THAT'S NOT TRUE or Mykel Board's Blog for Feb 2026

 

THAT'S NOT TRUE or Mykel Board's Blog for Feb 2026

  

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's February 2026 Blog/Column

THAT'S NOT TRUE!

by Mykel Board   

It is obvious that people are not cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. --Theodore Kaczynski (unabomber)

All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they can be applied.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.

--Charles Sanders Peirce (founder of Semiotics)

The pain… I can’t stand up. It's either the orange juice, the cheese or… or… It started vaguely just under my ribs… but it's moved… I can trace it… following my large intestines swelling… pushing out…. Pushing down…

BLAM! A splash… It lands… pelviswise… ready to escape… I've got to let it escape… run to the bathroom… belt fumble… open up.. pull down pants... underpants… together in one desperate grasp… sit… push… relax… push… uh… uh…. Uuuuuuuh.

I hear a splash as the pain drips out... turning to ecstasy on the way. I thought I'd explode… die… Now the relief… the relief… Without repanting, I stand and check to see what I've accomplished.

More solid than I expected… not a flood of liquid… actual turds… soft fuzzy on the surface… but still turds, not a primordial diarrheal soup.

What's that? A turd that looks like a lizard… a big lizards… maybe an iguana… I look closer. There's a short leg… a webbed foot at the end…. Another leg! It's crawling…swimming... making its brown way to the edge of the white porcelain… trying to climb up the side… sliding back… trying again… It's alive! That turd is alive!

No, that didn't happen... not exactly. It's based on a true story… a nasty stomach ache that turned into a power shit. One turd that looked like an iguana… with what looked like a lizard leg. But it was a turd. Not ONLY a turd, though… but an inspiration.

There is a reason telling lies is called talking shit. But I want to rehabilitate lying here. I want to praise the beauty of talking shit.

To start, we have to ask, what the fuck is truth in the first place?

Most people would say that "truth" is what matches the outside world. A street scaffolding collapses and strikes half a dozen people, killing two.

A scaffolding collapsed and injured 6 people, killing two is TRUE. A comet fell in midtown striking 6 people, killing 2 is NOT TRUE. If it is intentionally not true, it is A LIE. If it is unintentionally not true, it is A MISSTATEMENT… a mistake… or some other kind of mis.

Truth is what’s OUT THERE… beyond ourselves. It’s a statement that accurately reflects a reality not completely contained within us.

Lying is something intentionally not true. Fiction is a lie. Even if it is based on a true story, it's still a lie. The collapsing scaffolding caused by a meteor is based on a true story, but it's a lie. I want to write how truth is over-rated... more than over-rated. Outdated… nearly dead.

FLASH TO PENELOPE:

Penelope walks from the bathroom into my bedroom. There is something different… it's a smell… something like… like… like the spray you put between your toes to fight fungus… like a mouthwash you might use to cover up the garlic from dinner… like the Glade you'd spray to hide the scent of that massive beer shit.

She sits on the bed next to me… strokes my arm with the tips of her fingers.

"Well Mykel," she says. "Notice anything different? Something… you know… something sexy?"

"You're sexy," I tell her, "but you smell like a warmed over trash heap… a compost recycling center… a Roman vomitorium."

I can see the tears welling up in her eyes.

"I spent a hundred and fifty bucks on that perfume," she says. "I did it to please you. To bring us closer… to turn you on…"

Now she's crying. Pulling away from me… using her fingers to wipe the tears… her palm to wipe the sadness from her nose.

"I'm just being honest," I tell her. "I'm only telling the truth. Don't you want the truth?"

Of course she doesn't want the truth. She wants support… a compliment. The cliché is the truth hurts. And so does nailing your testicles to a table. The doesn’t mean there's any value to either one.

Uh oh, here comes Literary Device… I can smell her a mile away. I’m sure she has something to say on this. She has something to say on EVERYTHING.

"Mykel," she says. "You make it sound like there is no truth. Like we can't say it's true the earth goes around the sun… or that we'll all die some day.” That stuff is clearly true. Science has proved that... And what about when the truth is vital? If Sam's cat is hanging by its claws from the balcony and needs rescuing NOW, he needs to know you're telling the truth when you tell him.”

Okay, let’s talk about Sam’s cat. L.D. is right that sometimes it’s important to know the reality of the outside world… though much less often than you think.

At least a decade ago, I wrote about Doctor Gazork. For those who are too young or too newly initiated to know, I'll review:

Doctor Gazork is a way to confirm you're telling the truth. If you say, Doctor Gazork, your cat is in danger of imminent death, it must be true. If you lie after saying Doctor Gazork, you can never be believed again. You'll lose the only tool you have to PROVE you're telling the truth. No one can ever believe you again.

I learned about Doctor Gazork when I was a freshman at Beloit College in the late 1960s. In all the decades that've passed since then, I've never said that name and then lied… Doctor Gazork.

But the times we need the truth are as rare as a cat hanging by its nails on a balcony. It’s a greater wrong to make someone feel bad than it is to lie. Lying won’t hurt. The truth will.

“It was the truth.” is an excuse to be mean. There’s nothing more than that.

"Anyone ever tell you your dick is the size of a nine-year-old’s?"

"You look like shit in that hat."

"Your band sounds like a garbage truck backing up… to a drum beat of beer farts."

"Your only competition for bad performance in bed is bed bugs."

The question should not be: is it true but does it cause pain/distress to the person it's aimed at? The truth has nothing to do with it… especially if it's an opinion.

"But it was the truth!" is the universal excuse for hurting someone's feelings.

As for science: I've written before about the myth of science… how science and the scientific method are wrong in discovering "truth."

A quick review… starting with etymology. In English, most words that start with the letters sc are about cutting: scissors, scratch, scar, scab, scrape, scalpel, schism… It's no accident that science starts with an sc even though the "c" is not pronounced.

Science is all about cutting. Looking through the microscope at pieces of things. Focusing on atoms… electrons… tiny bits cut off from the whole. And it changes every day. Truth isn’t supposed to change.

For years, science said that fat causes heart attacks and other nasty things. Then it withdrew the warning because fat in some food is healthy… take fish… please!

Remember when cholesterol was bad and eggs became unhealthy because they had cholesterol? Now eggs are healthy because the cholesterol in eggs won’t hurt you because of the OTHER ingredients in the chicken orbs. That is the big fault of science: it CUTS. It looks at one part... cut off from its surroundings... not taking the rest of the world into account.

Remember when science used to say that two glasses of wine a day was a health boost? Then suddenly… a thimbleful of ANY alcohol CAUSES cancer. Take a drink and DIE!

Among the longest-lived people on earth are the Okinawans. They live on a diet of spam and awemori (a Japanese vodka-type drink).

And there's more to life than death. The happiest country on earth is Finland, where Finlandia vodka rules the roost.

But science wants to measure cancer… not happiness. Cancer is science… it's CUT out of the body. Happiness… oh well, that's not science… it's personal opinion. So say the scientists who ignore the reality.

Ok, L.D. maybe we can make a rule. If it's fixable… like your cat is in danger or your A-string is out of tune. [NOTE: I had a friend in the band City Beat who could tell! In the studio, he'd spot an out-of-tune guitar and tell the player exactly what string was out of tune and if it was too tight or too loose. He was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. Sad, but unrelated to his aural ability. Both these facts are TRUTH… but are they necessary?]

Okay, sometimes truth is important. But, important or not, it’s dying. Artificial Intelligence is a nail in truth’s coffin. I start to write and POW! Up pops a message from Google. LET GOOGLE AI write your email… summarize your thoughts express your true self. You fuckin’ machine know my “true self” better than I know it?

I HATE A.I…. except… it has helped kill TRUTH… or the idea of truth. Remember when people said photos don't lie and then it was shown that the Russians figured out a photo touch-up where the latest purged-man can disappear from pictures like the last drops of Finlandia disappear from the bottom of the bottle?

Now videos, movies, passages in books, dirty-words, dirty-thoughts can disappear (or be added) with the touch of a button. AI has killed truth… without a bit of humanity.

On Facebook, I reported that TV news showed scores of Venezuelans dancing in the street after US forces kidnapped their president. I said this report was likely bullshit… and someone answered, "Videos don’t lie." Who could make such a statement in 2026? Or in 1966? Was he too young to have seen Star Trek? The whole idea of TV is to lie with videos.

Get it? Truth is dead. AI holds the machine gun. Like chivalry, vestiges can remain (like a man tipping his hat to a passing woman) but as standard culture it's gone… over… nearly useless. Except for rare emergencies… the truth is nothing more than quaint.

Donald Trump has known this forever. Despite the videos that show Minneapolis resident, Renee Good, trying to drive away from an ICE agent, Trump says she "ran him over." Clearly a lie… not only from the video, but from statements of people who were there. But the truth isn't useful to Donny. That's what's important and what we should expect.

The need for truth is as rare as a cat hanging by its claws on a window ledge. As long as we don't value it… as long as we don’t expect it… as long as we have a functioning-but-rarely-used Doctor Gazork. We can accommodate a value change like today's women accommodate not having men tip their hats to them.

So lets abandon TRUTH and replace it with values… entertainment… motive. Watch CNN or FOX because you want to know what those guys are thinking… you want to get a view of how they look at the world… For things that change your life… like the weather or "an active shooter"… Only then is truth important.

But as for the rest… assume every compliment about your new cologne is a lie… Every report of an invasion of Greenland is bullshit… unless your friend in Greenland sends you an SOS.

It'll take some work to shed the truth value. If you need help, write to me and I'll send you the tip of my left pinkie… or the right one if someone beat you to the left.

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]

And oh yeah, If you're a zine fan, check out what I'm getting rid of. I just need the space for my heart meds: 
https://tinyurl.com/SeidboardZines 

→ Telling on each other dept: Ranker website lists journalists who have lied about the news and the other journalists who have exposed them. As you might expect, Bill O’Reilly and Rachel Maddow are listed among the fakers.

→ Speaking of lies dept: Politifact is a “fact-checking” website. To be fair they find fault with both Barack Obama and Donny The Trump. Check out some samples here. Of course, that’s what a politician does and it’s up to you and me to ASSUME lies if they come out of the mouths of people with power. That’s their job.

→ As relevant as Videotape dept: TRUTH is not dead yet, but it should be. For a fun list of other obsoletes (like the telephone busy signal) check out this from Best Life On-Line.

→ I told you so dept: Here’s a THIS WEEK magazine report on the continued joys of Artifific9al intelegence. Now we can add WAR to the glorious functions of AI. Wouldn’t you want a war over lies? Maybe it’s ALWAYS been that way:

And AI will certainly NOT improve intelligence.

→ But wait there’s more dept: As if to prove my contention that AI has killed TRUTH, reports come of fake AI tears in Minneapolis. Or is “slobbering” something else than tears?

LINKS:

It’s About Time dept: Finally, a book about Hungarian Punk put out by Puke and Vomit records. Great scene there and I was glad to have contact with bands like Der Trottel and Tizedesz. Glad to have been a (very small) part of that scene. 

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=

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