You're Still Wrong: Mykel's July Blog: That's Horrible... No Wait!

 

You're Still Wrong: Mykel's July Blog... That's Horrible... No Wait!

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's Blog for July 2021

To answer brutality with brutality is to admit to one’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy. --Gandhi

You walk down St. Marks Place… the plan: meet some friends… a drink at the Grass Roots… talk about old times... when St. Marks Place was PUNK ROCK. Barely registering… a city bus pulls over to the curb behind you. You hear it but only as part of the city noise. Then, the running footsteps... behind you… getting closer. You turn. A massive guy… running toward you… eyes filled with hate… like the cuckolded man… on a TV crime-show… running after the man he found boffing his wife.

He gets closer. You put up your hands… show you have no weapon… “let’s talk!” you want to say. No chance...

PFAAACK!

the crunch of his tight white knuckles into your jaw… a loud CRACK! The rest is pain… then nothing… blackness.

Here’s real scene: Seattle 2021. A white guy… mid-30s… balding, minor beard, slightly on the plump side… stands on a street corner. He wears a black leather jacket. Another guy, about a foot taller, same age, all in white… except for a black backpack. The bigger guy approaches the smaller one… Shouts… it’s hard to hear what he says… The guy in the leather jacket turns… look of fear... puts up his hands.

“Wait! Let’s talk,” say those hands.

The big guy moves closer. Cocks his right arm. KERPOW! Punches through the smaller guy’s raised hands. Fist-to-chin… no comments... no questions. BLAM! The smaller guy is down… slammed to the sidewalk… nose first … knocked out... possible concussion… broken nose. The big guy chuckles, sniffs… walks away.

The YouTube video makes it to facebook in a day. The reaction:

“Wow, that’s great!”

“I could watch that over and over again… just terrific.”

“Wonderful, just wonderful.”

At least a dozen more of the same tenor... All cheering the aggressor, booing the guy who puts his arms up and just wants to talk.

Oh yeah, the guy in the leather jacket… the one knocked out... was wearing a red armband with a swastika on it.

Did you switch? Were you horrified at the brutality of the aggressor, then turned into his supporter?

You don’t need to be in AntiFa to cheer this kind of hypocrisy… but it helps. The youtube clip claims there was some SMSing. Somebody said that somebody said that somebody said. No one said anyone was attacked… no one was hit… no one claims brutality. This guy is floored on a rumor that someone read while riding the bus.

FLASH to 1980s New York:

A pair of femmy young men walk down Greenwich Avenue from Sixth Avenue toward Christopher Street. They laugh… gesture limp-wristedly... stop and kiss each other in a gay parody of a Gone With The Wind poster.

Comes a voice from behind them. “Hey you faggots!”

Behind them are a gang of New Jersey boys... in town for a little fag bashing. They dive at the legs of the young men as if they’e going to bite them.

FOP! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

From behind the Jersey boys comes a crew with baseball bats. SLAM to the ribs. A Jersey Boy in shorts and a gray hoodie screams and sinks down. SLAM to the knees… a tough jock falls to the sidewalk, wincing in pain.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

The bats keep going until the Jerseyites crawl away... back to the Path Train.

When I read about this I think:

“Wow! That’s great!”

“Wonderful, just wonderful!”

The baseball bat group is SMASH, Society to Make America Safe for Homosexuals. Their Modus Operandi is to send out a weak-looking, femmy, pair as bait… and when the pair is attacked… they strike back... harder.

So what’s the difference? How can I defend SMASH but condemn AntiFa? Glad you asked and the answer is easy.

SMASH attacked in defense of others who were physically attacked. The bad guys bashed in real life…. Not supporters… not rumors… not history… not refusing to talk… but right there… watching the attack like you might watch a neighbor beat his dog… and do something to stop it. The anti-fa bashee? He just wanted to talk.

Sid Vicious wore a swastika on the cover of the My Way single. If that were this century, those Anti-Fas would’ve been all over him… probably with a baseball bat.

Your actions give others permission to do the same things. If it’s all right for you to punch someone who thinks differently from you… someone who’s done nothing to you… why not the same for someone who is a different religion from you? Or a different race? Or… the list goes on, but you get it.

Punching someone who has done no evil that you’ve seen says it’s okay to punch someone who’s done no evil that you’ve seen. My advice to the Antifa lovers?

Watch your back.

You’re building an audience who, when it happens to you, will be saying:

“Wow! That’s great!”

“Wonderful, just wonderful!”

When someone catches you sneaking a burger at McD’s… you know, Meat is Murder… you’ll get what you deserve. When someone texts that you put your hand on some girl’s leg when she was crowd-surfing at the punk show… It’ll be more than a hand on YOUR leg. I’ll be tuning in to YouTube to watch the video.

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]

–>Even The Governor Dept: Because New York State has reached a 70% vaccine rate, the governor has stopped all recommendations for sidewalk masks and relaxed almost all mask mandates in other places. Despite this, almost half of New Yorkers still mask themselves on the street. Stores and restaurants still ask people to mask up before they go in. And the post office is so confused, they have conflicting signs right next to one another. Why don’t the CDC-loving mask-wearers follow the CDC when they say fuggedaboud those masks? 

–>Who knew dept: Maybe COVID has turned everything upside down – even the real estate market. The Huffington Post reports on a Colorado house listed as being “a little slice of hell” with “human and animal feces left in the living room to greet you as you walk in.” It sold quickly for more than half a million dollars. I wonder if you have to wear a mask to go look at it.

–>Sudden realization dept: I wish I had the reference. Maybe it was on Al Jazeera, the only TV news I trust. Some professor is talking about race and how what we see on TV and in the news forms our images. She talks about the dead people we see on TV. Bodies of George Floyd and Eric Garner... bodies of war dead. They’re usually black. Remember that guy in Atlanta who killed the Asian sex-workers? How many bodies did you see? Yeah, that’s what I thought. If the victim is white… they show a high school yearbook picture. Asian… no pictures at all.
And hungry people, starving bubble-bellied babies? What color are they? Save the Children? What color children? We know anyone can be hungry… and anyone can be killed, but what we see… what we’re used to… are dead and hungry black and brown people. That’s got to affect the way we think about those people.

Wow! Never thought about that before.

–> Honest Cop Dept: NPR reports The police chief in Sperry, Okla. wrote himself a speeding ticket after a traffic camera caught him speeding. He says he's going to pay the more than $300 ticket he wrote himself. Evidently, he was doing 80mph in a school zone. That’s setting an example. if more cops wrote themselves tickets, you could have police forces that pay for themselves. Defund, shmefund.

–> Just deserts dept: My long-time pal Sid Yiddish found this interesting tidbit. You know how vegans really hate vegetables and are always looking for ways to trick bad-tasting food into tasting like meat? Mock duck, veggie burgers, almond milk. Funnily enough, a veggie company is recalling it’s fake eggs. Why? Because they were contaminated. With what? REAL EGGS, of course. Oh, the horror!

→ Special Thanks dept: And call-out to Josh C. and Grue S. who put me up, and put up with me… during my visit to Philadelphia. Both of the couple are friendly, smart, and large… in the physical and personal sense of the word. I’ve already written about my taste for fat people, their self-confidence and (often) musical ability. When we say someone is BIG-hearted, s/he often is a big person.

One of the weird things I don’t get is… self-image. Do fat people look in the mirror and think I’m ugly?” Do some fat people think… I wouldn’t be ugly if I weren’t fat? Grue is a spectacular AND beautiful woman! AND that fat is… er… a huge chunk of the reason!

See you in hell, redux,

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

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

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

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 November 2018 Blog/Column "Tolerance"

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel’s Post MRR column No ???
or A CRITIQUE OF PURE INTOLERANCE

I write this sitting in a train traveling on a 15 hour ride from Agra India to Amritsan… I probably have the name spelled wrong. I’ve got an deafening headache from lack of coffee. I’m thirsty, having just finished the last of the water. The only available food is Chiwda, a nice mix of nuts, toasted rice and noodles… great any other time… but it’s salty… and there is no water.

Internet is spotty in Google… time to write is even spottier. So this month, I’m combining some facebook posts into a blog. Next month, I hope, I’ll be writing about India.

This month, with some repeat (Who me, repeat? Who me, repeat?) I want to talk about TOLERANCE:

Tolerance used to be a “liberal” principle. I remember all these teaching tolerance programs in school… kids’ books with different colored rabbits-- kidtalk for different racial groups. The moral was always: underneath it all, they’re all just plain rabbits. Get it?

Tolerance was a virtue. You should approach people without pre-conception. You talk with them... learn from them... maybe they learned from you. People who dressed differently, looked different, had different religions, different ideas. You might disagree with the ideas… and say so... but you should tolerate them because a free exchange of ideas is the way both sides learn. And a free exchange of cultures is the way both sides can have nice new eats!

No discrimination by race, creed or color, we used to say. Today the right has no tolerance for race and color and the left for creed. Every politician promises ZERO TOLERANCE for something or other… and that’s supposed to be a good thing.

Maybe the earlier tolerance was a product of the peace and love generation… or the burgeoning Civil Rights movement… where Martin Luther King learned non-violence from Mohandas K. Gandhi … His image is everywhere here in India. Like every podunk town in the US has its ML King Drive… every city in India has its MG Road. Non-violence is crucial to tolerance. Violence is the ultimate in intolerance.

I guess this began to change in the 90s… a reaction to the unlimited freedom and tolerance of the 60s and then the 80s. I think the first time I heard the words ZERO TOLERANCE was in the war on drugs. Any use of drugs… possession of drugs.. BANG you’re in jail. ZERO TOLERANCE. The WORDS became a hallmark of the Giuliani administration in New York. The Broken Windows policing policy, based on an idea similar to marijuana leads to heroin. The smallest “crime”-- pan-handing, pissing on the street, fare-jumping,… BANG! You’re in jail. ZERO TOLERANCE.

Of course this hit the poor hardest, if you’re not poor you don’t NEED to piss on the street or jump the turnstyle. The jails filled. The poor were in jail or forced out of the city… The rich, who no longer were forced to watch people piss on the street, moved in. ZERO TOLERANCE worked to reduce crime. But it made life worse for those not tolerated. And drove rents and other prices up… ethnic diversity down.

Like the swine flu, ZERO TOLERANCE, quickly caught on. ZERO TOLERANCE for prostitution. ZERO TOLERANCE for smoking in public places… and the list goes on. Then, like syphilis jumped species from sheep to human (I wonder how that happened), ZERO TOLERANCE jumped politics and moved to liberals… the so-called left.

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR HATE is a sign I saw in a store window on Lafayette Street. It made me laugh. What better definition of HATE than ZERO TOLERANCE? They are the same thing! That was funny… but it wasn’t a joke.

Just like all Muslims were branded TERRORISTS by the right… All nationalists, alt-rightists, libertarians suddenly were branded NAZIS, or FASCISTS by the the left. And, guess what, ZERO TOLERANCE for “Nazis” and “Fascists.”

In the 20^th Century, the violently intolerant wore white hoods (and robes) and attacked violently in a wave of racial intolerance. In the 21^st Century, the violently intolerant wear BLACK hoods (and scarves) and attack with clubs and fists in a wave of political intolerance.

Flash back about 20 years. An old Caribbean-American friend of mine lives in Raleigh North Carolina. Last time she came to New York she seemed slightly stand-offish. I don’t remember the exact details, so my reconstruction will be slightly off, but close enough. (I’ve changed the protagonist’s name.)

“Olga!” I shout when I see her. “Great to see you! It’s been a long time.”

“Oh hi, Mykel,” she says. “My life has changed a bit since you saw me last. I have a new boyfriend now.”

“That’s cool,” I say, “but not so weird. How has your life changed?”

“Well,” says Olga, “He’s told me about Doctor Farrakhan. And I’m learning the proper way to act. Dr. Farrakhan says…..”

“Dr. Farrakhan????” I don’t say, “This is the guy who said ‘I’m not anti-Semite… I’m anti-TERMITE! THAT Dr. Farrakhan”

But I listen… I listen to ideas about modesty... about Jews position in history… about how Islam is the religion of the underclasses, the poor, the displaced, the oppressed. I listen.

And I have been listening ever since… or making the effort. I’ve traveled to Muslim countries (Turkey, Morocco, Senegal, The Gambia), and listened… and met great people, and have friends among them. I don’t hide my Jewitude… they check for horns when they find out… then they laugh and don’t care. We talk.

Flash to early 21^st Century, Laurens South Carolina: I’m with Sid Yiddish, who’s visiting from Chicago. Laurens is home to THE REBEL SHOP which my cousin tells me is run by “a real Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Sounds scary.

“Can we go, Uncle Mickey?” asks Sid.

We go.

It looks like it used to be a theater. The letters in the marquee say REBEL SHOP and there’s a confederate flag in front of it. Sid and I look at each other. I shrug. We walk in.

The owner of the shop, a chubby guy in his late 60s-early seventies wishes us welcome. Sid goes over to look at the t-shirts. I walk around to look at the posters, and Klan memorabilia. No lynching pictures… just guys on horses in robes with white hoods.

“This is the later Klan,” says one of the patrons-- a muscular guy, early 30s, I’d guess. “See the hoods… they don’t cover the faces like the early ones did. I guess they had more pride the second time around.”

Most of the pictures, in fact, are of the reformed Klan, where the hoods didn’t cover their whole faces… I wonder how long before Antifa is proud of what it’s doing. The story is scary, but fascinating.

The shop owner calls to us over the counter, “If you want to look at more pictures, you can check out my own room. I sleep in the back.”

He opens the door and shows us to the back room. There is indeed a bed there… along with what looked like several posters from BIRTH OF A NATION.

I look at the bed… nothing more than a couch with a few sheets and pillows... surprisingly coordinated, blue and an odd shade of beige. Then I walk out to talk with the guy.

“I’m surprised,” I tell him. “I thought you guys only used WHITE sheets.”

He laughs.

“You boys ain’t from around here, are ya?” he asks.

“Imagine your worst nightmare,” I tell him. “Imagine your vision of hell! The worst place you could ever be...”

“Ah,” he says,” You boys are from New York.”

The three of us laugh.

He motions to a younger man… 40s… muscular in an uncomfortable way-- like a grumpy version of the guy who told me about the hoods. The man is sitting by himself… arms folded… unsmiling. 

“I want you to meet (I forgot his name). He’s the head of the county National Socialist Society,” says the Grand Dragon.

“Hi” I say, extending my hand, “I’m Mykel Board from New York. This is my friend Sid Yiddish.”

The guy doesn’t look at us and only tightens his arms across his chest. He does not take my out-stretched hand.

Sid and I look at each other. He shrugs. We go back to looking at the t-shirts. Before long, we both find t-shirts we like. Mine is a very homo-looking one with a picture of a topless cowboy smiling and the logo IT’S A SOUTHERN THING! Sid gets one of an astronaut planting a rebel flag, with the logo SOUTH SIDE OF THE MOON.

Sid, who looks even Jewer than me, pays for both shirts by credit card. The credit card has Sid’s real name on it. (Hint: think something-berg or something-stein.) The Klan guy looks at it, laughs, rings up the sale and hands us applications to join the Klan. Neither of us qualify… you have to be a “loyal white Christian American.”

We wave to him, and leave going back to my cousins.

“Wow!” says Sid, “That was quite an adventure. The Klan guy was funny.”

“I’m surprised the town allows a store like that,” I say. “Seems like it’d be bad for its reputation.”

“The great thing is,” he says, “that the landlord for the place is a black church… Southern gospel. He pays his money, and they’re friends.”

“Holy shit!” I say, “A black church and the KKK… now THAT’S tolerance.”

“It’s a Southern thing,” he answers.

Flash to 1998: The phone rings… I don’t answer… I never do… I hate the phone. In an hour or so I listen to my messages… I recognize George Tabb’s voice…

“Mykel,” says George’s voice, “I have some bad news. Tim died today. I thought you’d want to know.”

People die all the time. I lived through the 80s… the AIDS era… dropping like butt-fucked flies then. I lost some people very close to me. There was a lot of sadness, but I didn’t cry.

ASIDE: I’m one of the least macho people I know. No muscles to speak of… I hate team sports (except baseball… and that isn’t really a team sport). I even ask directions on the street… can anything be LESS macho?

But if there’s a speck of machotude in my body, it’s the crying thing. I used to be sooo sensitive… as a kid I cried when Lassie didn’t come home. Later in life, I saw the movie, Once Were Warriors. It was about the Maori in New Zealand. I don’t remember the details, but I do remember that I cried… at a fucking MOVIE... I cried. What the fuck?

I felt manipulated… used… by the director.. I decided to stop crying. (Of course, when my parents died, I allowed myself the luxury. Most people cry when their parents die.)

But when Tim died, I cried. I didn’t feel guilty or girlish about it. I loved Tim. He was funny, opinionated, stubborn, and a good friend. We disagreed about music. Tim said the first hardcore band was THE MIDDLE CLASS. I said it was THE BAD BRAINS... politics Tim was a Commie... I was-- and still am, a Libertarian Socialist... baseball teams (but not baseball as an institution). Tim was a Giants fan… I liked the Yankees.

I remember Tim taking me to Candlestick Park for a Giants game. When the Star Spangled Banner came on, I stood up and took off my hat. (This was just to get Tim’s goat. I am not a fan of America, or The Star Spangled Banner? Oy vey! Is there another national anthem with bombs and rockets in it?)

Tim asked me to write for Maximum Rock’n’Roll and kept me on through several purges (I LOVED Tim, but he was not a tolerant guy. Not only Politically Correct, but Musically correct, and business modely correct.) Tim only censored me once in my time at MRR. That was when I mentioned John Crawford… creator of the Baboon Dooley. Tim hated the guy.

But we got along so well. We both respected and made fun of each other. I would never miss hanging out with him on my frequent visits to San Francisco.

Bob Black once asked me why I continued writing for MRR despite the totalitarianism of Tim.

“Don’t you know?” He said, “Tim is using you to try to prove he’s open minded. You’re just a tool.”

“But, I LIKE the guy! He took me out for my first El Salvadorian burrito. He’s like a musical encyclopedia (Example: I once was talking about subjects for punk songs. I was a fan of the early Texas homocore of the time like THE BIG BOYS and THE DICKS.)

“It’s a shame there are no homo baseball-loving bands,” I say.

In a flash, Tim is gone only to return with a 7” from a band whose name I can’t remember, but who had a song “I fell in love with a guy on a baseball card.”

So, when Tim died, I cried.

Someone set up a memorial page for Tim… I contributed. A friend of mine sent me an email message:

“Did you see Gavin’s obituary for Tim? It’s really good.” And she sent me a link.

I thought she was talking about Gavin of Artless guitar fame. But it turns out to be a guy called Gavin Mcinnis… someone I never heard of. But I really liked the obituary. It was obviously written by someone else who loved Tim.

I find this Gavin on facebook and friend him. Turns out he knows who I am… and he played in a punk band himself. I check out his page and see he’s got his own TV show… on Fox. Who am I to judge? One of my best friends-- and fellow yippie at Beloit-- had an investigative reporter job on Fox. (He’s since worked for Bernie Sanders… and helped expose the Russian connection during the last election.)

I invite Gavin to go drinking with my roving group of drunks in New York… He promises to join but never does . Then I heard about THE PROUD BOYS.

Actually, that’s not quite true. It wasn’t that quick. Gavin and I had some brief exchanges about Drink Club in New York, and a bit more about punkrock. I had already been fired from MRR by the latest in a succession of post-Tim MRR editrixes. I was fired for complaining about MRR policy of censorship that I never had to suffer under Tim... but times were changing.

Then, I didn’t realize Gavin had a TV show until… and didn’t know that he had anything to do with VICE in NY or anything else. Now, I realize he’s kinda famous.

---------------------------------

FLASH TO BERKELEY… the home of the Free Speech Movement in the 1960s. The movement sparked the naming of a square FREE SPEECH SQUARE.

Now we’re in the 21^st century. Some group called AntiFa had stopped a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-wing homosexual. It was the first I heard of the Antifa or Yiannopoulos, but I enjoyed the irony of a blocked speech in Free Speech Square.

As time passed, I heard more and more about the hooded AntiFa’s intolerance… and their violence used to suppress the speech of those they don’t agree with. Labeling their antagonists NAZIS, they feel it’s right to stop them BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, including murder to judge by the cartoon.

I suggest to Jeff Bale, another former MRRer, that we start a counter group to AntiFa where we go to meetings of the totalitarian left and stop THEM from speaking BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Jeff puts the kabosh on that idea.

“We need to maintain the high road,” he says. “Let them be the thugs.”

“But how about if we don’t stop them from speaking,” I offer, “but just get together to protect speakers from being attacked and censored by the hooded ones.”

He wasn’t up for that either.

“Mykel,” he says, “You’re nearly 70. I’m a year older. You think we can fight a bunch of macho 20 year olds with chips the size of a hammer and sickle on their shoulders? Besides, I thought you were non-violent.”

He’s right. I’m, letting a bit of 70 year old macho get in there. My mistake.

Shortly after that conversation, I heard about the Proud Boys. I didn’t hear much, but they sounded like my fantasy-- a version of it anyway. They are a group dedicated to fighting the censors… and ready to fight. They are not non-violent. They are macho brawlers willing to stand up for the right to speak. And willing to fight back when attacked. A kind of tolerance police… freedom defenders… At least that was my image when I first heard about them.

That they came from the right is logical. Free speech in America (this century) has been physically attacked by the left more than the right. If I had my druthers, I’d rather they came from the libertarian left. I’d like to see the war between freedom fighters vs the totalitarians… though with a different ending than in the Spanish Civil War. 

But, as I’m learning here in India, you eat what’s on your plate… even if-- in two hours-- it’ll give you the shits.

What happened in New York with The Proud Boys vs Antifa? I don’t know. Gavin says THEY started it, with a physical attack-- a thrown bottle. The press… at least the non-Fox press… says The Proud Boys were just a gang out to commit hate crimes... toughies looking for trouble

My guess: the truth lies in the middle, as it usually does. But in any case, the war will continue. Because talking is over. Tolerance… discussion… learning… compassion… understanding… are values long gone. Those who disagree are NAZIS, if you’re Antifa… or ANTIFA if you’re on the other side. 

Me, I’m on nobody’s side. I fear for the future though… Tolerance was a great value… as was non-violence. Both are gone now. It’s anyone’s guess what’s gonna happen. Being near 70… I’m lucky enough to have less of a future than the rest of you. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

1. I know about Carl Popper… He’s wrong.

2. I will be spotty on answering comments. I’m now in India and Internet access is not as available here as you’d expect… and I have other things to do.

3. If you want to read about my adventures in India and other places, check out my travel blog at: https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com

You’re STILL Wrong Mykel's Sept 2018 Blog/Column "Well-Hung"

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

Sept 2018 Blog/Column

Well-hung

The pain starts at the ankles. A rough localized pain… not a stabbing pain... closer to an intense rash that hurts rather than itches. It’s the rope... digging into me… every strand cutting its own notch… if I move an inch… try to twist or flop my body… it cuts deeper.

The hook on the ceiling stays firm. I half hope it will pull out... freeing me from the hanging, but if it gives way suddenly, the entire 135 pounds of my body weight will land on my bald skull.. likely splitting it. So here I hang… naked... my head a couple feet above the concrete floor, my elderly breasts slightly higher on my chest than they are when I’m standing. Between my legs my floppy bits hang in a limp parody of the erection that wasn’t.

It must be an hour now. The pain in my bladder is slowly becoming intolerable. Gravity fights the urge to piss. I have to piss upward… over a urethral hill… then down. The pressure wins… gravity loses... the stream pushes its way from between my legs... up over the taint… and out. A yellow stream from up to down… hitting my chin as if perfectly aimed by one of those Russian piss experts. I tilt my head forward to catch it in my mouth.

None of that is true. At least, none is true on a literal level. Metaphorically, it’s the focus of this blog… Here’s something that IS true.

It’s noon. My first class starts in an hour and a half. It’s a cloudy day… rain a minute away… in any direction. I stop at Cafe Angelique on my way to the subway. Walking in, the most beautiful girl I’ve seen this year is walking out. She holds the door… makes a chivalrous sweeping hand gesture… and smiles… not one of those tooth-gritting-I’m-doing-this-to-be-polite-but-actually-I-hate-you smiles… but a real you’re-a-person-I’m a person-and-I’m happy-we’ve-had-this-encounter-however-brief smile. The cloudy day brightens a bit… from the inside.

Inside the cafe, I pick up my usual bagel stick (cream cheese, lox, on a mini-French bread… baked like a bagel)... and head to the counter to pay for it. I pass by the second most beautiful girl I’ve seen this year. On her lap... standing... is a little boy, obviously enjoying his trip to the cafe. Not only does the woman smile at me, she says “Hello there.” And even the little boy shows me a toothy grin. One tooth is missing.

I feel like I’m walking six inches off the floor. What a way to start the day! It looks like one of those rare days… not one of those days.^® I find myself whistling Hungarian Rhapsody on the short walk from the cafe to the subway station. I never whistle.

On the platform, I walk to the end where the least crowded car will dock. I eat the bagel stick and wait for the train. When it arrives, I get in and there are about half a dozen people in the car. I sit in the 2-seat bench next to the door. Today it's more out of habit than from my usual curmudgeonly desire not to have some man-spreader force himself into the seat next to me before spreading.

On the same side of the car… the other side of the door… a tough woman sits sipping something out of an ice-filled plastic cup. I set down my backpack and pull out the latest Nation and start reading stuff I know I’ll half agree with.

CRASH!

Not the train, but the woman's cup of ice as it falls to the floor. I look at the cup laying there… mostly still filled with ice, but with a few cubes lying helter skelter on the floor. I look from the cup back to the woman. She sits.. her fist tucked under her chin… a sad parody of Rodin...

her brows furrowed not in thought but in hostility… to something I can’t see.

I look from her to the cup on the floor and back to her... then back to The Nation. In my peripheral vision I can see her stand up and move to the other end of the car… as far away from my end as possible.

I try to focus on The Nation. At the next stop a few more people get into the car. When the door closes, the icewoman stands again and walks toward her cup on the floor. When she reaches it, she pulls back a leg like a football punter… then she kicks the cup... aiming it directly at my face… It misses my face… but does not miss my shirt and pants… soon covered with melted ice.

“He kept watching me!” she shouts to the rest of the passengars… all of whom quickly bury themselves in their cellphones.

I go back to The Nation and read the same sentence over and over again. Something about a Trump Bump.... I'm not getting it, but at least I don't have to look at the angry woman.

Luckily, the next stop is Grand Central. My stop... I get out… jog up the stairs… move into an alcove and glance behind to see if she’s followed me. She hasn’t.

Key point, I think, ALL of the women in this anecdote are colored… the two women in the cafe… the woman in the subway car. All slight variations on the color of oak in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel... beautiful!

So, what’s all this got to do with hanging by my ankles naked from the ceiling in an unnamed building? I’m glad you asked: UPSIDE DOWN is the connection. My day turned upside down from heart-melting kindness to maniacal hostility. Life, people, everything that comes with the modern world is turning upside down… and few people notice it!

Leftists and rightists stand on their heads… supporting exactly the opposite of leftists and rightists… with as much anger at their former selves as the colored woman with a cup of ice.

FLASHBACK: On February 1, 1960, at 4:30pm, four black guys sit down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth store in Greensboro North Carolina. The men have already purchased toothpaste and other products from the store with no problems. At the store's lunch counter they are refused service when they each asks for a cup of coffee. Following store policy, the staff refuses to serve the black men at the "whites only" counter. The store manager, Clarence Harris, asks them to leave. The four freshmen, however, stay until the store closes. The next day, more than twenty black students, recruited from other campus groups, join the sit-in.

They are customers demanding the same rights as other customers. Consumers demanding from the giant corporation...

WE SHALL OVERCOME!

This is the call of the generation… inspired by black, but soon gone to white… It leads to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It leads to a host of others… but most importantly it establishes the basic principle that the right of the individual trumps the right of the corporation. The right of a customer to choose his business trumps the right of the business to choose its customer. You can’t just make “company rules”… post a sign WHITES ONLY and win. Anyone who can pay for your services is entitled to them. White customers complain. They are being disturbed by people who they didn’t like.

“Let the Negroes go to their own restaurants,” they say. “If they don’t like it, they should just open up a place themselves.”

Leftists/communists/liberals and my very young self applauded the sit-iners. We cheered the end of segregation and the affirmation of the rights of people over the rights of companies to just post a sign and keep people out. No more thumb over shoulder saying… “read the sign buddy, WHITES ONLY that’s the rule.”

FLASH TO 2018: Facebook, Apple, YouTube cut the account of wacko conspiricist Alex Jones. POW! We don’t like you! You’re out. If there was ever a case of corporate dictatorship... corporate triumph over individuals... this is it.

THE PROGRESSIVE MAGAZINE says in an editorial that Jones violated the terms of facebook’s agreement and “even if he didn’t, facebook is a private company and can change the rules any time.” This is THE PROGRESSIVE… previously one of the most out-spoken voices for the rights of THE PUBLIC over the rights of THE CORPORATION.

This attitude is NOT progressive. This is Donald Trump saying the right of corporations to pollute is more important that the right of individuals to breathe clean air. It’s Hobby Lobby denying contraceptives to its employees, saying the rights of the company bosses are more important than the rights of their employees. They signed a contract. If they don’t like it, they can work somewhere else.

Hobby Lobby was 4 years ago. Liberals were up in (non-lethal) arms. Then, in 2018, in a kerpow moment, those same liberals have turned themselves upside down and opened their mouths to taste the piss of corporatism…. and they love it. Alex Jones banned simultaneously from facebook, Apple and YouTube.

“How can they do this?” I ask.

“They’re a corporation. They make the rules. They can do what they want,” comes the answer-- from the liberals! Can you say WHITES ONLY?

But wait… there’s more.

In the days of white terrorism, the Ku Klux Klan wore white hoods to cover their identity when they terrorized Negroes, Jews, (sometimes) Catholics. They knew what they were doing was illegal, certainly violent, probably immoral.

These days, the only time you’ll see a klansman in a hood is in cartoons in “progressive” magazines.

Who wears the hoods in 2018? Who tries to hide their identity knowing that what they are doing is illegal, certainly violent, probably immoral. Is that a cross burning behind that guy? It might as well be one.

Had enough? Tough shit! There’s more.

Flash to 1950.

“I have here in my hand,” says Joseph McCarthy, “ a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party” shills for a dangerous Russia.

Russia was the bad guy. Those associated with it were bad. People were black-listed. Hollywood wouldn’t hire “Communists.” In order to get any work at all, Russia-lovers had to use assumed names to hide their identity.

Last month I wrote about how these former Russia lovers and CIA/FBI haters have suddenly turned into their upside down counterparts and now HATE Russia and love the CIA/FBI. But there’s more...

These days, actors still get black-listed, thrown off their programs… censored for their political beliefs or past sexual history. Roseanne Barr loses her job in a day, for a few words on Twitter. Kevin Spacey gets digitally edited out of a movie he was to star in. And the same political leaning that was the VICTIM of blacklisting, now applauds it. Upside down!

Yeah, there’s even more, but I need to stop now… my brain hurts… I probably should hoist myself back up by my ankles and let the blood rush to my head. It’ll give me the perspective needed to function in America in 2018.

-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]

-→Speaking of Antifa dept: During protests in Portland Oregon, one anti-Trump protester carried an American flag to show that he thought that it was patriotic to protest the president. Well, that didn’t sit well with the Antifa crew… one of whom beat the guy and put him in the hospital. In an exchange after the event, an Antifa member said, “Well, at least we didn’t kill him.”

-→Make Canada Great Again dept: Meanwhile, a manager at the Stanley Park Teahouse in Vancouver Canada was fired because he refused service to someone wearing a M.A.G.A. hat. The company said they fired the guy because he acted in a way violating the company’s philosophy of tolerance. 10 punk points to the company.

In America they’d be boycotted. If there’s one thing the current crop of left-totalitarians can’t tolerate… it’s tolerance.

-->Something for tolerance dept: Seems like the anti-Muslimites are always finding quotes to bolster their opinions. So I offer this one: Beware! Whoever is cruel and hard on a non-Muslim minority, or curtails their rights, or burdens them with more than they can bear, or takes anything from them against their free will; I (Prophet Muhammad) will complain against the person on the Day of Judgment. (from the Hadiths)

Put that in your Islamaphobic pipe and smoke it.

-end-

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
• I post a blog for Kyle Nonnemon, in prison for a ton of shit. He's a smart guy, with a passion for industrial metal and a general detestation of humankind. You can read his blog at: apothelema.blogspot.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.
• 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.