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