IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE or Mykel's June 2026 Blog/Column

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

JUNE 2026 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board

IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

It suddenly occurred to me that not one person who has successfully committed suicide has lived to regret it.

-1-Mykel Board

Alcohol is a social lubricant that brings people together. It allows people an excuse to bond and socialize, and there’s probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.

– Dr. Mehmet Oz

The latest research shows that alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco,”
– World Health Organization-1

Unlike burgers, processed foods such as hot dogs are classified as a Group 1 carcinogens. Consuming the artificial compounds found in most hot dogs can increase cancer risk. The same can be said for char-grilled burgers, which contain more carcinogens than burgers cooked on a frying pan on top of the stove. But the level of carcinogenic substances in burgers is far less than in hot dogs.
--World Health Organization-2

So drinking alcohol is as carcinogenic as eating hot dogs.
-2 – Mykel Board

I lie naked on the operating table. I’m in that state halfway between sleep and fully aware. I feel some sort of restraints on wrists and ankles. Each seems to be attached to a different corner of the table.

I squint my eyes open and focus on a couple of surgeons. One of the doctors smiles paternally.

“You’re doing the right thing, Mykel.” He says to me, reaching between my legs. “Those glands have helped destroy the world. And they’ve encouraged sex. You know that science has proved that sex causes so many diseases. Every case of syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis and most cases of AIDS and herpes are caused by sex. This operation will set you free. You’ll never have to worry about the dangers of sex, because you’ll never again have sex. You’ll be neutered and alive.”

Of course it’s correct to say that a person who doesn’t have sex will not contract an STD. Just as my quote at the beginning of this blog is correct in saying no successful suicide has lived to regret it.

But it is NOT logical to say that suicide CAUSES lack of regret any more than it’s logical to say that castration CAUSES the elimination of STDs.

I’m challenging the idea of cause and effect. Saying alcohol causes cancer, like saying sex causes STDs, is just wrong… or at best, misleading. One thing does not cause something else. Things happen for a combination of reasons… mostly too many to count. Something as simple as being shot with a gun caused him to die is just wrong.

How many people have been shot with a gun and DIDN’T die? How much does it count what kind of gun, where the bullet hit? If it was, in fact, a bullet and not a BB? How soon did our victim get treatment? And on and on. Hundreds of things have to happen in order for there to be an effect. The so-called effect is a combination of happenings and conditions –not the result of one thing causing another one thing.

I’ve written before of my hatred of science. Of how it’s wrong and how it never admits to being wrong… Though it completely changes its mind… it never says “we made a mistake.”

Science-based rules on alcohol are a great example of the failure of science. It was science that said two glasses of wine a day… especially red wine… was actually healthy. That wine provided your body with elements that improve brain and heart function and likely help control cholesterol.

Flash forward to the 2020’s. ANY alcohol is bad for you. Science says so. It’s just like x-rays and asbestos. “If you drink alcohol you will die!” say the health experts. Yet alcohol is and has been a part of every culture (except Muslim and Mormon) on earth. And the sharing of the liquid has likely SAVED more people than it’s harmed. Check out the quote from Dr. Oz at the start of this blog.

Science defies logic. And the reason is the myth of cause and effect. The reason for X is that it’s caused by Y. That’s wrong! The public urge to BLAME is the fault of the myth of cause and effect. And that myth has really nasty consequences.

A prisoner is released and commits a crime. He’s been in and out of prison. What’s the reaction? The cause and effect?

“It’s a revolving door! He should have more time in prison... not be let out. Freedom from jail CAUSES crime.”

BULLSHIT!

How can people even think that way? Lawbreakers are in prison. How does a longer time being surrounded by other lawbreakers make you less likely to be one? Logic should win this debate… NOT cause and effect.

You take someone who has pickpocketed a neighbor once. Throw him in jail with rapists, murderers and career thieves. What do you expect? He’s going to get some lessons in rape, murder and more efficient thievery. More prison time RESULTS in crime. It’s logical. Don’t give me statistics that prove different. Use your brain.

FLASH TO PRAGUE… 1972: (I’ve written about this before.) I’m 22 years old and am riding through Eastern Europe on a Dutch moped. Now that I’m here in Czechoslovakia, I want to visit one of my literary heroes: Franz Kafka. Yeah he’s dead, but I figure I can find his grave. I do.

As I stand in front of the grave, enjoying the irony of finding Franz buried with his dad, Hermann. (Kafka hated his father.) An older woman stops, looks at me and at the grave. She turns to me.

“Are you Israeli?” she asks.

“No,” I answer, “I’m not.”

“You are Jewish? Right?” she asks.

“That I am,” I answer.

“Well, I have a daughter…”

FLASH TO DINNER: The older woman has invited me to meet her daughter, a slightly chubby, somewhat sexy blonde. Her name is Tereza. We’re talking about religion.

“I’m an atheist,” says Tereza. “I know you’re a Jew. But I don’t understand how you can believe in God. If he lives in the clouds, he’d just step out and fall down. Any God would just fall down to earth.”

FLASH TO FACEBOOK IN RECENT TIMES: I post... asking my atheist friends to describe the God they don’t believe in.

The answers come back. “I don’t believe. How can I describe something that I don’t believe in?”

“I don’t believe in dogs,” I reply. “I can perfectly describe the dogs I don’t believe in perfectly: They’re about 10 feet tall and have six legs. They’re very furry… except for the tail. That is bare skin... marine green in color.”

“That’s not a dog,” comes the answer.

“It’s a dog I don’t believe in,” I reply.

Get it? If you don’t believe in something, you need to be able to describe it. Tereza’s old man who lives in the clouds is a perfect God not to believe in. She has an image and can describe it.

An atheist who can’t (or won’t) describe the God he doesn’t believe in, doesn’t know what belief is. His non-belief is not logical. How can you not believe in something if you can’t say what it is that you don’t believe in?

When I say I don’t believe in cause and effect the way science does, I define cause and effect as one thing or action that is directly –and usually immediately– responsible for the existence of another thing or action.

The Hiroshima atom bomb CAUSED the death of more than 140,000 people. The EFFECT of the smallpox vaccine was to completely eliminate smallpox.

Those are cause and effects I believe in. My objection isn’t the complete irrelevance of cause and effect. My objection is the seeking of cause and effect in EVERYTHING. Yes, certain combinations of things makes results more likely. The presence of alcohol, for example, makes unprotected sex more likely. And unprotected sex makes pregnancy more likely. But alcohol does not CAUSE pregnancy.

So it’s really not the concept of cause and affect that bothers me so much as it is the seeking of cause and effect where it doesn't belong... the illogic of trying to find a cause… or effect... where there is neither... and the further mistaking of cause for effect.

Imagine a pool table with bricks on it. The pool players take turns snapping a cue against a ball, only to have the ball bounce uselessly off the nearest brick. I’m a researcher, a scientist, studying the effects of bricks on billiards. To test my theory of cause and effect, I remove the bricks from the table and let the game restart. Pow! Five times as many balls go into the pockets as when the bricks are present. I have just proved that removing bricks from a pool table improves the performance of pool players.

From then on, I carry a bag of bricks with me to pool bars. Before my turn, I spread the bricks on the table… and then remove them. It’s cause and effect. I should have a high score. Removing bricks from a pool table guarantees a high score. NO IT DOESN'T. I tried it. It doesn’t work. It’s not logical.

Take warning labels… please. The Journal of The American Medical Association found that warning labels on cigarettes had NO EFFECT on the amount of cigarettes smoked. Lung cancer has decreased since the introduction of warning labels, but that decrease was mostly due to earlier detection and better treatment… NOT warning-label discouragement. Putting warning labels on cigarette packs is like putting brinks on pool tables… then removing them before you play. It does nothing.

Now the World Health Organization, in the name of science, is demanding that warnings be put on all alcohol, At the same time, they say alcohol is no more dangerous than hot dogs. In the past, science has urged two glasses of red wine a day for better health. Science had also, in the past, urged margarine to replace butter. More recent findings say there’s greater danger in polyunsaturates (can you say margarine) than in butter. Science was wrong! Wrong about margarine and wrong about alcohol.

Science may be the greatest villain in the cause and effects war, but it’s not the only one. As I write this, TV news reports that every candidate endorsed by Donald Trump has won the Republican primary. This is supposed to prove the EFFECT of a Trump endorsement. It’s not logical.

Picture this: there’s an election between Otto Kentrol and Jello Biafra for induction to the punkrock hall of fame. Otto is pissed off at me because I back Biafra. Biafra wins. Did I do it? If I back the person most likely to win, can I claim any credit for them winning? Did I CAUSE him to win?

Of course not! There is no cause and effect here. I haven’t proved my power by showing I can pick a winner in a contest where the winner is obvious. It’s the same in politics and music and life in general. It’s time to stop looking for causes and use logic and common sense to find solutions… not effects.

See you in hell,
MB

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er...  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]

→ Web MD proves my point dept: On their website is a nice description of how alcohol is good for you. So before you put a health warning label on your can of Smuttynose, consider some facts… use logic… not stupid cause and effects.

→Cause and effect… whoops dept: Scientists in 1988 found that facial expressions have the potential to influence our moods: the more people smile, the happier they will be, and vice versa. In a last-century experiment, researchers asked participants to read The Far Side comics by artist Gary Larson, with either a pen held between their teeth (forcing a smile) or between their lips (replicating a pout). Results found that people who smiled reported the comics to be funnier than those made to pout. Researchers concluded that changing a facial expression can change mood, and termed this phenomenon the facial feedback hypothesis. But when another team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands conducted the same experiment, using the identical comics, the results failed to replicate "in a statistically compelling fashion". Evidently, the cause and effect relationship of smiling to feeling was wrong. You can read about this and other science mistakes at: Science Correcting Itself

→ A shitty story: This story is from my long-time pal Sid Yiddish. Evidently it’s true, and as with many such stories, is more fun in the telling than in the reality. You can read it here. Thanks Sid!

See you in hell
redux
MB

LINKS

New Links:

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, fell 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.

And the regulars:

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. 

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 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/  and 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: @oona.frost

Jim Testa, a long-time friend, journalist, editor, musician and wordsmith, 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 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

YOU'RE STILL WRONG Post MRR Columns: Number 3

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMNS Number 3

aka How You Think

by Mykel Board

(Note: Parts of this column have appeared in different form on the STREET CARNAGE website.)

“Ok class,” says the young sexy teacher. “If there are 10 birds on a telephone wire and Farmer John shoots two of them, how many are left?”

Little Tommy raises his hand. The teacher calls on him.

“None,” he says. “the bullets would scare the other birds and they'd fly away.”

“Actually,” says the teacher, “the correct answer is 8... but I like the way you think.”

“I got one for you,” answers Tommy. “There are two women eating ice cream cones. One takes deep bites and eats it right down. The second one slowly licks the top of the cone, swirling her tongue around the tip and then slow widening her lips to suck in the goodness.... Which one is married?”

The young teacher is visibly embarrassed, but she decides to stand her ground. “The second woman, of course.” she answers.

“No,” says Tommy, “the one with the wedding ring. But I like the way you think.”

--Old Joke

It's the mother of all beershits... a massive movement... I trace it inch by inch... starting on the lower right side like appendicitis. The massive ball of excrement moves inch by peristaltic inch through my large intestines... upwards... from right to left... downwards... exquisitely... to the final sphincter where it forces a relaxation and downward blast... like a rocket exhaust... propelling me upwards toward the ceiling... an anal orgasm... After landing, I tilt to the left, raising one cheek from the pot... to examine my accomplishment. Wow! All that! It's like giving birth. I sit down flat again and allow a few straggling turdlets to make their final escape. When I stand up, I see that the toilet seat is covered in squished shit. So is my naked ass. I guess that when I twisted to examine my achievement, fecal remains must've clung and rubbed off on the seat. When I righted myself, I squeezed them down fouling the toilet and myself.

CLICK: Belly sweat collects in the folds, forms little rivulets... puddling in my navel... spilling over... streaming midrifly downwards... curling... running through pubes like swamp water through mangroves. Collecting salt to feed my already chafed groin...turning the pink to black-speckled red. One. Two. Three showers a day. Doesn't help. As soon as I step out, the heat and humidity again start the sweat. And the atmosphere refuses to evaporate it. A kind of diaper rash covers every crevice from knee to navel. Mosquito bites cover the rest.

I start writing this column in Georgetown Guyana. Both paragraphs above happened here. Readers over 40 might remember Guyana from The Jonestown Massacre in the late 1970s. The rest probably think it's some place in Africa.

If you imagine South America as a breast, halfway between the shoulder and the nipple... facing the Caribbean Sea... is Guyana. But I don't want to write about Guyana here. You can read it in my travel blog or in a special article I did for Street Carnage.

I want to go back to that joke at the beginning of the column and tell you that I DON'T like the way you think. Self-evident logic makes as much sense as 8 birds on a phone wire after two are shot. Self-evident logic is wrong. What your life experience has taught you is mistaken. I want to take a look at some of your thinking. Examine it carefully. But you've been warned. After the examination, you might find your ass in a mess.

FIRST CASE: What inspired this revelation was my pre-Guyana visit to Trinidad. In New York City, there are no Costcos, SamsClubs or other giant warehouse companies. I never had the experience. In Trinidad there is at least one: PriceSmart, a San Diego based chain specializing in warehouse stores in the Caribbean.

I go shopping there with Randy, an oft-mentioned pal from ANTI-EVERYTHING, the only punk band in the country. Floor to ceiling metal shelves. Bins, boxes, tables filled with useless things... and one or two things I might need one or two of. There are huge hunks of meat, whole cows, unrecognizable pieces of unrecognizable mammals plastic wrapped and ready for massive consumption. (One package says BEEF OXTAILS, and guarantees me it is halal. Aren't ALL beef oxtails halal?)

Why would a family of four buy a half cow? What the hell are you going to do with 240 rolls of toilet paper? But the thinking goes like this:

If I use one roll of toilet paper in a week, then 240 rolls will last me 240 weeks. I'll eventually have to pay for those 240 rolls. So, here they'll cost me 50 cents each, that's $120. If I pay for them one at a time, they'll cost me 75c each. That's $180. I'm saving sixty bucks.

THIS IS SO WRONG! If you have 240 rolls of toilet paper lying around, you'll use twice as much. You'll use it to blow your nose, to wipe up last night's beer puke, to sop the pus up from a broken pimple. You'll throw one to a friend with a cold... here, take this, I've got hundreds more. You'll use a fistful to wipe after that dainty superclean dump. You'd use one sheet, if you only had one roll. Those 240 rolls will last less than half the time and make twice the waste of your one roll a week. With that roll you'd stretch... use less... maybe buy a handkerchief for the occasional sneeze. Your savings are flushed down the toilet.

With food it's worse. You have more, so you eat more. A never ending supply of beef oxtails or whatever else you don't need. Nothing fresh and healthy... only in gross and grosser for it. Sure,if you're having an oxtail barbecue for 20 people, buy at Costco. If you're in Endangered Feces and need Charmin to throw at the crowd, buy at Costco. But if you're just this guy (or gal) and you think that buying a gallon of ice cream for $40 is cheaper than buying a pint for $7.95... WHAT YOU THINK IS WRONG.

SECOND CASE: Right now, the internet in the Guyanese house I'm staying in is down. All the electricity is off. It happens a few times a day-- like in California during the Enron era. I wonder how many times the average Californian was blacked out then. I can just Google it and find out. No I can't. I forgot. There's no electricity. Too bad... NO IT'S NOT!

I can still wonder. Speculate, imagine, use my mind. WONDER is NOT the same as WANT TO KNOW. Wonder is the joy of thinking, imagining, guessing.

I've seen pictures of the Amerindians here in Guyana. They look like the pictures I've seen of the Brazilian headhunters-- or the New Guinea ones that shrunk a Rockefeller's head in the 1960s: Vaguely oriental features, a bowl-cut haircut, loin cloth (probably an evil relic from some Christian missionary), curare-tipped spears, a bone through the nose. Just what you'd expect. I wonder if the local Indians were cannibals in per-Christian times. I wonder what cooked human flesh tastes like... but, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Google and Apple have destroyed wonder. Everyone and her pet pig walks around i-plugged into Wikipedia. If I wonder out loud what animal has the largest penis, BLAM, someone comes up with THE BLUE WHALE at 8 feet. End of wonder. Before I can fantasize about some unknown rodent dragging a 5 foot tube of flesh around... bigger than its body. My wonder's been killed. Like my foreskin, it's something I can never get back. I want to wonder without wanting to know. WHAT YOU THINK IS WRONG.

LAST CASE: Cut to a typical Guyanese house. Two stories, wood, the second floor has a covered porch as wide as the building. It's where the parties are... especially here in this house. Jamal, my host, is a gadabout, a man around town, party at his place every night. Beer, rum, and girls.

One of the many things I like about Guyana is the girls. Not that they're so beautiful. Some are. The average Guyanese woman is not average, though they all have some beautiful shade of skin color that puts any white guy/gal to shame. (No wonder tanning salons are so big in America.)

Except for the universally erection-inducing color, the girls here are either spectacular... combining the best of the Indian and the Negro... big eyes, Caribbean S-shape... strong, muscular legs that look like they'd squeeze the life out of you... and you'd love it... OR... ugly as an anal wart, rotund, hairy as a coconut or … so concentration camp skinny you're afraid to touch them. They might break.

I just like the fact that they're THERE! Unlike in many other third world countries-- Gambia, Senegal, Trinidad, for example-- girls go out by themselves... singly... just to lime (hang out). They don't need to be attached to anyone... they just are some of the guys. And many of these girls, not conventionally attractive, have such great personalities, that you WANT to be with them. They've got friends up the ass... as they should.

My favorite bar is a place called Buttsy's. Reminds me of the scummy bars on the Lower East Side when the Lower East Side was good. A couple pool tables, cheap beer ($300, about $1.50US), the kind of loud people others call characters, rather than the kind of loud people others call jocks. Girls as loud as boys. ID? Hah, if you can see over the counter to buy a beer, you buy one. If you can't see over the counter, the guy behind you will give you a boost. At the outside tables, you'll find easy banter among friends-- and friends to be made at the other tables. All they need is a stage and it's CBGB.

Conversation is not about whale penises, but it could be. Lots of laughter, body touching, innuendo. Makes me happy to be here. One of the guys says, let's just buy beer and come over to my place. The party continues... smooth and as easy flowing as a beer shit. That's where we are now. On the balcony, limin', drinking Banks beer. (I know the Beer Advocate doesn't like it, but it's the perfect beer for this hot humid climate... meant to be drunk ice cold.), a bottle of rum and a liter of coke make the rounds. There aren't enough cups, so we use the tops and bottoms of old water bottles to make our own.

“How do you like living in a primitive third world country?” I ask the goddess pouring rum into my half-water bottle.

“Depends on how you count,” she answers with a twinkle in her eye that make my nether parts ooze. It also gets me thinkin'.

Who decides which countries are in which world? Are they in order of average annual income? I don't think so. That would put Saudi Arabia in the first world and Greece in the third. How 'bout majority race? Nope, by that criteria, Japan and Cambodia would be in the same world.

I've heard lefties talk about North countries and South countries, instead of numbered worlds. That doesn't work either. Australia is south of the equator and Afghanistan north. Which one is first world?

How about flush toilets and internet access?

I haven't been in a house here that doesn't have both.

Gap between rich and poor? By that criterion, America would be fifth world... or sixth.

And what is the second world? Anything that used to be SOVIET? Anything with a -STAN at the end?

Has a country ever graduated? Moved up? A former third-worlder now second... or even all the way to first? I don't think so. Countries have moved down: Azerbaijan, for example. Maybe most of the seconds moved to third after the fall of the Soviet empire. Maybe the only second worlders left are Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and whoever the US is attacking at the moment. In any case, I've never heard any country called second world.

I figure is it's a cold war relic. In commie times, America and its friends were the first world. The Soviet Union and its allies were the second world. Everybody else was the third world. These terms stuck. After Russia broke up, the newly independent republics instantly joined the third world-- or the first.

This is just wrong. Countries are NOT in worlds. They are not worlds apart: luxury vs poverty. Flush toilets vs holes in the ground. It's much more complicated than that. Either there are no worlds or there are hundreds of worlds-- not three. WHAT YOU THINK IS WRONG.

This weekend I'll be in Suriname. That's not in Africa either.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact email me (god@mykelboard.com). Postal contact send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003]

-->How Much Punk Rock Do You Hear in Guyana dept: Most of my time here has been with members of the only punk band in the country: Keep Your Day Job. (How come counties with only one punk band have punk bands with such great names?) I sang an acoustic version of BEER IS BETTER THAN GIRLS ARE and will be a roadie for them in Suriname. In a country with very little live music, and no punk, they've got a tough job ahead. I hope they keep it.

-->Related dept: Those of us old enough to remember the 80s, put down later punkrock as bland and commercial. Green Day? Blink 182? Sellout arena bad punk copies, we'd say. But, for many people (like Keep Your Day Job), they are the bridge between the punk we know and the punk they're going to forge. If it weren't for those bands we dismiss, there'd be NO punkrock in places like Guyana. So we gotta give 'em credit... THEN, we teach 'em about GG Allin.

-->Beer and girls dept: A great man (me) once made a song by rhyming those old gas station posters of 20 Ways Beer Is Better Than Girls. Clearly, the list is a comic lament by some teenage guy who can't get laid and drowns his sour grapes in beer. It's almost feminist in its pathos. But, with the typical sense of humor of feminists, they don't get it.

Now, a Texas beer company has introduced a new beer with the motto: Goes down easy. The reaction has been predictable. Check it out here.

-->Keeping on the pressure dept: If you want to see me back in Maximum Rock'n'Roll (or if you don't) you can tell them directly with an email to: mrr@maximumrocknroll.com You SHOULD contact them.

--end

[My sadly under up-kept travel diary is available at: mykelsdiary.blogspot.com. And you can subscribe to updates, and notification of new columns and other writing by joining my Yahoo group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/readMBoard/]