You’re Still Wrong Mykel's Blog December 2019 or My Equality Ain’t Equal to Your Equality!

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

December 2019 Blog/Column

My Equality Ain’t Equal to Your Equality

by Mykel Board

PART ONE: Why don’t they just get a job?

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -Anatole France

Columbus Circle… almost in Central Park… splendid view… overlooking the magnificent greenery of the park. A glass of wine sits on the table in front of me. It was poured from a bottle with a label picture of a very long house… etched in red… with a flag on top at one end of the house and the word: POMMARD underneath. I don’t know that word in French… maybe it’s a name… or a place… or has something to do with an apple.

The waiter… a thin white guy… mid twenties with a perfectly trimmed beard… brings a plate of something and sets it in front of me. I’m not sure what it is. It looks like a baby lobster tail covering a pea which is in turn covered with a sauce carefully dripped over the legume… puddling slightly on the right side of the plate. No, there’s something yellow-brown in there. It looks like a grape. A spiral of onion sits on top.

The dish is one course of a prix fixe dinner offered by Per Se, a fabulous French restaurant with a different fixed menu every day. A full course meal… including desert… is a flat fee... Just $225 a person… plus another hundred and a quarter for wine… plus tax and a tip... of course.

That’s for ten courses, including nice homey comfort food: macaroni and cheese… French style. Oh it’s just too droll.

After wining and dining my way through the dinner, I have just enough room left for a couple dollar slices of pizza and a mug of Yuengling. I’ll grab them on the way to the subway.

I’ll take the D train to Broadway-Bleecker St. I can stop at the Bleecker Street bar between the station and home.

Notice: The NY Transit system is downsizing. Trains run slow. Finding a working escalator or elevator is as likely as finding a Social Justice Warrior who doesn’t find me offensive.

Yet they’re downsizing the repair and most other transit departments. Fewer people to do EVERYTHING except one job. And in that one job, the plan is to increase the workforce by 500 people. Did you guess it? TRANSIT COPS!

Instead of building restrooms in stations, they can arrest people who piss off the platform. That’s something I’ve done myself... more times than I’ve farted in a Mexican restaurant. But wait! There’s more: instead of giving poor people free transit passes like I’ve heard they do in Chicago, they can arrest people who jump over the turnstiles. Instead of building public housing… they can use jails to house the blanketed homeless who live underground.

“They could just get a job,” say those who are annoyed that cardboard box houses on the platforms are offending their visual space, “but they don’t.”

Yo asshole! They could just have a crowbar up their sleeve and smash your head with it. These people are hurting no one. They are causing no pain, destroying no resources. That’s certainly more than can be said about the bank-working keyboard tappers in the skyscrapers next to them. Or the scummy Real Estate Agents who do nothing but work for companies that raise rents and throw people out on the street… or the useless IT developers who bank thousands from moving electrons around to make it easier for your cellphone to collect information to sell to advertisers so they can market more directly to you.

Street begging is the highest form of work-- and the least destructive. They ask for money and you give it because you want to... the purest of transactions…. In return you get a smile, or maybe a god bless you. The perfect vendor-customer relationship. Why penalize these vendors? In the meantime, you have quarter-pounder tossing minimum-wage burger flippers… who (barely) earn their living by destroying people’s health. What’s in it for them?

Meanwhile people spend $300 on minuscule dishes with some god-awful French wine.

Look, buckaroos, you don’t end poverty by making it illegal. You end poverty by taking money away from those who have too much and giving it to those who don’t have enough. You don’t blame the police for mishandling the mentally ill. You train people to handle the mentally ill so you don’t have to rely on the cops in the first place.

Last month, I wrote about my time in Punxsutawney PA (see part two) with the working poor of a small town famous for one day a year. The roofer who just likes being under the blue sky. The former college professor who is fed up with students who don’t want to learn how to think and schools that don’t want to teach how to think.

There may be homelessness in Punxy, but I didn’t see it. Yes I saw poor people. Yes, I felt people hanging out at the library who were somehow… I donno… off. But there were no cops throwing them out. There were two restrooms, available to all.

There were things I didn’t see… and my friend Vincent seems to think I’m romanticizing a bit. He’s the one who sent me the email in PART TWO.

PART TWO: Department of Corrections

It’s rare that people I write about answer what I write. It’s rare that they even read it, I’m afraid.

One of the many things I’ve learned in my 60 years of shit-slinging is that if I write about anyone (except my pal Sid Yiddish), that person will not like it.

I could write: She was beautiful… like a Roman statue.. alabaster… if it weren’t for the tiny birthmark on her chin, you wouldn’t believe she was real.

The next day I’d hear. “What’s the matter with you? Why did you write about that birthmark? You’re making me look ugly to people who’ve never met me. You’re an asshole and I hate you.”

Writers lose friends by writing about them. So it was with much trepidation that I opened the email from my Punxsutawney friend that I called Vincent, the former college prof.

Instead of hating me, he was correcting me. Something I usually pay for from ladies in tight black dresses… with riding crops.

VINCENT: Your revelations about " Vincent" are not accurate. I left academia after 9 Universities given their idiocracy failure to teach students how to think critically; that is, none of the liberal arts/philosophy/scientific methodology is taught in these middle-tier institutions. Most of these students have no interest in curious learning and WE should not encourage most of them to pursue a liberal arts education. Instead, two year vocational training is much more practical, and would save them money and professors a great deal of misery.

Indeed, most of the small town citizens are friendlier than those of large cities. Nevertheless, you were not here with sufficient time to encounter their abject dismissal of the benefit and, perhaps, their disdain of the intellectual life. My friend MB hates lawyers, politicians, and other professionals who have invested years of study to achieve their status. While I understand his animus, he and the others despise book learning as a waste of time. Why? Because they had difficulty in abstract thinking in school. I have begun to understand that sentiment, I have realized that cognitive ability varies a great deal; and a person can earn a good living engaged in hard physical labor. Hence, I advocate schools that direct most students to consider vocational training and faster employment; we as Americans must not claim that everyone should pursue a liberal arts education.

MYKEL: Good reason to quit academia. If there is anything lacking in the American people it is the ability to think critically… or think at all. There is too much teaching what to think… especially enforced by narrow-minded students and greedy administrations… and not enough HOW to think.

But I disagree on the solution. Vocational training is the PROBLEM… not the answer. Students use their educational training for an occupation. They’ve invested in an “education” as job training. They have no interest in “curious learning” but they should. Higher education should not be a kind of air-conditioning repair school on a $100,000 budget. The purpose of higher education --and the purpose of education in general-- should be to encourage thought... exploration... wonder... logic.. in the students. Let them do with it as they will. We put too much emphasis in getting a job, earning money. There is no dignity in picking up garbage for the city… or shuffling electrons for a bank. There IS dignity in being able to use logic, compassion, innovation, in every day life.

VINCENT: The notion of "Trump country" for these people is that such LGBQT and illegal alien rights do not deserve special treatment. Alternatively, you might be surprised by the number of Lesbians in this town. I am not; many of them have experienced difficult relations with men and decide to raise their children alone. That is a cultural aberration.

MYKEL: I don’t doubt that most people oppose “special treatment” for people different than they are. (Though I don’t expect they would mind special treatment (under a different name: politeness, consideration, fair compensation) for themselves. In most cases, though, it is not the “special treatment” that is the problem. It’s defining what special treatment is. For example, gender-neutral restrooms are not “special treatment.” Everyone has access to them equally and can use them in the same way.

I’ve written a lot on the subject of gay marriage, but the unequal treatment is not in the gay part, but in the marriage part. Why are certain rights: extended health insurance benefits, alimony, hospital visitation, in some cases even sexual contact… given to married people, but not to singles. The “special rights” are to those who are married regardless of gender. Marriage is a religious institution and should be treated as such. The government has no business in encouraging it with special privileges.

VINCENT: "Earnest" was misunderstood. He has been a "roofer" for over 12 years, long before Trump had any influence.

With respect to gun ownership, this is "hunting" country. I do not understand the shooting of a stationary animal and how it is in any way "sporting." Yet, even those with significant education love it.

MYKEL: Thanks for the correction about Earnest. I’m sorry for the error. There is also another good point here. City or country… not all the people are the same. The fact that there’s a hunting show on in a bar, doesn’t mean everyone in that bar likes hunting.

VINCENT: This town has fallen economically because the coal industry deteriorated over time, including the factories and supporting industries. Those individuals having reasonable intellectual ability have left, e.g. my class in 1975. The result is that most of the residual residents can earn only marginal incomes, at least for a number of years or until they can secure a better paying job; and the latter often depends on nepotism or otherwise knowing someone having some power.

I have to conclude that your years of experience have not exposed you to the struggling masses. Most of the women I know are working 2 or 3 jobs just to survive. However, in the history of labor in this and other nations is this unusual? NO! We cannot guarantee a perfect life with each person receiving a fantastic income.

MYKEL: I don’t know anyone who wants a “perfect life”… or wants one guaranteed. Life itself is not perfect… we all die. But the society CAN guarantee a DECENT life for each person. That is a home, enough food, heat in the winter, cooling in the summer. Some untorn clothes (except for the punk rockers who like TORN clothes). We don’t all need $300 prix fixe meals, but we all need food and drink.

VINCENT: You are correct that these plebeians--including myself, I guess--will continue to attempt to survive. Se la vie! Yet as you have implied, they are the salt of the earth--if they instill in their children the traditional values of Americans.

I don’t think the “traditional values” of Americans have much value. I’ve already mentioned the fallacy of the “dignity of work.” I also dislike the idea of self-reliance. My Japanese students don’t get it when I explain that Americans think it’s better to do something yourself than to ask others for help. They see the society as SOCIAL. And that if they can offer help, they should… and if they need help, someone else should offer it. I agree with them.

VINCENT: I am not saying or implying that you are denigrating these rural folks. However, I do believe that your analysis was a bit skewed in some ways. I guess mine would be too if I tried to assess New York City denizens.

MYKEL: Again, you’re right. I was only in Punxsy a month. When I was in Mongolia one of the professors at the university told me, “You’d better write that book in the year you’re here. After that time, you’ll realize how much you don’t understand.”

-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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

→ Nice Try dept: Mashable reports that Droogie, the handle of a California hacker, figured he could outsmart the DMV by choosing a license plate that would throw off the computers. He chose NULL, figuring that when the computers read the plate number, they’d toss it out. He figured wrong. What happened is that all the tickets on cars with plates that couldn’t be read went to Droogie. He was the null one, and he got all the NULL tickets-- $12,000 worth. I don’t know that this proves or disproves anything, but it’s fun to read about.

→ Sucker dept: True Activist website posted a story that McDonalds has adopted a policy that bans buying food for homeless people. Since I was in the middle of writing this blog. I had homeless on the mind, and thus was perfect sucker-bait. The story is false. Evidently some employees of a McD’s in Manchester UK told customers that, so that they could get some odoriferous people out of the building. They made it up on the spot. I need to be more careful.

→ Whoops dept: The government of South Dakota had started a campaign to inform people that they were working to reduce methamphetamine use in the state.

This follows on the… er… heels of another South Dakota campaign, this one aimed at teaching drivers not to jerk the wheel to correct an ice skid:

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:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog
• And another 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.

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

Let's Talk Race or Mykel's Post MRR Blog #25

YOU'RE STILL WRONG

POST MRR COLUMN 25

Let's Talk About Race

by Mykel Board

"We had grown up believing white to be the color of all the important things , like ice cream, aspirin, ribbon, the moon, the stars.” – Lloyd Jones

I'm happier than a young feminist firing an old Jew. Let's Talk About Race... the new fashionable topic... right up my alley... I talk about it often, but it never gets the attention it deserves. 

Race's kissin' cousin IMMIGRATION is getting a lot of cyber ink lately, especially thanks to Donny Trump. I'm gonna talk about that too.

The SCENE: You have a medium-priced apartment in a low rent part of the city. Yeah, it's far from downtown, but it'll do. There's a bodega down the block... beer and chicharones. There's a bar on the corner where they know you by name and pour out that pint of Yuengling when you walk in the door. It's a place you can live.

A truck pulls up to the next building... a moving van. You lean out your window to check on the action. Behind the van is a big black SUV. A Negress, hair done up in a bright-colored headscarf-- wearing a matching dress-- slides heavily out of the passenger seat. She opens the back door. Four screaming little black kids-- two of each gender-- pile out onto the street. A very proper-looking colored gentleman is the last to leave the car... from the driver's seat. Wearing a black suit, with a stiff white shirt and tie, he puts his hands on his hips and bends back to look at the building.

You think, “Yes!! Safe!!”

When colored people (or Mexicans) move into a neighborhood, what do people think? "FUCK, it won't be long before I can't live here anymore? It'll be too expensive. All the shops I know... my friends... NOBODY will be able to stay. Rents will go up like penises at a strip club. Food will go up. I'll be forced out."

I don't think so. That's not gonna happen.

But let some white bearded guy, with too skinny jeans and a topknot, move in and... it's the end! Next come the organic bakery, the hipster hat shop, and STARBUCKS! Let's get this clear. White people make neighborhoods unlivable. There, I said it.

Little known fact: except for Godfather's Pizza (and I'm not sure if that qualifies), every fast-food chain in America has been started by and presided over by a whiteguy. But walk into one of those restaurants and see who is actually doing the work. It sure ain't white guys. The ones MAKING, SELLING, CLEANING UP, are not white! White people don't work. They sit there and OWN... that's it. White people wouldn't know how to work if you paid them... and you do!

Take my local bank... please! I walk in and a black guy greets me at the desk. I walk past him... up to the Indian woman behind the safety glass... ask her how much money I have left. Not a white guy in sight! But my credit card late fees are NOT paying these guys... the guys who are actually working. They're paying some white gym bunny to sit on his ass and watch internet porn in between NASDAQ trades. THAT IS NOT WORK.

Those knee-jerk defenders of white people talk about crime. They talk about black on white crime... black on black crime. They talk as if reducing the number of pickpockets and dope smokers was REDUCING CRIME.

White-guy supreme, Rudy Giuliani, brags about REDUCING CRIME in New York during his regime. He brags that the city has become safer because of his war on Negroes.

Let's get this straight: GUILIANI did NOT reduce crime in New York. He reduced crime STATISTICS. While he was gathering up homeless people and shipping them off to Camden or Newark, there were a bunch of white guys at Citibank and Chase, committing crime after crime. They were stealing from bank customers, defrauding homeowners, MAKING people homeless. Eventually the feds stepped in and made the banks pay billions in fines. Unlike the single-joint marijuana smoker under Mayor G... none of the white people went to jail. Jail isn't for white people.

Clearly more people were hurt by the banking crimes of (mostly) white guys, than by any Negro stealing a hubcap in the South Bronx. But for Mayor G... That ain't a crime.

Want to limit crime? Then make some laws. It's not Broken Windows that are the problem, but Louvered French Windows. My proposal for the first new law under President Sanders: Establish a MAXIMUM PERSONAL WEALTH. If you have ten billion dollars, you don't need ELEVEN billion dollars. Come on white guys... give it up.

The rich are destroying America. They make prices go up, buy up real estate, force people out of their homes. Wealth creates poverty. If you have money, go away... leave... NOW! Move to Russia. I don't care, but don't buy up The United States. Live in Beverly Hills if you want, just don't move to my neighborhood.

As long are there are rich people, crime will not end in America.

FLASH TO IMMIGRATION:

What about immigration? It's related to race because every immigrant to the US belongs to some race or other. I say Donny Trump has the right idea: A WALL. I wish! But we can't build a wall where it really belongs... in the North Atlantic. We need a flotilla!

Yes! I'm talking about EUROPEANS. 

In 2010 there were almost 5 million European immigrants in the US... enough to populate every hipster hair salon in New York... for a year! These were only the official ones... the ones in the records. Millions more came on tourist visas... and... er... forgot to leave. And the legal ones? Many of them work in “higher-skilled occupations.” (This from immigrationpolicy.org.)

You know what that means? NON-WORK. They diddle away at banks and IT companies, getting incredible salaries for making ONES and ZEROS... pushing numbers from one computer to another... doing NOTHING that will make your life-- or the life of anyone you know-- better.

How do so many Europeans enter the US? EASY! All they have to do is register on-line, show a passport and POW! They're in. Do we stop the ones ready to drop puppies? Anchor babies for French or Germans or Brits? You bet we don't. They'll be Americans... little European-Americans ready to make space to bring their parents and who knows what other Daddy Warbucks over here.

Let's make this clear. I have nothing against immigrants... if they qualify as REAL IMMIGRANTS. What does it take to qualify? The answer is built right into the statue of liberty, composed by Jewess, Emma Lazarus:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

That doesn't mean investors, property owners, millionaires, bankers. Huddled masses are not bearded IT execs. Wretched refuse doesn't refer to insurance actuaries, or suits with a summer villa in The Hamptons. Poor! Get it? Homeless! Understand? Take your bankroll and spend it elsewhere. Please!

If I were President Trump, I'd add a few more requirements to the ones listed on Ms. Liberty. (Not many-- I think the lady got it mostly right.)

Extra Requirement One: Immigrants must have REAL JOB SKILLS: carpentry, roadwork, restaurant bussing. Things involving people, tangible things, services everybody can use. "Creating a lunch-break scheduling app" is NOT a REAL JOB SKILL.

Extra Requirement Two: Immigrants must speak Spanish. MOST of the Western Hemisphere speaks Spanish. People spoke Spanish in America before they spoke English. Europe is a hodgepodge of languages. Walk ten miles and people speak something else. For the sake of a unified hemisphere, EVERYONE should be able to speak Spanish. At least we can make sure our NEW AMERICANS can do that.

Look, I don't want to blame Europeans for the accident of their birth. They can't help it. And if they want to visit the US, I have no problem with that... though I'd insert a microchip under the skin to make sure they don't overstay their welcome.

In Montana, we could make a EUROTOWN. Move all those $700 a night hotels, those ridiculous Fendi and Coach shops... those $300 a dinner hoity-toidy restaurants hosted by celebrity chefs from the Food Network... Put 'em there. Europeans-only hotels, where for $700 a night, the white travelers could have a bed, a bathroom, and a souvenir bar of Ivory Soap at their jacuzzi.

Meanwhile, in real cities, we take back real estate for bodegas and taquerias. Open a bikini bar or punkrock club. Have a thrift shop. Make the city a place to live again.

Yeah, buckaroos, let's talk about race and immigration. There's a lot that needs to be said.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me 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 by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Kiss this dept: A study by anthropologists at the University of Nevada and Indiana University surveyed 168 cultural groups and found that only 46% "kiss in a romantic or erotic way." Among those kissless groups are many countries in Black Africa, New Guinea and the Amazon. Some Pacific cultures have fake kisses involving "passing mouths over each other without making contact. What's with the lack of eating face?

"Some of these people never go to the dentist," says William Jankowiak, one of the study authors, "They never brush their teeth."

-->Tarred prayers dept: Mayor Tony Tarber of Jackson Mississippi has a solution to the city's pothole problem. With repair estimates at $743 million, Mayor Tarber offers a cheaper solution.

"Yes, I believe we can pray potholes away," he tweeted. "Moses prayed, and a sea opened."

–> What's in a label dept: This from Utne Reader:

There are over 300 different eco-labels on packaging. Those that rank with "virtually meaningless" include HYPOALLERGENIC; the word is a creation of cosmetics advertisers in the 1950s.

FRAGRANCE FREE merely indicates that a product doesn't have a conspicuous scent, substances that cover up or neutralize odors can still be present.

A product labeled NON-TOXIC "won't kill your kids if they ingest it, but still might contain chemicals that can cause serious health problems.

More: BIODEGRADABLE has no enforcement nor clear definition. The manufacturer is free to decide what exactly NO ADDITIVES means.HORMONE FREE has no legal standing and can be used on beef even if it contains hormones such as testosterone. NATURAL, CRUELTY FREE and FREE RANGE, all have no legal meaning and can be applied at the manufacturers' discretion.

The label CORPORATE SCUM, while usually not found on packaged goods, has, on the other hand, a clearly defined and identifiable meaning.

-->Long overdue dept: Sid Yiddish reminded me that I should thank my friends at PORK magazine in Portland for printing some of my columns. They're quarterly, so they can only do one out of four... but THAT'S a big help. Thanks guys. It takes balls.

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: And on the side of the ball-less... take Maximum Rock'n'Roll... please!

I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll for censoring me. Send your comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com (or post on their facebook page) with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

-->Happy 5776 dept: I had a nice Rosh Hashanah dinner with friends, including Mr. & Mrs. George Tabb. George is another veteran writer recently canned from MRR.
“Every columnist there now is a transsexual feminist,” he told me.

“What about Lefty Hooligan?” I asked. “You know, the old guy-- a goy-- willing to sell his father to keep his column.”

“It's Leftisha Hooligan, now,” he answers. “Didn't you know?”

-->And: I'm still on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, CDs, posters, and a few 7-inch singles. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

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