or Are You Happy to See Me?
You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's 1st October 2020 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board
[This will be my last semi-monthly blog. I find there are fewer readers. It’s more work. And I’m in no mood. Next month the blog goes once-a-month again.]
We die. That may be the meaning of our lives. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives. --Tony Morrison
You know how it feels when you’ve got your hands around the throat of someone you hate? You know how your fingers press against the neckback while your thumbs search out the bump of an adams apple? You know how when you squeeze, you can press your thumbs against that bump… one on either side… until something pops… then gurgles? There’s always a cough first.. then a tension… like an electric shock… then limpness… the head lolling… first right… then left... then down… chin to chest. You know how it feels when you release your hands and see that final slump… Thinking Yes! I did that! You little piece of shit… NOW, your life has meaning. Get it?
Sometimes I feel like sticking my head in the oven… the microwave oven. Sometimes I feel like walking down Broadway with an Uzi… and lots of ammo. 2020 has been a hell year for most everyone. Every day I dread email, facebook, or some other bringer of bad news. Who died? Who hates me? Who’s in the hospital? In jail?
My friends are dropping like beershit turds. Not (only) from the plague or from what happens when you get old and your friends do too, but from tightly wound tension... from the plague fear… from well, your other friends don’t want to see you so they must know something I don’t know. I’d better sequester myself too… at least from you.
I feel like Bojing Chow, the Chinese guy from Hubei (pronounced “Hoo-bay,” capital Wuhan) who works chopping suey for 10 years… sleeps in a hovel with his wife, family, and two other families… saves enough money to open his own hole-in-the-wall restaurant serving a Hubei favorite, Spicy Duck Neck. With the name Hubei Your Urges. The motif is a strange mixture of half-naked women and ducks.
Then comes the WUHAN virus. Then the lockdown… the closings… the sudden poverty. Bojing! Join me in my microwave… I’ll show you how to defeat the door-lock. There’s room enough for two.
I’m a social guy… the reverse of that cliché of I love humanity. It’s people I can’t stand. Me? I like people. I like to be in the midst of them… to eat and drink with them… to talk with them… to be naked in a pile of them.
In
“normal” times in New York, every Thursday night I have DRINK
CLUB. We go to a different bar every week, eat, drink, talk.
Maskless, we treat each other like human beings, sharing food,
tasting this beer and that. Laughing… or singing out loud.
Sometimes we hug each other.
The plague put the kibosh on
that… at least for a few months. During the last month or two I’ve
brought it back with outside meetings and sticking to the same bar
every week. In pre-plague times, Drink Club had from 6 to ten people
usually several Japanese, and a few Hispanics to kick up the spice.
We loved to kid.. to lie about how to say Cheers in our native languages. We teach the round-eyes that in Japanese, it’s baka yaroo. (Actually, that means you fucking idiot.) We teach the Orientals that, in Spanish, it’s besa mi culo. (Actually, that means kiss my ass.) In English it’s garlic cow. I’ll teach you where that comes from.
In
Spanish, garlic is ajo. Cow is vaca (pronounced, you
guessed it, baka). Ajo in Japanese is something like asshole.
So Garlic Cow in Spanish is ajo baka which, in Japanese
means stupid asshole. Get it? No one else will.
This
silly playfulness helps bring us together... to make us laugh… to
make us feel less alone.
In lockdown Drink Clubs, the max is 7 people… almost all occidentals… mostly old people. This further lend credence to my theory that old people fear this plague less than the young. Like I wrote a couple weeks ago, that’s what old people do. We don’t fear death. We die. But that doesn’t make the uniform group of white oldsters any more exciting.
I miss the languages, the joking, the name-calling. In Spanish, it’s common to call the hefty guy Gordo (Fatty). In America, in the early 1900s a famous actor-comedian (who came to a bad end) was called “Fatty Arbuckle.” In 2020, “Fatty” would be bullying. You’d probably be banned from Facebook.
In 2020, people’s sensitivity is knife sharp. Not only from PC-itude, but from the tension and fear caused by COVID... mine too. I wrote how I fb-blocked a long-time friend because he name-called me.
Come
on Mykel! (Here’s where you slap me, holding the front of my shirt…
by the collar… slap first the right cheek, then on the left.)
“You’re - Mykel - fuckin’ - Board.”
Say
one word with each slap.
“You’re - gonna - block - a -
friend - because - he - called - you - a - name? Who - HASN’T -
called - you - a - name?”
Flash to Chinatown: I’m out
with El, one of my few remaining friends. We’re at a Chinese
restaurant… not Wuhan. El notices an error in the English language
menu. One dish is labeled Chicken Niggits.
I laugh
out loud. Take a picture. And BAM! Post it on Instagram.
Double
BAM! In a few minutes comes a reply from another long-term friend.
Yeah, she’s black, “So this is what it’s come to?”
I
send an apology and delete the post. It doesn’t help. I haven’t
heard from her again.
I’M SORRY!
And so it goes.
Blame? I’d love to blame. Everyone looks for someone to blame… as if this will help… Hurricane after hurricane… quick blame the oil companies and their climate change? Race riots? Blame anarchists and outside agitators. Police murders? Blame “a few bad apples” rather than a system that attracts and creates bad apples. Police being murdered? Blame thugs who are incited by the anarchists. Corona virus? If you’re a Trump supporter, blame China. If you’re a Trump-hater, blame Trump.
The
problem is that blaming doesn’t
work. I don’t feel better if I blame my friends for deserting me…
I’m still friendless. Believe me, the only solution is the
microwave. Right now it’s on the refrigerator… too high for me to
reach just standing on the floor. Okay, I’ll use the step ladder.
POW!
Exploding head! That’ll teach ‘em. Right? They’ll have nobody
to blame but themselves. Now, where’d I put that step ladder?
- end -
ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com
→ In Everyday Life dept: In writing this blog, I learned there really is such a thing as Exploding Head Syndrome. Your head doesn’t actually blow up, though. You need a microwave for that.
→ Speaking of death department: Here are slightly edited versions of two emails I received from Kyle Nonnemen. They show the slave business aka Prison Labor… and how the prison system encourages people to keep quiet about their COVID symptoms.
Here are his last two emails to me.
+++++++++++++++++++
Message
1:
I
can’t get out of my cell to call you. Corona virus outbreak
lockdown status. Nobody gets out. They pop my door to give me nasty
sack-lunches and a 15 minute shower once a day. Other than that, it’s
24 hour lockdown.
To
prevent corona spreading even more than it already has, I took a
corona virus test on 9-30, should get the results back by Monday.
They stick a wooden cotton swab up your nasal cavity and it’s
extremely painful.
If I’ve got the corona virus I'm getting transported to the quarantine hospice death ward they got set up at Coffee Creek. I got severe asthma, limited lung functioning from scoliosis and a lot of other damage to my lungs and Oregon Department of Corrections can’t afford high quality medical care.
So
if I’ve got corona virus, I'm probably going to die from it. So
when the Covid stuff first started happening, I wore a mask
everywhere and didn't sit with any other inmates and primarily stayed
in my cell. All the units in the prison were separated to avoid
cross contamination.
I cleaned the mask all the time, sprayed stuff down with Virustat.Then, when the wildfires happened, I got stuck on a crowded sardine-can bus and then left outside in the in the prison yard for over 10 hours breathing in the toxic smoke, and ash from the fires. Then they crammed me into an open dorm unit, hundreds of inmates from all different units crowded together in one communal area.
In
addition, Oregon state penitentiary where they evacuated us to, was
previously declared a Covid hot zone. Now that they've brought
everybody back from Oregon state penitentiary, the incubation period
is over and now there's a really bad corona virus outbreak.
The Statesmen-Journal newspaper did a whole article about how bad the cramped conditions were at the state penitentiary and how people are infected from it.
That's
why I asked you to contact some civil rights attorneys because if I
test positive I'm getting shipped out to the death ward unit and you
ain’t going to hear from me again. Lawyers can call me though.
Oregon D.O.C command staff are the reason this is
spreading. No visitors come in. The prisoners don’t leave. It’s
them bringing it in.
But
whatever happens, is going to happen. I'm tired of living in a cage
anyway.
so it goes.
all
the best
kyle
Message 2:
They're transporting me to medical hospice death ward at coffee creek. With my asthma etc. I probably won't survive this. So you won’t hear from me again.
I
just wanted to let you know what happened. Get a hold of the prison
for funeral arrangements or whatever. I don’t know what they’ll
do with my body.
Sorry for putting you through all this. Thanks for your support
all
the best kyle
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.
I have a very occasional blog about how rich people are just like us… same needs, same desires, you know. You can read it 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
