Mykel's April 2024 Blog/Column: The Obvious Answer

 

Mykel's APRIL 2024 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong

Mykel's

April 2024 Blog/Column

The Obvious Answer

by Mykel Board

Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies.
                                    – Andrea Dworkin

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.
                                                                                 - Abigail Adams

Some women do not masturbate for pleasure; they masturbate to make a political statement: to remind us that women do not really need men             
                                                                    --Mokokoma Mokhonoana

April again, spring, renewal, most every culture and religion has a holiday… Christians-Easter, Jews-Passover, Muslims-Nowruz. Fools ignore this and think it’s like any other time of the year. They’re wrong.

People who know me, know that I’m an organizer. Thursdays, I have Drink Club, a small eat, drink, socializing group. Once a month I organize Eat Club, where we go to a different restaurant every month. I also have a ROUNDTABLE (sorry no URL) where we gather at the Algonquin hotel, like Dorothy Parker and friends in the 1920s. Every month a different topic with a somewhat varying group in the discussion… yes with food and drink. Finally, also every month, I have a haiku group… also meeting at the Algonquin… where we talk about our own poetic output.

Yet until now, I’ve never organized a political group. My politics usually don’t match those of anyone else… or at least too few to make a group out of it… until now that is. To understand what I’m doing I’d like you to imagine one of those awful prescription drug commercials on TV. Cut to the smiling grandpas… the kids playing ball in the park… the family barbecue. In the background read too fast and too faintly is the warning message.

_________ will likely cause frequent nausea. Other side effects include weight gain, lethargy, increased urination, food cravings, mood swings, backaches and joint pain, swelling of the ankles, fingers, and face, heartburn and indigestion, hemorrhoids, and insomnia. Some instances are fatal.

If this were a drug, I bet you’d be pretty hesitant to try it… maybe asking your doctor for an alternative. And what if this drug were forced on you? Or less seriously, you were connived into taking it because everyone else is.

Well, this isn’t a drug… but the side effects are real, and there are more than in the warning above. I’m writing about the side effects of PREGNANCY… especially pregnancy as the result of heterosexual sex.

Andrea Dworkin recognized it, but, for the most part, she was brushed off as a kook. I was one of those brushers. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how right she was. Or at least close. Rather than contempt for, I’d say power over. There’s no doubt that, on the whole, men have more physical power than women. The reason there are women’s sports and men’s sports is that combining the two would result in women losing most of the time.

Feminists say that rape is not about sex, but about power. I’m not sure about is the right word, but certainly involves. 92% of all rapes involve heterosexual sex. One of the reasons rape is so easy for men, is that, they’ve got more power. It may be taboo to say that in this all-things-are-equal era, but down deep you know it’s true.

And rape is only the most extreme. What of the everyday stress and insults that go unreported, but irritating?

Flash to Monday morning at Scamson bank. Jack, the branch manager, is already behind the inquiry desk, preparing for the first customer to ask him how to move money from his friend’s saving account to his own checking account. Jack likes to get in a few minutes early, and be there for the entrance of Madeline… his (not-so) secret crush. She’s a few minutes late as females are wont to be. She walks in, past the front desk as she does every morning.

When she walks past him, Jack speaks in a loud voice, accompanied by a smile. “Hey Madeline,” he says, “has anyone ever told you you have nice ass...sets?”

Madeline thinks sneer, but Jack is the boss. A sneer is a good way to get fired, so she pretends not to hear him. “And he continues. “Did I tell you how much I like your compound interest? I mean I go for that double-digit inflation there.”

Madeline continues the walk to her cubicle, wondering whether to sue the bank for harassment.

Stop right there! Don’t you see? The reason guys make sexual comments… talk about women’s bodies… is because the want to possess it! They want to make that asset… that inflated double digit... their own. The talk feeds the fantasy. Guys make the jokes, send out the sex-filled talk because they want to get laid. If getting laid… at least getting laid by women… stops, then the fantasies also stop… or at least drop dramatically. How many guys have fantasies about bank robbery? It’s illegal! They don’t think about it… and even if they do, they don’t talk about it in public.

I’ve had this discussion with dozens of friends… of any gender you can name. Almost all have come to agree. Then it occurred to me... like a lightning strike in a summer storm. There is a way to stop the he-said/she-said defense of what might be rape. There is a way to stop the disease of pregnancy… or at least reduce it to near zero. Just think… none of those nasty side effects. The population explosion would implode. Rape would nearly disappear. The fundamental inequality of power would be reduced to almost nothing. How could we do that? Easy answer: Make heterosexual sex illegal!

If I were 50 years younger and a bit more athletic I’d jump and click my heels at the revelation. Yes! Yes! Yes! It’s so obvious. The primary manifestation of the power imbalance… gone with the stroke of a president’s (or a governor’s) pen signing the new law.

You may have read about the organization I started there and then: Policy Initiative to Mitigate Power. It was easy to draw up papers and a statement of purpose… It’s all in the name. P.I.M.P. will change the world. Already almost a dozen Congressmen and women have climbed on board. And the best thing is that both the left and the right support us! The issue could be the great unifier. Conservatives who want sex education removed from schools fear that it will encourage heterosexual sex. After the P.I.M.P. law takes effect, the only class in sex ed would be not to do it. Trump-hating liberals constantly harp on Trump’s alleged involvement with heterosexual sex. After the P.I.M.P. law, all that becomes a clear violation.

Let me tell you a little bit about my organizing adventures. You might be surprised at the warm reception I received. First I made handouts… in the shape of those square religious tracts. On the front was printed: No matter who is your God… P.I.M.P. is the answer. I just stood at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Broadway, and handed them out to anyone who would take one. You can imagine that in the middle of Times Square that would be a lot of people. It was.

Only about 1 in 5 took one, but that was enough. My first taste of ecstatic joy was when a young woman (blond, thin, with a couple outstanding attributes), took one, walked off, and then came running back to me.

“This is wonderful!” she said. “Do you know how much time I waste tightening my belly, dyeing my hair, spending hundreds of dollars on makeup to please… men!” She said the word with a wrinkled nose and an expulsion... like you might spit out a cockroach in your burger.

Since the start of P.I.M.P. there have been dozens… maybe scores of people… men and women... who tell me how great they think a het-sex ban would be. Maybe 70% of PIMP is women, but in that last 30% are a bunch of gay men with the idea something like that means more for us.

One surprising group was the number of conservative women. Members of Libs of Tiktok or Moms for Liberty. Women who put kinship first and preach devotion to home, husband and family.

One member of that crew was front and center in that big demonstration we had in Texas. Maybe you read about it. She was early middle age, with jet-black hair and bright red fingernails.

“I’m happy to see you here,” I told her, “and you surprise me. I thought maybe the conservatives wouldn’t like us because so many conservatives focus on the family. Family usually means het-sex.”

“But don’t you see,” she says, “sex has been the disgusting thing we have to do in order to make “a family.” I nod, stroking my chin as if I had a goatee.

“Artificial insemination is even better than artificial intelligence,” she continues. “We don’t need to do IT.” She pronounces “it” as if it involved fellatio with a reptile. “It used to be our wifely duty... expected as part of family values. P.I.M.P. and science free us from that. Now, they have no excuse to make us perform that vile and loathsome act. We see a doctor… get an injection… down there. And pow! We got it. Yeah, we still have to suffer the side effects of pregnancy, but thanks to you, we’re free of the old etiology.”

‘Wait! Wait!” I say. “What does etiology mean?”

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” she says, shaking her head. “Get with the program… and you wrote the program.”

I smile.

“It means, the cause of the disease,” she tells me. “Sure we still have suffer the symptoms, but we’re free of the old cause. You’ve saved us the pain… the embarrassment… the penetration by beast erect, rather than penetration by doctor’s syringe.”

So where do we go from here? Politics… that’s where. This month the P.I.M.P. party has officially registered with the US government. We’ll have candidates on the ballot in 5 states in November: New York, Texas, Florida, California, and Utah. Feminists and family-ists support us in the Blue and Red states. Besides those, we’ll have ballot initiatives in another half dozen states, pushing for the prohibition of heterosexual sex. We are the only party that can unify America. We are the only ones that will get citizens to join together without actually joining together.

Imagine a nation… a world… without hetero-sex. If we really believe it, we can really do it. And as the world calms down… as sexual tension relaxes and confines itself to one gender. As most of the problems in the world begin to disappear, we will only have ourselves to thank.

See you in heaven,
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]

→ Look to Other Countries Dept: Stopsex.com reports that there are now seven countries that have banned heterosexual sex: Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Benin, Burundi, Tajikistan and Togo, In every one of those countries, instances of rape… and family strife... have decreased.

→ You, you dirty rat dept: The Associated Press says rats have gotten into confiscated weed at New Orleans' aging police headquarters, munching the evidence as the building is taken over by mold and cockroaches. The city's police chief complains. "The rats eating our marijuana, they're all high."

→ I Told You So dept: In case you didn’t believe me. The NY Times reports that Citibank is being sued for “a culture of sexual harrassment.” Here are the exact words: Ardith Lindsey, a managing director at Citi, alleged that her 15-year career at the bank had increasingly become a “traumatizing” experience, especially after she ended a relationship with a former supervisor. The supervisor, Mani Singh, then sent her dozens of threatening text messages.

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:

I never expected to see myself as a centerfold. I know several of my enemies would like to see me fold… but not exactly like this:

That’s in the zine Trey Mayhem sent me recently. It’s called Murder and Mayhem and it’s also a record label Murder and Mayhem records. You can see the blog here. Or/and contact Trey at TreyofToday@yahoo.com

My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachelorette!

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 who has recently died in a motorcycle accident.

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. It’s hard (and costs money) to send him email. So. If you remember how to write a letter… send him one at: Kyle Nonneman, #16534211, Snake River Correctional Institution, 777 Stanton Blvd Ontario OR 97914-8335

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

Throwing Away The Key or Mykel's January 2024 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's January 2024 Blog/Column 

Throwing Away The Key    

by Mykel Board

Sexual harassment at work... is it a problem for the self-employed?

– Victoria Wood

The liberal idea of tolerance is more and more a kind of intolerance. What it means is 'Leave me alone; don't harass me; I'm intolerant towards your over-proximity.
- Slavoj Žizek

Being desired is not the same as being harassed, and we do not have to punish or shun the person who sees what is special about us.

- Sarah Schulman

I’m not a pervert. I’m Italian.

--(former) Gov. Andrew Cuomo

Imagine a skeleton key… a metaphysical key… It opens locks others can never open. It opens doors… you can walk right in. Others wait for hours in the cold rain. It’s a key you always carry… You can’t leave it at home… You can’t forget it… No one can steal it… It’s yours and yours alone.

Would you complain? Would you say that the doors you open are dishonestly opened? Would you say that the doors… the treasure chests… the secret passageways... opened by the key... are unfair? Would you kvetch that the locks require a key in the first place? Would you grumble that others are allowed entrance by working for days… weeks… months to be let in, when all you have to do is have a little key insertion and BINGO, the lock opens?

Listen up ladies! You have the key. It rests securely between your legs. Free for your use… at least until menopause… often beyond. Yet you complain. A prominent producer wants to trade a little nookie for a starring role. What do you do? Throw the guy in jail. Put him and his walker behind bars for offering you a shortcut to fame. What did he do? Forcible oral sex????? The guy’s a cripple and he “forcibly performed oral sex”??? All you had to do was press your knees together and stand up. But why bother? Others have to work for their part… audition… do screen tests… wait weeks for a “maybe.” You have the key.

Work for the governor? Your chance to grow in politics… get ahead just by being nice. That squeeze… that hug.. you got… Oh my God, he pressed against my breasts… I’ve seen harder breast-pressing between two disgustingly hetero jocks greeting each other in a bar. You couldn’t put the guy in jail, but you got him to resign.

Then there's 

Stormy Daniels, who did better. Trump pays over $100,000 in a “non-disclosure” deal. What a bonanza… greedy Stormy discloses anyway. Then she accuses the president of “defaming” her and tries to get even more money! Can you get greedier? I’ll take your money then sue you while disclosing what you paid me for NON-disclosure. Ah the profit in #MeToo#... if you’re early. But let me tell you, girls, in your #MeToo#itude, you’ve ruined it for others.

From Theda Bara to Mae West, to Jane Mansfield to Bo Derek to Drew Barrymore. How many others fucked their way to the top? Marilyn Monroe screwed the President of the Untied States… and his brother! How many others followed the same path? All of them? Is that wrong? Evil? They’re sex symbols for fuck’s sake. Sex Sex Sex Fuck Fuck Fuck. Are you saying that someone who represents sex is wrong for fucking? We called them “sex symbols” for a reason. What’s wrong with you... forcing women to throw away that chance?

Maybe it’s too late. Maybe you’ve already ruined it for everyone... taken away the skeleton key.. the free pass used for decades by beautiful seductive women who want to play the part of beautiful seductive women. Want to make it in the movies in 2024? Go for an interview, fill out a few forms, just like ugly people have to do. No more shortcuts. Your fellow females have seen to that.

But wait! It gets worse. Believe the women! Is the new call… Right up there with It’s not WHEN it happened, but THAT it happened… a complete rejection of the concept of forgiveness I’m not a fan of the new mottos. I’m old fashioned. I like innocent until proven guilty, and this one by Confucius: Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass. but that thinking is sooooo last century.

Yes, you’re greedy scum. That’s clear. This is America and that’s the way things work here. But don’t call yourselves feminists… at least not in the sense of people who support women. You’ve ruined the most important benefit you’ve got. You’ve made it HARDER for women to get ahead… to make it big. A few of you will strike it rich with #MeToo#… more will be back in the mailroom with no way out. That’s what you call feminism.

I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ve never been a woman. [Aside: One of the few things in my life that I’m ashamed of is that I’ve never even worn a dress. Even those awful frat jocks wear a dress on occasion. On Halloween… or football celebrations… they are at least free enough to express their inner transgenderism. Once or twice, maybe… but they do it. Me? Never… and I’m ashamed.] 

I can imagine the harassment... sitting by yourself at a bar (though there are always the free drinks from strangers), walking down a dark street by yourself, unable to relax at that deserted place in the park, an unwanted pregnancy. Those are things that I rarely –or never-- experience. Womanhood DOES have its disadvantages. I’ll surely admit that.

But I’ve also never experienced a job offer traded for a blow-job. I’ve never been able to a get a better tip by showing more leg. I’ve never been able to shake my tuchus and get an extra $50 bill stuffed in with the Christmas bonus.

Those benefits of being a woman are being destroyed… by YOU… in the name of feminism you’re bringing equality instead of by raising up… by pushing down. Instead of by enjoying those few things that are biological perks of twat-endowment, you’re wringing cash out of them and then destroying them for use by anone else in the future. But wait.. it could (and will) be worse.

Some cultures, like the Italian and Jewish cultures, touch each other all the time. We hug greetings and partings. We make conversational points with a slap on the shoulder or the pinch of the knee. We’ll have an arm around each other’s neck.. gender ignored… just to show friendship.  

You’re killing that now. Both Andrew Como AND Joe Biden have been accused of inappropriate touching. Woody Allen and Steve Tyler too. I’m no fan of Joe Biden, but come on… he hugs kids? How many Hugs Not Drugs bumper stickers does it take to explain that hugging kids is A GOOD THING. In 2024, kids live enough in screen-induced isolation, from phone to computer to TV, Now they have to live where adults are afraid to TOUCH them. That means involuntary lifelong isolation… except maybe for sex. And then, touching WILL ONLY mean sex… not friendliness, affection, or mishpocha. And it’ll be YOUR FAULT. Plus, given the speed of technological development, I would be surprised if sex itself weren’t outlawed. Why go through that gross humiliation when you can be artificially and sterilely inseminated by a machine?

FLASH BACK: Groupies are a tradition in music. Musicians got laid. Ian Dury’s Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll was a report card of what everyone knew. Yet in this millennium, singers from R. Kelley to Michael Jackson to punk rockers I’ve never heard of are accused of sexual misconduct. Look! This is Rock’n’Roll… the only sexual misconduct is NO SEX!

Sorry, forgive the digression. It’s all related but not the point.

So what exactly IS the point, Mykel?

Shit, is that you Literary Device? You come to harass me… tell me its just about consent or maybe age and consent.

Do I need to give consent when Granma Board gives me a big hug hello? Or maybe only women need to give consent. Antioch College (now gone) reached the height to stupidity in it’s required consent forms of last century… with dozens of questions that must be asked and answered in the affirmative before moving from homeplate to first base.

1. Can I hold your hand?
2. Can I kiss you?
3. Can I unbutton your shirt?
4. Can I touch your breasts?

Each act checkmarked and okayed before the next. This was the 1990s, before hugs were bad and the press and all reasonable people laughed at the Antioch requirements. Are they coming back?

If I were of a conspiracy mind (I AM of a conspiracy mind), I’d say #MeToo#, the general re-demonization of sex, the concept of forcible touching, the abandoning of forgiveness under not when, but that, the monetization of “successful” sex-related accusation… and the Internet. All of this IS part of a conspiracy… a conspiracy of isolation. Divide and conquer… or at least control. Stay home by yourself. Don’t touch me! There’s nothing you can do with another human that you can’t do individually from behind some screen or other. Artificial Intelligence becomes the ONLY intelligence. Virtual reality becomes the ONLY reality. Quick, where’s the hemlock?

If I were just plain cynical (I AM just plain cynical), I’d say the complainers are just being selfish… wanting cash and fame… and they’ll sacrifice anyone else to get it. These days they have it easier than Marilyn Monroe did in the 1950s. They don’t need the extra inconvenience of undressing and dressing again. Plus, even ugly people can play. Maybe I was wrong in when I started this blog. Maybe the special key women have to blast their way to the top has not disappeared, it has only changed. Instead of a blowjob for a movie part, all that’s needed is some legal papers… and a muff. If the twat-key user plays her cards right, she won’t need the National Enquirer. Publicity? Read the newspapers in 2024. The New York Times has BECOME the National Enquirer. Entire political parties give news coverage and publicity to talentless women that other talentless women could have only dreamed of in the olden days.

Selfish? Well, if Mae West spreads her legs to become a little chickadee, that won’t hurt Bo Derek’s chances to use her money-maker to become a 10. But if some shlubess is rubbed by Donny Trump in a dressing room… and she uses the media and the courts to earn her fat dollared hold accountable (the drag name for REVENGE), then the chance for the next gal will be lost because of the touch-fear induced consequences. The #MeToo#-ers, the Stormy Daniels, the Rose McGowans, plenty more... those in first get the bucks. The harassment game is just like the stock market. You gotta jump in early. Right now, the average settlement for a work-related harassment is $53,000. Celebrity cases bring ten times that. But the accusers know… and don’t care… that they’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg. They get their money, and people… especially Americans… will stop touching one another ever again. It may be illegal for me to wish a special suffering on those accusers. That’s the ONLY reason I won’t do it.

Prairie Home Companion author and personality Garrison Keiler, puts his arm on a woman’s back to console her after hearing sad news. She accuses him of SEXUAL HARASSMENT. He’s fired from his job… where he’d worked for over 40 years. The nicest, kindest gesture. The touching of compassion gets thrown into court and the kindness is apologized for and punished. It’s just crazy.

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]

→ Note 1: Some of the ideas and their expression were inspired by a great book called The Invisible Generation by Jason Rodgers. You can find it on the Autonomedia webpage.

→ Note 2: To be fair, there is some controversy as to what went on with Garrison Keiler. You can Google it (DuckDuck Go) if you like. But you really don’t have to. I’m sure your mind, such as it is, is already made up.

→ Godwin’s Revenge Dept: It thrills me that the Israeli army has discovered the final solution to the hostage problem: KILL THEM ALL. It seems to me that was tried before and didn’t work. But those Hamas folks think they can intimidate with a couple hundred kidnapped women, children and (mostly) men? Hah, Mr Gaza! Just try intimidating with a bunch of corpses! We’ll fix that for you! Send in the corpse makers. As of this writing, there’s about 100 hostages left. Already starting on solving the problem, the Israeli army just shot three of them who were waving a white flag. Some evidence points to 8 more Israeli bullet-riddled hostage corpses. 97 more to go, I guess. Not to mention the 20,000+ goyish bodies scattered to the Gaza winds by Israeli forces…. Hey! I told you not to mention that!

→ I’m moving there dept: MSN reports that the chief of staff at Paraguay's Agriculture Ministry, Arnaldo Chamorro, was replaced after admitting he'd been conned into talks and signing a memorandum of understanding with representatives of a non-existent country. Chamorro told reporters that purported officials from the "United States of Kailasa" had told him the country was a South American island. I wonder if he’ll sue for harassment.

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:

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. It’s hard (and costs money) to send him email. So. If you remember how to write a letter… send him one at: Kyle Nonneman, #16534211, Snake River Correctional Institution, 777 Stanton Blvd Ontario OR 97914-8335

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

A Touching Sentiment or Mykel's Blog for November 2022

  

A Touching Sentiment

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's November 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

They injected a cold germ into people, and found that those who had more hugs had a better immune response to the cold virus. And then studies showed that if you get hugged before a stressful condition like giving a speech or doing math problems, people do better. Performance is better if you’ve been hugged before the stress. – JONATHAN JONES (reporting on psychology experiment)

Physical touching is one of the clearer types of sexual harassment. Many courts have reasoned that physical touching is more offensive than verbal harassment. – Kokozian Law Firm

Physical touch is one of the main ways we express and receive love, and for millions of people, this is their primary love language. – Pastor Joe Wittwer

Don’t touch me, I’m NEW WAVE. – Mykel Board

It’s a tight squeeze. Post-Covid airlines… overbooked, lines from here to eternity. I wait on one, my print-out in one hand… my Secure ID^® in the other. In front of me is a white shirted blue sports jacketed man… head bent down, thumbing away on his iPhone 14. Behind me is a somewhat chubby man in his late thirties standing next to a somewhat chubbier woman around the same age. With them is a boy about 10… wild… running… chasing his younger sister. The children run very close to my legs.

“HIYAAAH!” yells the boy pushing the girl forward. She lands next to my right leg. Her bright dress, sweeps the floor, picking up the shoe scrapes of dozens of annoyed travelers.

“Jamie! Stop it!” yells the man, calling my attention away from the prone girl.

Then I feel it. A kind of pulling on my leg… first aware of it on my belt, then the pantleg itself. I look down and see the little girl. She’s using the cloth of my pants to hoist herself up to standing. Then comes the voice. This time it’s the woman who speaks.

“Madison!” she yells, “Never do that. Don’t ever touch a stranger.”

Mom changes her focus to me.

Bringing her eyebrows together, she looks like she’s going to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” she says to me. “This is the first time in an airport for the children… and the first time since Covid that they’ve been around other people. They don’t know how to act.”

“No problem,” I say, reaching down to help the little girl to her feet.

“No!” shouts the man, sounding panicked, “I’ll help her. Thank you.”

And he walks over to the little girl, picks her up, and walks her gingerly to her mother.

When I was in my 20s I penned the “song” Ugly People With Fancy Hairdos, for my first “band,” ART, THE ONLY BAND IN THE WORLD. One of the lines was

Don’t touch me, I’m NEW WAVE.

Now, nearly 50 years later, I’m still fascinated by touching… how it works in different cultures, and how people are dying from lack of it.

When I was a 20-something, I remember seeing a reprint from an information booklet given by the US military to soldiers shipped to Vietnam. The book talked about Vietnamese culture and what soldiers had to look out for.

You’ll often see Vietnamese men walking on the street holding hands with other men. This is not a homosexual gesture. It is simply a way for Vietnamese men to show friendship.

You get the implication? If it WERE a sign of homotude, then it would be perfectly logical to take offense… and you’ve got a gun, Buster.

It’s one of the many things that got me interested in Japan. As a Jew, I was used to being touched. Jews… and Italians… and even the French... are all over each other. Hugging, back-slapping, poking in emphasis…. It wasn’t strange at all that Andrew Cuomo used as his defense I’m not a pervert. I’m Italian. It’s not only family, but strangers, new acquaintances. Sex --the most involving kind of touching-- comes easier to us than to the goyim. (I’m NOT including Italians among the goyim.)

OLD JOKE:

Q. How do you get a Jewish American Princess to stop fucking you?
A. Marry her.

NOTE: The Hasidim (the Jews with the curly sideburns), do not like men touching women who are not their wives. But even among the Hasidim, same sex people will be touching all the time… and you’ll see men dancing together, holding hands. Nothing sexual, just the joy of skin.

Not growing up a Hasid, reading about boy-boy hand-holding in Vietnam was a shock to me. As a kid, I saw Jewish guys with their arms around each other… even tweaking a nipple in jockish play.

When I first go to Japan, I have the feeling that the Japanese never touched each other. Their greetings are bows, not handshakes. In public places, it is taboo to touch another person, unless s/he is a family member. Or so I thought.

Then, I get drunk.

I’m in an izakaya… a small Japanese bar, where strangers drink beer and sake and eat food off of sticks. I’m out with the boss of the local Toyota office, and several of my students… new employees of the company.

A couple beers and a couple more sakes into the night, I feel a hand rub up my back to my left shoulder… then a squeeze.

“Sensei!” comes a voice very close to my right ear. “Thank you for working with us.”

I look over. It’s the boss… half hugging me… half using my body as a cane to support his drink-weakened knees. It startles me, but I like it. I put my arm around his shoulder, lift my glass of sake and say KAMPAI! We drink.

Looking around the room, I see people draped over each other like capes over the arms of matadors. It’s just sooooo great!

When I later ask my Japanese friends about it, they tell me about skinship. That’s the importance of having physical contact… not necessarily sexual, but physical… for true friendship. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: the act of intimate, non-sexual touching between very close (usually same-sex, but can include both genders) platonic friends. It involves acts such as holding hands/arms, hugging, and kissing on the cheeks.

My impression was just wrong. The Japanese lack of touching is not because it’s a touchless society, but because it’s a society of formality. Everything has a politeness level. If I’m speaking with an important person on business, the word I is watakshi. If I’m speaking with someone I don’t know, I is watashi. If I’m speaking with casual acquaintances and every day pals, I becomes boku. If I’m with my close pals at a bar, I is ore. Just like the language shows degrees of formality, touching shows degrees of formality.

But wait! In Japan, there’s more. It’s hadaka no tsukiai, aka “naked friendship.”

“Mykel,” says the boss, “you have to join me in Hakone. Drink sake from a floating bamboo boat. Stand naked in a hot spring, under the sun or stars, feel the heat….” I don’t remember the rest... as the image of being naked with the boss is somewhat unsettling. But it’s not the first time I would have uncomfortable nudity.

FLASH TO FINLAND: 1986. I’m here studying the language. I’ve heard it’s the most difficult in the world… I feel like a boxer… challenging a champ. (Finnish won, by the way. I just couldn’t get it!) A friend in the town where I’m staying invites me to visit his family. I walk into his house. He introduces me to mom, dad, and his sister Enny.

The house is toasty warm. My friend takes me into what looks like a small bedroom. “You can leave your clothes here,” he says, taking off his own clothes. Hmmm, this is a benefit I didn’t expect. But wait… it’s not for wild sex. It’s for a sauna.

It’s then that I find out that every Finnish family has a sauna. (Sauna is, in fact, a Finnish word borrowed into English.) So you visit your friend at home, take off your clothes, then sit naked in the sauna with your friend, his siblings and his parents. It’s just like shaking hands. Sitting there, I pretend it’s the most natural thing in the world. Now I realize, it is.

FLASH BACK TO JAPAN: Yes! Being naked together is the way to create deep friendships. Touching… skinship… is on the path to nakedness. Jeez, do I love Japan.

And now I find that America is becoming what I THOUGHT Japan was. The governor of New York is pushed out of office with charges of forcible touching. Actor Kevin Spacey is charged… almost 40 years after the fact, with touching in a simulated sex-act.

Touching, even in playfulness, is taboo enough to go to court.

What touching do we have left? We used to have a slight sliver of touching in the custom of handshaking… skinship in its meekest form. But even that is in trouble in 2022.

One of the great tragedies of COVID is the elbow bump greeting. Until the plague, the only time strangers touch skin-to-skin in America is shaking hands… a very brief, but real, skin contact. To lose that is to lose our humanity.

And it’s not only touching, but humanity itself... physical presence… that’s in danger. How can you NOT lose your humanity if your view of humanity is through a cellphone screen. How can you care about what you do in war… or in peace... if you’re just a drone away from murder.

Joe Biden sends non-humans to murder in the middle of civilian populations. First a car filled with AID workers.

“Oh, sorry about that one. We’ll try again.”

Then a top leader of some rebel army group we don’t like. BINGO… we got him. But let the Russians drone Ukrainians… How could they do such a thing?

I’ll tell you how. THEY isn’t people. Only the receivers of the souless strikes are real people. Drones are machines… like computers or cellphones. They can never experiences skinship.

When the Japanese attacked American warships in WWII, it was PEOPLE who were fighting people. The Wind of God (Kamikaze) was a human being in an airplane... making a commitment... keenly aware of what he, personally, was doing to “the enemy.” Me (us) and them.

Today’s war only has THEM.

The world needs more nudity. More awareness that other people have bodies… flesh… real skin. Humanity needs more touching, more skinship. The way things are going, we’ll all become the drones.

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]

→ A touching video dept: The web reports –with horror– Another video of Joe Biden touching a girl has surfaced. The website says that Biden “has made a habit throughout his political career of placing his hands on women.” I know. He is NOT Italian… but still, come on! “Placing your hands on” some is NOT a bad thing. In fact, until recently, Christians thought of it as a kind of healing.

→Speaking of Sex Dept: A study in Indonesia found that Criminalizing sex work in low-income settings like Indonesia decreases earnings of the female sex workers and increases the prevalence of STI infections. 
    The results should have been obvious before the study even started. The anti sex work “feminists” actually hurt women and other sex workers. You wanna talk human trafficking? Take a look at the farms, not the brothels.

→Speaking of Drones Dept: Mark Hamill, the original Luke Skywalker, has let the WARS part of STAR WARS go to his head. He’s now pushing for Drones for Ukraine.
    Says Hamill, “Very simply, Ukraine needs drones. They define war outcomes, they protect their land, their people, they monitor the border, they’re eyes in the sky. I was really shocked because they give me these updates at least two or three times a week about what’s going on and they said they’ve received over 500 drones since I started this.”
    Now there’s something to be proud of, right?

See you in hell, redux,

MB

THE NATION AGAIN

I’m a long-time subscriber to the The Nation. It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely, when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends” would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.

One article is about the return of polio. My friends tell me that it’s the “anti-mask right” who make arguments about the dearth of natural immunity. Liberals know that masks and isolation are really good for people. This from the article I just linked to.

It was modernity that gave the polio virus a chance. As hygiene improved, collective immunity faltered.

Another article talks about big tech evils and how tracking algorithms aid anti-abortion efforts. My liberal friends, however, would rather have big tech censor people they don’t like, than protect people they do like.

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:

Sid Yiddish! There’s a great interview with him on YouTube. You can check it out here.

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