EMPATHY or Mykel's July 2026 Blog/Column

Monday, June 01, 2026

EMPATHY or Mykel's July 2026 Blog/Column

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

JULY 2026 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board

EMPATHY

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

– Susan Sarandon

The opposite of anger is not calmness, it’s empathy.

– Mehmet Oz

One of his (Marquis DeSade) greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

– Vernor Vinge

I walk down Broadway from Bleecker Street. Passing the convenience store on the right, I stop in to check my lottery ticket in the machine: I slip it in gently… making sure the testing light bathes every bar of the barcode. NOT A WINNER, flashes the machine. What a surprise! FUCK YOU!

Then, it's on to the bank where I take out $50 in cash from the ATM... using my Disney ATM card given to me by the bank… without choice… and more embarrassing than an open fly.

The cash spits out: a twenty and half a dozen fives… should last the rest of the day.

I leave the bank and head south on Broadway. On the way to Houston Street, I pass a grey-bearded guy sitting on a street-level window ledge, reading one of those free newspaper give-aways.

As I pass, I turn toward him and shout…

FUCK YOU!

He barely glances up at me and returns to his reading. I continue my walk. At least once a day, this same ritual ensues. I pass the guy… shout FUCK YOU! at him… and keep walking. It's losing its effect I fear, but first: some background.

For the last few months, almost every day, I walk past this guy and he's sitting, reading… usually a thick book… never talking to anyone... never asking for money… never implying homelessness… just a mystery. In my mind, I construct a story of how he lives in a shelter and comes out on the street to read whatever he can find. I don't know how or where he pisses, shits, eats, or does any of the stuff people have to do. He's just there… reading.

To myself, I call him Amiri, using the name LeRoi Jones chose after his writing made him famous. James Baldwin is, of course, my favorite black writer, but Amiri is a much cooler name than James.

When I see Amiri reading that free newspaper instead of a book, I figure his favorite books have run out. What a tragedy! The guy loves reading… never bothers anyone… lives for the written word and he runs out of books. I can help.

I try to sell books on Biblio, eBay, even Amazon… but there's some stuff that would never sell and has already been rejected by Mercer Street Books. I'd love to give it to Amiri and express my admiration for another real- paper-and-ink book lover.

I figure I've got to ask him first. He may have a secret stash someplace, or he may want me to bring my donation to someplace else, free from the NY weather. I keep some book names in the back of my mind. Maybe I could give him some Jim Thompson… can’t go wrong with that, can you.

The next day, instead of passing him, I stop and talk to him.

"I see you here every day," I tell him. "I just wanted to ask you…"

"Leave!" he says to me, like a pedestrian might brush off a sniffing dog.

"But I first…" I say, "can I just find out if you…"

"Leave!" Amiri says again… in a louder voice dropping to a vocal exclamation point pitch at the end of the word.

"LEAVE!" He says for the third time, briefly looking me in the eye and then returning to his newspaper.

FUCK YOU!

I shout in all capital letters walking away from him, angry at the response when all I wanted was to do a good deed… to help.

Every day since then, when I pass Amiri, I turn and say FUCK YOU in a loud voice and just continue walking. But for some strange reason, my anger builds.

I know what I'll do. I'll get one of those free books from the library give-away table-- a paperback. I'll walk up to Amiri… stop.. take out the paperback… and start tearing it up. First I'll rip off the cover. Then tear out… page by page… ripping each page in half after I tear it from its binding.

That'll teach him. What could sadden a book-lover more than seeing a book destroyed in front of him? Shirk my gifts? I’ll teach him a lesson.

Bang! I head for the library. I don't know how it works in other cities, but here in New York, libraries have a FREE TABLE. People can bring their unwanted books… sometimes CDs, DVDs, magazines… and leave them on the table. Other people can pick out what they want and take it home… or try to sell it at a used book store. That means what’s left is usually only crappy books, or books in some obscure foreign language.

Ah, here’s The Golden Glove, a "middle reader" That means a children’s book (Junior High) or so.

I take the book, stick it in my BEN 10 backpack and head back to Broadway. On the way, I fantasize the horror that will appear on Amiri's face when I stop right in front of him... pull out the book... tear off the cover... tear out the pages... tear up the pages, and throw pieces in the air... letting the wind blow them into the Broadway traffic. I wonder what the passing people will think of a wildly grinning little man walking uptown… throwing book shards into the street.

Even now I'm getting a wide berth as I walk from the library to Broadway. I must look scary. I feel like whistling. I'm gonna show him! He thinks he can just shrug me off when I want to help him. My grin widens as I picture the pained look on his face. Ah, I'm just about to get to his little window alcove.

He's not here. No Amiri. No books. Nothing. Did he get tired of the daily FUCK OFFs? Did I make such an impression that he couldn't put up with it? Damn!

For the next couple days, I check his spot and it's empty. I've stopped carrying The Golden Glove. I feel cheated.

Suddenly I'm not smiling.

Before I go on, I want to tell you about Calvin, Matthew, and Dylan. Calvin is from South Carolina. He must have heat in the blood, because every year he finds a way to go back and winter with his friends there. During the rest of the year he lives in New York… mostly on a milk crate on the corner of LaGuardia and Bleecker Street.

"How you doin' young man?" he asks when he sees me crossing the street and coming towards him.

"Calvin!" I shout to him. "Howya doin'? When did you get back from Charleston?"

"A couple days ago," he tells me. "Where you been?"

We talk for a while. I have to leave him to reserve a couple tables for Drink Club.

"I'll talk to you soon," I tell Calvin, "but first…" I reach into the watchpocket of my jeans and pull out a crunched dollar bill. I hand it to him with apologies for the creases.

"It's the only way I can fit the bills into my cash-for-street-folks pocket," I tell him.

"Mykel," he says, "I know I can always count on you. Crunched or not."

I laugh and head for the Peculier Pub.

FLASH to Broadway and Houston Street: The shady side of Broadway. Matthew is in his usual wheelchair shaking a plastic cup with some change and a few dollars bills in it.

“Matthew!” I shout to him. “I gotta talk to you.”

“Sure Mykel,” he answers, “but first could you get me a bottle of water from our Egyptian friends.”

I smile, knowing exactly what he wants… a $1.50 plastic bottle of Poland Spring Water, from the food truck on the corner.

“It’s for Matthew,” I tell Mamoud in the truck, fishing out a couple dollars from my wallet.”

“I figured,” comes the reply. “Keep the bills,” he says motioning me to take a bottle from the icebed under the window.

“Ok,” I tell him, “then how ‘bout an everything bagel for me.”

“Butter, no toast,” he replies, knowing in advance what I like.

I nod and watch him slice and butter up a bagel. I hand him three bucks. “Those you keep,” I say.

“Shokran,” he replies.

I put the bagel in my backpack and return to Mathew… handing him the water.

“How’s your other wheelchair friend?” Matthew asks.

“She gets out sometimes,” I say. “She has friends, but I think she spends too much time inside.”

“You told me about those stairs in front of the building, Mykel. Here’s what you should do: tell your friend to go to any hospital and ask to speak to a social worker. A social worker can hook her up with some city agency that could force them to put in a ramp… or find her housing in an accessible building. That’s their job.”

It’s the beginning of a long conversation. I always learn a lot from Matthew… the ins and outs of the NY disability laws… tricks about Access-a-ride… and more. He’s just got this stuff down. I’m the student… and only need to fork over a few dollars a week for tuition.

Then there’s Dylan. He’s the only white guy among my current street-living friends. (Will, from Texas, lived on the subways… but he went back to Texas to be a graphic artist.) Dylan camps out on Broadway, just north of Great Jones Street. He marks his territory with a blue chalk outline on the sidewalk. A mattress lays in the middle of the outlined square, along with a couple plastic cups, a hand-mirror, and – bunched up to one side-- a wool blanket I gave him on an especially blustery day in November.

Sometimes Dylan shows up with a crate of packaged food: “Google Gummy” candy (I didn’t even know it existed.), unfrozen frozen food, packets of raw ground beef or fish. Sometimes, heads of lettuce or bunches of carrots. He “sells” these from his mattress for whatever a passing person (usually an NYU student) is willing to pay.

Yesterday, I spotted a PayDay candy bar among his mysterious groceries. It’s my favorite and still there in his box of sale goodies. I pull a dollar out of my watch pocket.

“I’ll take the PayDay,” I tell him.

“I’m not taking money from you for this stuff,” he says. “I don’t like taking money from my friends.”

I smile… reveling in the status rise from donor to friend. Yes! He thinks of me as a friend. I’m proud.

Then there’s Jim Testa… he’s NOT a street-living guy. He lives in New Jersey, but I see him in NY at least once a month… sometimes more. He’s a regular at the Algonquin Roundtable with me and Dorothy Parker and some other slightly less famous people.

Jim used to work for an insurance company and we often joked that the ARTLESS song, When You’re My Age You’ll Be Selling Insurance, was about him. It wasn’t.

After he quit the insurance biz, He got a job as a “special ed” teacher. These are both “day jobs… like an actor who works as a waiter to make ends meet. See, Jim’s “real job” is a music critic and occasional musician. I’ve known him since the early days of punk… probably for longer than you’ve been alive. My George Foreman Grill, KitchenAid Blender, and innumerable books, records and CDs come from Jim. When I needed to hook up my turntable to the amp, Jim came over on a sweaty summer day and spent hours getting it to work right.

You can probably tell that I think a lot of the guy.

But there was one thing… at the Roundtable. I need to set the scene:

Besides Jim, me, and Dorothy, there’s Max and Bill. Bill used to work in a record store, and is one of those guys that you mention the first three words of any punk song, and he’s got the title and usually the rest of the song. Max is his girlfriend. She’s a super smart female, who is one of the few girls on earth that can whistle…. I don’t mean a happy tune… I mean a stadium kill the umpire whistle. Wow! Other Roundtable participants are Jennifer Blowdryer (you know her), Rufus, who is a professor of pizza making, and random others who join us… or don’t.

During the discussion, I talk about my admiration for colored people because they so quickly go their own way. Clothing styles, fashion, music, they suddenly stop, change, and BANG!! Do something new… different… and the rest of the world catches up... then POW! Something else new… to be copied by white people.

White people spend hours and cash trying to catch up with them. As soon as they get the new haircut… try to make the new music BANG! Negroes create something new… and the melanin-impaired spend more months...or years... trying to copy it.

“Mykel,” says Jim, “How can you say that? You know… you have absolutely no empathy. As long as I’ve known you, I’ve seen that.”

That comment sticks with me a long time after that Roundtable meeting.

“What the fuck?” I think over and over again. “Calvin, Matthew, Dylan… these homeless guys are my friends. I spend several bucks a day out of my watch-pockets for street people who are my friends or who I meet for the first time. I find out their stories... ask them about their lives... sometimes ask them for advice… or just to tell me what their day-to-day is like. And you say I have no empathy? What does saying colored people or Negroes have to do with empathy? And besides, everyone at the Roundtable is white. Who am I lacking empathy with?”

These thoughts go through my mind, building up a defense against an accusation that troubles me more than it should. I am a social guy. I use out-dated vocabulary because I hate to be told how to speak. I hate to have the language rug pulled from under me. The words I use are not pejorative, they’re neutral… and used to be common.

Then, I start thinking about the guy with the books... and it hits me. What if Amiri just wanted to be left alone? What if he collected the books that interested him, and just wanted to read them? What if he wanted a bit of book privacy in the middle of the hectic life that makes Manhattan? What if he thought I was going to bother him… that I was a missionary, a social worker, just an annoying local who wanted to chat when all he wanted to do was sit and read? What if he only wants privacy… to get away from dealing with people? What if my FUCK YOU! is another brick in the backpack of someone already carrying too many bricks? What if he didn’t know I wanted to give him books, but thought I was someone who wanted to chat, disturb his reading, or get him away from it? Why didn’t I think of any of this before?

I walk outside to where Amiri sits… where I’ve shouted FUCK YOU! to him at least once a day… except for the days he wasn’t there. He’s there now. I walk up to him... smile... tip my metaphorical cap… and say “Nice day, isn’t it?” and then keep walking.

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...  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]

SPECIAL THANKS DEPT: I want to thank Jim Testa and Dawn Suvino (who is mentioned, but not by name) for their friendship and life-changing help… and empathy. Thanks! Also a big thanks to Marlene Wicherski, one of the editors of the great DC punkzine, Truly Needy. She has the nasty task of editing this blog.

SPEAKING OF JIM TESTA DEPT: For folks who don’t know, the US has the world’s highest percent of its population in prison. Yes! We’re number one! And it also has the world’s highest rate of medical bankruptcies. Jim Testa could be one of them… but you can help prevent that. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-james-cover-medical-expenses-this-summer

DEAD KOCH DEPT: Today is primary day. I just cast my vote for Brad Lander… who was arrested for blocking ICE kidnapping of people awaiting trial at immigration court. When NYC mayor, Ed Koch died, they named a bridge after him. He was awful. He started the race-based “stop and frisk” laws, heavy enforcement of homeless round-ups, etc. Some people supported him because he was Jewish… and strongly believed to be gay. There was a lefty Democratic organization Village Independent Democrats that refused to support him… And they still exist, but seem to have changed sides. The NY Primaries are now full of fake lefties, including millionaire Dan Goldman for Congress, and pro-censorship Grace Lee for State Senate. These guys are running in Greenwich Village so they have to look liberal. Guess who supports them. Yep… not the socialists, but the “Independents.” Fuck you!

THE GOOD GUYS DEPT: While the fake lefties plaster themselves all over the city… the Democratic Socialists of America have already elected the current NYC Mayor and AOC (who’s facing some challenges from her right). I never thought I’d see the day where self-proclaimed socialists could make it in American politics. I’m glad to be wrong for once. It gives me hope… but we’ll see when the results are in. I expect the worst.

LINKS

I’m happy to present the art of Sarah Thobe… who paints personalities as part of her portraits. Check her out at https://sarathobe.com/.

And it was great to hear from my very long-time friend, Fred Lonberg-Holm. Celloman extraordinaire. You can hear him at https://fredlonberg-holm.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of

Anthony Allen Begnal asked me to mention his Hardcore Conversation You Tube channel, and I’m happy to do so here.

Longtime scene/zinester Robb Roemershauser has restarted the Above Ground Zine Library. The Zine library doesn’t yet have an address at the location but, feel free to donate zines that you no longer want to the Aboveground Zine Library 2100 Sawmill Road Apt. 22-202, New Orleans, LA 70123. The Zine library will be located in the upper 9th ward on a busy street.

My pal Matt Sheahan says: You can link to my website - www.matthewsheahan.com or my Substack - https://politenewyorker.substack.com/ . Matt is a great musician and very funny guy.

My Kenyan pal, Albert Melody shares a facebook adventure in one of those great Kenyan national parks. Guess who he shared the adventure with!!! You can read about it here. Albert also has a blog at: Albertomelody.blogspot.com

Teddy Labato has a “lo-fi noise” link to his band Check it out.

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. 

Zine fans can find my list of old stuff that I want to get rid of here.

Here are some other contacts to make:

Teddy Lobato’s band can be found at https://www.facebook.com/THEBASSMANsPSYCHEDELICNOISE

Karl De Winton sent me a link to his bandcamp DJ stuff. https://share.google/5sTnXjgMkFbiWQvzA
NSFW… but that depends on your job. 

Dan Hetrick asked me “How 'bout us punk rawk programmers?” And offers http://merk.chat  Free chat for the people!

I’ve talked about Bob Cutler before. But he has more to offer than DYSTOPEKA
https://chrometuna.com/ https://theklusterfux.com

Riot Division makes its musical offering at: https://www.facebook.com/riotdivision

Barstool Revolution Zine is on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/people/Barstool-Revolution-Zine/61557909822199/

Rina Borei shows off her inflatable Octopus on  Instagram at @oona.frost

Jim Testa, friend, journalist, editor, musician and wordsmith, (he appears in this month's post) 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) 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

Hijacking The Rainbow or Mykel's June 2024 Blog Entry

 

   

Hijacking the Rainbow 
or
Mykel's June 2024 Blog: You're Still Wrong

 

Florida is where woke goes to die
                            -- Gov. Ron DeSantis

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
                        — Maya Angelou

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
                    --Kris Kristofferson made famous by Janis Joplin

It was while giving a speech in Washington about the British theft of the Elgin marble from the Parthenon. I described the attitude of the current British authorities as "niggardly." Nobody said anything, but I privately resolved — having felt the word hanging in the air a bit — to say "parsimonious" from then on.                         --Christopher Hitchens

I think I’ve told this story before. I must’ve. It was an epiphany… a life changer. Google tells me no. Google tells me there are no instances of “Mykel Board” and “Miles Davis” occurring on the same page. Who am I to argue with Google? Am I the one to stand in front of the charging train with my hands out in front of me, while a little baby lies crying on the track? Sorry kid, but I’m getting out of the way. Maybe I’ll come to the funeral.

I only vaguely knew of the word WOKE I didn’t get what it meant… something about being aware… with some kind of racial overtones. Nothing that would stick. I probably heard it sometime in the late 1960s, but I was too involved in taking LSD and stopping the Vietnam war to bring it into full consciousness. It laid in the background… written off as a fashion word… until the 1980s or so. I knew that lots of white people were using the word… that couldn’t be a good sign.

My high school buddy David told me about Miles Davis. David is the only person I know who loves music and doesn’t give a fuck about genre. He hates (or loves) NOTHING on principle. He just tunes into the sound and judges from there. David had seen Miles in the 60s, when we were in high school together. I had no idea what the jazz guy sounded like… only that he was a famous jazz musician… maybe the most famous jazz musician in the world. Normally, talk about jazz artists would go in one ear and come out my asshole. But David’s report of this Miles event… since double checked by Mr. Google... was something special.

In Manhattan, around 1959, Miles Davis was driving through midtown Manhattan in an expensive car... could have been a Mercedes. A cop (in New York in the 1950s the words “white cop” were a pleonasm.) stops Miles and asks him to get out of the car… show ID…

“Why’d you stop me?” asks the trumpet player. “I wasn’t speeding or nothin’.”

“You don’t fit the car,” answers the cop.

BOING! Awareness bops into my brain like an erection at a strip club. A thought I’d never thought before. A realization I’d never realized before. An epiphany. If it were me driving, I wouldn’t have been stopped. No white person would have! Suddenly, I was WOKE! What a beautiful and right word. What a sudden consciousness… like something zen. Like realizing that… hey… boys can be cute too. Just POW!

What a wonderful word WOKE was. What a perfect expression of learning. A word that should not be used easily, but one that expresses a moment of awareness… especially of something that happens to people who are different from you. Wow.

Then that beautiful word changed meanings. It became… mostly in the hands of right-wing Republicans… clichéd... what used to be called Politically Correct. [NOTE: Those Politically Correct or their initials PC also changed meaning. Their origins lay in the glory days of the 60s debates between anarchists and “New Leftists” on one side and the traditional Marxists on the other. The “new left” used PC as an epithet against the Marxists. George Bush Sr. got hold of it somehow and twisted it to mean “doctrinaire” “unthinking allegiance to cliches” etc.]

Woke lost its exquisite meaning of “sudden awareness of someone else's reality.” It came to mean dictatorial, literal, a leftist political crowd follower. Such a beautiful word… wrecked... destroyed... hijacked by the right.

FLASH TO A THUNDERSTORM: The end of it. The breaking sun through the mist of raindrops that never achieved the weight to fall to earth. The sky becomes a prism. Sunlight filters through. Everyone my elderly age remembers ROY G BIV red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet… the colors of the rainbowy, learned before knowing what exactly indigo was.

When Jesse Jackson ran for president, he gathered supporters among blacks, whites, yellows, men, women, old, young. All this before “diversity” became a cliché. Jackson used the metaphor RAINBOW to show the mix of people who supported him. His supporters were The Rainbow Coalition. Rainbow was EVERYBODY… all kinds of people… coming together for something new… something great.

FLASH TO PORT AUTHORITY BUS TERMINAL, in Hell’s Kitchen NYC. 2019-- slightly pre-pandemic. An attractive teenage boy… brown hair just over his forehead… the slightest hint of a mustache on his upper lip. He wears white PUMA sneakers, tight black Levis, and a rainbow-colored shirt. Not a strict hard-lined rainbow, but a soft rainbow, where each color slowly fades into the next.

I watch him from my seat on a waiting room bench. Yeah, he’s a beauty, but probably a year or two before legality. It’s not worth the effort… or the risk. I watch someone braver and about 5 years younger than me… with a full head of hair… slightly gray at the temples.

Gradually, the older man sidles in on the boy. He says something, touching the kid on the arm The boy turns to him and starts yelling. His English is accented… something central European.

“Get away from me!” shouts the boy. “Why are you touching me?”

“Your shirt,” says the man. “You’re advertising yourself.”

“What about my shirt? It’s a nice shirt. That’s all… just a nice shirt.”

The man steps away... turns his back to the boy, and pretends to read a newspaper he picked up from a vacant bench. The boy walks quickly out of the waiting room. He stands... remaining near the track gates, by the departure/arrival board. Here and there his concentration flits from the train information sign to us in the waiting room .

This time it was the encyclopedia Britannica… not Google… that explains:

It goes back to 1978, when the artist Gilbert Baker, a gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. Baker later revealed that he was urged by Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., to create a symbol of pride for the gay community. Baker decided to make a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride. As he later said in an interview, “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, to get out of the lie. A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’”

The first versions of the rainbow flag were flown on June 25, 1978, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. Baker and a team of volunteers had made them by hand, and now he wanted to mass-produce the flag for consumption by all. The various colors came to reflect both the immense diversity and the unity of the gay community

It was not until 1994 that the rainbow flag was truly established as the symbol for gay pride. That year, Baker made a mile-long version for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Now the rainbow flag is an international symbol for LGBTQ pride and can be seen flying proudly all around the world.

The idea of rainbow was the sum of the parts. A unity of colors, genders, ages, philosophies. In 2024, all those parts have shrunk to: Vagina, Penis, Anus, Mouth, and where you put them. Rainbow parades ban cops, NAMBLA and, maybe these days, gay Republicans. The people behind the flag are less diverse and colorful than a McDonald’s burger offering. That beauty, that unity of differences has become little more than a pick-up signal meaning “Hey, wanna fuck?”

The gay liberationists have stolen the rainbow. And now only men can be gay! Women are lesbians and their “L” must come first in any alphabet of homosexual letters. The same thing, of course, happened to the word gay itself… which appears in its original meaning in old songs that people chuckle to.

Sometimes, it’s possible to take back a stolen word-- make a negative into a positive. One of the best examples of that is QUEER. Its first meaning was strange, unusual, different… with a negative connotation. Then, it homofied. I remember my father telling me how when he was in England during the Second World War, one of the British soldiers complained that he was “feeling queer today.” Dad moved to the other side of the room.

So even in the 1940s, QUEER had become attached to homotude… but kept the negativity. Then the queers took it back… with PRIDE.

It was such a joy listening to people use QUEER as a brag. You bet I’m queer. Different from you boring hets. I’m different and love my difference. I’m so fuckin’ queer… kiss me now!

Nigger is another word that twisted and turned its way through history. Mark Twain used it without negativity… just to identify race… maybe with a slight tint of downtrodden… former slave. Then it took on a negative meaning. A pejorative so fiercely taboo, that it’s unprintable… censored in TV… referred to as “the N-word,” replacing FUCK, which had been the F-word, (and now can be heard on every cable TV show). Nigger took over as the number one bad word. Even words unrelated, but that sound vaguely like nigger, are banned… or at least avoided. Check out Christopher Hitchens’ quote at the top of this blog.

But black folks picked up NIGGER and ran with it. (I hate the euphemism “African-American.” Most black people have no history in Africa and there are plenty of white folks who are REALLY African-American.) Yes, Nigger became natural in Black English. A wonderful spit in the face to the white people who used it with a sneer.

Yo! White boy… I can say nigger because I am one. It’s a marker… it’s the way I talk. You CAN’T say nigger… because you ain’t one.

So, as with QUEER, the recipients of the negative took it over and stuck it to the original users, while keeping it for themselves.

FLASH TO WHAT THE FUCK I’M TALKING ABOUT

One of my longtime fantasies has been to write a book called Hijacking the Rainbow… something about Woke, Rainbow, Fascist, Freedom, Queer, Liberty, Hold To Account, all those ideas that have been turned upside down, lost or reversed their meaning. I figure here I can break the ice… start the ball rolling… try them out… get the ink scratched on the parchment by putting things down in a blog. I hope the feedback from this blog and the act of touching fingers to keys will bring me out to get my writing ass in gear. Maybe a reader or two can suggest an inclusion. I’ve already gotten a good suggestion about how the words “gender-affirming” have come to mean ‘gender-rejecting.” We’ll see what “fantasies about writing a book” becomes. More word changes and ideas are welcome. Please use the comment section of this blog for your suggestions. And don’t let the creeps hijack your rainbow.

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]

→ HEY, YOU CAN’T SAY THAT! Dept: After complaining about words lost to language change, censorship, or wokitude (new/negative meaning) I came across this “list of banned words” compiled by Lake Superior State University. It’s actually a list of words and phrases that various contributors say SHOULD BE banned. The site doesn’t really want to impose censorship. The list has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. It’s having fun expressing annoyance. It includes one of my many pet peeves: “No Worries” when used as a synonym for “You’re Welcome.”So the guy holds the door open for me as I enter the prostate radiation room. I thank him. “No Worries” comes the answer. I’m having fuckin’ radiation next to my fuckin’ balls!!! Don’t tell me NO WORRIES.

→ SCARIER THAN THAT DEPT: There is an on-line program that will make your job easier by censoring “sensitive words.” Say the inventors: Text Censor is The World's Simplest Text Tool and the world's simplest browser-based utility for censoring words in text. Load your text in the input form on the left, specify all the bad words in the options, and you'll instantly get censored text in the output area. Powerful, free, and fast. Load text – get safe text. You can try it yourself here.

→ FETUS? ARE YOU SERIOUS? DEPT: The Jstor Daily reports that during the Trump administration, the CDC was instructed not to use certain words and phrases in its public reports. Science-based” and “evidence-based” are on the list of the banned words, along with “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” and “fetus”.

See you in hell (redux)
MB

COMMENTS: For some reason Google wasn't allowing comments. So I'm posting this one here from Tony Autoharp. (anonyarena@yahoo.com):

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I don't think anyone wearing a rainbow shirt or any other kind of shirt is "advertising" themselves and it is not an invitation for random strangers in a train station to touch you uninvited. If this man is interested in someone, he has a mouth. He can use it to ask first. This is not difficult. "I like your looks and I am attracted to you. Do you like me?" And from there if he gets an affirmative reply he may ask "May I touch you?"  There is a step-by-step process to these things. But just sitting down next to someone and immediately starting in with grabby hands, and blaming that unwelcome behavior on the shirt the kid is wearing is not just impolite, its inappropriate. It is no different from Trump broadcasting to the world "I don't even wait, I just kiss. And when you're a star they let your do it; you can grab 'em by the pussy and do anything." These self-entitled assholes ruin everything. And that man in the train station probably ruined the joy of wearing a nice colorful shirt for this young man. And that's just sad.  It is quite probably he now feels like he's never want to wear that "nice" shirt again, because it is now connected to an unhappy experience. That's how you coat rainbow colors with a tarnish. 

I have never interpreted the Rainbow Flag to mean "I wanna fuck."  I don't know who thinks these things. 

I also don't hear black people use the "N" word the way you seem to.  The "er" sound at the end is usually changes to an "a" sound. Whatever the case may be, you know the old saying "like the pot calling the kettle black?" Well, that's how come it can be used as a symbol of solidarity. It does not matter if the pot calls the kettle black because both are black - no harm/no foul.  It means something else entirely if the white porcelain pitcher in the fancy china cabinet calls the kettle on the stove black, to emphasize that different distinction and imply that the while porcelain is superior. That's not only snobbery, it can quite seriously be something far worse, more ugly, and even a prelude to something dangerous.

Queer is a little different. A non-Queer may call an LGBTQ person "Queer" if that is how that person self-identifies. It's all about context. Say it with love and respect and you will get love and respect in return. Say it in the context of insult and antagonism, that's something else again. There is a chasm of difference between, "I love you, you colorful, brilliant and wonderful queer you. Keep on dancin'!"  And "You fuckin' queer, you ought to be shot in the head for dancing like that in here!"  The former is an encouragement. The latter is a threat.   

The question of "hijacking" (which is not a word that I use so much but would use the more accurate words like "appropriating" and "redefining") words and symbols, is a question of something that is all too often beyond our control. The swastika used to just mean "good fortune." World events forever transformed it, "re-defined" it, and now we can't unsee what we see when we see it. Even when we see it in its original Himalayan or Tibetan or Native American tribal contexts, it will always be jarring to see it. The late 1970s punk rockers tried and failed to re-define it as "rebellion" but that didn't work. At some point meanings of certain words and certain symbols just permanently change, and there's we can do about it because there's no going back. Or if it does, it will take thousands of years and a lot of cultural forgetting to reach that point. I think that is probably no longer possible. We no longer live in the Stone Age. There are no more "forgotten" civilizations. After the information age took hold, anyone can look up anything on Google and find it, even where "Mykel Board" and "Miles Davis" may appear in the same place. This makes cultural "forgetting" a much more impossible task because our collective memory is now stored at at our fingertips in an instant.  We may try to "redefine."  But the reason propagandists have been so successful at changing the meanings of words and phrases like "woke" "critical race theory" "feminist" and "liberal" is not because anyone let them do it. They do it because anyone with enough determination, money and power behind them CAN do it.

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BACK TO THE NATION DEPT: The newest issue of THE NATION has a great column by Kali Holloway on why TikTok banning is such a bad idea. (As is most (all?) censorship.) It again makes me point out that THE NATION is the only lefty magazine I know that is often right (I mean CORRECT) about things.
    Besides the Holloway column, there’s also a good one by Ginny Hogan (strangely, but slightly, different on the website than in the magazine) with the pull-quote talking about the up-coming presidential election.

We have our two candidates.
One of them is deeply uninspiring,
and the other is Donald Trump.

Time to subscribe, I’d say.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

READ THIS AGAIN!! Lots of new stuff here:

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

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

Here's a start:

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners.

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth, superstar comic writer, Justin Melkmann and possibly the next vice-president of the US, Charles Bukkake.

Here’s an update on the current URL for Sid Yiddish’s Dating Game (type) entry.

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.

And for a quiet smile and a much needed break for you and the dog, try G.C. Adams’ YouTube entry.

Christopher Selden has a bandcamp entry for his band Crooked Ghost. I say any band with a publicity photo like this deserves at least a listing… maybe an orgasm or two.

Y ou already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their on-line version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys. Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher!

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.

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

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

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