Hate Crimes or Mykel's Column/Blog for June 2022

 

 

Hate Crimes

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's June 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

Hate has gotten a bad name during the last twenty years or so.
                   – Mykel Board, liner note to the You’ll Hate This Record Record 1983

I don’t hate nobody.
            – John Howard, Grand Dragon KKK, Laurens SC

What has changed is that since the 1990s, the term "hate speech" has expanded like a rapidly blossoming tumor to cover so many things that weren't "hate speech" back then. For example, the word "tranny,” or being against illegal immigration and gay marriage. And back then, a "joke" was not the same thing as an "attack… “Free speech v. hate speech" is an absolutely false dichotomy, and you've swallowed it hook, line, and sinker
                   –Jim Goad

It’s true that I hate black people, but not for being black — it’s because they’re people.
                 –Jim Goad

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
                             –H. L. Mencken

ITEM ONE: On December 14, 2012, white, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty white school children ages between six and seven at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. He also killed six adult staff at the school, and his mother. Then he killed himself. Authorities say his motive was unclear, though there is some evidence he was fascinated by the Columbine High School shooting of 1999. The Sandy Hook shooting was not classified as “a hate crime.”

ITEM TWO: On May 19, 2022 white, 18-year old Payton Gendron entered a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo NY. He shot and killed 11 black and 2 white people of various ages. Authorities say he was radicalized by recent posts in the internet. The shooting is classified as a hate crime.

WHAT’S THE POINT? There is a smorgasbord of emotions… but they don’t have equal status in 2022.

LOVE? Me? I’m not a fan of romantic love… It’s usually just a tool to sell movies, a cover for another emotion: LUST, or a cover for its cousin: INSECURITY. But I’ve still got the love

I love my family, especially the black sheep. I love punk rock. I love sex. I love pistachio ice cream. I love the Yankees winning a World Series or a good shoot-em-up with Riki Takeuchi. I love the way mothers pull their little children closer to them when they pass me on the street. I love it more when those same kids look back at me and smile.

LOVE used to have its own crimes: Crimes of Passion, they were called. Katoom! One bullet through the wife and the milkman... in flagrante. Crimes of passion were “mitigating circumstances”… a reason for mercy... not a reason for increased punishment. People understood Love Crimes and felt sympathy for the perpetrator.

FEAR? Me? I’m afraid of having a stroke or getting cancer or Alzheimer's. I’m afraid of crazy people with axes or guns. I’m afraid of being alone for too long… of being stranded with no real human contact. I fear being falsely accused of a crime... Antifa screaming in the background BELIEVE THE WOMAN!

HAPPINESS? Me? Orgasms make me happy. Seeing myself in my relatives makes me happy. (“You know what, Uncle Mickey,” says my nephew. “I never want to get married. I want to be like you… free.”) Riding roller coasters makes me happy. Going to diners… wearing a gangster hat… drinking and eating with friends or strangers… all of that makes me happy.

SADNESS? Me? Human stupidity makes me sad. Seeing people I love acting knee-jerk, illogically, like the masses or the TV news tells them to act. That makes me sad. The deaths of friends or people I admire makes me sad. E-books and name-calling on facebook makes me sad.

I could guess the poor white guy at the elementary school in Connecticut was sad. Suicides are usually sad.

In 2022, the number one emotion is HATE! Me? I hate broccoli. I hate jackhammers. I hate bicyclists who ride on the sidewalk or go the wrong way down one-way streets. I hate pollen in the spring… and in the fall. I hate the way my stomach turns every grain of food into gas. I hate expensive cars. I hate cars that are just trucks in drag. I hate people with hairy legs who wear shorts. I hate the way gray hairs grow out of my nose and I don’t notice them until they’re long enough to cause people to speak to my nose instead of my eyes… like guys who talk to big tits instead of the woman behind them.

I hate people who stand on the walk side of escalators. I hate people who pad down the sidewalk in slow motion texting away on their fuckin’ cellphones. I hate subway passengers who try to squeeze into a car before anyone else has left. I hate people who exploit the word HATE to make a buck. I hate rich people who pay no taxes. I hate pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and hospitals that make fortunes on people’s sickness.

I hate landlords who foreclose on tenants and put people on the street. I hate mayors who serve those landlords and politicians who say taxes are theft, when the real thieves are the corporate shills filling their campaign war chests.

I’m so filled with hate that a pinprick to my belly would unleash a torrent of hate so big it’d drown a beached whale. HATE is the most common, the most widespread, the most human of emotions. It’s also the most taboo and the most punished.

Are there hate crimes? You bet your white hood there are hate crimes. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hate crimes. The cop who stopped Miles Davis on the highway while he was driving his Porsche because “you don’t fit the car” committed a hate crime. Refusing to teach kids about race when they themselves know that little Mary Ivory has a very different life from little Brianna Ebony. That’s a hate crime. Red-lining by banks is a hate crime. Purposely misreading “Black Lives Matter” as Only Black Lives Matter is a hate crime.

More hate crimes? How ‘bout sending weapons and “training” soldiers to Ukraine, but not to Tigray? Or worse, opening the US to the free-flow of Ukrainians, but not to the free-flow of Ethiopians… That’s a hate crime. The Texas shooting of eight prostitutes (six were Chinese-Americans) was a hate crime... not hate against Orientals, but hate against sex workers.

Are MOST crimes HATE CRIMES?

Only the ones that make the news.

But what about the other emotions? How come only hate gets special treatment? A lot more crimes are committed because of greed than because of hate. I want that car… your wallet… your wife… your bank account. I want that bank commission… those bragging rights. Why aren’t there special laws against GREED CRIMES?

It’s fashion. Hate is in now, and it gives the authorities an excuse to limit speech they don’t like. They say hate is caused by internet disinformation and radicalization. Stop that, and you’ll stop hate. Facebook and Twitter have been ever-increasing bastions of “hate” censorship. Joe Biden was this close to establishing a Department of Truth in the US government… in the name of fighting hate. Can you say 1984?

In US law, “Hate Crimes” have higher penalties than greed or lust or sadness crimes. Hate crimes don’t deserve any special punishment. A person killed for his wallet or a person killed for his race are just as dead. The invention of special penalties for hate crimes only further divides the educated from the uneducated… those who know what names to call their victims and those who don’t. If a white guy with a gun learns to say “Take that, asshole!” instead of “Take that, chink!” he’ll get off easy.

FLASH TO HICKSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL, 1966. It’s my Far Eastern History class with Mr. Horne. We’re discussing the very beginnings of the Vietnam War. In those days... before parents feared teaching their children how to think.. Mr. Horne would divide the class into those who thought the US should do MORE in Vietnam, and those who thought we should get the fuck out.

“Okay,” said Mr. Horne, “I want the war supporters to debate the war opposers by taking sides. I want you to argue for the opposite of what you believe. I want to you learn how the other side feels.”

Fuck, I loved Mr. Horne… I learned so much from the guy. (He wore combat boots to class.) We learned empathy! We learned how other people felt. We learned to criticize our own thinking. I only wish critical thinking… or thinking at all... weren’t such a taboo in 2022.

Ewwww, you can’t teach kids about race or talk about GAY in class. That teaches them people are different. We need to teach that everybody is the same. That’s how we fight hate… by being the same as everybody else.

When we don’t learn to think… to think critically... we have caricatures. Instead of understanding how the other side thinks, we put them in a box, wrongly invest them all with characteristics we don’t like… and then reject them.

All anti-abortionists are against government programs for children. All BLACK LIVES MATTER supporters believe white lives DON’T matter. And the list goes on. We make people we disagree with into HATERS… and then we hate them for that. Fuck, I just hate that kind of thinking.

See you in hell.

LATE NOTE: As I prepare this blog, word comes of a shooting in West Texas. An elementary school… 14 students and a teacher. It appears the shooter was white and the victims were a hodge-podge. I guess that means it wasn’t a HATE CRIME, but who knows? These things change every 10 minutes. I heard the guy with the gun also shot his grandmother. Old people… if that isn’t a hate crime, it will be.

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]

→ Crimes of Pission Dept: Oliver Willis reports that police found a 16-second phone video showing someone pissing into a bag of milkshake mix at Arby’s. It turned out to be the manager of the place. According to the cops, on the day the video was taken, the restaurant sold at least one ice cream float and about 30 to 40 milkshakes. Nobody noticed.

→ Nuclear Taste Dept: ABC News says A small brewery in Finland has launched a NATO-themed beer to mark the country’s bid to join the military club. Olaf Brewing's OTAN beer has a blue label with a cartoon of a beer-drinking medieval knight-in-armor emblazoned with NATO’s compass symbol.
     The beer's name is a play on the Finnish expression “Otan olutta,” which means “I’ll have a beer,” and the French abbreviation for NATO, which is “OTAN.”
    The brewery owner described the new lager as having “a taste of security, with a hint of freedom.”

→ Knock knock dept: A Nigerian law website reports on a Peruvian funeral where a woman pronounced dead after a car crash shocked mourners by banging on the inside of her coffin. She had been announced as a fatal casualty after the crash which also took the life of her brother-in-law.
    The woman was placed into a coffin ahead of her funeral. The next day, mourners gasped when they heard knocking at the start of the service.
    Her relatives, who had lifted the coffin onto their shoulders, immediately lowered it and opened the lid to find her alive and peering at them.
    Police in Peru are now investigating the incident, which took place at the hospital where the woman first received treatment. I wonder if the doctors will be charged with a hate crime.

→ Buy Me dept: Oh yeah, I have a few copies of the You’ll Hate This Record Record left… for less money that you’d expect to pay. Check it out here.

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.

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

Wrong Questions or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's December 2021 Blog

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's 

December 2021 Blog/Column 

Wrong Question

by Mykel Board

“Change the questions you ask and the way you view the issue will be transformed.” - Isaac Yu, 

Being in possession of all the answers holds no appeal at all, but owning a good pocketful of unanswered questions is, to me, like bread to the starving. --Cathy Johnson

Clamps… big metal clamps… shaped like upside down U’s… hold my shoulders to the floor. And my wrists… and my ankles. Another metal clamp… like you might see in a dentist’s office or a porn movie… holds my mouth open. 

A big man in a soldier’s uniform stands over me with a bucket. I’m guessing it’s filthy water. I’m guessing right. He pours it into my open mouth. I’m drowning… coughing… spitting up… water down my throat… into my lungs… dripping down the sides of my face. As I cough… some of the water goes up through my nose… forcing booger-laced snot out onto my face… into my eyes. 

“Now,” says the man, “let’s try this again. Where is the next terrorist strike against US forces?”

“How... should... I... know?” I sputter between coughs, tears and frantic efforts to breathe through the water in my lungs.

“You are Milad Borazjan,” he says. “You are from Teheran and work to plan terrorist activities.” 

I cough… spit up some more water… “I’m Mykel Board,” I say. “I’m from New York and I teach English to Japanese businessmen.”

My interrogator frowns. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” He asks.

“You didn’t ask.” I answer. 

FLASH TO NEW YORK… November. I sit barefoot… in my underwear… a formerly plush green robe hangs loosely over my naked body. I  try to think of a way to introduce this blog about asking the wrong questions. Maybe I’ll put myself in the US torture center in Guantanamo… an inquisitor asks me about terrorist activities, rather than asking who I am. 

I get this mail from Common Cause, asking for money to help support a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United. That’s the Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to contribute unlimited funds to political candidates. 

“Wouldn’t we be better off,” they ask, “if we could get the huge amounts of corporate funds out of politics. Wouldn’t that help make elections fairer?”

WRONG QUESTION!

Here are the top 15 richest people in America:

Any one of them is richer than 90% of US corporations… unless they run those corporations. The right question isn’t whether or not we should permit corporate money in politics… but whether or not we should permit ANY money… especially private money… in politics. 

Should we again have Fairness Doctrine TV laws? Should we ban all paid political advertising? Those are the right questions. 

Hold on! There was a snap… PiKoop! Klip! A shake... then silence. I recognize the sound, though my punkrock damaged hearing won’t tell me if it’s from under the dresser to my right or from the kitchen behind me. I check the dresser… First try! Yeah!

There, fresh as a freshly slaughtered lamb, lies a mouse in a snappy trap. A vague smell of death rises from the little gray body. The small metal bar crushed Mickey’s little skull, his mouth still around the Wasa bread wired to the bait lever. He bleeds softly from the ears.

Got what was coming to him.

“Hey Mykel, you’re blaming the victim!”

“Mice eat my food! Their shit spreads disease. Their pawing and scattering keep me awake at night,” I answer. “Sometimes the victims are at fault… they SHOULD be blamed.”

FLASH TO  KENOSHA WISCONSIN: a jury of 11 whitefolks and one colored guy, find Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot… with an semi-automatic rifle… three protesters at a Black Lives Matter demonstration. Two of those shot were killed. 

So far, there have been only a few demonstrations, one riot (in Portland, where they riot at a loud fart), at the not-guilty verdict. In any case, there is nothing to compare with the riots after the police killing of George Floyd. Why?

Rittenhouse was found innocent because he was attacked and had to fight off his attackers with his rifle. He was a victim, don’t you know? No choice but to pull the trigger. 

Of course, the guy did ride into town carrying a semi-automatic rifle. But no one asks “Is the victim responsible for the crime?” If you’re a victim, you must be innocent. You can’t go around blaming the victim. Isn’t that right? 

But what if we say no? What if we say sometimes the victim IS to blame? What if we ask, “Why did the victim go to a demonstration he hated… with a loaded semi-automatic rifle?” “Why go anywhere at all with an semi-automatic rifle, unless you intend to use it?”

Maybe we’d get different answers.

But wait, there’s more. Spikes in crime… in gun violence… in random attacks. Every day, someone’s cellphone or some security camera captures pictures of a masked man in a hoodie attacking innocent bystanders… and mugging, mauling or murdering them.

Conservatives ask, “Doesn’t this prove we need stronger laws to get these criminals off the street? Won’t locking them up keep the rest of us safe? Where are the cops when we need them?”

And they answer that it’s the anti-police demonstrations, the defunding, the disrespect for law and order that makes the crime shoot up like a penis in a whorehouse. 

Liberals ask, “What about homelessness, COVID-caused poverty, the emptying of prisons with nowhere for the prisoners to go?”

And they answer, “Crime increases because it’s the only thing criminals know. Non-violent criminals are released onto the street without homes, without money, without ways to live. There are no mental health services for the homeless. All they know is the crime they learn in prison. Jailing makes criminals. It doesn’t cure them, right?”  

WRONG QUESTIONS!

The right question is taboo in 2021. That is: What are the effects of mask mandates, and a society used to people wearing masks in public?” 

Look at an old Western. The bank robbers have kerchiefs over their noses when they hold-up banks. Stage coach bandits ride, faces kerchief-covered as they race after the Wells Fargo stage coach. We know they’re criminals because they cover their faces.

The question should not be, “Why is there so much crime?” But, “Why are there so many criminals?”

In 2021, criminals commit all sorts of misdeeds for the same reason dogs lick their balls… BECAUSE THEY CAN. 

Wear a hoodie and a mask and you’re invisible. Cellphones, security cameras… what do they capture? People in masks and hoodies. Much (most?) of the increase in street crime comes because people wear masks… and that it’s not strange… not a sign of criminality… nothing to worry about with the stranger behind you in a hoodie wearing a mask. EVERYONE is wearing a hoodie and a mask. It makes crime soooo much easier. 

FLASH TO MY LOFT BED: I take her left nipple into my mouth… suck on it… play my tongue over it. Then the right nipple. I feel a hardening between my legs. I gently take her wrist to move her hand down there… wrapping her fingers around the stiffness.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she says, “just put it on the night-table. I’ll smoke it in the morning.”

When I Google “Size Matters” I get 6,080,000 links. When I look for “Size Doesn’t Matter.” I get 13,000. It shows you what counts. 

Take vegetarians… (I know. I know.) 

There are three main reasons people are vegetarians: 

1. They think it’s healthy.

2. They think it’s better for the global environment.

3. They feel sorry for the animals. 

Let’s talk about the last one. When you see pictures of the poor animals being murdered by farmer Joe or Kenji Sakamoto, you see BIG animals. You see cows, whales, porpoises. If they’re talking about China or the Philippines, you might see a dog or two. I’ve never seen a PETA billboard with a picture of a cockroach or a mosquito… or even a mouse.

I’ve heard sorry-for-animalists trying to explain that the big animals feel pain, and insects don’t. The ability to feel pain is also used by anti-abortionists when they talk about the fetus. “How can we kill it? It feels pain.” 

Now that scientists suspect that plants feel pain, that argument goes out the window like a wounded housefly. All that’s left is the emotional tinge of a sad-looking cow-- or a fetus picture blown-up human size.

“Does X feel pain?” 

WRONG QUESTION!

Not that it’s the wrong question to ask, but it isn’t the REAL question they ask. 

The real question vegetarians ask is: 

“Does the animal scream or otherwise show pain like humans show pain?” 

For vegetarians, like for most others, size matters. They’ll tell you it’s about reverence for life, but they take the lives of flies and roaches with a casual swat. If they can’t see the pain of what they murder, it doesn’t count. 

Their real question is:

“Is the animalBIG enough that we can see the pain and feel guilty about inflicting it?”

That question tells us more about the asker than the answer. Size matters, you see. 

If you want to talk about killing animals… or fetuses… the question SHOULD be: 

How can we act morally in the world and find a principle to make life-death decisions?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to that one.

Yeah, sometimes I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have all the questions. But finding those questions is more important than finding the answers.

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]

–> Anyone can show it off on YouTube dept: The internet was supposed to democratize music, but as it turns out, it turned into an oligarchy. The American Prospect reports: 

For the main streaming companies—YouTube and Spotify—music is really a loss leader, incidental to data collection, the advertising that can be sold off that data, and the promise of audience growth to investors. “Spotify is benefiting from every single artist on the platform driving fans to them,” said Chris Castle, an entertainment attorney who used to work at A&M Records. “The labels say they give you exposure. The answer is that you can die of exposure.”

Remember when the labels were worried about home taping? How much money that lost? Naw, you don’t remember, you’re too young. 

–> Speaking of exposure dept: In a repeat of the notorious piss-in-mouth show at Gilman Street in the 90s. The lead singer of Brass Against pissed in the mouth of a fan at their show in  November. The loudwire website did a story on this, but unfortunately it was not accompanied by a video. Oh wait, I found the link! The band itself is weird enough, doing brass versions of Rage Against The Machine  and Tool.  Glad to see this kind of stuff is still going on in the ever-stuffier twenty-first century. 

–> Right again dept: I’ve written about the evils of recycling and how it does more harm than good. You’ve probably heard about the hundreds of neighborhood recycling programs stopped because of my writing. (Yeah right.) Now, The Tampa Bay Times reports on lead-poisoned workers, and a spread of the poison to surrounding communities… from where? From a lead recycling plant, of course. 

See you in hell, redux,

Mykel Board

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