Mykel's April 2024 Blog/Column: The Obvious Answer

 

Mykel's APRIL 2024 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong

Mykel's

April 2024 Blog/Column

The Obvious Answer

by Mykel Board

Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies.
                                    – Andrea Dworkin

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.
                                                                                 - Abigail Adams

Some women do not masturbate for pleasure; they masturbate to make a political statement: to remind us that women do not really need men             
                                                                    --Mokokoma Mokhonoana

April again, spring, renewal, most every culture and religion has a holiday… Christians-Easter, Jews-Passover, Muslims-Nowruz. Fools ignore this and think it’s like any other time of the year. They’re wrong.

People who know me, know that I’m an organizer. Thursdays, I have Drink Club, a small eat, drink, socializing group. Once a month I organize Eat Club, where we go to a different restaurant every month. I also have a ROUNDTABLE (sorry no URL) where we gather at the Algonquin hotel, like Dorothy Parker and friends in the 1920s. Every month a different topic with a somewhat varying group in the discussion… yes with food and drink. Finally, also every month, I have a haiku group… also meeting at the Algonquin… where we talk about our own poetic output.

Yet until now, I’ve never organized a political group. My politics usually don’t match those of anyone else… or at least too few to make a group out of it… until now that is. To understand what I’m doing I’d like you to imagine one of those awful prescription drug commercials on TV. Cut to the smiling grandpas… the kids playing ball in the park… the family barbecue. In the background read too fast and too faintly is the warning message.

_________ will likely cause frequent nausea. Other side effects include weight gain, lethargy, increased urination, food cravings, mood swings, backaches and joint pain, swelling of the ankles, fingers, and face, heartburn and indigestion, hemorrhoids, and insomnia. Some instances are fatal.

If this were a drug, I bet you’d be pretty hesitant to try it… maybe asking your doctor for an alternative. And what if this drug were forced on you? Or less seriously, you were connived into taking it because everyone else is.

Well, this isn’t a drug… but the side effects are real, and there are more than in the warning above. I’m writing about the side effects of PREGNANCY… especially pregnancy as the result of heterosexual sex.

Andrea Dworkin recognized it, but, for the most part, she was brushed off as a kook. I was one of those brushers. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how right she was. Or at least close. Rather than contempt for, I’d say power over. There’s no doubt that, on the whole, men have more physical power than women. The reason there are women’s sports and men’s sports is that combining the two would result in women losing most of the time.

Feminists say that rape is not about sex, but about power. I’m not sure about is the right word, but certainly involves. 92% of all rapes involve heterosexual sex. One of the reasons rape is so easy for men, is that, they’ve got more power. It may be taboo to say that in this all-things-are-equal era, but down deep you know it’s true.

And rape is only the most extreme. What of the everyday stress and insults that go unreported, but irritating?

Flash to Monday morning at Scamson bank. Jack, the branch manager, is already behind the inquiry desk, preparing for the first customer to ask him how to move money from his friend’s saving account to his own checking account. Jack likes to get in a few minutes early, and be there for the entrance of Madeline… his (not-so) secret crush. She’s a few minutes late as females are wont to be. She walks in, past the front desk as she does every morning.

When she walks past him, Jack speaks in a loud voice, accompanied by a smile. “Hey Madeline,” he says, “has anyone ever told you you have nice ass...sets?”

Madeline thinks sneer, but Jack is the boss. A sneer is a good way to get fired, so she pretends not to hear him. “And he continues. “Did I tell you how much I like your compound interest? I mean I go for that double-digit inflation there.”

Madeline continues the walk to her cubicle, wondering whether to sue the bank for harassment.

Stop right there! Don’t you see? The reason guys make sexual comments… talk about women’s bodies… is because the want to possess it! They want to make that asset… that inflated double digit... their own. The talk feeds the fantasy. Guys make the jokes, send out the sex-filled talk because they want to get laid. If getting laid… at least getting laid by women… stops, then the fantasies also stop… or at least drop dramatically. How many guys have fantasies about bank robbery? It’s illegal! They don’t think about it… and even if they do, they don’t talk about it in public.

I’ve had this discussion with dozens of friends… of any gender you can name. Almost all have come to agree. Then it occurred to me... like a lightning strike in a summer storm. There is a way to stop the he-said/she-said defense of what might be rape. There is a way to stop the disease of pregnancy… or at least reduce it to near zero. Just think… none of those nasty side effects. The population explosion would implode. Rape would nearly disappear. The fundamental inequality of power would be reduced to almost nothing. How could we do that? Easy answer: Make heterosexual sex illegal!

If I were 50 years younger and a bit more athletic I’d jump and click my heels at the revelation. Yes! Yes! Yes! It’s so obvious. The primary manifestation of the power imbalance… gone with the stroke of a president’s (or a governor’s) pen signing the new law.

You may have read about the organization I started there and then: Policy Initiative to Mitigate Power. It was easy to draw up papers and a statement of purpose… It’s all in the name. P.I.M.P. will change the world. Already almost a dozen Congressmen and women have climbed on board. And the best thing is that both the left and the right support us! The issue could be the great unifier. Conservatives who want sex education removed from schools fear that it will encourage heterosexual sex. After the P.I.M.P. law takes effect, the only class in sex ed would be not to do it. Trump-hating liberals constantly harp on Trump’s alleged involvement with heterosexual sex. After the P.I.M.P. law, all that becomes a clear violation.

Let me tell you a little bit about my organizing adventures. You might be surprised at the warm reception I received. First I made handouts… in the shape of those square religious tracts. On the front was printed: No matter who is your God… P.I.M.P. is the answer. I just stood at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Broadway, and handed them out to anyone who would take one. You can imagine that in the middle of Times Square that would be a lot of people. It was.

Only about 1 in 5 took one, but that was enough. My first taste of ecstatic joy was when a young woman (blond, thin, with a couple outstanding attributes), took one, walked off, and then came running back to me.

“This is wonderful!” she said. “Do you know how much time I waste tightening my belly, dyeing my hair, spending hundreds of dollars on makeup to please… men!” She said the word with a wrinkled nose and an expulsion... like you might spit out a cockroach in your burger.

Since the start of P.I.M.P. there have been dozens… maybe scores of people… men and women... who tell me how great they think a het-sex ban would be. Maybe 70% of PIMP is women, but in that last 30% are a bunch of gay men with the idea something like that means more for us.

One surprising group was the number of conservative women. Members of Libs of Tiktok or Moms for Liberty. Women who put kinship first and preach devotion to home, husband and family.

One member of that crew was front and center in that big demonstration we had in Texas. Maybe you read about it. She was early middle age, with jet-black hair and bright red fingernails.

“I’m happy to see you here,” I told her, “and you surprise me. I thought maybe the conservatives wouldn’t like us because so many conservatives focus on the family. Family usually means het-sex.”

“But don’t you see,” she says, “sex has been the disgusting thing we have to do in order to make “a family.” I nod, stroking my chin as if I had a goatee.

“Artificial insemination is even better than artificial intelligence,” she continues. “We don’t need to do IT.” She pronounces “it” as if it involved fellatio with a reptile. “It used to be our wifely duty... expected as part of family values. P.I.M.P. and science free us from that. Now, they have no excuse to make us perform that vile and loathsome act. We see a doctor… get an injection… down there. And pow! We got it. Yeah, we still have to suffer the side effects of pregnancy, but thanks to you, we’re free of the old etiology.”

‘Wait! Wait!” I say. “What does etiology mean?”

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” she says, shaking her head. “Get with the program… and you wrote the program.”

I smile.

“It means, the cause of the disease,” she tells me. “Sure we still have suffer the symptoms, but we’re free of the old cause. You’ve saved us the pain… the embarrassment… the penetration by beast erect, rather than penetration by doctor’s syringe.”

So where do we go from here? Politics… that’s where. This month the P.I.M.P. party has officially registered with the US government. We’ll have candidates on the ballot in 5 states in November: New York, Texas, Florida, California, and Utah. Feminists and family-ists support us in the Blue and Red states. Besides those, we’ll have ballot initiatives in another half dozen states, pushing for the prohibition of heterosexual sex. We are the only party that can unify America. We are the only ones that will get citizens to join together without actually joining together.

Imagine a nation… a world… without hetero-sex. If we really believe it, we can really do it. And as the world calms down… as sexual tension relaxes and confines itself to one gender. As most of the problems in the world begin to disappear, we will only have ourselves to thank.

See you in heaven,
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]

→ Look to Other Countries Dept: Stopsex.com reports that there are now seven countries that have banned heterosexual sex: Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Benin, Burundi, Tajikistan and Togo, In every one of those countries, instances of rape… and family strife... have decreased.

→ You, you dirty rat dept: The Associated Press says rats have gotten into confiscated weed at New Orleans' aging police headquarters, munching the evidence as the building is taken over by mold and cockroaches. The city's police chief complains. "The rats eating our marijuana, they're all high."

→ I Told You So dept: In case you didn’t believe me. The NY Times reports that Citibank is being sued for “a culture of sexual harrassment.” Here are the exact words: Ardith Lindsey, a managing director at Citi, alleged that her 15-year career at the bank had increasingly become a “traumatizing” experience, especially after she ended a relationship with a former supervisor. The supervisor, Mani Singh, then sent her dozens of threatening text messages.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

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

Here's a start:

I never expected to see myself as a centerfold. I know several of my enemies would like to see me fold… but not exactly like this:

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

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

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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

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

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a couple video links.

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

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong who has recently died in a motorcycle accident.

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

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both. It’s hard (and costs money) to send him email. So. If you remember how to write a letter… send him one at: Kyle Nonneman, #16534211, Snake River Correctional Institution, 777 Stanton Blvd Ontario OR 97914-8335

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

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

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

Bi bi binary or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel Board's blog for May 2022

 

 

Bi Bi Binary

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's May 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

The binary approach is an obsolete school of thought in the process of structuring human perception towards reality. The true nature of reality fits better with a spectrum approach.

- Toba Beta

Human beings have a strong instinct toward binary thinking, a basic urge to divide things into two distinct groups, with nothing but an empty gap in between. We love to dichotomize. Good versus bad. Heroes versus villains. My country versus the rest. Dividing the world into two distinct sides is simple and intuitive, and also dramatic because it implies conflict, and we do it without thinking, all the time.”

- Hans Rosling,

Binary paths belong in bygone past. All things civilized are non-binary. - Abhijit Naskar,

Love cannot be defined, caught, cast in stone, or archived. It's something we have no control over. Love is completely analog. Love can never be digital. --Vicky Krieps

You’re either part of the problem of part of the solution. --Black Panthers

You’re wrong. --Mykel Board

Comedians are famous for their repertoire of phrases used to tame hecklers.

Yeah my mother used to tell me that too.

Your mouth works, now try your brain.

If I was as smart as you, I’d be stupid.

We’ve all rehearsed comedy comebacks… when people ask: BANG, you got a stock answer good for anyone... any time.

Q. Did you go to business school?
A. No, I got an education.

Q. Is it hard being a Jew?
A. No, it’s easy. All you gotta do is have a Jewish mother.

Q. How’s your hearing?
A. What?

When I meet someone, it’s never long before we talk about sex. Not (necessarily) sex with each other, but in general. I use the word vagina within the first 20 minutes of a conversation with a new person. Doesn’t everyone?

And while judging the desirability of every passing stranger (usually on a scale of one to a hundred)… or while talking about bars long gone and sorely missed… a new friend will inevitably ask, “Mykel, are you gay?”

Ah, my stock answer… pops out like a drunk’s penis from a vagina. “No, I’m not gay,” I say, “but most of the guys I’ve had sex with have been gay.”

“So you’re bisexual?”

“Trisexual… try anything.”

The usual response is an I’ve-heard-it-before eye-roll. Maybe with a headshake.

At nearly 80 years old, I have slightly more real-life sexual energy than my hero, Tuli Kupferberg… and he’s dead. Bisexual and trisexual just don’t do it for me any more. Gimme a video.

So, as I’m masturbating to Lief Blowher (look her up on xvideos). On the upstroke, it occurs to me that sex is like linguistics, Covid, the Ukraine war, Donny Trump and racism. Binary in the 21^st century. The Greeks didn’t have binary sex. They just had sex. Who the hell invented homo and hetero? And now it’s worse, with an alphabet of sex letters that you either are or you aren’t. A wombload of ones and zeros disguised as LBQTABCDEFG.

Ok, speaking of letters-- actually letter sounds-- here’s a quick linguistics lesson-- the structuralist school, as I remember it from 1987. For the structuralists, speech sounds are like computer language: ones and zeros… plusses or minuses.

The F-sound in English is made with the inside of the lower lip touching the upper teeth. Air is blown through the narrow opening and the vocal chords do not vibrate. Plus labial, minus voice.

The F-sound in Japanese is made with both lips close together, and air blown through the narrow opening. The vocal chords do not vibrate. Also plus labial, minus voice.

But they’re are not the same sounds. Structuralists jump through binary hoops to distinguish them. The Japanese sound is plus bilabial. The English sound minus bilabial. The English sound is plus tense (lower lip). The Japanese sound is minus tense. Hoop after hoop.

The list goes on. Adding more and more pluses and minuses… but why? I explained the difference between the two sounds in two sentences. What use is all the plusing and minusing? Why the thirst for binary? So it’ll fit in your computer?

To be fair, binary-tude has been with us at least since the Chinese flipped heads or tails with the I-Ching. But it really took off with computer storage and little bits being either ones or zeros. Now it rules everything. There are people in jail and others probably killed for having the wrong series of ones and zeros on their computer hard drives. The death penalty! That’s how much binary is worth in 2022.

Binary destroys thinking. It gives two options… if it’s not A, it must be B. If he’s not good, he must be evil. Nuance dies. It’s impossible to think outside the box without thinking of another box.

Another example… real life: I’m in Japan… trying to enter a restaurant in Shitamachi, Tokyo. Shitamachi strictly translates as downtown. But is actually closer in meaning to oldtown. I notice an interesting restaurant… frayed red lanterns hanging from the roof. Looking through the window, I’m happy to see there are NO WHITE PEOPLE inside. Oh yeah, my kind of place.

I pull on the door handle. The door doesn’t open. I pull again... harder. It still doesn’t open. What an idiot I am! In some countries, doors open out, some open in. I get it.

I push the door. No results. I can see the people inside looking at me and laughing. I push again. Inside, a chubby guy wearing a black suit, puts down his chopsticks and walks over to the door. He slides it open.

FOILED AGAIN BY BINARY THINKING!

The US must be one of the world’s most binary countries. (Israel: Jew or not-Jew is also way up there.) American movies divide the world into good guys and bad guys… heroes and villains. TV news reports on criminals and life-savers. Wars are right or wrong, good or bad. People, the same. Meet someone new? First thought: are they good or bad?

Text books show the history of earth as a series of good guys fighting bad guys. The side that has death camps are the bad guys. The side that kills hundreds of thousands with atomic bombs… and poisons millions of a future generation… they’re the good guys.

Maybe it’s not American… maybe it’s natural in humans. Two hands, two feet, two nostrils, two ovaries, two testicles… everything we can see in our bodies is one, two or ten. Our bodies are digital. It may be natural, but it drives me batty!

A famous punkrock writer and producer has called me a “Trumpist” because I said that president hadn’t gotten us into a war… and did the right thing by pulling us out of the Trans Pacific Partnership. Donald Trump is the absolute epitome of the binary. You either love him… and whatever he does is GOOD… or you hate him… and whatever he does is BAD. There’s no reasoning… No nuance. No need to do any thinking whatsoever.

But wait! The problem is not Donny Trump… it’s the whole idea of GOOD and EVIL. From fairy tales to facebook, you divide up the world. Trump is EVIL… and anything he does is evil and if it’s not evil, then you have to prove he didn’t do it? Instead of seeing him (and all humans) as a complicated ANALOG combination of positives and negatives and deeds and desires that are neither positive nor negative… You see DIGITAL. If someone is EVIL you have to explain away the good,,, deny it exists. It interferes with the binary.

Donald Trump was responsible for one assassination and no wars. Joe Biden droned a car-ful of medical aid workers… and has jailed more migrants than Donny ever did. Am I a Trumpist for pointing that out?

Then there’s Hitler, the Godwin embodiment of evil... What do you do when you find him on YOUR SIDE? Hey vegetarians. How could you be a vegetarian? Hitler was a vegetarian! Instead of saying, “okay… he was right on that, but he did a fuck of a lot more harm than good,” you scramble to prove “NO! It ISN’T TRUE! HE WASN’T A VEGETARIAN!”

I once posted on facebook the cliché that Hitler made the trains run on time. First answer? “No he didn’t. That was Mussolini.” Second answer? “No, he just made the train crews SAY they ran on time. They were really still late.” You cannot admit that someone EVIL can do anything good. It destroys the binary.

Then there’s sex. You’re STRAIGHT or you’re GAY. Okay, there are so-called bisexuals, but many doubt even that. One of the main sources of pride in my life is that my friends who call themselves straight, tell me Mykel, we know you’re really straight, but only claim to like guys because it’s extreme and outrageous. My friends who call themselves gay (or lesbian… a completely unnecessary word that means “gay woman”) tell me You’re really one of us, but you only claim to like girls because it avoids the stigma of being gay. Stigma in 2022? Jeezus fuckin’ Christ!

Yeah, there’s the BISEXUAL argument… but it’s BI… it’s digital. Another file folder to fit in. Sex is not digital… it’s analog! There is a whole range of sexual tastes: age, hairstyle, clothes, weight, body shape, body hair, personality. Our tastes are more than just a decision based on innies and outies.

But you, my digital friend, you self define… Like Biden is good, so everything he does is good. Or Trump is bad, so everything he does is bad. You define yourself as STRAIGHT. You’re not allowed to even consider sticking your dinkle into another man’s dent… or you’re GAY, so, even though that girl looks sooo good, you don’t do it because… well, because you’re GAY and gay people don’t do that. Even defining yourself as BISEXUAL doesn’t work, because then you’re saying there are people who are NOT bisexual. That makes another digital divide.

Tuli Kupferberg, when he was alive, wrote a song about getting old:

Once I was a sexual (two words), but now I am asexual (one word). I got those later life asexual blues.

We are all, more or less, SEXUALS. Of course we have preferences. I like Founders Breakfast Beer more than I like Budweiser… but I’m still a beer drinker. More people you find yourself attracted to may consider themselves men than consider themselves women. But that shouldn’t define you. Once you put yourself into a little labeled container, you lose your analog. You are no longer free, but only have the choice to move from one container to another.

One of the binariest of the binary is MALE or FEMALE, man or woman. Even at birth, someone says Choose one! Now! You’re allowed to change your mind… once. Then, that’s it.

People who would rage against a pre-pubescent spending a half hour having sex, now support their right to permanently and surgically CHOOSE their gender (one of two, of course) while their age is in the single digits. If they’re not sure… they can take drugs that will delay puberty “until they’re old enough to decide.” This is just crazy since:

1. The hormones released in puberty help with the decision to choose gender and are often the cause of pre-pubescents’ changing their mind on the surgery. So delaying puberty delays the BIOLOGICAL age and makes the “choice,” not a choice at all. The decision is still made by a newly pubescent who needs maturity to decide.

2. Why choose at all? Several cultures have more than two sexes, and one of my best friends is a guy… with a twat. Many regret the surgery and more just find that it didn’t do what they expected it to do.

Why not let kids play? Let little boys wear dresses. Let little girls play football. Call the kids what they want to be called, and after they’re old enough to decide (puberty at the earliest) on surgery, let them decide.

But wait! There’s still more!

War is probably the nastiest and most dangerous of binary thinking… and it’s effects. Take the Russian Ukraine invasion. Putin is the new Hitler… and there’s no indication he gets the trains to run on time. His reported popularity in Russia is 82%. Why so popular? Are ordinary Russians also EVIL?

Putin’s enemies cannot accept that. They have to scream foul. Fake figures… the opposition is in jail… he’s really hated but everyone in Russia is afraid to say so. In war, there are only good guys and bad guys. If a bad guy is popular, then the people who like him must also be bad.

If there’s a war, the bad guys rape and pillage… commit atrocities. The good guys protect “the innocent.” It’s binary… digital. No matter how analog the reality. No matter how much good or evil from both sides… no one can see it that way.

There’s a war… it’s a movie: Cue the pillaging~ Cue the rape! Cue the dead women and children (Men? Ah as long as they’re not children, then it’s no big deal. It’s a war. Men die. That’s what they do. The horror is when women and children die.) Cue the atrocities.

And it’s all the fault of one man… One macho guy in Moscow. Every raping penis… every apartment building missile… every closed escape route (whose escape routes? Why women and children, of course. Men have to fight and die. That’s what they do.) Every “civilian” casualty is personally ordered by the next corollary of Godwin’s law. The EVIL VLAD PUTIN!

Oh the list goes on. People are either anti-mask or pro-mask. Anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine. Trump-lovers or Trump-haters. “The other side” is stupid and EVIL. OUR side is smart and GOOD.

Well, join the army! The ANALOG army. The army of the subtle. The army of no sides… but infinite nuance. The army open to men women and those who are both… or neither. The army that marches out of step… not giving a shit about matching the stride of the next person. See you in that army… or not.

See you in hell… or not

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]

→ Speaking of non-binary dept: The New Republic reports that, traditional treatments for substance use disorders, take place in expensive residential facilities, demand total abstinence from all drugs, and rely heavily on group therapy and the 12 steps. The magazine writes about a new system called PROP that doesn’t punish or control those in the program. Instead, PROP holds substance use on a continuum and gives people the power to determine their own treatment goals: Some might want to be abstinent from all drugs; others might reduce their substance use to more manageable levels. A completely logical-- analog-- approach.

→ Speaking of non-binary Chapter 2 dept:
I write this during Passover. This is the time of year where most Jews do not eat any wheat products… except matzo. And do not eat or drink anything with yeast in it. So what’s that got to do with analog? 

An analog Rabbi!! Yes! Reuben Zellman, a California rabbi is the first intersex student to graduate from reform rabbi-school. The rabbi is, of course, active in social causes, but is most interesting because of the lack of binary. Yes! My kind of… er… person! L’chaim!

See you in hell... or not (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.

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 

MYKEL'S MAY 2021 BLOG or Glasses and Passes

 

 You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

May 2021 Blog/Column

Passes and Glasses

by Mykel Board

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.
                    – Dorothy Parker

It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. Today, however, we need new lenses. And we need to throw the old ones away.
                        – Kenichi Ohmae

Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.
                            – Joseph Joubert

I sit in front of my HP, typing these words. To my left, on a round night-table is a mini wall made of 35 pairs of eyeglasses… stacked neatly… 7 piles... 5 glasses each. A small tag hangs off the right hinge of each pair. Each one is special, and I need to know what it is.

For example, I wear my Blue Blocker glasses to use the computer before I go to sleep. Watching blueless porn takes a bit of getting used to, but after spending my load, and wiping down the mouse, I sleep even easier not exposed to the blue light from the screen.

FLASH TO THE MORNING: Most of my news comes from either Al Jazeera or the BBC… the only news sources I trust. There’s a story about a guy in Atlanta… he shot up a few massage parlors… ones he’d patronized… He tells the cops he did it because he was a sex addict and he needed to destroy the cause of his addiction. The police say he’s a nut. The press… the people on the street… my friends... say he’s a Hate Crime Killer.

“Great!” I think. Finally people learn that Sex Workers are humans too. Entitled to dignified lives, legal protection, freedom from harassment. It’s about fuckin’ time!

But wait! The crime of the guy with the gun is not an anti-sex worker crime. Three quarters of the victims were from China or Korea. Even though all were in sex-selling places, this wasn’t an anti-sex-worker crime. It was an ASIAN HATE CRIME.

What? 100% of the victims were in sex-selling places. But they were killed because they were (mostly) Asians??? The guy complains about his sex addiction, but he shoots holes in people because… because they have slanty eyes?

Hold on! I know how to understand this.

I turn to my wall of glasses and look for the ones marked RACE. Ah, here they are. I slip them on and reread the article. Now I get it. Yeah, there are white people, black people, yellow people, and some red people. Those colors don’t come out without the glasses. People on the street look just like… well… people on the street. It’s the race glasses that bring out the browns, blacks, yellows and whites. They make it all as clear and colorful as a Christmas card.

So when I initially (pre-race glasses) post on facebook that I don’t get this Asian stuff… I mean, it’s weird for find Asians in business run by Asians, right? This is one of the answers I get from facebook:

Asians are being predated (sic) upon by blacks (not whites) because many blacks are extremely racist against Asians and black criminals view Asians as being the weakest and easiest victims to predate upon. White people are not the problem here (or with anything else, excepting stupid white liberal women and white cuck males going along with the pro-criminal black/anti-white agenda of the globalist "elites.)"

Without my race glasses, I would have never understood this. I would have just seen the race-beaters as paranoid, ignorant, uneducated, propaganda victims. I wouldn’t have noticed race. But now, thanks to the glasses. I SEE!!!!

FLASH TO A FEW WEEKS AHEAD: Glassesless, I’m out for a stroll to the post office, then to K-Mart, the Korean grocery store... for kimchi dumplings and makkoli. For those of you unfortunate enough not to be acquainted with this nectar of the Oriental gods… Makkoli is a cheap drink, sold in plastic, soft-drink style bottles. It has the color and consistency of semen… and a taste like boozy Seven-Up. Heavenly.

Today, there are lots of cops… in pairs… just standing around. I wonder if they’re part of a new city program to put cops on the street instead of in cruisers. Maybe it’s part of a change to make cops like they are in old children’s books. You ask them for directions, wave them over if you need help getting a cat out of a tree, walk over to them for ask about a wandered-off toddler. Nice... a move in the right direction… I say.

When I get home, I get out a tin of sardines and the last of the matzo… to prepare my lunch. I pour myself a glass of hibiscus tea, sit in front of my Roku (a gift from a fb friend), and turn on the news.

FLASH TO THE DEREK CHAUVIN TRIAL: A guy wearing a suit sits behind a desk. Underneath his image is a sign… VERDICT IN CHAUVIN CASE EXPECTED MOMENTARILY.

I predict the jury will find the cop guilty of something relatively minor. Third degree whatchamacallit… or intent to commit gobbledygook in the second degree. They can’t let him go. The streets would explode. But, come on, would YOU vote to convict a cop in a city where you have to walk around and have other cops know what you did?

[NOTE: My proof-reader says “The jurors were anonymous.” I say, if you have a “justice” system, where the cops know the lawyers... know the judges... and the janitors... at the courthouse. There’s no way in hell the jurors can be anonymous… at least not for long.]

Okay… here it comes. The jury walks in… we can’t see them, but the judge handles the paper. One by one he reads the verdicts:

Second-degree murder: GUILTY
Third-degree murder: GUILTY
Manslaughter: GUILTY

BLURF! What a surprise! A Grand Slam! The jury finds the cop guilty of all three. There is cheering in the streets… a victory… the start of teaching the American police that black lives DO matter.. and that….

Whoa, I’m not getting it. In the last five years, nearly 500 unarmed people were killed by cops… about 60 more blacks than whites. That’s the order of the day. How will throwing one guy in jail for who-knows-how-many years change any of that?

Okay, it’s time for the race glasses. Let’s see what this is about.

Oh, I get it! This is about a WHITE cop and a BLACK victim. The world has to see that… for once… “the trial of the century” is NOT a black “criminal” driving a Ford Bronco away from a dead white white woman. Now, the minstrel show has to star someone in whiteface. No Ford Broncos in this one… just a knee and a neck.

Whoopeee! “We” won!

Yeah, right.

Race-colored glasses are available to anyone who wants them. And people of all political stripes wear them by the boatload. Order your pair today!

FLASH TO ANOTHER PROBLEM: In this millennium, the US military has been the most destructive force in the world. Estimates are that Americans killed more than a million people during the Iraqi war. The US invaded Iraq because Saudis flew a couple planes into a couple buildings in New York. Huh? I don’t get it.

I try the race glasses, but Arabs don’t change color. Libyan, Somalian, Iraqi, Syrian, Yemenite… they all look the same. The US military, a bunch of trained murderers, is an embarrassment. I know some people are tricked into joining the military. Others are forced into it by judges who say… join or get out of the country. I feel sorry for those people… but I wouldn’t want to be one of them. Why would anyone?

Then, I read that transgender people are pushing for the right to join the military. In 2015, liberals hail the decision to allow this. Conservatives condemn it. The Trump reversal of this is hailed by conservatives and condemned by liberals. I don’t get it.

Will transgender people demand entrance into the mafia? Will they demand the right to be switch-pullers on electric chairs? Jailers? Pharmaceutical lobbyists? I don’t get it. Wait… I need to switch glasses. Here we are… the Equality Glasses. I slip them on and suddenly I SEE.

What matters is that all people have equal rights. It doesn’t matter if its the right to do something good or the right to do something bad. If one group has it, another group demands it.

Now it all makes sense. Marriage, an oppressive institution that requires sexual fidelity, and legal bonding, gay people need that right to be equal. Corporate presidents, some of the scummiest people on earth... billionaires made rich on the labor of others… Men do it. There should be an equal amount of women doing the same. It’s EQUALITY between groups that counts. What it is that’s equal has nothing to do with it. Only equality counts.

Without the equality glasses, I might wonder why a woman who has worked in middle management for 2 years demands the same salary as a man who’s been there for 10 years. EQUALITY! I get it. Men… women… both work 8 hours. Equal pay for equal work. Nothing else matters.

But wait! If equality counts, why is there a violence against women act? Shouldn’t that be equal? Should there just be a violence against other people act?

You guessed it, time for the sex glasses. Everything is sex… or gender. Now I see the whorehouse murders even clearer. Who knew that having a type (long hair, Oriental, pale skin, lots of flesh, butch, fem) was fetishizing? I thought a fetish was some kind of carved object that casts a voodoo spell. On the porn sites, “fetish” usually involves leather and ball gags. But with the glasses, I see that EVERYTHING is a fetish.

Like girls with turned up noses? It’s a nasal fetish. Think guys with a gap between their front teeth are cute? It’s a dental-notch fetish. Whatever and whoever is attractive to you is your fetish. You just happen to like a type… just the way they look…. can’t think of a reason? No problem. Someone ELSE will find you the reason. Like Chinese girls? It’s because you think they’re passive and submissive. Like black guys? It’s because you think you think you can show your liberalitude. Like fat people? It’s because you dream of being engulfed by your sex partner.

You only think you have a type. You really have a fetish. And it makes you a danger to society and a potential murderer. I can see it all through my sex glasses.

It’s late, I’m taking off my glasses. I need to rest my eyes… or maybe I’ll watch a movie and indulge my Miike fetish.

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]

–>So what’s my excuse dept: Count Down, a recent book by Dr Shanna Swan, argues that world pollution is altering humans' reproductive development and threatening the future of our species.
    The book tells how pollution is leading to higher rates of erectile dysfunction and a growing numbers of babies born with small penises. I assume these are male babies. You can read about the book and its findings here.

–> I told you so dept: (redux): People who’ve been reading me since Truman’s election know that I’ve long been an opponent of recycling. My main objection is that it provides an excuse for consumption. “It’s okay for me to buy that crap… I’ll recycle it so everything will be fine.”
    Now, I read that recycling plants are poisoning the communities where they’re located. One of the (fortunately) few lead recycling plants is doing real harm to the works and those who live close to the plant. I’m sure there are more recycling polluters than that. Where are those poisonous rare earths and lithium culled from the recycled computer batteries? In your lunch, I’d say.

–> China virus redux: The MIT Technology Review writes that we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss that Wuhan lab as the origin of the plague. The animal source just doesn’t make sense, as there are lots of “wet markets” in China, but few virus labs… and the location of one of them is the location of the virus outbreak.
    The report talks about the World Health Organization, and how it was closely monitored by Chinese authorities when its team concluded that a lab leak was so unlikely that further investigations of it were unnecessary.
    The WHO’s director general later walked that statement back, claiming that “all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and studies.” A group of 26 scientists, social scientists, and science communicators have now signed their own letter arguing that WHO investigators lacked “the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses” to determine whether or not SARS-CoV-2 could have been the result of a laboratory incident.

Stay tuned for more.

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