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

I WAS FRAMED! or Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column

 I Was Framed ... or Mykel's Blog for October

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column 

I Was Framed!    

by Mykel Board

The instrument that measures all other instruments– the human nervous system– has its own laws, and one of them involves always seeing the results one wants to see until and unless something really startles the brain enough to reframe its experiences. --Robert Anton Wilson

Popular authors do not and apparently cannot appreciate the fact that true art is obtainable only by rejecting normality and conventionality in toto, and approaching a theme purged utterly of any usual or preconceived point of view. --Edwin Baird

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me. – Barbara Kruger

It’s slightly pornographic… or could be. Just three fingers... lady’s fingers clearly... but what’s between them? Is that a urethra canal? Could it be the centerfold of a “men’s” magazine? Will the Google gods post this behind a SENSITIVE CONTENT SCREEN? How about if we look at the picture another way? Maybe that can tell us something different about those fingers:

Flash to the motel room: The floor is bloody… The door hangs on one hinge… lopsided as if forced in from the outside… it was.. Lying on the couch is a woman… clothed only in her own blood. Her vacant eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. A man… scruffy… wearing a beat up overcoat... sits on a chair at the desk. On either side of him is a cop. One tall… macho looking.. a strong chin cleanly shaven. Squinting, the disheveled man can read DETECTIVE BASTINI. The other cop is somewhat shlubbier… beer belly just poking over the front of his belt. The name on his badge is not visible to the sitting man.

“You realize this looks pretty bad for you,” says Detective Bastini.

“But officer,” says the disheveled man, “you gotta understand. This was a set-up. I was framed!”

You got it buckaroos! I want to write about FRAMING! How our entire view of the world, of people, of good and bad… right and wrong... is all about framing. And framing is everywhere… what we see out of a window is framed… what we hear on the news… what we listen to in a punk club… what appears in store displays… It’s all framed. White-washing, green-washing, pink-washing, ad-washing, even face- washing… BUILD THOSE FRAMES!

Yeah, I’m going to repeat myself here. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. But in saying what I’ve said before, I’m going to frame it with a frame. Show how you’ve been tricked by what the frame let in the picture and what it kept out.

So says the Google search. I don’t have time to dig further because my stomach is begging for release… Last night was Drink Club and I’m paying for it now. Aaaahrgh! I feel like I’m being fist-fucked from the inside. The pain… the pain… the bathroom… the toilet… sit down… ahh… ahhh… aaahhhhhh! An explosion… splashing down with the force of a space capsule in the ocean. BLOOOF! BLOOF! BLOOOF! Feces-filled water splashes back up... dribbling drip… drip… drip back into the muddy waters below. No, I can’t see it, but I feel it… against both lower cheeks… and the back of my thighs. 

Ecstasy! Poetry in brown! I just sit a bit and enjoy it... closing my eyes to focus on the relief. Then the wipe… the double wipe… the pull up… What’s that? A hard-yet-squishy feel. I again pull down my boxers. A brown stain discolors the top… right near the elastic. A single dingle-berry... hanging by a hair… too high up to reach through the legs… still there. I have to go around the side… grope for it. Aaaah, if only I could pay someone to make sure I’d got the last one before pulling up. A pro to take care of errant hanger-ons… to save my underpants… and my embarrassment at the laundromat. But wait... a dingle-berry remover!!! I’ve created a job! All I need is someone to fill it. Get it? It’s easy to create a job, though likely it’ll be a shitty one. 

It’s the frame! If we only look at jobs… at how many people are employed or can be employed… we mistake the Mona Lisa fingers for the painting. If we frame it as happy people... fulfilled people… people able to live a good life… then Biden’s 6.6 million jobs are meaningless. 

MOST jobs are worthless. They contribute nothing and may do more harm than good. 

That guy sitting at his desk shuffling electrons to buy and sell stock… What does he contribute? The greeter at Walmart... the CEO of a tech corporation... the maitre ‘d at a restaurant… bookkeepers… corporate lawyers… insurance brokers… advertising copy writers… the list never ends. Framing “job creation” instead of “life improvement” skews the equation.

It’s sometime in the late 1970s. Milton Friedman has already won the Nobel Prize for his defense of the crime of capitalism. The local PBS station shows a short series where Friedman explains his theories.

A twenty-something me sits in front of the TV as Friedman walks around the streets of New York, talking to the camera. He passes a beggar.

“It seems cruel,” says Friedman, “but if we don’t support this man… if we don’t give him money… he’ll have to get a job. The state… other working people… will not have to pay for him”

I close my eyes… take a deep breath… wish for the beggar to jump up, slam a lead pipe into the back of Friedman’s head… grab his wallet and take off. “There’s your have to get a job, motherfucker!” And I smile.

I tell this story to my Ayn Rand-loving friends. “No Mykel,” they tell me, “That’s what the police are for. They catch the guy and throw him in jail.”

“Where he’s supported by the state… working people,” I answer.

WORK --more precisely HAVING A JOB-- is something that’s lauded by Communists and Capitalists alike. There’s dignity in having a job. And a gauge of any president’s performance is whether or not he creates FULL EMPLOYMENT! So, destructive and useless jobs are better than no jobs at all. NO THEY AREN’T.

Let’s move the frame. Let’s value the ability to enjoy life. The ability to help others enjoy life. Lets value a smile on a poor man’s face more than a billion dollars in Jeff Bezos’s pocket. If there were no garbagemen, who would take away the garbage?

Who takes it away now? Who removes the banana peels from your kitchen? YOU DO! The garbage is taken away because it needs to be taken away… not because there are garbagemen.

I can hear Literary Device complaining now.

“Forget about garbagemen, Mykel,” she says. “What about doctors? Teachers? Architects? Those things take years of study. Are you going to have everyone be her own doctor?”

“Not quite,” I answer. “But I can tell you that I get paid to be a teacher. It’s my job. I’d do it though, even if it weren’t my job. I love doing it”

There are enough people who love doctoring and teaching doctoring that –job or not– they’d do it. With so many worthless or destructive jobs gone, people will be able to do what they love. Think of all the kids that want to be doctors or firemen or athletes, but end up stock brokers or insurance salesmen as adults. Are they happy wearing their white shirts and ties... spending a third of their lives moving electrons from one computer to the next… I bet MOST people are unhappy in their jobs, especially the useless or harmful ones.

Move that VALUE frame. Value humanity... satisfaction... time... rather than having a job. You’ll get a much nicer picture.

FLASH TO The Every Little Bit Helps frame: I generate a lot of garbage. No, I’m not talking about this blog. I’m talking real, physical stuff. Junkmail… bills (always shredded and thrown out), old magazines, plastic containers from yogurt, deli sandwiches, styrofoam trays from frozen chicken… the list goes on. The only garbage separating I do is pulling out the deposit bottles and cans. I put those in a separate clear plastic bag and leave that outside for the street people who live on bottle and can deposits. Many of them are my friends.

According to Green Matters, only around 9 percent of goods separated for recycling are being recycled. But there’s the frame. If you separate your soup cans from your bleach bottles you’re part of that every little bit. You can go ahead and buy your Campbell’s 12 pack and your Costco size bleach bottle. You’re still doing your part. But if we expand the frame… include the rest of the Mona Lisa... we can see the whole picture.

We can see that there’s a relationship between feeling good about your consumption… and consuming more. It’s okay if I buy so much more than I need. More to throw away…more junk… I RECYCLE… so it’s all right.

NO IT ISN’T! Recycling encourages consumption. Consumption encourages waste (and corporate profits). In this frame, RECYCLING MAKES JUNK. Instead of framing the junk our consumption makes, why not frame the consumption itself? Instead of recycling, why not avoid buying in the first place?

FLASH TO the war in Ukraine. Oh, the bad guys invade. “We” have to help. It’s good guys against bad guys… a typical American frame… cowboy movies… war movies… comic books. The good guys need to defeat the bad guys… the invaders. Send in weapons… train the soldiers… beat the war drums… put up Ukrainian flags. Measure success like in a war movie. CHASE THEM OUT. MAKE THEM DIE. They lose. We win. What can be more American than “Winning isn’t everything… It’s the only thing?”

But let’s use a different frame. Let’s keep score… if score must be kept… a different way. Let’s use a GOLF frame, instead of a comic book frame. In golf, the lowest score wins. So players work hardest at getting the lowest score. How ‘bout if, instead of keeping score by advances and retreats and downed airplanes or destroyed infantry, we count dead people. The fewer dead, the better the situation. So if “we” want to get a good score, we provide negotiators instead of bombs. We offer cash, concessions, trades, to keep the number of dead low. We exchange the frame of winning and losing for one of dying or not dying.

NEXT FRAME INTRODUCTION: It’s called “pre-judgement” and includes one of my favorite idioms of the last decade or so. It too is an extension of the American good guy/ bad guy frame. That is, anything done by a badguy must be bad. If the cowboy wearing black picks up a a dog in scene one, he’ll shoot it in scene three. He can’t be NICE to the dog… he’s a bad guy. That phrase I love is Trump Derangement Syndrome

FLASH TO Miami beach: It’s crowded. Throngs wanting to get in their last wave before Hurricane Bruce slams the coast and ruins their fun. If you walk quietly in a corner of the beach, you’ll see what looks like a typical American family: a chubby balding man… gray chest-hair, a woman, obviously his wife, with bright red hair, obviously from a bottle. A boy and his younger sister play on the bright blue picnic blanket spread in the sand. The boy carries a plastic bucket and a little plastic shovel. The little girl is empty-handed.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear that they are speaking French. Maybe they’re tourists. With a peal of kiddie-laughter the empty-handed girl grabs the bucket from her brother and runs toward the ocean. The brother gives chase, finally catching up and wrestling the bucket free. Then he pushes his sister who falls into the increasingly violent waves smashing against the shore. The girl washes out to sea.

“Aide! Aide!” screams the father, as the little girl is rip-currented further and further from shore.

Donald Trump, passing by, hears the shouts. Not taking the time to remove anything but his shoes, he runs to the water and jumps in. Powerfully, he swims out to the girl, grabs her around the chest and… careful to keep her head above water... brings her safely back to shore.

TRUMP MOLESTS TODDLER AT THE BEACH is the headline in The Times the next day… along with a photo of Donny Trump in the water with his arm around the girl’s chest.

For so many people, Trump is incapable of doing anything right… of doing a good deed. If it appears good… pardoning non-violent offenders, keeping the US out of war, downsizing The Pentagon… there’s always some reason it’s BAD. Getting out of NAFTA and TPP… disastrous trade bills that would have allowed international trade with no oversight. Slave conditions unanswerable by the US courts. President Trump saved us from them.

No he didn’t. Come the answers. Those were good for trade… come the TDS answers… except for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC who also opposed the treaties when they were presented by the Dems… those treaties are left out of the frame.

And finally… briefly… a pair of frames I’ve written about before: the GENDER frame and the RACE frame. Seeing abortion as “a war against women” where most of the anti-abortionists see a war against murder. Or seeing street crime and armed robbery as BLACK street crime and BLACK armed robbery instead of POVERTY-INDUCED street crime and POVERTY-INDUCED armed robbery. Framing… framing… framing.

So please… face the wall and look at that picture. Take it down… open the back and spread out the painting so the unframed parts become clear. Then REFRAME it, so those twat-showing hands become the Mona Lisa.

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]

→ Framing Step-by-Step Dept: There’s a great step-by-step analysis of news- framing in the New York Times. It’s not published on any of the monopoly-internet sites, but you can find it here.

→ How you react DEPENDS dept: Many of you know that I’ve gone through radiation treatment for prostate cancer. Called Cyberknife, the treatment itself is painless, though expensive. But the cash expense is only part of the problem. I pissed in my pants on the way home from the last treatment. I’ve been wearing (and needing) DEPENDS ever since. I have daily brain fog and the only time I’m not tired is late at night when I should be sleeping. If cyberknife is recommended for you… consider it VEEERRRRRY CAREFULLY, before you agree to it. You have been warned.

→ Put A Bag On It dept: The Canadian Broadcasting Company reports that in an environmental move, rock climbers in British Columbia have been encouraged to use WAG BAGS, to shit in. The idea, you shit in a bag that contains deodorizing chemicals, and then carry the shit with you, out of the wooded areas where you dispose of it at home. Sure, that’s gonna happen. Yeah right.

See you in hell redux,
MB


THE NATION AGAIN

I’m a long-time subscriber to the The Nation. It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely, when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends” would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.

I found, in an old issue, a great argument against those who charge “What Aboutism” when others make points about a parallel issue outside the frame. The author’s basic (and correct) point of view is that the anti-whataboutism argument justifies hypocrisy.
Then there’s Thomas Graham who spots a little more subtlety in the Ukraine war than the media and the current war-mongers are showing.

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