I WAS WRONG or Mykel Board's Blog for January 2026

  

I WAS WRONG or Mykel Board's Blog for January 2026

  

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's January 2026 Blog/Column

I WAS WRONG

by Mykel Board    

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

                -- Henry Ford

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them
                -- J. Harold Smith

You have to own your mistakes, otherwise your mistakes own you
            --Paulo Coelho

For nearly 50 years, I hated Opera on principle. It was fat ladies and guys who “sang” the word Figaro over and over again. And the plots? My God! Love and other mushy shit. Opera was something to make fun of… like the Marx Brothers did. Opera isn’t punk. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is punk. Outrage is punk (if you haven’t seen it, do!) Aileen Wuornos is punk. The Ramones, The Dead Boys, The Sex Pistols are punk… but opera cannot be punk… or so I thought. A Drink Clubber showed up… he’s an opera singer. He put me on the guest list.

I was wrong. Opera can be pretty punk. You got this girl who works in a cigarette factory. She’s got two guys who want to get into her pants. One of ‘em ends up stabbing the girl to death… at a bullring!! What could be punker? In case you don’t know, that’s the plot of Carmen.

This, being my first blog entry of 2026, will talk about some of the times I’ve been wrong. As I come to the end of the legend that is me… (heart attack in September)… it’s time to come clean. From punk to politics… I know it’s hard to believe… but I’ve been wrong a few times. And now I want to talk about it.

Let’s first time travel back to 1966-67… Hicksville High School. Yeah, I went to high school with Billy Joel. When I was there, he was two years older than me and had a band called The Hassles. Now, he’s two years younger than me… but that’s show biz. I never saw his band. Me, and my best pal Dave, had better things to do. We took the Long Island Railroad in from Hicksville to Manhattan. We went to the city...Cafe Wha... almost every weekend to see The Fugs. We often got stoned… before taking the train. I remember once I took a handful of mom’s diet pills. I got so high, I fell in love with the train door.

That was the thing in Hicksville High School. The cool kids (called TRACK ONE… with advanced placement classes and lots of Jews) smoked dope. The dumb kids (called TRACK THREE, often taking “shop” or “home economics” classes), drank booze. I never had a full can of beer until I went to Beloit College in Wisconsin. You cannot live in Wisconsin without drinking beer. Not drinking beer is against the law there.

That’s when I realized I WAS WRONG. Marijuana made me want to sit alone and read books… often the same paragraph... over and over again. Alcohol made me want to kiss strangers and dance naked in the street. My love of drugs over booze was a big mistake… corrected as a teenager and 20-something. Though at Beloit, I have to admit to doing both.

FLASH TO NOW: I've just wiped up the few seminal drops I can still spill… after 20 minutes looking for-- and finding-- exactly the right video on ThisVid porn site. You can't get good scat vids very many places, so you take what you can get. Time to put away the laptop, zip up my pants and watch some real TV.

I turn on my just bought VIZIO TV, grab my new ROKU remote (a gift from a fb friend) and look for the next ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR streaming TV show. I want to watch them all… Found it, and Dennis Hopper’s in it! My favorite American actor.

BANG! A commercial… for Starbucks. A store/company I hate on principle. Crazy high prices, awful reputation for treating their workers like shit, ugly mega-corp forcing the little guys out of business. I wish I could jerk off into their frappacino.

And this commercial??? Does it talk about how great the coffee is? Does it say they let you sit there all day doing your homework on your MacBook? Does it brag about all the crap they put in their coffee, call it by an Italian name and charge 6 bucks for it?

NO!!! They talk about how the shlubs who work for them have a chance for advancement… how they throw their baristas a few dollars to pay for a college course or two... NOTHING about the product, only what good employers they are.

Later come more ads: One for Meta (the drag-name of Facebook/ Instagram/ WhatsApp). What’s in the commercial? Do they talk about how facebook keeps you on-line for hours… checking back if that last cat picture has as many LIKES as you'd want? Do they explain how you can avoid local phone charges by sending messages and calls through the Internet? Do they entice you to post your personal twerking videos to earn more hearts than your neighbors have?

NO!!! The ad starts with a very working-class looking guy… flannel shirt… overweight… 2 days’ beard growth… talking about his home town and how it suffered when the factory closed and the business moved to China. And how people were poor and they thought they were lost until META "invested" millions of dollars in a new facility housing computers and AI machines. How the city came back with all that money,.. How META made jobs. Not a word about the products or services… just about how good META is for the community. Bringing jobs and income... what the locals need.

Back to Dennis Hopper: he's a piano player and there's some mobster connection. Also a sexy female singer and… another commercial… This one from Amazon.

[NOTE: While I never go to Starbucks, I have to admit being addicted to Facebook, and using Instagram every once-in-awhile. I also use WhatsApp to communicate with my non-American friends. And I use Amazon both to buy and sell from, though my buying is mostly from gift-cards I earn by taking stupid surveys that pay in Amazon gift-cards. I feel guilty for my sins in using these sites.]

Back to the Amazon commercial: Does it brag about next day delivery? Does it say it sells anything from American Cheese to Zambian Socks? Does it tell you how it makes your home so comfortable and product ready that you never have to leave?

NO! It reports that 28% of its business is working with small businesses. It tells us about how Amazon "supports" small businesses, and how they can't do without it. They tell us how kind they are in providing shipping materials and delivery services for their small business babies. They are not a mega (or MAGA)-business. They are a public service, providing for the needs of small businesses in your neighborhood.

Right-wingers and corporate Democrats call anti-racist jacket-patches and driving (non-Musk) electric cars virtue signaling. The implication is I'm on the good side and I want you to notice it. I call these commercials virtue advertising. Companies brag about their benefits to society and their workers, rather than the quality of their products. And I hated it.

Then, in a flash, I realize I’m wrong. That virtue advertising means these assholes are worried. It means that the boycotts, the strikes, the petitions, the letters of complaints are working. Virtue advertising is a sign of FEAR. Those evil corporations have learned they are not loved. They have to change and tell people about the change.

Does Starbucks give college scholarships so people won't think they're evil? They hope so. Does Meta invest in local economies, create jobs for local workers, build factories that include kiddie play spaces, because they're afraid that people will think they're shithead exploiters and polluters if they don't? Yes! And they advertise those actions.

So my hatred of virtue advertising has changed to a clenched fist victory salute. These ads are admissions of guilt. They know their image and do something about it, THEN advertise that doing. Virtue advertising means the good guys won… not completely, of course, but we made a difference. Let's celebrate it… not complain about it.

The next wrongitude I want to talk about has to do with my arthritic hand, stent-supported heart, loss of hair, radiated prostate, limpy-flogger, increased bowel gas… There's a reason old farts are called old FARTS.

When I was a young-un of 18 or 40 or 60 I was usually the oldest in my crew… just a few years older than the others, but older. Younger people were sexier, brighter, more willing to try new things… think new thoughts. I avoided the real oldsters.

In my 20s, when I hung out at the 9^th Circle, we used to make fun of the crowd at Ty's or Boots and Saddles. We called those places "wrinkle bars."... laughing at the patrons as well as the locales.

By the time you read this, I'll be 76 years old. Maybe just back from a birthday party celebrating the 90^th birthday of one of my best pals. Old people may not have the smooth looks. Though, for some people… age is a fetish. Check out ThisVids' geriatric porn. Lots of those MILFs and DILFs are OILFs. oldsters, doin’ the dirty.

For more than 50 years, I’ve been the oldest member of any group that would have me. In college, the the crew I organized under the banner OPERATION MAXWELL (named after the Beatle’s song Maxwell’s Silver Hammer), was 3^rd year me and a bunch of freshmen. When I was with ARTLESS, Gavin, the guitar player looked so young that we told people I was his dad. The idea of hanging out with old (older) people was as appealing to me as eating mountain oysters.

FLASH TO MINUTES BEFORE I WRITE THESE WORDS: I just finish wrapping a re-gift to one of the two best friends met at the start of the COVID plague. One is in his early sixties, his boyfriend turns 90 on the day before Christmas. This is how we met:

For those who don’t know, I’m the big macher of a group called Drink Club. Once a roving troop, we now meet every week on Thursday night at the Peculier Pub, where we drink ourselves into Friday. During COVID we started meeting outside at the Peculier. The weekend before we meet I send out email to about 150 people. I’m lucky if 6 show up. The official starting time is 8:32 PM.

Tonight, I sit by myself at our usual table outside. It’s a little after nine and no other Drink Clubbers are here. At another table, closer to the street, sit these two old guys… balder than me. Next to their table a black wheeled walker is parked. The shorter guy has a full gray beard and looks to be the older of the two. He’s laughing at something said by his partner… slapping the table… head thrown back… the beer on the table making waves in its glass mugs. His friend gestures… opening his arms to the sky... as if planning to embrace the universe. Then both laugh. And again.

I stand up and walk over to their table.

“Excuse me,” I say to them. “I am Drink Club. Usually, we have a crew of people here, but tonight no one showed up. You guys seem to be having so much fun… can I sit with you?”

“Sure,” says the younger guy, “my name’s Ed.” He gestures toward his senior, “that’s George.”

“I’m Mykel,” I say and sit down. Not one Drink Clubber shows that entire night, but I have a great time… and learn that Ed and George live together just down the street from me. They’re now my best friends. (Except for two girls who I may tell you about some day.)

Get it? OLD PEOPLE ARE (or at least can be) AWESOME. They’ve seen, done, screwed, joked, drank, more than you have. Maybe more than you ever will. They’ve got it… and you’re still lookin’ for it!

Tomorrow is the first of George’s several 90^th birthday parties. It’ll be at Ty’s, a NY gay bar that’s at least as old as Ed is. George is a celebrity there. His advancing walker is treated like the horses pulling the king’s coach in London.

Avoid Old People?? Boy, was I wrong.

The last wrong I want to write is more political. Ever since Dad made me mow the lawn for my allowance, I had the feeling there was something wrong with work. Not the expenditure of energy or brain work, but the exchange of labor (or mind) for money. When I read Bob Black’s The Abolition of Work sometime in the 80s, I could only think YES! YES! YES!

Why should people spend more than half their waking time just so they can eat, clothe their nakedness, and travel from home to a job over and over again? That’s not humanity, that’s slavery.

As a corollary to anti-work, comes the natural thought of being anti-Union. What do unions do? They support work. They want more people to work. They want to legitimize work… more cookies for the slaves instead of abolishing slavery in the first place.

As I grew older and was forced into the work machine myself, I saw that I’d been wrong. Unions want shorter hours, LESS work, more time off. They don’t legitimize work, they put reins on it.

No, it’s not as good a solution as ending work completely… but it is making the lives of the slaves better than they would have been otherwise. That’s something I’ve got to support.

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 TO THE BLOG in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

→Two wrongs make a right dept: Starbucks is a great example of how virtue-advertising and unions can work together to make life better for those trapped in the work cage. You can read about all the good stuff the Starbuck’s union has done, and wants to do here.

→ Getting It Up At My Age dept: The NY Post reports on a survey of 687 “older Americans.” The survey asked about about their sexual habits and preferences. The results revealed that those in their 70s get it on even more than those youngsters in their mid-to-late 50s. I’ll drink to that.

→ They were wrong dept: Even a few presidents have apologized for making mistakes… Okay, that’s something. But I want to make it clear that I’m not really apologizing. I’m just stating that I think differently now than I thought before. It is interesting that most of the presidential apologies involve the deaths of other people. That is very American. I’m not sure, but I’d guess that, among countries not involved in war, Americans kill more people than the citizens of any other country in the world. No one apologizes for that.

→ You can’t say that, dept: I just came across this BANISHED WORD LIST. It’s not clear who is doing the banishing, but most of those words I don’t use. I guess I’ll have to start using them now that they’ve been banished.

See you in hell (redux)

MB

AFRICAN LINKS:

Albert aka Alberto Melody is the reason I went to Kenya. We met on facebook a couple years ago. He has a blog you should take a look at: Albertomelody.blogspot.com. Tell him Mykel sent ya. Oh yeah… He’s looking for friends his own age. So if you’re a 20-something and interested in Africa… or just meeting new people. Contact him at: albertletowon42@gmail.com

NON-AFRICANS

Jim Testa, a long-time friend, journalist, editor, musician and wordsmith, has an interesting substack about music and more. You can find it here.

Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him.

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.

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, best band name of the year.

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

Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it here.

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.

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. I’m glad they didn’t call it “anti-defense.”

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. mykelboard@gmail.com

NO EMPATHY or Mykel's August 2023 Blog

   

No Empathy... or Mykel's Blog for July 2023

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's August 2023 Blog/Column 

No Empathy....    

by Mykel Board

“We are surrounded by people who appear to be happy, people who clap their hands and dance in the streets, people who sing for the pure joy of singing… and you think they don’t suffer? You think that they are somehow excluded from the battle of the human condition-- death, infirmity, lost love, poverty, crime and all the rest of it. We’re all half mad.”

--Robert Wilson

“There is only one way to understand a lonely bench in a park: Sit on it; watch whatever it is watching; listen to whatever it is listening to! Sit in spring, sit in winter, sit in summer! To understand something deeply, you need to live its life!”

- Mehmet Murat Ildan

[NOTE: All the people and events described in this blog are true. No names have been changed. No one is innocent.]

I’ve just left the cancer center. Prostate… what old men get. I’m an old man. Radiation surgery… cyberknife they call it. Five cybercuts in 10 days. Not painful… but requiring a weird diet of non-fiber food: white bread, popsicles, canned fruit. A double laxative at night… then a Fleet enema in the morning just to make sure nothing is left inside. After that, a half hour on the operating table.

Your choice of music while they cut. First was Dixieland Jazz. Then The Velvet Underground, Today: Patti Smith. I have other choices. At a hospital, I don’t want to ask for something dead: (Kennedys, Boys, Milkmen, Grateful). It might make the staff uncomfortable. Right now, they’re helping me off the table just as Patti asks if I know how to pony... like Tony Maroni.

I leave the building… on the street now. I need to find a post office. The Upper East Side… I don’t know this neighborhood. I’ll ask someone. Here’s a fellow patient, skinny guy… about half my age… just leaving the cancer center.

“Excuse me,” I ask, “do you know where there’s a post office nearby?”

“Sorry, I’m not from around here.”

“Thanks anyway.”

I ask a security guard… standing in front of the next building taking a smoking break. I love it: a smoking break next to a cancer hospital.

“I know there’s one close,” she says, “but I’m not sure what street.”

I thank her. Ah, here comes a very determined-looking woman… wearing a backpack… body leaning forward as if marching into battle… I approach her.

“Excuse me,” I say, “do you…

She snarls… shakes her head… waves her arms above her head as if brushing away a gnat attack. Stamps the ground... harder as she passes me and disappears around the corner.

I don’t get it? I’m 5 foot 3 inches tall… pushing 80 years old… barely standing after radiation treatment. Did she think I was going to attack her? I don’t understand the cruelty. All she’d have to do is say, “I’m sorry,” and then give an excuse. She wouldn't even have to stop. I just don’t get the inhumanity.

BOING! That’s it. That brings me exactly to what I want to write about. First some definitions (to quote Humpty Dumpty: words mean what I want them to mean… so don’t bother looking this up):

SYMPATHY is feeling sorry for someone. When someone dies you send a sympathy card. When you see a wounded animal, you feel sympathy. You feel unhappy because someone or something else is suffering.

EMPATHY is the ability to feel the emotions of someone else... to mentally put yourself in their jockstrap. To understand what makes them tiktok. To “get it” as if from inside another person.

You’re probably familiar with Jim Testa. He’s known for half a century of music writing… for supporting bands that nobody’s heard of… for supporting friends (including me) that no one else would dare support. A great human being. That’s why it hurt… when Jim said, “Mykel, I’ve known you for a long time… and one thing I’ve gotta say… again… is that you have no empathy.”

The remark comes after I say I refuse to be bullied by the language cops. I’ll say Colored People if it fits what I’m talking about… or if it proves a point. How is People of Color okay, but Colored People offensive? And what’s the problem with being offensive anyway?

“Mykel,” says Jim, “I’ll say it again. You have no empathy.”

FLASH TO CALVIN: Calvin sits on his milk crate… the color of the crate slightly lighter than his skin…. He gets darker in the summer. His back is against the side of the building that corners Bleecker and LaGuardia. He wears a black baseball hat, a plain gray t-shirt and bluejeans. On his feet, some kind of sneakers that are neither new nor fashionable. In his left hand is a plastic soda cup with a few coins on the bottom. He sees me from his corner… smiles and waves.

“Calvin!” I shout from across the street. “How you been doin’?”

I cross to talk with him. Simultaneously, I pull a single dollar bill out of the watch pocket of my jeans… where I keep my homeless money.

“You on your way to your favorite place?” Calvin asks me, nodding toward the Peculier Pub, my regular hangout.

“How’d you guess?” I joke, dropping the dollar into Calvin’s cup.

“You goin’ back to South Carolina this summer?” I ask.

“Mykel, are you kidding? You know how hot the summers are in New York? Double that for South Carolina…”

He interrupts our conversation to talk to some passing folks… all with purple NYU T-shirts… talking with each other… gesturing with their cellphones.

“How you doin’ today, folks?” He says, rattling the coins in his plastic cup. They keep walking… like he’s invisible.

Calvin and I talk a little more. My sister lives in South Carolina and we’ve talked about that before. Calvin’s family is from a different part of the state than my sister is.

“It’s almost like a different country,” he tells me.

I often think about Calvin. Where does he go at night? How does he get to South Carolina once a year? Hitchhike? Do people still hitchhike in 2023? What’s it like 20+ years after the last time I hitchhiked. What’s his life like? I can’t imagine!

FLASH TO MANNY: In a wheelchair on the other side of Bleecker… down a little bit.. usually in front of the CVS on the corner. About 50, a big guy... missing a few teeth on the bottom… I drop a buck into his plastic cup. Even though it’s nearly 90^o out, he’s covered from shoulder to knees in a blanket.

“Mykel,” says Manny. “ Gotta talk to you. I always see you hangin’ out with these Japanese guys… girls… whatever. Lemme warn you. Be careful of ‘em.”

“But, I like Japanese people. They’re smart and fun.”

“They act like they’s your friend,” he says, stealing a glance to the right and left. “But secretly, they hate you. They want to kill you. Take it from me… I know.”

What happened to this guy? Is he talking about the Japanese or Asians in general? Did he serve in Vietnam and end up in a wheelchair? Why would he say something like that? I can’t imagine why he feels like that. No clue to what it must be like to have that kind of fear and hatred inside... stewing as he sits in the heat and asks people for money.

FLASH TO KEVIN: If Manny is big and fat, Kevin is a monster. From neck to knees… rolls and rolls of it… His body is just a lump… a huge lump… any particular part: chest... stomach... back... ass… They fold into one another… just blobs… impossible to know where one part ends the next part begins. He’s like a huge mound of jello on a bench. Not really ON the bench, but dripping over the bench.

Kevin’s bench is in front of H-Mart, the Korean supermarket chain. I often shop there. Not expensive... good Korean food... good Japanese food at two-thirds the price of the Japanese stores. Kevin’s cup doesn’t get a dollar from me. I know him too well.

“Mykel,” he tells me twice a week... when I shop at H-Mart, “I don’t want your money. I know you’re going into that store. Bring me a Coke when you come out.”

I say to him, “Kevin, you say the same thing to me every week. I know you by now. You know they got a sign in the store… in the soda section… by the Coke. HOLD ONE CAN FOR MYKEL TO PICK UP FOR KEVIN.”

He laughs.

We shake hands… bump fists actually. I go into H-Mart… buy some frozen Korean pancakes, red miso, pork dumplings… and a can of Coke. I pay... walk out… freeze. Kevin is on his feet… leaning forward… yelling…. Both fists clenched at his side… the muscles on his neck throbbing.

YOU WHITE BITCH! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU WON’T EVEN TALK TO ME? DON’T EVEN SAY “I’M SORRY!”

And the rant goes on. He stands and shouts down the street at someone I can’t see. I’ve never seen him like this. He could have a stroke. If he were white, he’d be red in the face. I steal behind him… quietly set the can of coke on the bench… he’s still yelling not seeing anything but the object of his rage. I turn toward Houston Street and head home.

FLASH TO WILL: Will’s from Texas… Austin… BA in film from UT. He arrived in New York at the beginning of this year. His plan? Live on the street until he earns enough money to get a place of his own.

25 years old, Will is the thinnest of my homeless friends. He’s amassing his future fortune by working for DoorDash, a food delivery service that makes its workers compete with one another to score points for quick service and good ratings. Orders flash to cellphones close to either pick-up or delivery points. The first person to accept… provided he has a good rating… gets the job.

Will also makes money on eBay… learning and visiting thrift-shops… anywhere the subway goes… pickup up DVDs and electronic doodads… and “flipping them” on eBay… two to ten times their original value. Will travels the city wearing a huge backpack… for his deliveries and his thrift-store finds.

Will is a schlemazel. Two months ago, I saw him with a shiner… not the beer, but the black eye.

“What happened?”

“Mykel, it was weird… these two crackheads… they chased me. They wanted to mug me… I fought them off… screamed at them. One got me right in the face. Blam! It’s a little better now, but still hurts.”

“I’ll buy you a drink,” I tell him.

While waiting for orders from DoorDash, Will hangs out in a mid-town library. He’s got a laptop in his knapsack, and can connect and post on facebook. Today marks a week after the black-eye incident.

“I was attacked again… mugged… wallet stolen… all my money… at swordpoint!”

This is New York. People get mugged. I understand. But mugged at swordpoint? In the subway in 2023? That is impossible… or would be for anyone not Will.

“At least I still have my cellphone.” continues the facebook post. “I couldn’t survive without that. Doordash! What would I do?”

Give it another week.

“I fell asleep on the subway. Woke up… my phone was gone.”

Will sleeps on my couch once a week or so. I watch him planning his next day. After the phone is gone, he’s still planning… visit Verizon… it’s insured… get a replacement… how will they transfer the number? Where’s the nearest Verizon? We sit on the couch to work out the details. But I think: How can he do that? How can he keep going? He could easily move back to Austin where its familiar… easier… more friends than one old Jewish guy who’ll give up his couch once a week. What gives him the power to keep it up… and to smile and be friendly… and not to hate the world? I can’t imagine.

POW! it hits me… like a Fleet Enema. Jim is right. I don’t have empathy. I can’t put myself in other people’s jockstraps. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live on the street. I can’t see myself hating Japanese people. I don’t know how it feels to be confined to a wheelchair… to be black… to flip DVDs from the Salvation Armies. I think about that… wonder… but I can’t feel it. Yep, Jim’s right. I don’t have empathy. Sympathy yes! I live for sympathy. Sometimes I even feel sorry for people who are much richer than I am. But empathy? No, I just can’t do it.

Shit! It’s late. I gotta get to today’s prostate zapping. That enema... that music choice… I need to stop at the bank first. POW! Out of the house, down Broadway… what’s this. Some girl with an ID tag… she wants me to contribute to something… just to talk to me about children or animal abuse. She moves to block my path. I snarl… shake my head… wave my arms above my head as if brushing away a gnat attack. I stamp the ground harder as I pass her… not saying a word, and then, I disappear around the corner.

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]

→ Headline of the week dept: Speaking of homelessness. I saw this headline on the internet: Homeless Man With No Arms Stabs Tourist

I hope the tourist wasn’t Will.

→ Speaking of Will dept: CNN reports DoorDash is jumping on the speedy delivery trend. The company is now offering 10- to 15-minute delivery. Okay Will, you’re really gonna have to jump to it to pick up the food and bring it to the lazy shit who ordered it… in a quarter of an hour!!! Make sure you bring your pepper spray, though you might not have time to use it.

→ Pearls Before Swine dept: It seems that TickTockers have been promoting “Yoni Pearls,” small bundles of a variety of herbs. The idea is to insert them into your vagina (if you have one) to help improve odor, remove toxins and treat bacterial and yeast infections. “Reported side effects are, itching, dryness, stinging and cramping." I donno, I can think of better things to put in MY vagina.

→ I try to be a philosopher but I Kant dept:  This from a facebook pal of mine:

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.

This time, Lev Golinkin writes about how the Western (and pro-war liberal) media praise Ukraine fighters who have exactly the same philosophy as US white supremacists. And, as I still can’t figure out how someone can be Pro-Israel and Anti-Trump at the same time. Israel has more public places named after Donny than anywhere else on earth. In any case, there’s a nice letter from Bob Gris (no link, sorry) quoting the evil Alexander Haig who called Israel “the largest American aircraft in the world that cannot be sunk.”

Finally, there’s a nice discussion of Bernie Sanders and how this guy usually gets everything right.


You can read more, or even subscribe at: https://www.thenation.com/



LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

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

Here's a start:

Jason Rodgers sent me his book Invisible Generation… free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian (in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I find the book, I’ll give you some more details.

Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachlorette!

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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

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

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

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

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

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