NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH? Mykel's October 2024 Blog

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

The Truth! or Mykel's October 2024 Blog: YOU'RE STILL WRONG

You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's

October 2024 Blog/Column

THE WHOLE TRUTH

If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!

--Mark Twain

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

– J. K. Rowling

Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around.

– Frank A. Clark

Somewhere in the south of France an invasion has come from somewhere in the north of Africa. A row of tanks… just left the warship… works its way from Marsailles toward Paris. Somewhere in the middle of that row… not the exact middle… maybe a place best described as forward middle… is a tank with a driver and two gunners.

The line of tanks stops … somewhere in an open field… maybe a farm. It’s quiet here in the late afternoon. The driver stands to open the hatch at the top of the tank. He’s a young soldier… mid-twenties at the latest. He reaches up to push the hatch open. As the young man stands... his right arm above his head holding the hatch open… a whistling comes across the sky. Then... an explosion… several. One of the little missiles hits the open hatch… explodes… blowing the man into the air… separating the man from the arm that opened the hatch. Carrying the man up and away from the tank… into the field. A pool of blood next to him makes a Rorschach pattern destined never to be interpreted. The next little missile hits the tank dead on… blowing the gunners inside into little pieces.

The now one-armed tank driver awakens on a cot in a field hospital. He barely notices his transfer from there to a truck… filled with portabeds… several of those lying on the beds moan loudly. A few scream out in pain. Others are dead still.

FLASH TO Emma Silverberg now looking into her mirror. She sees how her neck wrinkles where it meets her chest. There’s a little hollow in that spot… shaped like a sideways eye. She reaches behind her neck with her right hand… grabbing the skin of her neck… pinching it between her palm and fingers… watching the ugly little pocket disappear as the skin pulls tight.

“Maybe if I taped it,” she thinks. “Duct tape would hold… it holds everything.”

I’m imagining this as I sit in her living room waiting for her to meet me for dinner at Arby’s. I’ve been visiting her for almost ten months now. It’s part of a program called VISITING NEIGHBORS where lonely people who want company meet and go out to eat… or see a movie. Sometimes they need help getting around. Usually, they just need company.

Emma is slightly older than I am… just past eighty. It’s easy to see that she used to be a beauty. Her eyes remain bright blue and though the lids wrinkle on them, those eyes show an intensity that clearly melted the hearts of dozens of young men… and maybe women.

She did not grow fat in her old age, but I can tell that her weight shifted. Her breasts drooped. Her muscles turned soft and flabby. She still dresses like I imagine her dressing 50+ years ago. Tight black sweaters, short slinky skirts, shoes with heels so high and thin that, more than once, I’ve had to catch her in a stumble. It’s time for a change. I know that. And this evening I’m going to tell her.

She’s coming down the steps now. Gripping the banister tightly to keep her balance. She’s dressed like she always does, except tonight, she wears dark stockings with a single seam up the back… from ankle to that small area I’m unable to see.

“How do I look?” she asks me.

I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry Emma,” I say. “But someone has to tell you… You’re older than I am but you dress like a teenager. People laugh behind your back. They’re annoyed when you stumble in front of them in your too-high heels...” and I go on.

FLASH TO CALVIN, SITTING ON HIS MILK CRATE ON BLEECKER AND LAGUARDIA “Yo Calvin!” I say to him, “You been waitin’ for me?”

He laughs. “I’m always waitin’ for you,” he says, “or somebody else who’ll give me a dollar.”

I fish in my watch-pocket were I keep my homeless single dollar bills. I pull one out and hand it to Calvin.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to face a very stern-looking woman, about 40. She frowns… pulling her eyebrows closer together… wrinkling her forehead.

“Why do you give him money?” she asks. “He could be working. You’re keeping him on the street. Let him get a job…. Do something.”

She walks away in a huff... like I’ve insulted her. I hope I have.

HANG ON: That story about the tank commander is true. That man was my father. The story was right from my one-arm dad’s mouth… I wasn’t there, but I believe every word of it. The story of Emma and my comments to her was a lie… made up on a bus on its way to from New York to Boston. (We’re almost in Danbury as I write this).

The third story, about Calvin, I’m not sure of. I remember somebody somewhere complaining about my giving money to street people, but the details are lost on me. File that one under I Don’t Know.

That’s what I want to write about this time: TRUTH… during this last political month… charges of truth and lies hurl back and forth like missiles in a battlefield. I’m here to tell you IT DOESN’T MATTER.

ASIDE: I’ve often written about my friend Dawn. We’ve known each other for around 40 years. Our opinions overlap: she’s a Democrat. I’m a social-libertarian. She’s a feminist. I’m a social-libertarian. She’s interested in the possible. I want the impossible. In any case, I respect her as a deep thinker… and one area we agree on is TRUTH. We both think the made-up Mykel mistreated the made-up Emma. Her feelings, her pride, her self-esteem are more important that THE TRUTH. My father’s dead now. The truth won’t hurt him.

AN EXAMPLE OF TRUTH AT IT'S WORST

=====================
This blog will be posted a month and a few days before the presidential election. I predict a Trump victory. Most of my readers will be happy to know my predictions are usually wrong. I, of course, will be voting for SID YIDDISH, as I have in most every presidential election since Harry Truman.

As I write this, the election has turned into a bunch of LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE charges and counter charges. An army of fact-checkers calls out each side when one side says it advocated SHIT, where in TRUTH they advocated FUCK.

“I built a wall to keep out migrants,” says Donny the Trump.

“I helped draft legislation to make it hard for illegals to stay here,” answers Kamala the African-Indian.

“I helped draft legislation to make it hard for illegals to stay here,” answers Kamala the African-Indian.

No one says, “Let’s open up. Let’s let people go where they want to… live where they want to.” Oh no. That’s not realistic. (Code for able to be true.) Fuck realism. I want the impossible.

I don’t care if George Santos is really a gay son of holocaust survivors. I love the way he urged fellow-Republicans to come out of the closet. I love his creativity in making up an entire life: schools, jobs, personal history. These… er… trump any notion of TRUTH. His falsehoods are better than the truth can ever be.

FICTION is/can be more accurate than TRUTH… and it can reveal a greater truth than the truth itself.

“I stopped American jobs from going to China!” shouts Don in his brag about saving factory work.

“Together with President Biden,” counters the former and possibly future Prosecutor in Chief, “we have created more jobs than any president in the history of America.”

“No one should ever work.” is the opening sentence in a book by Bob Black called The Abolition of Work. Bob Black gets it. He tells both sides to fold the truth… the realistic…. the possible... into a long thin tube… and shove it up their collective asses. He does not talk about what’s real… likely... not even what can be achievable… but he’s right!

I don’t care if the Civil War was about slavery… as modern historians say… or only about not losing territory… as Abraham Lincoln said. It doesn’t matter which is true. Slavery had to go.

TRUTH is sometimes important… it’s how we learn and how we transfer knowledge… but it’s not the MOST important.

Like in my fictional account with Emma Silverberg, compassion is usually (always?) more important than truth. During that awful presidential debate there were “fact checkers” galore looking to catch a lie here or there. Who checks the fact checkers?

After the debate, factcheck.org wrote: Trump repeated his false claim that everyone — liberals and conservatives — wanted to end Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion.

That’s not true. Trump’s claim was that liberals and conservatives wanted THE STATES to decide about abortion rights. This may or may not be true, but the “fact” reported by factcheck is false.

Factcheck also said: The vice president claimed Trump’s economic policies led to “one of the highest” trade deficits in American history. But the annual trade deficits during the Biden administration have exceeded those under Trump.

Even by Factcheck’s own account, Harris said ONE of the highest trade deficits… not THE highest. It is likely BOTH had one of the highest. The fact-checker lied.

We could go on... but why? Why have a fact check at all? Why not just assume from the get-go that both sides are lying, and that there are things more important than the truth… especially compassion, vision, and goals… even if those goals are impossible... what people would call lies... they’re still more important than THE TRUTH.

Where are the compassion-checkers. Where are the source-checkers… what the source says may be fact or conjecture. Isn’t it more important to know if the source wants the same things you want? Where are the language manipulation checkers? The ones who value meaning over truth. The ones who catch the trick in I never shot John Smith… but you did stab him to death.

DONALD TRUMP: These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality. And we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast.

KAMALA HARRIS: And let me say that the United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported.

COMPASSION CHECK: Bing: Lack of compassion-- BOTH candidates: People come to our country because conditions in their own country… often caused by US policies… are so bad they need someplace better. They are Emma Lazarus’s Retched refuse from foreign shores. Kicking them out is like kicking away a dog huddled under a roof to get out of the rain. It is pure cruelty… true or not.

KAMALA HARRIS: What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy

SOURCE CHECK: It is likely TRUE that Goldman Sachs said that. But do you want a country run by Goldman Sachs? Do you want Wall Street making the decisions on what’s a good economy and what’s a bad economy? Do you want a view of a “strengthened economy” where the stock market is up and the streets are ever more crowded with homeless people?

KAMALA HARRIS: And now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care

LANGUAGE CHECK: Is abortion “healthcare?” Nowhere in the world is it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide healthcare. There are different definitions, however, on what healthcare is. Sometimes, abortion is clearly healthcare… where a birth can lead to the death of a mother, for example. Trump said he supports abortions in that case. In other cases, abortion may be provided by a healthcare worker, but it is not healthcare… except maybe mental healthcare, I’ll give it that.

Don’t get me wrong. I support abortion. Just walk down the street. You’ll see dozens of reasons to support abortion. There clearly should have been more of them… so many missed opportunities… But don’t call it healthcare just because a doctor does it. Is a facelift healthcare?

Get it? In national politics like in everyday interaction, there are things more important than the truth. I don’t care if Donald Trump improved the economy more than Joe Biden did. I care about what each consider an economic improvement. The truth is secondary (tertiary?). I don’t care if Kamala Harris came from a middle-class background and loved her nanny. How will a woman, who, for most of her life, worked to put people in cages, think of me if I end up on the street… needing to steal bread to eat for a day?

Catch words: extremism/ist leftwing, rightwing, fascist, authoritarian, communism/ist, air strikes… these are all ways to manipulate the language... truth or not.

Sometimes the truth is important, but, more often, there are things that matter more.

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... 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]

→ MAYBE IT’S THE FUGU DEPT: In Japan, the number of people aged 100 or older has hit a new record – 95,119. Most of the centenarians are women, The world's oldest person, Tomiko Itooka of western Japan, is 116. Japan's oldest man, Kiyotaka Mizuno, 110, told local media that he has "no idea at all about what's the secret to my long life.”

→ BEFORE YOU WERE BORN DEPT: In the 1950s and 60s, nuclear weapons were considered insurance of peace through the theory of M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. If you destroy me, I’ll destroy you, so we’d better not start anything.
    I haven’t heard that term in ages. But I did hear of a new “Global Strategy Company” a national full-service political consulting firm with expertise in government affairs, public relations, and electoral politics. You probably guessed right. The name of the company is just perfect for politics 2024:

More at: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#sent/KtbxLwgsxqWWLGLgRcRcqFZqjlxngZhkHL

→ BETWEEN THE LEGS DEPT: The NY Post reports that men with small dicks, on average, earn about triple what men with large ones earn. Since, elderly rich men get more nookie than elderly poor men… I hope the rumor spreads… just like her legs. Truth or not, for someone pushing 80, it’s certainly a better hook than my bank account.

→ SPEAKING OF SHORT DEPT: Our (unwarranted) obsession with truth is best exemplified by a website that says (among other things): Napoleon wasn’t short, Marie Antoinette didn’t say “let them eat cake,” and no witches were burned during the Salem witch hunts. That’s another problem with “the truth,” it keeps changing.

See you in hell, redux,
Mykel Board

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:

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.

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

Here’s an update on the current URL for Sid Yiddish’s Dating Game (type) entry.

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.

And for a quiet smile and a much needed break for you and the dog, try G.C. Adams’ YouTube entry.

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.

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

I WAS FRAMED! or Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column

 I Was Framed ... or Mykel's Blog for October

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column 

I Was Framed!    

by Mykel Board

The instrument that measures all other instruments– the human nervous system– has its own laws, and one of them involves always seeing the results one wants to see until and unless something really startles the brain enough to reframe its experiences. --Robert Anton Wilson

Popular authors do not and apparently cannot appreciate the fact that true art is obtainable only by rejecting normality and conventionality in toto, and approaching a theme purged utterly of any usual or preconceived point of view. --Edwin Baird

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me. – Barbara Kruger

It’s slightly pornographic… or could be. Just three fingers... lady’s fingers clearly... but what’s between them? Is that a urethra canal? Could it be the centerfold of a “men’s” magazine? Will the Google gods post this behind a SENSITIVE CONTENT SCREEN? How about if we look at the picture another way? Maybe that can tell us something different about those fingers:

Flash to the motel room: The floor is bloody… The door hangs on one hinge… lopsided as if forced in from the outside… it was.. Lying on the couch is a woman… clothed only in her own blood. Her vacant eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. A man… scruffy… wearing a beat up overcoat... sits on a chair at the desk. On either side of him is a cop. One tall… macho looking.. a strong chin cleanly shaven. Squinting, the disheveled man can read DETECTIVE BASTINI. The other cop is somewhat shlubbier… beer belly just poking over the front of his belt. The name on his badge is not visible to the sitting man.

“You realize this looks pretty bad for you,” says Detective Bastini.

“But officer,” says the disheveled man, “you gotta understand. This was a set-up. I was framed!”

You got it buckaroos! I want to write about FRAMING! How our entire view of the world, of people, of good and bad… right and wrong... is all about framing. And framing is everywhere… what we see out of a window is framed… what we hear on the news… what we listen to in a punk club… what appears in store displays… It’s all framed. White-washing, green-washing, pink-washing, ad-washing, even face- washing… BUILD THOSE FRAMES!

Yeah, I’m going to repeat myself here. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. But in saying what I’ve said before, I’m going to frame it with a frame. Show how you’ve been tricked by what the frame let in the picture and what it kept out.

So says the Google search. I don’t have time to dig further because my stomach is begging for release… Last night was Drink Club and I’m paying for it now. Aaaahrgh! I feel like I’m being fist-fucked from the inside. The pain… the pain… the bathroom… the toilet… sit down… ahh… ahhh… aaahhhhhh! An explosion… splashing down with the force of a space capsule in the ocean. BLOOOF! BLOOF! BLOOOF! Feces-filled water splashes back up... dribbling drip… drip… drip back into the muddy waters below. No, I can’t see it, but I feel it… against both lower cheeks… and the back of my thighs. 

Ecstasy! Poetry in brown! I just sit a bit and enjoy it... closing my eyes to focus on the relief. Then the wipe… the double wipe… the pull up… What’s that? A hard-yet-squishy feel. I again pull down my boxers. A brown stain discolors the top… right near the elastic. A single dingle-berry... hanging by a hair… too high up to reach through the legs… still there. I have to go around the side… grope for it. Aaaah, if only I could pay someone to make sure I’d got the last one before pulling up. A pro to take care of errant hanger-ons… to save my underpants… and my embarrassment at the laundromat. But wait... a dingle-berry remover!!! I’ve created a job! All I need is someone to fill it. Get it? It’s easy to create a job, though likely it’ll be a shitty one. 

It’s the frame! If we only look at jobs… at how many people are employed or can be employed… we mistake the Mona Lisa fingers for the painting. If we frame it as happy people... fulfilled people… people able to live a good life… then Biden’s 6.6 million jobs are meaningless. 

MOST jobs are worthless. They contribute nothing and may do more harm than good. 

That guy sitting at his desk shuffling electrons to buy and sell stock… What does he contribute? The greeter at Walmart... the CEO of a tech corporation... the maitre ‘d at a restaurant… bookkeepers… corporate lawyers… insurance brokers… advertising copy writers… the list never ends. Framing “job creation” instead of “life improvement” skews the equation.

It’s sometime in the late 1970s. Milton Friedman has already won the Nobel Prize for his defense of the crime of capitalism. The local PBS station shows a short series where Friedman explains his theories.

A twenty-something me sits in front of the TV as Friedman walks around the streets of New York, talking to the camera. He passes a beggar.

“It seems cruel,” says Friedman, “but if we don’t support this man… if we don’t give him money… he’ll have to get a job. The state… other working people… will not have to pay for him”

I close my eyes… take a deep breath… wish for the beggar to jump up, slam a lead pipe into the back of Friedman’s head… grab his wallet and take off. “There’s your have to get a job, motherfucker!” And I smile.

I tell this story to my Ayn Rand-loving friends. “No Mykel,” they tell me, “That’s what the police are for. They catch the guy and throw him in jail.”

“Where he’s supported by the state… working people,” I answer.

WORK --more precisely HAVING A JOB-- is something that’s lauded by Communists and Capitalists alike. There’s dignity in having a job. And a gauge of any president’s performance is whether or not he creates FULL EMPLOYMENT! So, destructive and useless jobs are better than no jobs at all. NO THEY AREN’T.

Let’s move the frame. Let’s value the ability to enjoy life. The ability to help others enjoy life. Lets value a smile on a poor man’s face more than a billion dollars in Jeff Bezos’s pocket. If there were no garbagemen, who would take away the garbage?

Who takes it away now? Who removes the banana peels from your kitchen? YOU DO! The garbage is taken away because it needs to be taken away… not because there are garbagemen.

I can hear Literary Device complaining now.

“Forget about garbagemen, Mykel,” she says. “What about doctors? Teachers? Architects? Those things take years of study. Are you going to have everyone be her own doctor?”

“Not quite,” I answer. “But I can tell you that I get paid to be a teacher. It’s my job. I’d do it though, even if it weren’t my job. I love doing it”

There are enough people who love doctoring and teaching doctoring that –job or not– they’d do it. With so many worthless or destructive jobs gone, people will be able to do what they love. Think of all the kids that want to be doctors or firemen or athletes, but end up stock brokers or insurance salesmen as adults. Are they happy wearing their white shirts and ties... spending a third of their lives moving electrons from one computer to the next… I bet MOST people are unhappy in their jobs, especially the useless or harmful ones.

Move that VALUE frame. Value humanity... satisfaction... time... rather than having a job. You’ll get a much nicer picture.

FLASH TO The Every Little Bit Helps frame: I generate a lot of garbage. No, I’m not talking about this blog. I’m talking real, physical stuff. Junkmail… bills (always shredded and thrown out), old magazines, plastic containers from yogurt, deli sandwiches, styrofoam trays from frozen chicken… the list goes on. The only garbage separating I do is pulling out the deposit bottles and cans. I put those in a separate clear plastic bag and leave that outside for the street people who live on bottle and can deposits. Many of them are my friends.

According to Green Matters, only around 9 percent of goods separated for recycling are being recycled. But there’s the frame. If you separate your soup cans from your bleach bottles you’re part of that every little bit. You can go ahead and buy your Campbell’s 12 pack and your Costco size bleach bottle. You’re still doing your part. But if we expand the frame… include the rest of the Mona Lisa... we can see the whole picture.

We can see that there’s a relationship between feeling good about your consumption… and consuming more. It’s okay if I buy so much more than I need. More to throw away…more junk… I RECYCLE… so it’s all right.

NO IT ISN’T! Recycling encourages consumption. Consumption encourages waste (and corporate profits). In this frame, RECYCLING MAKES JUNK. Instead of framing the junk our consumption makes, why not frame the consumption itself? Instead of recycling, why not avoid buying in the first place?

FLASH TO the war in Ukraine. Oh, the bad guys invade. “We” have to help. It’s good guys against bad guys… a typical American frame… cowboy movies… war movies… comic books. The good guys need to defeat the bad guys… the invaders. Send in weapons… train the soldiers… beat the war drums… put up Ukrainian flags. Measure success like in a war movie. CHASE THEM OUT. MAKE THEM DIE. They lose. We win. What can be more American than “Winning isn’t everything… It’s the only thing?”

But let’s use a different frame. Let’s keep score… if score must be kept… a different way. Let’s use a GOLF frame, instead of a comic book frame. In golf, the lowest score wins. So players work hardest at getting the lowest score. How ‘bout if, instead of keeping score by advances and retreats and downed airplanes or destroyed infantry, we count dead people. The fewer dead, the better the situation. So if “we” want to get a good score, we provide negotiators instead of bombs. We offer cash, concessions, trades, to keep the number of dead low. We exchange the frame of winning and losing for one of dying or not dying.

NEXT FRAME INTRODUCTION: It’s called “pre-judgement” and includes one of my favorite idioms of the last decade or so. It too is an extension of the American good guy/ bad guy frame. That is, anything done by a badguy must be bad. If the cowboy wearing black picks up a a dog in scene one, he’ll shoot it in scene three. He can’t be NICE to the dog… he’s a bad guy. That phrase I love is Trump Derangement Syndrome

FLASH TO Miami beach: It’s crowded. Throngs wanting to get in their last wave before Hurricane Bruce slams the coast and ruins their fun. If you walk quietly in a corner of the beach, you’ll see what looks like a typical American family: a chubby balding man… gray chest-hair, a woman, obviously his wife, with bright red hair, obviously from a bottle. A boy and his younger sister play on the bright blue picnic blanket spread in the sand. The boy carries a plastic bucket and a little plastic shovel. The little girl is empty-handed.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear that they are speaking French. Maybe they’re tourists. With a peal of kiddie-laughter the empty-handed girl grabs the bucket from her brother and runs toward the ocean. The brother gives chase, finally catching up and wrestling the bucket free. Then he pushes his sister who falls into the increasingly violent waves smashing against the shore. The girl washes out to sea.

“Aide! Aide!” screams the father, as the little girl is rip-currented further and further from shore.

Donald Trump, passing by, hears the shouts. Not taking the time to remove anything but his shoes, he runs to the water and jumps in. Powerfully, he swims out to the girl, grabs her around the chest and… careful to keep her head above water... brings her safely back to shore.

TRUMP MOLESTS TODDLER AT THE BEACH is the headline in The Times the next day… along with a photo of Donny Trump in the water with his arm around the girl’s chest.

For so many people, Trump is incapable of doing anything right… of doing a good deed. If it appears good… pardoning non-violent offenders, keeping the US out of war, downsizing The Pentagon… there’s always some reason it’s BAD. Getting out of NAFTA and TPP… disastrous trade bills that would have allowed international trade with no oversight. Slave conditions unanswerable by the US courts. President Trump saved us from them.

No he didn’t. Come the answers. Those were good for trade… come the TDS answers… except for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC who also opposed the treaties when they were presented by the Dems… those treaties are left out of the frame.

And finally… briefly… a pair of frames I’ve written about before: the GENDER frame and the RACE frame. Seeing abortion as “a war against women” where most of the anti-abortionists see a war against murder. Or seeing street crime and armed robbery as BLACK street crime and BLACK armed robbery instead of POVERTY-INDUCED street crime and POVERTY-INDUCED armed robbery. Framing… framing… framing.

So please… face the wall and look at that picture. Take it down… open the back and spread out the painting so the unframed parts become clear. Then REFRAME it, so those twat-showing hands become the Mona Lisa.

See you in hell,
Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

→ Framing Step-by-Step Dept: There’s a great step-by-step analysis of news- framing in the New York Times. It’s not published on any of the monopoly-internet sites, but you can find it here.

→ How you react DEPENDS dept: Many of you know that I’ve gone through radiation treatment for prostate cancer. Called Cyberknife, the treatment itself is painless, though expensive. But the cash expense is only part of the problem. I pissed in my pants on the way home from the last treatment. I’ve been wearing (and needing) DEPENDS ever since. I have daily brain fog and the only time I’m not tired is late at night when I should be sleeping. If cyberknife is recommended for you… consider it VEEERRRRRY CAREFULLY, before you agree to it. You have been warned.

→ Put A Bag On It dept: The Canadian Broadcasting Company reports that in an environmental move, rock climbers in British Columbia have been encouraged to use WAG BAGS, to shit in. The idea, you shit in a bag that contains deodorizing chemicals, and then carry the shit with you, out of the wooded areas where you dispose of it at home. Sure, that’s gonna happen. Yeah right.

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 just 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.

I found, in an old issue, a great argument against those who charge “What Aboutism” when others make points about a parallel issue outside the frame. The author’s basic (and correct) point of view is that the anti-whataboutism argument justifies hypocrisy.
Then there’s Thomas Graham who spots a little more subtlety in the Ukraine war than the media and the current war-mongers are showing.

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

Sad Song: You're Still Wrong: Mykel's October Blog

 

A Sad Song: You're Still Wrong: Mykel's  October Blog

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's 

October 2021 Blog/Column 

A Sad Song

by Mykel Board

There are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone. 

                                                                                  --Nicole Krauss

Staring at my picture book, she looks like Mary, Queen of Scots.

She seemed very regal to me, just goes to show how wrong you can be. I'm gonna stop wastin' my time. Somebody else would have broken both of her arms. Sad song, sad song. Sad song, sad song.

                                                          --Lou Reed

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.

                       – Lemony Snicket

It starts in that no man’s land between your belly and your chest. It’s a pressure… something on your diaphragm. You struggle to breathe...  your chest rises and falls in deep sighs. Slowly it creeps up… deep in the back of your throat… the spider in the old lady who swallowed a fly… then you feel it in your nose… your eyes… those little parts of your eyes closest to each other… wet… they fill ever more... soon you can’t see… you squeeze your eyelids shut... tears pour out... dripping down the side of your face… You look to the right and left to see if anyone’s watching you… Your nose runs. You wipe the tears… the snot… on your sleeve.

Sadness is inexorably… though understandably… linked with death. People cry when someone close to them dies. It’s the same everywhere. 

I ask my Kenyan pal, Albert, if men cry in Kenya. He says, “Sure, men cry when someone dies. It’s normal.”

Sometimes, we’re sad when people we’ve never met… but have admired… die. I cried when Thurman Munson died. I’ll cry when Jimmy Carter dies. Okay, got that. 

But there’s a kind of sadness that’s not about death. A kind of sadness that doesn’t reach up the throat… doesn’t end in the nose or the eyes... a kind of sadness that is like a giant press, squeezing your lungs… squeezing the air out of you… making you feel like shit for no reason except the sadness itself. 

FLASH TO THE SECRET KOREAN BAR; It’s above a deli on the corner. There are no signs for it… you just have to know it’s there. You enter through the deli, walk up the unmarked staircase in the back and POW! There you are. 

I’m walking up those stairs right now. 

“Yeoboseyo!,” I shout from below. It’s Hello in Korean, but only for answering the phone... never as an in-person greeting… except by me. 

“Mykel!” shouts Jenny from upstairs… behind the bar. 

“How’d you know?” I shout back. 

When I get upstairs, Jenny has poured me a mug of Hite beer. She pushes it over the bar to me as I sit in front of her. 

Andy, an ABK (American Born Korean), hangs out in the bar and is a friend. 

“Andy,” I shout at him from the other side of the room. “Come and sit next to me. We’ll talk. Have a Hite!”

Andy sits on the next stool. “Mykel,” he says, “nice to see ya! I’ve been feeling like shit for the past week.”

“I hope I didn’t make it worse,” I tell him. 

It takes him a second. Then he laughs. 

“How’s the deli job?” I ask. He works at a Korean deli, chopping salad, preparing the take-it-weigh-it-and-pay-it food that Korean delis invented. 

“You know, chop chop,” he says, his right hand making a fake karate move. “So close to Grand Central, lots of tourists and businessmen. Not my favorite people.”

I talk to the bartender, “Jenny,” I say, “give Andy a Hite on me.” 

She pours him a beer. “Mong chung eeee” we say in a fake toast. (It actually means You Moron!) 

“You look unhappy,” I tell him. “Did something happen today?” 

“Something happens every day, Mykel,” says Andy. “When I look in the mirror, I feel like shit. I want to cry. It’s….”

“Huh?” I say, nearly choking on the beer, “You’re a smart, good-looking guy. I wish I saw what you see when I looked in the mirror.”

He smiles halfheartedly… and puts the tips of his index fingers at the edges of his eyes. 

“See these? Slanty eyes!” he says. 

“Come on,” I say, “you speak perfect English… Well, I mean you tawk like a New Yawka.”

He looks at me… very close… fixing his eyes on mine. Then he says… very slowly and very LOUD.

“WHEN… PEOPLE... SEE... ME... THEY... TALK... LIKE... THIS... LOUD... AND... VERRRRRRY…. SLLOOOW. THEY... EXPECT... I... CAN’T... UNDERSTAND…” He speaks, staring directly into my eyes projecting  profound pathos.

“But…” I start.

“You don’t get it, Mykel,” he says. “I know you. Sometimes you play the outsider, the one who never fits… but you CAN fit if you want. I have no choice… I’m ALWAYS the outsider… always the foreigner… no matter how American I am.”

He slaps his own cheek. “I hate my face. I hate being born this way. And sometimes it feels worse than ever...”

I feel a giant press, squeezing my lungs… squeezing the air out… making me feel like shit for no reason except the sadness itself. 

My adventure with Andy took place at least 15 years ago. But all these years later, the sadness still creeps up on me when I think about it.

FLASH TO NOW… RECENTLY: TVs, newspapers… The New York press is filled with… stop the press. A restaurant worker is assaulted… cellphone videos prove it… punches traded… three against one… all girls… a catfight. 

What happened? The worker politely asked for COVID vaccine proof. It’s required by law, you know… can’t eat inside a restaurant without your Covid-card. And for that she gets punched? For that, she’s wounded and has to be saved by patrons pulling the evil Texans off the helpless young lady. 

New Yorkers know that Texans are violent anti-vaxxers who don’t care if the whole world comes down with the plague. Just like them to attack a helpless girl only following the law… doing her job. 

It’s all too pat. The video shows the attackers are black women. The attackee is invisible. Facebook is alive with posts… those evil Texans. Not only do they want to make the rest of us sick with their no-vaxxing, but they attack a hostess who’s just doing her job. 

The news always describes the attackers as Texans. The minions… especially the New York minions… some of the most conformist people in the world… build on the anti-Texas outrage. Ted Cruz… Trump supporters… No respect for other humans... They only love guns and their version of God. 

Looking at the rage in the three black women… looking at the reports with no comments from the attacking side… Seems as clear as a knee on the neck that there’s an unreported racial side to this. 

How could you say that Mykel? They’re from Texas. They just want to kill people… unless those people haven’t been born yet, you know, fetuses… They’re the only ones with a right to life… get it? haw haw haw.

BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! The news unfolds… the waitress wasn’t white. She was Asian. The attackers were all vaccinated. They were being pestered a SECOND time to show their proof… Did someone else’s cellphone catch the word Niggers among the crowd… the staff? 

Yes, I was right. I should be happy. I should be shouting I TOLD YOU SO from the top of the Empire State Building… dancing naked with a suck this you dumb New Yorkers sign hanging from my penis. 

But I don’t feel that way at all. Instead, I struggle to breathe...  my chest rises and falls in deep sighs. Slowly it creeps up… deep in the back of my throat… Being right makes me sad. The news: all lies… the people… my friends… true believers of those lies. So sad.

Some movies are called tear-jerkers. Usually chick flicks, they’re structured to make the viewer cry. I remember one called Once Were Warriors… a New Zealand story about the Maori. I cried at that one and then was pissed off at myself for being manipulated into tears. Now that I think back on the movie, I realize I cried from the film structure, not from sadness… like I laugh at Moe, Larry and Curly. 

Tears can come from pain, laughter, anger, frustration… as well as sadness. Sadness can only come from reality… from the realization that something is really wrong. 

There are people in the world who don’t feel the sadness…. who aren’t aware of the pitiable pain of our lives… who watch the TV news and are outraged… but not saddened. That, in itself, is sad. 

See you in hell,

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.  Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

–> The Way Out dept: 

Seems to me, when the government requires creative people to be creative for those they don’t like, the answer is to do lousy or offensive work. This web designer doesn’t like homosexuals? Ok, make a website where every click on every link will bring you to queerbait.com. You want to prove a point by hiring someone who doesn’t approve of you? Have your gay wedding cake with an icing picture of a little boy impaled on a devil-dick. It’d serve you right.

–> My kinda school outing dept: Mass Live reports: Students in Boston rode a party bus, complete with a stripper pole and neon lights, on a school field trip. Why? There’s a national school bus driver shortage. They have to take what they can get from private companies.

Eleventh grade Language teacher, Jim Mayers tweeted about the experience on Sept. 17.

“It is a funny story, but there actually is a real bus shortage and it speaks to major flaws in our education system,” said Mayers. “This in no way is a reflection of anyone involved in planning the trip. We were trying to have a fun day with the kids and that’s exactly what happened.”

I say: the only way to top “a fun day with kids” in a stripper bus with poles and neon… is to have actual strippers. 

–> Rising rents dept: The LA Times reports that a family owned crypt with neighbors Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe is taking bids for a luxury deathplace. Bidding starts at $2 million for the no-bedroom… er… flat. 

–> Shaving lifespan dept: CNN tells of published research that says that eating a single hot dog can take 36 minutes off your lifespan. Joey Chestnut, one of my few heroes, has won the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest for the past several years. He estimates he’s eaten more than 19,000 hot dogs. He’s not dead yet, but the clock is ticking faster than for most people. If he’s buried next to Hugh Hefner, I might visit him one of these days. 

-->Speaking of Death Dept: I just wanted to give a sad nod to the death of Michael Evans... long time ARTLESS drummer and drummer around town (God Is My Co-Pilote, False Prophets, and a ton of others). One of the few people who switched easily from punk to avante garde to jazz to Afro-Caribbean... and just a great guy. 

See you in hell, redux, but I expect Evans will not be there to greet us. He's jamming with Ginger Baker.

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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

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

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

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

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links here... 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's a few 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 too 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