgusting). They are millions of baby-preventing condoms because washing and reusing the same condom twice… OH YUCK! And... they are millions of once-used latex gloves.

But wait! There’s more. Think about those pots you stick in the microwave… or in the freezer. You live on the plastic wrapped meat... vegetables... yesterday's tuna casserole... in the refrigerator. Your morning sandwich bought plastic-wrapped at Pret A Manger! All that: in plastic. And you think you’re not eating it? You think those petroleum molecules are somehow better for you than the washed flesh of someone’s hands?

Sure, blame the cancer epidemic on smoking… on vaping… on the artificial food coloring squirted into your bottle of Mountain Dew. Wake up bottled water drinkers! Every bottle of water is surrounded by plastic… and that plastic goes INTO the water. Buy water by the case? By the time you get to that last bottle, more plastic pollution has leached into that water than will ever come out of your faucet.

Yeah, in other countries they sell water in plastic bottles. Their own water is undrinkable and glass is too heavy for easy and cheap shipping. But most other countries don’t use latex gloves to touch food. They don’t use them to touch each other in the doctor’s exam room.

I blame Christians... those sex-adverse fanatics who tell you that THE SOUL is godlike... good... while its house is evil... sinful... needs to be hidden away like a filthy box for a precious jewel. Christians-- along with their monotheistic cohorts: Jews and Muslims-- have taboo-ized the body... made it shameful... along with all those things the body does... pissing... shitting... fucking.

FLASH TO INDIA… I’m at the famous sex temple in Khajuharo. There are frescoes of orgies, sex with animals… with people of all and indeterminate genders. It’s enough to harden my 4 inches of limp biscuit. Tourists pose in front… take selfies… point out the best tiles.

FLASH TO MUMBAI: At a dinner party, I talk about the temple... ask its origins... its history. An attractive homosexual answers me… in a voice that borders on panic.

“You know how old that temple is?” He asks… Then answers his own question… “800 years old! That’s how old. And India has the Kama Sutra… and a history of sex… sex… sex… India was a sex country... More cum spilled than all the tea in Darjeeling... And what happened?”

“The British?” I guess out loud.

He points a hard index finger at me.

“Yes!” he shouts. “Yes! Yes! Yes! It was the British… They ruined us.”

“Like the Americans ruined the other Indians,” I answer.

But it’s not only sex. It’s deeper than that… or-- in a way-- more superficial… or at least surface. The problem is the body and its outer coating… SKIN. The mind is holy. The body is dirty. It needs constant washing… covering up… protection. Half of the #metoo complaints are He touched me. His skin on my body… not even on my skin… just my body. I’ve been defiled… used… his SKIN touched me.

FLASH TO LEXINGTON AVE, NYC: I walk into the school lobby, preparing to board the elevator to take me to my first class of the day. I hope Shiho will be the student. She’s my favorite… one of three people I know in the world who have been to North Korea. She's got terrific stories. This elevator, though, takes fuckin’ forever!

Then it hits me… that caustic smell… filtering through my nosehairs and embedded boogers… burning my nostrils… a medicinal… artificial... stinging smell. I’d know it anywhere: PURELL. The most pervasive example of puritanical cleanliness since Queen Victoria ordered table legs covered-- in modesty-- in the mid 1800s.

The smell is everywhere. In the mensroom, in front of elevators, in the train, in Del Monico’s Deli, where I’m trying to enjoy my half price 4-6PM dinner… The woman at the next table glares at me as she scrubs her hands with PURELL-soaked wetnaps… as if she were trying to rub from her eyes the image of my eating these greasy chicken wings. I gag loudly at the smell.

You don't see Purell in India. They don’t rub germicide on their hands... killing off the weak bacteria… so only the strong survive to reproduce. They don’t wash their hands after taking a piss in Christian fear that their naked hand touched the never-to-be-naked skin DOWN THERE!

[Aside: Some facebook friends were trying to convince me it's HEALTH reasons to wash your hands after only taking a piss. Yeah, right. What's the DIRTIEST PART of any public toilet? The first place touched by people who piss on their hands, jerk off or get shit on their hands while wiping? You got it right! The SINK HANDLE. And what's the LAST place you touch after washing your hands? Yep.]

Me? Back in New York... I'm going to Rick's Cabaret this weekend. I need as much skin as I can get.

– end –

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or 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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-→Common Cold Dept: Some British politician once said, "I think right now if Donald Trump invented a cure for the common cold, they would still find a reason to criticize him."

     BINGO! Trump says he’s pulling 7000 troops out of Afghanistan and ALL the US troops out of Syria. He’s ending two of the worst cases of American international interference in the last 20 years. And what does he get? CRITICISM from both parties. It’s easy to understand from the war-loving Neocons… but the liberal Dems? If Obama had done the same thing, they would have had a parade in celebration.

-→Who doesn’t? dept: The Daily Mail reported on Dec. 14 that a Chinese man identified named Peng was hospitalized in Zhangzhou after he complained of a cough and chest pains. As doctors examined him, Peng admitted that he was "addicted to smelling his socks that he had been wearing." The pain in his chest, it turned out, was a fungal infection he had inhaled from his socks.

     While Peng made a full recovery, other people said on Chinese social media that they have the same habit: "The reason I smell my socks is to know if I can continue wearing them the next day!" one of the comments said.

     Another pledged to "wash my socks every day now.” He learned his lesson.

     Yeah, the fungal infection is interesting and funny… but more interesting and funny is that the reporter didn't realize that EVERYBODY smells their own socks.

-→My kind of recycling dept: Jim Alexander and Betina Bradshaw of Devon, England, had a Christmas feast for family and friends. On the menu: deer, pheasant, rabbits, badgers ... all roadkill. Alexander, a trained butcher, had collected nearly 50 fresh animal corpses over the past year. The butcher said his collecting habits have occasionally drawn the attention of police, but "once they realize I'm doing nothing wrong, they are fine, and one even helped me lift an animal into the van."

     I see this as a dilemma for vegetarians. The animals eaten weren't killed for food. They were dead anyway. Isn't it a waste to just throw the corpse into a trash heap? If the roadkill isn't eaten, then carnivores will simply spend money to buy meat that WAS killed for food.  Doesn't eating roadkill actually SAVE animals?

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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:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog

• And another 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.
• And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

CONTACT REDUX: You can contact me on facebook or 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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group: readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.