BOOZE or Mykel's Blog for November 2026

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

NOV 2026 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board

   BOOZE

The captain has three bottles of beer in his pockets, and therefore life is extremely good.
                    – Jon Kalman Stefansson

 If something bad happens, you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens, you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
                –Charles Bukowski

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
                – Humphrey Bogart

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
                – Henny Youngman

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
                – Mark Twain

SCENARIO ONE: Tenth grade biology class: It’s frog dissection day. The jars of floating frogs have been brought down from the shelves and one placed at each work station. The frogs are still wet from the liquid.

“Miss Reinheimer?” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes Mickey,” replies the teacher. “What is it?”

“What is this stuff that the frog was in, keeping it ready for our knives?”

“It’s green tea,” she answers. “It keeps them from falling apart.”

SCENARIO TWO: I sit in an alcove at CVS, waiting for the woman in white to come ask me to roll up my shirt sleeve so she can stick the flu-needle in my skin and save me from coughing for the rest of the winter. Ah, here she is.

“It is Mister Board, isn’t it?” she asks.

“That’s me,” I answer, “I’m guessing you want me to roll up my sleeve.”

She smiles and nods. Then she stands next to me with an open bottle of Diet Coke. She presses a puff of cotton against the top of the bottle, soaking it with the liquid. Then she rubs the liquid against my arm and follows that with the plunge of a needle.

SCENARIO THREE: You’re depressed. Your best friend has just jumped to her death from the top of a 30- story building. Your mom finally succumbed to that bang on the head she got in a car crash with a huge Amazon delivery truck. Your abortion succeeded, but the baby’s body was accidentally brought past you. You can see it was horribly deformed… just one big eye. When you’re released from the hospital you head for the kitchen… looking for liquid solace. You find it in a huge bottle… of grape Gatorade.

Of course these things only happen in imagination. You know they can’t be true. The preservatives used for dissecting animals is formaldehyde… made from processed alcohol. Before you get a vaccine, or injection of any kind, the doctor rubs your arm with alcohol… to prevent infection. When one thing after another goes wrong in your life, it’s not Gatorade you turn to but a bottle of Southern Comfort.

Diet Coke, Green Tea and Gatorade are healthy. Booze is not. THAT’S WRONG.

The purpose of this month’s blog is to show that… again… everything you know is wrong and here’s another example.

Why do the Jews have special blessings over wine? Why not over vegetable juice? Jesus turned water into wine… Why not soy milk? Catholics think of the blood of Jesus as red wine.

In Shinto, sake is consumed as part of “purification rituals.” The sake is served to the gods as well as to the religious followers. People drink it to communicate with those gods. Also, the sharing of sake between participants in a Shinto ceremony is seen as a means of fostering friendship and strengthening the bonds within the community.

Wikipedia describes this for Taoism: In Taoist rituals and practices, alcohol also plays a role as an offering and a means of connecting with the divine. An alcoholic beverage is often used in religious ceremonies and as an offering to the ancestors. The use of alcohol in Taoist rituals can symbolize purification, blessings, and the establishment of a sacred space.

This is typical for the Japanese. Nomu, in Japanese, means “to drink.” They have invented the word nomunication where ideas are exchanged while drinking-- usually beer or sake. It’s common in Japanese business discussions… but I think it works everywhere.

The list goes on. And think about it… who would you rather be, a Taoist or a Mormon? And if a religion older than 2000 years says booze is the body or the blood of God, they must’ve got it from somewhere.

As for nomunication: Would you rather discuss capital finance… or capitalISM... over prune juice or over Michelob?

There is something about booze that is holier… healthier… more human... than any bottle of Gatorade or Ensure. It’s been that around since about 7000 BC, when the Chinese discovered it… much to their --and the world’s-- delight. The Old Testament mentions wine several times. Noah, of and the ark fame, got sloshed after the flood. He fell asleep naked and was covered up by his daughters. This is not a negative! It shows compassion on the part of the daughters and an understanding of the horrible ordeal that Noah suffered guiding that boat filled with two of every animal. Somebody had to feed the skunks!

And what about drinking age? Except for the Muslim countries where alcohol is prohibited, the US has the highest drinking age of any country in the world. In Russia and Austria the drinking age is 16. What else do we have age limits for?: voting, driving, sex… all useful or/and fun activities. Just having a drinking age shows how much we deeply respect drinking.

The internet says: It’s not uncommon for European nations to serve alcohol to a child as young as five years old. Many Jewish kids experience their first taste of drunkenness with the four cups of wine required on Passover.

This year the US government recommendations changed from 2 drinks a day… especially red wine… to ZERO because any amount of of alcohol causes cancer..

By now, you’ve probably heard the chorus… you may be part of it.

Hey buckaroos, EVERYTHING causes cancer. I found a listing on an internet “health site” that says:

Indoor Tanning lights, Outdoor sun tanning, Smoking including someone else's smoking, bacon, sausages, beef and lamb, any barbecued meats, Trans fat (fat-shaming? Trans-shaming?), flying in an airplane, painting your nails, tap water (and not only in Flint!), and Styrofoam: all cause cancer.

This is fear mongering… and bullshit. Health becomes a value that’s further and further a list of things NOT to do… and it is based on INDIVIDUAL actions, what YOU eat or don’t eat… smoke or don’t smoke… drink or don’t drink. What about your neighbors… society… your country?

The top ten countries in longevity are Monaco, San Marino, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Saint Barthelemy, Andorra, French Polynesia, Switzerland and Australia. The US ranks number 62. Most of those top ten countries are small, obscure places that may share long insular histories. The only country in the top 10 comparable to the US is Australia – slightly larger than the US, with a history of being a British Colony and worldwide immigration. So how do they compare in alcohol consumption? The per capita consumption of alcohol in the U.S. is 9.8 liters a year. (For me that’d be a month.) Australia – number 10 in the longest-lived countries – 11.2 liters a month.

I know. I know. My drinking buddy Mark Twain also complained that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.

So though my numbers don’t PROVE anything, they do show a trend. You can have a healthy group of people… who are miserable. When I go to the gym, I’m miserable. Wearing a non-offensive T-shirt and sweat pants (even a gym is not enough incentive to put me in shorts!), I sit on an uncomfortable seat… two black pads pushing my legs apart. My job is to bring my knees together as many times as possible… gradually increasing the weight. I have to fight after every 10 pushes. Then I switch machines to one where the pads are on the outside of my legs and I have to separate the legs instead of bringing them together.

To my surprise, I’m better at keeping my knees together than spreading my legs!! That’s does not coincide with my self-image. I’ve always considered myself as one who is quick to spread… but I guess as I get older…

That’s side-tracking. The point is that I’m miserable. Doing one painful thing after another… among other (mostly) guys also doing one painful thing after another. Why? For health! Health is causing the body pain, eating disgusting rabbit food, going to bed before the bars close, getting up before Dolly Parton had to be at work. Health is annoying, uncomfortable, I make an effort and have a heart attack anyway.

My nextdoor neighbor, Jack, who I hardly know, is up before me. Every morning and most evenings I hear a sound like someone repeatedly... and heavily... punching a pillow. I haven’t asked him what he’s doing because I fear it might be something… er… personal. But in my mind it’s some exercise… something “healthy.”

This is a pre-Boardian view of health. What I’m thinking about now is to expand health. Change it from ME to US. When I go to the doctor, I have to wait my turn, usually several minutes past the appointed time. But when I’m in the exam room, there are at least 4 other people there. There’s the Doc, and 3 students.

“We use this to keep a baseline on blood pressure… and don’t forget to account for the increase in pressure caused just by being at the doctor…”

The doctor is explaining my blood pressure to the students. He’s instructing them as he examines me. I think it’s great… more than a health check for me, it’s a kind of classroom. That’s a good kind of WE health. That is health that teaches others about health.

But there’s another kind of WE in health. I see on TV that some towns in New Jersey are suffering a “cancer cluster.” Evidently the towns developed on top of toxic dump sites that spewed poisons into the land and air. Those poisons caused a GROUP of cancers in those towns. That’s also the WE of health. Side Note: My proofreader tells me she grew up in a “leukemia cluster” in East Rutherford NJ.

Yes! Yes! I think. We need some WE health. Lately, I’ve been reading about BLUE ZONES. These are areas of the earth where the general population lives longer lives. Science seems to be getting better in answering WHY about these zones. Of course, they include individual stuff like diet, but they also include measurements like “frequent social interactions.” Here in the US (and probably other places) COVID has labeled person-to-person interactions as dangerous. I’ll tell you what’s dangerous: FACETIME and ZOOM are dangerous. COVID, like polio, is controllable with a vaccine. Isolation is not.

This is where alcohol comes in. Sure, some people drink alone, but I say the problem with that is not the drink part, but the alone part. Alcohol is a social drug. Its number one quality is to bring people together… not to separate them. The four-cups-of-wine seder is at least a family together. Often more than that. My sister and I were always bringing friends to the feast and mom would open a few extra boxes of matzoh for the company… along with another bottle of Manischewitz. Lately, I’ve been going to Chabad seders where dozens of Jews down their four cups in joyous unity.

The happiest times of the week for me are Drink Club on Thursdays at the Peculier Pub, Drink Club Lite on Sundays, at the Bleecker Street Bar, and Drink Club Secret on Tuesdays, at… I can’t tell you where.

The US ranks 23rd in the World Happiness list (Finland is first, then Iceland, then Denmark. Most unhappy is Afghanistan… a booze-prohibited country.) These happy countries rank at least 30 positions higher than the US in booze consumption.

I understand that some people are physically addicted. I know that too much booze can cause car crashes, and damage the liver. Too much of anything can be unhealthy or bad in another way. Too much sugar can cause diabetes. Too much sex can give you chafing. Too much money can turn you into Elon Musk. But it’s the TOO part of TOO MUCH that’s the problem, not the adverb. Take water, that healthiest liquid. Too much water can drown you. Does that mean water is a bad thing?

Unlike the drugs like vaccines that PREVENT things from happening… or like antibiotics… that stop things already done, alcohol ENCOURAGES things… good things. Laughter, song, dance, they’re all encouraged by alcohol. Enemies smooch… or something sexier… with alcohol. A night of strangers together at Drink Club (https://drinkclubnyc.org) will forge deeper relationships than sitting together at a dozen Noam Chomsky lectures.

Alcohol is a health food. It’s one of the few that not only helps the consumer, but helps groups of consumers. It’s why people have more fun when drinking alcohol, than when drinking water. Alcohol dissolves differences… turns hate into love… changes annoyance into entertainment. When I’m drinking with strangers, the strangers become friends. When I’m drinking with friends, the friends become better friends. It’s no accident that Donald Trump is a non-booze drinker. Alcohol is a drink of being WE! Donny The Trump is too much of a ME guy to go for the booze.

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 TO THE BLOG in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

→ LAST MINUTE ADDITION: I just found that Sardinia in Italy has double the alcohol consumption of Italy in general… beer consumption around 60 liters per person per year. It is also the healthiest place in Italy… and home to the top longevity place in Europe.

–> I BET BEER WAS INVOLVED DEPT: The NY Post reports that a New York resident saw footage from his Ring camera. It showed an Amazon delivery driver pissing in the hall outside his apartment, peeing all over the floor and furniture. "He walked straight back there as if he'd done it a hundred times, like second nature," the resident reported. "I had shoes in the hallway, a chair in the hallway, a table in the hallway and he was peeing and splashing everywhere." The victim complained to Amazon, who offered him a $50 coupon as consolation. The resident declined the offer.

→ THIS ONE TOO: Anxious to heed nature's call, a man in Rosenberg, Texas, crashed his car into a Krogers... on purpose, KVUE TV reported that the unidentified man, who police later learned was upset that the store was locked, drove his car through the pharmacy doors in order to use the restroom. No injuries were reported.

-→PROBABLY NOT THIS ONE: This from a Canadian source: A British Columbia city council candidate whose humorous campaign signs went viral appears to have won his election, despite branding himself as “unqualified.”
    Brady Rogers gained attention online for his Kelowna City Council campaign signs, which bore slogans such as "I barely want to do this," "Just trying to pay my rent," "Fine. I'll do it," and "How hard can it be?"
    Even Rogers' campaign website opens with the message: "Do I enjoy politics? No. Do I know what I'm doing? No. But am I qualified? Also no."
    Preliminary results from the local municipal election show Rogers receiving 12,635 votes, coming in fourth among the 37 candidates. If those election results are certified. Rogers' seat on the 9-member city council will be guaranteed.

LINKS:

I'll soon be posting in Substack as well as Blogger. I want to thank Jim Testa for helping me set it up. There’s been a delay in getting started. Keep an eye out

Subscribe to the blog at: https://mykelboard188732.substack.com
Read or/and subscribe to Jim at https://jimtestanj.substack.com

I just heard from Luciano Pires who explains he’s: a musician, illustrator and writer and I run a YouTube channel called Electric Acid, dedicated to strange, obscure and forgotten music. The channel explores everything from underground noise, industrial and experimental music to bizarre one-off records, marginal scenes, forgotten artists and musicians who somehow slipped through the cracks of music history.

I’m especially interested in the stories behind the music — the records that sound like they shouldn’t exist, the artists who operated completely outside the mainstream, and the strange connections between different underground scenes.

You can find Electric Acid at: https://www.youtube.com/@Electricacid

I’m happy to present the art of Sarah Thobe… who paints personalities as part of her portraits. Check her out at https://sarathobe.com/.

And it was great to hear from my very long-time friend, Fred Lonberg-Holm. Celloman extraordinaire. You can hear him at https://fredlonberg-holm.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of

Anthony Allen Begnal asked me to mention his Hardcore Conversation You Tube channel, and I’m happy to do so here.

Longtime scene/zinester Robb Roemershauser has restarted the Above Ground Zine Library. The Zine library doesn’t yet have an address at the location but, feel free to donate zines that you no longer want to the Aboveground Zine Library 2100 Sawmill Road Apt. 22-202, New Orleans, LA 70123. The Zine library will be located in the upper 9th ward on a busy street.

My pal Matt Sheahan says: “You can link to my website - www.matthewsheahan.com or my Substack - https://politenewyorker.substack.com/ .” Matt is a great musician and very funny guy.

My Kenyan pal, Albert Melody shares a facebook adventure in one of those great Kenyan national parks. Guess who he shared the adventure with!!! You can read about it here. Albert also has a blog at: Albertomelody.blogspot.com

Teddy Labato has a “lo-fi noise” link to his band Check it out.

It’s About Time dept: Finally, a book about Hungarian Punk  put out by Puke and Vomit records.   Great scene there and I was glad to have contact with bands like Der Trottel and Tizedesz. Glad to have been a (very small) part of that scene. 

Zine fans can find my list of old zines that I want to get rid of (aka sell) here. Which reminds me, it’s time to donate some stuff to the Above ground Library
Here are some other contacts to make:

Teddy Lobato’s band can be found at 
https://www.facebook.com/THEBASSMANsPSYCHEDELICNOISE

Karl De Winton sent me a link to his bandcamp DJ stuff. https://share.google/5sTnXjgMkFbiWQvzA NSFW… but then again,
that depends on your job. 

Dan Hetrick asked me “How 'bout us punk rawk programmers?” And offers http://merk.chat  Free chat for the people!

I’ve talked about Bob Cutler before. But he has more to offer than DYSTOPEKA https://chrometuna.com/https://theklusterfux.com

Riot Division makes its musical offering at: 
https://www.facebook.com/riotdivision

Barstool Revolution Zine is on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/people/Barstool-Revolution-Zine/61557909822199/

Rina Borei shows off her inflatable Octopus on Instagram at: @oona.frost

Jim Testa, friend, journalist, editor, musician and wordsmith, (he appears in this post) has an interesting substack about music and more. You can find it here.

Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him. 

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. 

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners, best band name of the year. 

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the US

Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it here.  

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover. 

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should connect to the Zero Point) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you. 

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA. 

You already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their online version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys.  Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher! 

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart. I’m glad they didn’t call it “anti-defense.”

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. mykelboard@gmail.com

Home is Where... or Mykel's July 2023 Blog

  

Home is Where... or Mykel's Blog for July 2023

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's July 2023 Blog/Column 

Home is Where....    

by Mykel Board

The worst thing someone gets is isolated. Isolation is the darkest part of any condition.  – Annie Lennox

Other people may complicate our lives, but life without them would be unbearably desolate. None of us can be truly human in isolation. The qualities that make us human emerge only in the ways we relate to other people.           --Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

                              --Jello Biafra

My name is Hitori Bochi. I’m a third generation Japanese guy... in prison in Arlington Texas... nearly 20 years so far… I’ve lost count. The charges? FAILURE TO OBEY…. And attempted murder… with a pair of chopsticks!

Right now, I’m in a room… concrete walls… concrete floor… shit and piss hole in the middle. Another hole in one wall lets in sunlight. It’s higher than I can reach. From down here, I can only see sky, clouds, sometimes feel the splash of rain blown in from outside.

It’s punishment. The hole I mean… for contraband. A magazine under the prison mattress... erections and shaved twats. Forbidden to us. We need to stay full of cum… keep tension high. The strongest will rape… get their nookie any way they can. The weakest will pleasure ourselves… using CONTRABAND.. My asshole still aches from the rape.

Yo! Yo! Yo! Hitori! This is Mykel speaking. Can you hear me? You’re not going crazy. I just wanted to tell you what’s going on in the outside world.

I don’t care if you’re real or not. I got nothing else to do here except talk to phantoms… so talk away. What do you want to tell me?

What I want to tell you will surprise you. The world has changed. It’s become more like this concrete room you’re in. Not because people are forced into it. Not as a punishment. It’s what people want. They want a world without other people… without physical contact. They want a virtual world… an isolated world with communication only through machines.

But don’t people eat? Don’t they need to buy toilet paper? Don’t they go to movie theaters, baseball stadiums? What good is shouting SWING HARD at the Rangers’ batter if he can’t hear you? Are prices so high at the stadium that people stay home and watch it for free on TV?

It’s not free on TV anymore! You have to pay to watch the local teams. I’m a Yankee fan, but…

Fuck you! You’re a Yankee fan? Stop talking to me!

Ok, no baseball talk. I just want to let you know about how the world has changed. How the class system has changed from people who work in offices vs people who work in the field to people who work at home and people who serve them.

Remember how it used to be? You got up, put on your business drag, drove or took the train/bus to the office, spent the day doing mostly worthless work with your co-workers... complaining to each other, laughing secretly at the boss, hanging out in bars after work… It was called HAPPY HOUR for a reason. Even if you hated your job (most people did), you could enjoy the company of others.

So it’s different now? How could that change?

It started with that plague that came from China... spread quickly around the world… Lockdowns... restaurants and bars closed… the only people allowed out were called “essential workers.” Hospital workers: nurses, orderlies, janitors... cashiers at supermarkets, cops, firemen, postal workers… usually the lowest paid jobs. They were essential.

Doctors? What about doctors?

In hospitals, they physically existed. Most of the rest became “tele-medicine.” You saw your doctor though a phone with a built-in TV. No body touching… no breathing the same air. The plague eventually ended… or at least lightened enough to allow people to go out again. Most didn’t want to.

Some couldn’t. Companies, learning that employees could work from home, sold off their office space, down-sized, saved money on rent, electricity... gave their employees computers and said “Use your own heat and electricity to work. We’re not paying for that anymore.” No more happy hours. No more hangin’ out in the common room. No more other people.

Wasn’t there a rebellion? A demand to get back to work?

Nope. Most people LOVED working from home. No commute! No highway. No crowded trains. The wall between work and home... smashed to wallboard dust. People LIVED at work and they quickly fell in love with it.

FLASH TO HERE AND NOW: Hitori is still in the clink. I don’t know if he’s in solitary or back with his fellow cons and a big black prick up his ass. I do know there’s a protest movement… friends and families of the incarcerated… demanding an end to solitary confinement… and end to THE HOLE. I donno, they could just throw the guy an iPhone and everything would be just like you and me, right?

Me? I’m calling the EPSON PRINTER tech department… I get white stripes through my pictures… blotches at the edges of the page.

YOU HAVE REACHED…. PRESS ONE IF YOU WANT…. PRESS TWO IF YOU WANT… PRESS THREE…

Tech support is EIGHT. I press 8 in a fury.

ALL TECH SUPPORT AGENTS ARE CURRENTLY HELPING OTHER CUSTOMERS. YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US. PLEASE HOLD FOR THE NEXT AVAILABLE TECH SUPPORT SPECIALIST.

What sounds like old merry-go-round music plays through my headphones. Then it stops. Then it starts again… Finally, a woman with a strong accent (Indian? Philippine?) and a soft voice comes on the line.

“My printer is streaking,” I tell her.

“May I please know your name?” she asks.

“Mykel Board,” I say.

“Have you used our service before?” she asks.

I nod… then answer, “Yes, a while back.”

“Would you have the kindness to give me your phone number?”

Then I hear a scream… like a small child who has dropped a stuffed animal into the toilet.

“Tumahimik ka na!” shouts a male voice in the background… Aaah, it’s the Philippines.

At first I’m pissed off. My hearing is lousy… her accent is strong… the interruption is rude…. Then… a wave of sorrow washes over me, like champagne washes over baseball players after a world series win.

This poor woman is working at home. Her husband is taking care of the child. He probably lost his job during Covid. Now, instead of going to The Call Center, like my Pinoy friends did, the plague has forced her to work from home… squeezed into her 1 room house… answering phonecalls from pissed-off foreigners, while her baby screams in the background.

The sadness of this poor woman… trapped at home… living at work… What a tragedy!

But wait! The US government reports most people working from home here LIKE it. And it’s especially the rich, the educated and the healthy who DO it. The poor and the uneducated (often the same) are the ones riding bicycles on the sidewalk, delivering meals, groceries and vitamins to those rich enough to live in isolation.

Remember when the word InCel was an epithet? The involuntary celibate… the chubby guy with a neckbeard who never got laid… never left the house… spent all his time playing video games? Now, every unmarried person is an InCel. It’s not weird. It’s common. In order to have sex, you have to touch another person! Eeeeew Cooties!

America is not like the rest of the world. It is a jail, where the inmates happily go to the hole… and stay there by choice. Those who the society calls essential workers are in the bunk-bed cells… raped by Uber-Eats, DoorDash, and Amazon.

Americans watch movies at home, school their kids at home. Teachers teach “distance learning”. Learning? Yeah right. This is not learning. You can even study languages with no teacher at all. “Lessons” made up of bullshit where you can’t guess wrong. Besides, once you learn a new language, who are you going to speak it with?

Here's some artificial "intelligence" from the learn-Japanese website:

Meanwhile, stores close and lie empty or are replaced by UrgentCare centers or UrgentCare for Your Pets centers. Or how ‘bout a UPS office where you can call, they’ll pick up your package and the center will do the rest? You never have to leave home.

The stay-at-homes talk about convenience. It’s just sooo convenient having things delivered to your door. You never have to go out… face other people… shop in a store. See? Covid actually made the world better.

So fuckin’ sad.

The delivery folks are just as isolated as those they deliver to... on their bikes... in their cars or trucks. The country becomes 300 million people in solitary confinement... and they love it that way.

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, c/o Seidboard World Enterprises, 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]

→ Sign of the Cross(over) Dept: As a porn lover, I’ve always found it comical when het/homo stars are “caught” in other roles. Now I learn there is an epithet for that… especially het male actors who do a guy or two early in their careers. (Can you say Peter North?). The term is crossovers. There’s a great column about the gradual DE-stigmation (yeah!) of that term. You can read it here. I hope it’s true.

→ Add one more dept: I think Bill Maher is probably the celebrity whose politics are closest to mine. (Can anyone find my appearance on Politically Incorrect on the internet? I’ve tried all the keywords, but nothing pops up.)

Here he presents “The Cojones Awards” to people who stand up to cancel culture. He did, however, leave out John Cleese, who had the balls to refuse to cut the famous Loretta segment in the upcoming Broadway play that’s a Life of Brian adaptation. There will be protests.

→ Stop passing gas dept: Uexpress reports that protesters at the Massachusetts Statehouse demonstrated against climate change. People started shouting from the gallery. Then eight audience members turned their backs on the senators and mooned them. Ass cheeks were sharpied with the words "stop passing gas." The protesters continued with chants of "You're a senator, not an ass, why are you still passing gas," They were arrested and escorted out of the chamber. I’m waiting for Liz Cheney to start the hearings against them.

→ Ah masking, you gotta love it dept: This from Sky News: People in Japan became so used to wearing face masks during the pandemic that now they are signing up for lessons to teach them how to smile again.
    For three years or more, many people wouldn't be seen in public without a mask.
    With the government having finally lifted its face-covering mandate, many people realized they had forgotten how to live without them. Worse, they had forgotten how to smile.
    Now, at around $35 each. The Japanese can take lessons to bring back the habit.

See you in hell, redux,

MB

THE NATION AGAIN

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

This time, The Nation writes about yet another reason to nationalize the banks… I only wish it were possible. There’s also a great article about the true influence of Nazis in the Ukraine who turned into heroes in the American press. And speaking of the US weapons-manufacturers prop, there’s a nice column by the often-correct David Bromwich. It includes the great quote: How close is Ukraine to Russia. How close is Taiwan to China? And how far is the US from both places?


You can read more, or even subscribe at: https://www.thenation.com/



LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

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

Here's a start:

Jason Rodgers sent me his book Invisible Generation… free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian (in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I find the book, I’ll give you some more details.

Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachlorette!

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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

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

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a couple video links.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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