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

EVERYONE Is Above The Law or Mykel's July 2024 Blog Entry

   

EVERYONE is Above The Law
or
Mykel's July 2024 Blog
aka  You're Still Wrong

The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread. 

– Anatole France

“The law roasted her to death at a slow fire.
                        –Mark Twain in The Prince and The Pauper

Practically all laws, whether they forbid me to take your car, outlaw racial discrimination, or coerce the payment of taxes, impose somebody’s morality on somebody else. 
                     –Stephen L. Carter

--------------------

I stand with half a dozen people at the northwest corner of Broadway and Houston Street. A cacophony of horns blasts from the barely moving cars and trucks. If this were a symphony, every thirty seconds or so, a conductor would cue a VROOOM VROOOM screaming from motorcycles... and cars that wish they were motorcycles. No one looks at the traffic lights. The red-handed DON’T WALK sign hides behind the school bus blocking the crosswalk at the corner.

From our standing-at-the-corner crowd, an attractive young woman in twat-shaping shorts, steps from the curb into the traffic. Stepping hard… intentionally… she weaves her way through the cars to reach the divider in the middle of the street. Her move has given me the courage to try it… and I twist and turn my way to the middle divide. So does a mom pushing a stroller. Then a tourist trying to follow his cellphone map.

Slowly we wind our ways through the traffic until one by one we reach the other side of Houston Street. None of us notices or cares about the lights… and it’s the same for the traffic we’re weaving through. They don’t care either.

FLASH TO WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT: I tried asking Google (actually DuckDuckGo) how many federal laws there are. It turns out nobody knows. The last attempt to count them was in the 1980s. The result “was scattered among 50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law.”

Of course, there are also state, city, and local laws… new ones coming and going every day. The laws are constructed –some by accident, some by intention– so that EVERYONE will be a lawbreaker at one time or another.

I haven’t been in high school since 1968. It’s likely things have changed since then. When I was in school, Social Studies taught us that America was a Nation of Laws. Unlike dictatorships… like Russia, where HUMANS rule arbitrarily, in America everyone must obey the same laws. It doesn’t matter if you’re Al Capone or Jane Fonda. The law applies to all of us.

“In America, everyone is equal before the law,” Mr. Greenspan told us. “There is no aristocracy here… no dictatorship.”

Even then, I thought something was fishy about that idea. Al Capone was a gangster. The guy behind the machine gun that The Untouchables were always fighting. But what sent him to prison? TAX EVASION. He didn’t pay the government on the money he stole from those dead guys. It seemed to me that mass murder from the end of a machine gun was a more deserving crime than tax evasion. But that was the only way they could get him.

FLASH AHEAD TO 2325: A teenage Mikhail Boardinov is struggling against the body lock placed on him by Robocop4870-UB.

 “You are under arrest,” says the 4870… whose mellow voice is uncannily like that of HAL in 2001.

“What for?” asks Boardinov. “I know you don’t like what I say sometimes. But I have a right to say it.”

“Of course you do,” answers the Robocop. “This is a free country… You’re not in Russia.”

“Then why am I being arrested?” asks Boardinov.

“You know why,” says the Robocop. “You’re not being arrested for your beliefs or your writing. You’re being arrested for breathing without a license.”

“How do you know I don’t have a license?” asks Boardinov, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with my vocal opposition to the merger of AmazAppleGoogleSoft with the US government, would it?”

“Of course not,” comes the reply. “You know about climate change. You know how bad carbon dioxide is for the earth. Humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. You know that the law requires a breathing license for every citizen… and that all citizens must document at least 3 periods of one minute each day… where they stop breathing in order to help save the planet. You are a selfish bastard… not caring about the earth or anyone in it besides yourself… and if you had a license, you’d show it to me.”

FLASH TO 2024: As I write this, Donald Trump has finished his trial about paying a pornstar hush-money^®, but like Al Capone’s trial, the reason for the court is violation of some business expense reporting.

Donald Trump is an outsider. Before his previous term in office, he was without experience with the Washington politicos. He was a businessman and an entertainer. And he lived his life according to the rules of those professions. I can’t imagine a successful businessman who doesn’t have an accountant or lawyer he pays to fiddle the books. The pornstar makes the news. Few people know – or care – about the buisiness law.

In Florida, they’re bringing Trump to court for boxes of classified documents on the floor of his bathroom. No he didn’t piss on them, at least not as far as I know. He didn’t do anything with them except leave them in his house. And they raided that house. The Feds tore the place apart looking for… for whatever they could find. A little later they raided Joe Biden’s house too. Found a few classified docs. Poof! that was the end of it. No big deal for Joe, but Donny Trump had to go to court.

And now the Repubs are getting into the act. They can’t get Joe, so they go after his kid… cooking up a violation of some federal gun laws for an ILLEGAL purchase of a revolver... a decade and a half ago… and they’re still looking to dig up some law to prove the kid’s an undercover secret agent for Ukraine or someplace else in The East.

GET IT???

There are so many laws in this country that anyone at any time is guilty of violating something. The function of the law is NOT that all people are subject to all laws. That would mean jail for EVERYBODY. The function of the law is to provide a means for powerful people to GET those they don’t like. It allows good-old-boy cops to arrest black drivers going five miles over the speed limit. Not because they’re black (wink wink), but because THEY VIOLATED THE LAW. They were speeding. Laws allow colleges to break up peaceful demonstrations, not because the big donors don’t like the ideas of the protesters, oh no, ever that… but because the demonstrators were OBSTRUCTING. And that’s AGAINST THE LAW.

Mr. Greenspan was wrong. The purpose of the law is not to make some rules that apply to everyone equally all the time. The purpose of the law is to control or punish people the lawmakers don’t like. American elections have become not who wins at the ballot box, but who stays out of court… and the corollary, who stays out of jail.

Along with the US, other third-world countries have adopted the same system. Pakistan and Thailand have both jailed the “opposition,” using the law as an excuse. Nelson Mandela spent 20 years in prison in South Africa before JUSTICE finally beat LEGALITY and he became president.

Of course Donald Trump is guilty of violating the law. Every one of those people crossing against the light on the corner of Houston and Broadway was guilty of violating the law. Every person in the United States is guilty of violating the law… or a law… or multiple laws.

The law does not “hold violators accountable.” The law provides the violation to punish people out of favor with those in power.

See you in hell,

Mykel Board

LATE ADDITION: Just before I’d planned to post this, the Supreme Court issued a decision saying that “Presidential Immunity” means… er… Presidential Immunity. Much of the plot to let the courts, instead of the voters, decide the next president has been lost. That’s a good thing. Friends and regular readers know I’m a Trump agnostic. He’s done selfish and serve-the-wealthy things, Can you say cutting rich and corporate taxes? But he also kept us out of war, opened up a dialog with North Korea, and pardoned thousands of non-violent jailed humans. I don’t think his election will mean DEATH TO DEMOCRACY. Democracy has been dead a long time.

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]

→A FISH LAW DEPT: Hand-fishing without a license is illegal in Kansas. Anyone who plans to hand-fish must first get a hand-fishing license in addition to a hook-biting fishing license. Even with a license, however, it is only legal to hand-fish flathead catfish from sunrise to sunset June 15 through August 31 along the Arkansas River, all federal reservoirs beyond 150 yards of a dam, and the whole stretch of the Kansas River. Everywhere else, you have to keep your hands to yourself.

 → SPEAKING OF FISH AND HANDS DEPT: In Gainesville County, Georgia, it is against the law to eat fried chicken except with your bare hands. As for enforcement: in 2009, a 91-year-old visitor from Louisiana was arrested and charged for eating fried chicken with a fork. 

→ GETTING MARRIED ON THE WAY DOWN! DEPT:  Unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be fined or jailed in Florida. You know sometime, somewhere, a bachelorette parachuted on Sunday. It was her passion. Then, some unrequited state legislator decided to teach her a lesson. I’ll get you, you bitch! Take THIS law!

There are a ton more of these super-weird laws. You can google them. At first, they seem funny. But there’s something sinister behind all of them.

→ IT MAY BE A CULT… BUT Dept: I’ve been on the LaRouche mailing list for a long time. The cultishness and conspiracy focus have usually put me off them. But they are often so logical, and print news that you just can’t get elsewhere. This is a translation of part of a Putin speech… and it makes a lot of sense

See you in hell (redux)
MB

THE NATION AGAIN:

In the newest issue are a couple of worthwhile columns: There’s a good one by Adolph Reed Jr. It’s sumarized in this quote: Liberal policy offers sympathy to those sleeping on the streets, but stops fhort of giving the shewhere to live..

And there’s another good one by the often right, Jeet Heer, on the necessity of cleansing the Democratic Party of the remains of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, and building a true alternative to the Republicans. Also the column talks about the Dems abandoning young people (Hillary Clinton on young followers of Trump vs. Bernie Sanders fans: “At least they shave.”)

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions many I’d 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, superstar comic writer, Justin Melkmann and possibly the next vice-president of the US, Charles Bukkake.

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 on-line 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!

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.

Longtime writer, Randall Fleming, has a new book out about the reversal of flag desecration. In his view, the right And more generally it’s about political violence in the 21^st century.

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.

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

You’re Still Wrong Mykel's Blog for June 2019 or MAKING SHIT UP

Mykel’s Post-MRR Blog

Number ??? June 2019

Making Shit Up

by Mykel Board

Everything was made up by people that were no smarter than you.

--Steve Jobs

I’m tellin’ ya’. I saw it with my own two eyes. We’re recording the extra tracks for GG’s HATED Roir cassette. Yeah, the cassette… musta been in 1986. GG insists on a mic where he can stand and throw himself around. I think Chicken John is on guitar. Evans is definitely the drummer…. a live recording. GG is singing “I WANNA FUCK MYSELF. ” At the end of the song GG screams I WANNA FUCK MYSELF. FUCK MYSELF.

He walks back to Evans and rips a drumstick out of his hands. Then drops his pants and shoves the drumstick up his ass. Up and down… back and forth… Splinters anyone? But that’s not enough… pulling the drumstick out from his ass, he shits on the floor. Not a splatter shit, but a dogshit shit. Individual turds… cucumber size… lying stacked like French bread in a bakery.

But wait! There’s more! One by one, he picks up those turds and shoves them BACK into his ass. Moving his stomach like an Indian fakir, he sucks each one back into its ancient home.

None of that happened. I made it up. You believed it because you know about GG… and you know about me. You’ve heard rumors. You want to believe it’s true. That’s what I want to write about this month. Making shit up.

Making shit up is different from lying… or maybe it’s a kind of lying. Lying is just saying something that isn’t true… usually for your own face-saving benefit.

“The dog must have farted.”

That’s a lie.

Damn, there’s that neighbor’s dog. I love it… I always keep dog cookies on hand for when it paws the door and begs to come in. Leaves a slime over my face after licking me hello. I love her, but she does have poor digestion. Farts up a storm… the smell lingers in the corners like a nerd at parties… You never know when it’s going to make an appearance…

That’s making shit up.

There is some creativity in making shit up. Some extra believability that comes from the surrounding stories. A novel is making shit up.

Though there are always cries of LIES! LIES! LIES! in politics, much of it isn’t lies, but people making shit up.

Most of what you think you know is just stuff people made up. Here’s some of it:

• THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WAS INVENTED TO PRESERVE SLAVERY
• IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRAT IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, YOU’RE VOTING FOR TRUMP
• DONALD TRUMP SAID THE RACISTS AND NAZIS WHO MARCHED IN CHARLOTTESVILLE VA  WERE GOOD PEOPLE
• SUPPORT FOR GAY MARRIAGE AND TRANSSEXUALS IN THE MILITARY IS PROGRESSIVE

All that shit is made up. Some is “inspired by real events” but most of it comes from the same process that created Alice and the White Rabbit.

Let’s take the Electoral College. For the non-Americans and I’ll explain.

The Electoral College is the US system for deciding the president. Instead of just counting the raw number of votes for each candidate, there is a group of electors. More populous states have more electors than less populous states. Every state, though, has at least three electors. Alaska has three electors. California has 55. (NOTE: Alaska was never a slave state.)

The reason for this system was to give some voice to the rural/farming states. If elections were decided by pure vote tallies, the populous states-- with the mega-cities-- would decide every election. The needs of farmers, ranchers, and small town dwellers would never be met. A candidate would only have to win the cities to win the elections. Fuck everyone else. With the electoral college, Wyoming doesn’t have a BIG voice (3 electors), but it has a voice. With direct election, it would not. (Wyoming was never a slave state.)

So where did the idea that the Electoral College was related to “preserving the rights of slave states” come from?

In an article called, “The Electoral College was explicitly designed to protect slavery,” The Raw Story website writes:

In order to guarantee that the nonvoting slaves could nevertheless influence the presidential election, Madison favored the creation of the Electoral College. 

The Convention then accepted the idea of an Electoral College. By this time the Convention had already agreed to count slaves for representation under the three-fifths compromise, counting five slaves as equal to three free people in order to increase the South’s representation in Congress. Thus, in electing the President the political power Southerners gained from owning slaves (although obviously not the votes of slaves) would be factored into the electoral votes of each state.

Yo, buckaroos! The 3/5 compromise is a COMPROMISE… get it? It was included to stop an impasse between the slave states who wanted the entire population counted, and the non-slave states who didn’t want the slaves counted at all. It was NOT about preserving the slave states… but only about representing them. [NOTE: My pal Richard mentioned that, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, EVERY STATE was a slave state. So the idea that the E.C. was created to protect slave states is ipso facto ridiculous!]

The 3/5 compromised decides the NUMBER of electors in the electoral college. Yes, it is unfair. Counting a population that can’t vote to decide votes is nasty and wrong. But that doesn't mean the electoral system should be abolished. Saying so would be like saying convicts who have served their time are not (in most places) allowed to vote. That is unfair. But it doesn't mean that all voting should be abolished.

So while there was a relationship between slavery and the WAY electors were chosen… the connection between the electoral college and slavery is just…. well, made up. And worse, this is 20-fuckin’-19! I can guarantee that in the 2016 election, NO SLAVE STATES were benefited by the electoral college and they won’t be in 2020. (Actually, they’re ALL slave states… but that’s another blog.)

Related to this is the incredible notion that if you don’t vote for the Democrat in the 2020 election “you’re voting for Trump.”

By now, you already know that we have an Electoral College… and it has a useful function. It may need some tweaking, but it doesn’t need abolishing. Even if you don’t agree with that, you know that it won’t disappear before 2020.

The reality is that most states are either Democratic or Republican. In those states, ALL the electoral votes will go to the Democrat-- or Republican. It doesn’t matter how the individual voters vote. NOT voting for the Democrat in New York… or not voting for the Republican in Alabama… won’t change the fact that New York’s electoral votes will go to the Democrat and Alabama’s to the Republican.

I could vote for my penis, and that would have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election (or, for that matter, on the outcome of my penis.) Only in the swing states-- that is the states that change from year to year-- do individual votes count. Those states are: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire. North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. About a quarter of all the states.

Some of those states are BARELY swing states. Arizona, for example, has voted Republican in nine of the last ten presidential elections. And Wisconsin has voted Democrat in eight of the last ten elections. Not very swingin’.

So if you’re not in a swing state (and nearly ¾ of voters are not) … not voting Democrat is… well… not voting Democrat. It is registering a complaint… If anything, it’s a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, and a message to whichever party… I don’t like the shit you’re throwing at me.

That is a far cry from voting for Trump. That part is completely made up.

Next comes Trump calling the Nazis and Klansmen of Charlottesville, VA “good people.”

Here’s what happened: A demonstration was organized in Charlottesville, Virginia. The general organizing theme was around the removal of statues associated with the confederacy and southern history during the US Civil war. There were as many counter-demonstrators as demonstrators. One man drove a car into the counter-demonstrators, killing one person.

On a news show, Donald Trump said the following:

You’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too. (Complete text of the TV interview here.)

On Twitter, Nation Magazine sports writer, David Zirzin says Condemning Israel is not anti-Semitic… calling Nazis and White supremacists “good people” IS anti-Semitic.

I searched for the exact Zirzin quote, it looks like it was deleted. There were a ton of comments that he just made it up. It wasn’t his idea, of course, and I don’t blame him for thinking Trump said Nazis were good people. Lots of folks believe it, even though it was made up. Trump’s comments, in fact, CONDEMN neo-Nazis and white nationalists. But that story doesn’t fit the narrative. So someone just made up the story… putting the “fine people” together with “neo-Nazis”… reconstructing the whole speech… making up a new one… and POW! People believe it.

Now let’s look at the support for Gay Marriage and Transsexuals in the military. Supporting these institutions is PROGRESSIVE. While opposing them is FASCIST.

Is Friedrich Engels FASCIST? As one of the founders of Communism (for the millennials, Communists are not fascist… or Nazi), Engels wrote about marriage and how it is used as an oppressive tool to maintain women in a subordinate position. Marriage and its associate rules push people into forming family units where there is a bread-winner and a housekeeper. It makes one person reliant on the other for sustenance… and even gives a financial value to that dependence. The value makes its appearance in ALIMONY when the marriage breaks up.

In order to encourage marriage, the US government… and private enterprise… awards several bonuses to married people that are not awarded to individuals in other relationships. Take insurance… please!

In civilized countries, the entire population is entitled to tax-payer funded medical care. There is only government-provided health insurance… and it doesn’t matter if you’re hitched or not. In the US, medical insurance is paid for by employers. The law requires employers to pay for the SPOUSES and children of workers. If you’re not married, it only pays for you.

In recent times, there was a “domestic partnership” provision, that required companies to pay for people living together (het or homo), if they registered. They didn’t have to be married. This cost employers a ton of money. With gay marriage, domestic partnership is dead. If you’re not married, someone loses insurance. The employer doesn’t have to pay. The insurance companies don’t have to insure. Thousands of people who had the legal freedom and independence that comes from NOT being married, have suddenly lost that. They’re pushed into marriage for the insurance. And some for the tax benefits of joint filing.

But wait, there’s more: ADULTERY is a valid legal reason for divorce. Divorce means a big payment in alimony. So marriage pushes people into MONOGAMY. A religious rule turns into a legal rule with the stroke of a wedding ring. The free love ideals of the REAL progressives dies in a religious fury encouraged by the government. Gay marriage is NOT progressive. Marriage itself is not progressive, it is government control of love and sex? Does that sound Progressive to you?

Interestingly, there have been some new voices talking about the evils of family… and THEY are progressive.

And Transsexuals in the army? Oy vey! It’s like an antebellum southerner asking Should transsexuals be able to own slaves?

That’s not the question! The question is should slavery be abolished?

Since WWII, the US military is a murder machine... killing more people than all other countries combined. Should transsexuals have a right to participate in that?

Of course not! NO ONE should have that right.

And the last made up stuff I want to talk about is something I’ve written about before, so I’ll be brief.

Lack of gun control causes mass killings and school shootings in the US.

In Switzerland, every family has a gun.Wikipedia reports that Canada has a million more registered firearms than the US, with a population of 10% of that of the US. Canada is one of the most peaceful countries on earth.

Gun violence is not caused by guns. It’s caused by violence. You’ve already read that-- in modern times-- the US has killed more people in other countries than all other countries combined. And, it has cheer-led even more. America is a country that thrives on war movies… or superheroes winning the day… by killing.

America puts less value on life (except, for some, unborn life) than any other country in the world. It’s just made up that guns make violence. It’s easy to see that a culture of violence creates violence. As for local/legal murder, aka The Death Penalty, the US (with the exception of Japan: one death penalty in the past 20 years) is the ONLY first world (sic) country that still has that penalty. So you tell me, how is it GUNS that make the violence here?

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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 quote dept: Speaking of gun laws, Morgan Freeman had some nice words about mass killings in America. He included America’s fascination with CELEBRITY (he is one)… and it’s certainly something to consider.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine?

People who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

-→Unfortunate simile dept: You know what a fan I am of Godwin’s law… which states that given enough time, every internet discussion will bring up Hitler or the Nazis and after that further discussion becomes useless. Can you imagine climate change?

William Happer, chosen by Trump to evaluate the risks of climate change, said:

The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world-- and so were the Jews.
End of meaningful discussion.

--> Jokes become reality dept: Just like 4chan’s successful attempt to provoke the easily-offended left. (They pretended that the OK sign was a secret WHITE POWER sign… and thus made it one.) It’s clear that this is another case of a joke becoming reality. I think 4chan is the Yippies of the right. 

 

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