Change of Heart or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's April 2022 Blog

 

 

Change of Heart

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's April 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung,

The refusal to discipline our impulses is ultimately at the heart of everything from the negative way we conduct our political campaigns to the selfish and dangerous way we drive our cars.

--Stephen L. Carter

April is when the brown turns green… when nature calls from the night shouting: WAKE UP! Fools ignore the call. I’m not one of them.

It’s some kind of ladder… up against a wall. Wrists and ankles taped to it… duct tape… shiny silver under the floodlight. Another piece across the mouth seals the lips. Muffled screams catch themselves behind the tape. A long drip of saliva leaks from under the seal.

Here comes the candle… my favorite part. A red one… the drippings show against the bright white skin. Start on the chest… over the right breast… drip… drip… drip… The whole body shakes... another muted scream beneath the tape…

I unzip my pants. Another drop… hit the nipple right on it.. Yes! Yes! Now go lower… the lower parts… shaved and ready for drip… drip…

Oh my God! Keep going. Another one in the same place… I’m almost there. Drip… drip.. Yes! Yes! Uh.. Uh… aaaaaaaah! A few dribbles into the handkerchief.

Whew! I needed that.

I leave the website, clear my cache. I don’t need a fistful of advertisers trying to sell me duct tape. Then I get dressed.

Okay. I’m ready to start my day. Supermarket for a week’s TV dinners. Post office to mail off those eBay sales. Shit, I feel bad parting with GG’s Eat My Fuc (original Blood Records pressing) but five hundred bucks will buy me Rittenhouse Rye for a month. Then to the Union Square Farmers Market for produce, bread, and cheese.

Dressed and out the front door. Pfffffft. A bicycle barreling down the sidewalk barely misses me. I hate bicyclists. Self-righteous sons of bitches. Oh, I’m so environmentally correct. I can go the wrong way down a one-way street, ride on the sidewalk, not have a light at night. I don’t need to follow your laws. I’m saving fossil fuel, so get the fuck out of the way.

“Get on the fuckin’ street!” I yell at the cyclist.

Still peddling, he turns around, flips me the bird, turns back, and crashes into a trash can. The front wheel slips in the slats of the can. The driver tips… falling hard on the concrete. Luckily, he doesn’t hit his head, or my joy might be tempered. I can see his arm is scraped up and the bike wheel bent like a folded pizza. I can’t hold back a laugh as I pass him, wishing I had the balls to piss on him.

I walk on: post office, supermarket, heading toward Union Square.

“Yo Mykel, how’s it goin?”

It’s Kevin, my hugely fat street-living pal. As usual, I find him begging just outside the square. As soon as I see him, I reach in the watch pocket of my Levis, and take a dollar from the small pile of bum-aimed singles I keep there. I hand it to Kevin.

“Didja see the bike crash?” I ask him.

“Nope,” he answers, “what happened?”

“Some asshole riding a bike on the sidewalk flips me off… then crashes… It was sooo great!”

Kevin shakes his head.

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” he says. “I like you and you are always so kind to me, but you shouldn’t be laughing at someone else’s pain.”

“Waddaya mean?” I ask.

“That guy on the bike… he was probably a delivery guy… service promised in 20 minutes or it’s free. Guess who pays. His life is harder than yours, Mykel. Try to chill.”

I can feel myself starting to get pissed off.

“Chill? You want me to chill? I have to walk through this city where half the people on the street are afraid to show their faces? I can’t sleep because midnight trucks backing up BEEP BEEP BEEP warning who? The toddlers on the road at 3AM? Meanwhile half of NYU is worshiping Saint Patrick by vomiting in front of my door. And I should chill?”

“Calm down Mykel,” says Kevin. “I live on the street… and I don’t complain.”

“You should complain,” I tell him. “Sure your life is shittier than mine. Why not scream that to the world? Let them know how you’ve been fucked over! Spit in the face of every pedestrian who walks right past you… pretends he doesn’t see you… ignores your pain… your needs.”

“And where would that get me?” He asks. “I already have a bum leg and I should be on insulin… but I can’t afford it. Do I need to add a stroke of stress on top of that? Do I need to carry around a lungful of hate and anger? Mykel, I live on the street and my life is better than yours.”

“I donno, Kevin,” I say, “Maybe you got something I lack.”

I take my leave and walk through Union Square

A bearded guy, wearing black, blocks my path.

“Are you Jewish?” he asks.

“No -ish about it,” I tell him. “I’m a Jew.”

He laughs. “Did you set Tefillin today?”

Instead of brushing him off like an errant cyclist, for some reason I’m tolerant. Listening. Maybe the talk with Kevin had something to do with it. The Chassid invites me into the mitzvah tank, wraps the tefillin around my arm and my head, puts a tallit around my shoulder. [NOTE: The picture is not me. It’s just an internet image I found that will explain tefillin to the goyim.]

“Now repeat after me,” he says. Then, line for line, he recites a Hebrew prayer. I repeat it.

As I hear myself speak, I feel my body empty. The tension and the anger slowly leave me. The release is ecstasy. Better than a massive shit. When I return home that night I find I have no interest in the pouring wax videos. I want to see people screwing, yes! But I want them to be in love with each other.

But wait! There’s more:

The next week… on Sunday… I sit on a bench in the park. I guess I’m still feeling the after-effects of the tefillin. An attractive young man in a suit and tie sits next to me. He glances my way. A week ago, I would have thought, Jesus Fuckin’ Christ! A fuckin’ Mormon! Blow me if you want, but don’t tell me how Jesus loves me. Now, I calmly wait to see what happens.

“Nice day, isn’t it?” he says.

I nod.

“The sky is blue,” he continues, “and we’re here, enjoying the sunlight, watching people have a good time… at the same time feeling we’re part of something bigger. Part of the universe.”

Okay, enough is enough. Tefillin or not, there’s just so much crap I can put up with. I don’t yell at the guy, but I do look him up and down and frown.

He laughs. “Oh these clothes… You must think I’m going to pull out a bible and beat you with it.”

I laugh. “You’re pretty close to right,” I tell him.

“I’m just dressed this way because I’m coming from my brother’s funeral. Half the time you’ll see me I’m wearing orange robes and sandals.”

“You’re shittin’ me,” I tell him. “How can you appreciate the sky and the universe and the people in the park if your brother just kicked the bucket?”

“It’s all part of the same thing,” he says. “The universe goes through us... live… die… if you believe, live again… if you don’t believe… it’s just turning out the day to enter the night.”

We talk for a couple hours.

FLASH TO NOW: I’ve changed. Maybe you’ve seen me in the park… You probably haven’t noticed. All those saffron robed bald guys. You wouldn’t see the tallit… you’d just turn your head or maybe look skyward… think “yeah, There’s another one.”

But that one is me. The rumors you’ve heard are true. That’s me of the shaved head… of the saffron robes. That’s me Jewish Buddhist… and Hebrew Monk. I call myself a Jewdhist Hunk.

I’m calm. Pissed off at no one. I still chat with my homeless friends… still give ‘em a dollar. But I don’t complain. I’m alive… calm… feeling the sun on my head and the music of the cosmos in my ear.

I start every day sitting on the floor cross-legged… breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. Clearing my thoughts when some kind of joy-in-pain enters my head, I look at it like a chipmunk running across my path. I let it go and it scampers away. My joy is in the relief of inner pain.

The candle wax videos are gone. I pleasure myself to loversinlove.com. When I see cyclists on the sidewalk, I move to one side and let them pass. “Have a nice day!” I shout after them.

See you in hell... No! See you in the heaven we make for ourselves,

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]

→ April Showers Dept: By the time you read this, I will have taken my shower for April. I’ll be smelling like Irish Spring… with a touch of herbal essence. You might see me in Washington Square Park... sitting next to that jazz band by the fountain… chanting my mantras while the sax wails tales of love for the universe. Make sure you say hello. I won’t ask you for money.

→ Hope she wasn’t in pain dept: WKBN reports: On March 12, a standoff in Pennsylvania dragged on for 10 hours after a woman made an odd appearance at a neighbor's home. The woman was naked, and forcefully entered the home, where she stole the owner's shotgun. As she walked out his back door with the gun, he asked her what she was doing. She said, "It's my house." The woman then returned to her own home. The neighbor called the cops, who set up a perimeter around the woman's house but couldn't extract her until late that evening. She was taken to a local hospital with self-inflicted injuries... from a sword

→ How Much Punk Rock Do You Hear In Russia? dept: Since I got through this entire blog without mention of the Russia-Ukraine war, I should at least offer a YouTube video with my feelings about the whole thing. It’s right here.

See you in hell, redux… No, not this time.

MB

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:

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

Grits Up In Flames or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's March 2022 Blog

 

Grits Up In Flames

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's March 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

 Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves
- Laura Esquivel

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
- Tennessee Williams

Do not go gentle into that good night... Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
--Dylan Thomas

It’s a candle in a jar… aromatherapy… brown letters, on the outside: VANILLA Invigorating. The plague: tired me out… fucked up my body… my sleep. With a drink or two before bedtime I sleep badly… fall asleep around 1:30AM... wake up after 2 hours... piss... jerk off... play Spider Solitaire until I lose ten games… back to for two… maybe three.. more hours sleep.... repeat. If I don’t drink before bedtime, I don’t sleep at all. 

I nap during the day. Sometimes around noon... sometimes after lunch... sometimes around 9PM. I’m usually tired... fuzzy thinking… can hardly move. 

It’s 11:00AM… still naked from my late wake-up… no energy to dress…  I stumble to the kitchen... make my morning coffee. Electric perk: half coffee… half turmeric, pepper, and cinnamon. 

I stand facing the paper instructions for cooking grits. I thumb-tacked them to the cabinet door. I love grits. They’re tough to get in New York. I love ‘em with cheese or shrimp...or… When you find them, they never have instructions. You’re American right? You should just how to cook grits. It’s in the blood. I don’t know. Tell me and I forget. It doesn’t matter now. I’m too tired to cook.

The  coffee is ready… perked to a dark brown. I pour it into my Life should be a journey… not a race coffee cup and bring it to my table… a rotating double tiered table, I found in street trash. On one end, I have my Skype class computer, external monitor, remote mic and video. On the other end is a blank spot for a plate and a glass.

When I sit down, I spot the candle and figure I’ll invigorate myself. I’ve got to teach a Skype class at 12:30… I need the energy. I reach for the candle… open the top… see it’s almost used up. An eighth of an inch of wax on the bottom, slightly more along the sides of the jar. 

I take the spoon from my coffee and scrape the side wax to the bottom of the jar. Then I light the wick. It glows faintly… goes out. I try again. Another failure. Maybe the wick is too old… de-wicked. I shove a kitchen match (one of those on a wooden stick) into the wax at the bottom. I use another match to light the wooden wick. It flares up… bloofff… burns down to the wax… and goes out. 

This is pissing me off. 

You fuckin’ stupid candle. I’m smarter than nearly spent aromashit in a jar. I’ll show you… you moronic blob of white wax. 

I grab a metal ashtray from on top of the file cabinet. From the trash I take a random piece of paper… a form letter from Nancy Pelosi… asking me for money. I tear it in quarters. One of those quarter-pieces I soak in the lighter fluid I use to remove price labels from books and records I sell on eBay. 

I pour the wax fragments on top of the paper and squirt a dash of lighter fluid on top of that. I set the ashtray on my Epson printer… far from any paper. Better safe than incinerated, right?

I light the matchstick wick. POOF! Into flames… burns down the stem… POOF! Into flames… big flames… flames bursting out and up… an upside down rocket engine… yellow... red… spots of blue…ashes everywhere… over the printer… onto the bookshelves… great gobs of fire. 

Using my bare hands, I whack at the errant flames… EEEEAAAAH!… an eyebrow set alight by the flaming ashtray… I slap myself to put it out… a brittle singe on my face. A toxic smell slowly fills the air.

I try to pick up the metal ashtray… move it to the kitchen sink… YAIIII! My fingers sizzle against the heated steel. It won’t move… embedded in the melted plastic of the printer top.

I run to the kitchen… a spatula… I’ll slide it under the burning tray… pry it loose… enough to get it to the sink. There… slide it under the burning ashtray. It doesn’t slide. Push… push harder… CRACK! Something gives… it slides… off the printer onto the wood floor… flames splashing out… I dance to stomp on the burning droplets… smoke rises from the floor around the ashtray. 

Back to the kitchen… a pot holder… an oven mitt… back to the main room... grab the now towering inferno of the ashtray… smoke rises from the oven mitt.. POW! Into the kitchen… throw it in the sink… more splashes… the flames… filled with new oxygen reach for the stars… not the stars but the paper with the grit instructions… hanging on the cabinet door… up in flames… burning the bottom then flaming across the page to The Cheese part… then The Shrimp… ashes rain into the sink while flames reach for the ceiling. 

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! FIRE! FIRE! 

The smoke alarm… I can’t deal with you now… you piece of shit. JUST SHUT UP! I grab it from the shelf... smash it to the floor… step on it. Then back to the sink.

I reach through the falling ashes to the faucet… the handle… pick up a filthy chili bowl from the sink… run the water… into the bowl… SHPLOW! Throw the bowl full of brown water onto the grits-flaming cabinet… refill… SHPLOW! Onto the spouting sputtering spewing ashtray… FSHHHHTTTT!… The water turns to steam… More water… more steam… Then it slows… the flames sputter… turn to smoke…  thick black smoke… like those chimney pictures in Greenpeace ads. I cough. My nose runs. I feel the smoke alarm crunch under my sneakers. 

Acid tears force my eyes closed… I squint… peer hard… like looking through my neighbor’s drapes. Smoke no longer pours out of the ashtray. Only a single black thread rises from the tray… a snake charmer… at the end of his show. I fold a sheet of paper towel, and use it to push the smoldering ashtray under the faucet… and turn on the water. There’s a hiss… and then only the sound of water. 

As I sink to the floor… exhausted… breathless… I begin to feel the pain in my charred fingertips… the burn of smoke in my eyes… the ash in my nose. I lay supine on the floor… a thin stream of something black drips from the corner of my mouth.

This is it… but only the start. The next day: I’m cooking soup for lunch… homemade... rice, bean, and chicken soup… with a dash of cooking sake… and yesterday’s leftover ramen. As the soup simmers, I watch OnePunchMan… A Japanese parody of super-hero animation… great graphics and funnier than a fart in church. 

What’s that smell? The soup!! Boiling over… grab the wooden breadboard… on the table in front of the TV… grab the pot… off the stove onto the breadboard. A can of Dogfishhead 60 minutes from the refrigerator… and bang… plop down to watch OnePunchMan complain to his disciple, the cyborg Genos,  about scoring worse than the part-robot on the mental section of the hero test. Of course the bald man aced the physical part.

The episodes are only 24 minutes each… made for TV with lots of space for commercials. So when this episode comes to an end I walk back into the kitchen to get some desert. It’s then that I see the flame on the gas stove… still lit… burning… never shut off from when I took the soup to the other room. There it is… on the stove top… naked and burning… a gas flame. 

But wait! There’s more… 

In the modern world, gyms don’t have keytags anymore. They work by your phone number. You give your phone number to the usually attractive guy/gal behind the plexiglass near the entrance. S/he types it into the computer... tells you your name... you nod… or say something witty… s/he smiles and waves you in.  

Today, it’s a skinny long-haired guy… either clean-shaven or one of those beauties who never needs to shave. 

“Six four six six seven four seven zero one eight.” I say. His fingers are quick on the keys. 

“Nothing like quick fingers,” I tell him.

He smiles… then frowns. 

“I’m sorry, Sir,” [Note: there are few things I hate more than being called “Sir”]  he says, “you’re not in the system.”

“Eat me!” I don’t say. “Then I’ll be in your fuckin’ system.”

Instead, I realize that I gave him the wrong number. Six months ago, I gave up my landline after 30+ years. [I’m now convinced VERIZON is the most incompetent company in America.] The number I gave the cute boy was a bastardization of my old phone number and my newer cellphone number. Just odd pieces of each… mish-moshed together.

“I’m sorry, kid,” I answer, “I fucked up. My number is… and I give him the right number. But the memory confusion is scarier than a bedbug.”

Add these adventures to my newly acquired inability to simply move something from one place to another. Use my hands to pick up the lava lamp… KERPOW… my elbow knocks the air purifier from the table onto the floor. Grab a bottle of Rittenhouse Rye (I shit you not. That’s the real name of the booze!) from the liquor cabinet… KRAAAASH… the bottle of Everclear falls… smashing into a hundred pieces in the sink. Add water to the humidifier… SPLOOOOOSH! The seal loosens. Water pours down into the space where the electric cord joins the machine…. ZZZZZZZ! FLASH… lights out… short circuit. 

And so it goes… The Star Trek captain? The singer for Black Flag? The name of the street beggar on Broadway… the one who sinks to his knees in front of his wheelchair? What you call that little indentation that extends from under your nose to your upper lip?  I forget… forget… forget

Usually the answers come back to me in an hour… two… the next day. Sometimes never. But the reality is that I’m losing it. Drugs? Genes? Booze? Alzheimer’s? Enlarged prostate? Don’t test me… I don’t want to know. I will not go gentle into that good night. 

It’s late. I’m tired. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try something invigorating. Maybe I can get one of those aromatherapy candles. 

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]

→Proof dept.: Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction usually makes a better story. In case you were wondering if I made it up… as I often do. This one was real. Here’s a picture of the printer top after its run-in with my invigorating candle:

 → You happy you got your legal weed? dept: The website Gizmodo reports that a man in Thailand, using scissors, “completely amputated his penis” apparently due to an episode of “cannabis-induced psychosis.” The man regained his mental facilities after being admitted to the hospital and most of his injuries were “successfully treated.” Doctors, however, weren’t able to reattach the lost several inches. That’s probably lucky for future generations.

→ What the fuck? It’s money! dept: MSN reports: A mother told police that she was waiting at a store's self-checkout line with her one-year-old son who was sitting in the shopping cart.

    The mother said a woman approached her and commented on her son's blue eyes and blond hair. The stranger said she had $250,000 in her car, and offered to buy the child with it. The mother said she wouldn't sell.

Mom waited for the woman to leave the store before heading to the parking lot, where she was confronted again.

The stranger began screaming at the mom... saying if she wouldn't take $250,000 for him, then she would give her $500,000 because she wanted that baby. Mom still did not sell.

See you in hell, redux,

MB

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:

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

The Importance of Being Ernestine or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's February 2022 Blog

 

The Importance of Being Ernestine
or You're STILL Wrong,
Mykel's February 2022 Blog

 

The Importance of Being Ernestine

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's February 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

Emotionalism, irrationality, softness and weakness are more symptoms of a man's own feminine side than they are characteristics of women.  – Robert A. Johnson

A man does not learn very well. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down. A log is capable of learning more than a man. – Edward P Jones

Old women who go around thinking sensible thoughts should be apprehended with bear traps. – Daniel Kharms

Those who know me know I have a special effect on women. After some time with me, women cut me off like a moyl with a foreskin… no contact with me again… ever… telling my friends to hate me… blocking me on facebook… sending my email directly to the spambox… walking out of any room I walk in to. 

Maybe it’d be wrong to say there’s a legion of twatted Mykel-haters, but it would be fair to say there are enough female Mykel-100%-avoiders to arm the Ukrainians for the 21st century. 

But wait! There’s more! Women who don’t ditch me like facebook ditches the politically incorrect… become lesbians. It’s my Midas touch. I change them. 

My sister, Gayl, says it comes from “the type of girl you like.” She may have a point. I didn’t name the second ARTLESS album Boy With A Cunt because I like handkerchief-dropping, gown-wearing, lip-pouters.

“If you like butch tough-girls who can beat you up,” Gayl tells me, “you’re gonna find a few lesbos in the woodpile.”

SWITCH GEARS: Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe who has not made me a woman. This is a rather notorious prayer that traditional Jewish men say every morning, striking their chests. It’s been the cause of much discussion, and much anti-Jewitude. I ask my rabbi about it. 

“That prayer is an acknowledgment of the pain of childbirth,” says the rabbi. “In order to bring us into the world, women have to suffer in a way men cannot imagine. It is through their pain that women keep humanity in the world. We need to give thanks to G-d for both that we, as men, don’t have to suffer that pain. And that there are women who DO suffer that pain so we can live.”

Until then, it seemed to me that giving birth was nothing more than taking a huge constipated shit through your muff. Push… push… push… spew it out. It hurts a bit… then… maybe a pussy fart… Then... aaaaah, it feels so good. That’s it. Until that rabbinical moment, I never thought of it as anything more. 

BANG! What a change! One of of the many strikes of satori that makes me glad for the rabbis in this world. All that suffering that mom went through just to make the world a better place for having my sister and me as part of it. Who wudda guessed?

FLASH TO NOW: I sit naked on the wood floor in my apartment. To my right lies a half roll of duct-tape and a knife. My crossed legs not as lotused as they used to be. I steady my breath… feel the air come into my lungs through my nose... leave through my mouth. 

I focus my mind between my legs… yes, my mind is often focused there, but now I have a goal. I want to feel the world like a woman feels it. 

After a couple minutes of breathing, I pull my belly inwards… toward my spine…. tightening the muscles between anus and gonads… trying to pull the twin cullions… up… back into my body… back to their ancestral home… pre-pubescent. 

I can’t do it. They just lay there like a couple of oversized boyscout beans in a hairy bag of skin. I reach between my legs to give them a boost… a nudge… a push… Ouch! That hurts… but I got one in there… just gone… Now the other… this one easier… right next to its twin... somewhere inside me... near my appendix, I think. 

I shift my weight… slowly… making sure I avoid picking up splinters… or being stabbed by a 40-year old flooring nail, loosening from its own ancestral home. Yes! Yes! I did it!

Now to take care of the half pickle… the Vienna sausage… barely visible... afraid to show itself after the disappearance of its siblings. 

With my right hand I hold the base… pushing inward with the thumb of my left hand… uh… uh… uh… There it goes... inside… all the way! With my left hand, I hold the entire kit and caboodle inside me. My right hand grabs the duct-tape. Using my teeth, I pull out about a foot of tape. Still holding the end with my teeth, I use the knife to cut the tape from the roll. 

Quickly, I tape myself closed… shut the danglies inside… become WOMAN… at least half-way. I need lips. There’s all that flesh that just covers the prostate. I guess that’s how doctors make those lips when they do trans-surgery. Maybe I can get the feel just by moving the muscles right. 

It’s the in-between... the taint! Taint the asshole… taint the balls… The taint: where my lower lips should kiss the floor. 

Squeeze! Squeeze! Yes! I can do it. Yes! I can learn what it’s really like to have a hole in my body big enough for a human to spray out, wet, slimy, crying. Yes! I can take that huge shit and fall in love with it… bring that vaginal turd to my breast… suckle it… know the pain and Yes! know if there’s the post-natal joy that I see on all those diaper commercials. 

Yes! Yes! …..     No!

I can’t do it. My testicles squeal like trapped mice begging to be released. My limp gherkin leaks into the duct tape. 

No! I can’t do it. I’ll never know the pain that I’m supposed to thank God for not giving me. No! I’ll never experience more than the anal analogy of taking a shit. No! I’ve failed. 

I know. I know. I hear it every day. “You want to be a girl? Be a girl! Those chicks-with-dicks magazines by your bed! You could be one if you want! You’ve got the equipment… sort of.”

I press my palms against the side of my head. I don’t want to hear it. Don’t talk to me about effeminate men. I love them, but they are not women. There’s nothing feminine about them. The swish… the limp wrist… the eye-batting. Stiffens me right up, but it’s not LIKE A WOMAN. 

Once or twice in my life I’ve seen a real vaginated woman move like that. Hand on her hip… cigarette between index and middle finger… pouty sneer. She did not look feminine… she looked like a gay man… a man in drag… a femmy male homosexual. A woman screaming in the pain of childbirth… now SHE looks feminine. 

Soooo… I don’t get it. I don’t get why I make girls into forever Mykel-haters or forever lesbians. I don’t get why they call boys who move in a certain way or have a certain breathiness “feminine.” I have to accept the failure…  Know that sometimes rabbis have answers that scientists don’t. Know that some questions will never be answered.

What has changed is that my mind has gone from I don’t understand women to I can never understand women. And until men start having babies, equality is impossible… and probably undesirable. In the meantime, I’ll strike my chest… and thank God. 

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]

-->Lick This Dept. The BBC reports that “a prototype lickable TV screen that people can taste has been invented… in Japan, of course. Taste-the-TV, works by spraying flavors onto a "hygienic film" which is then rolled over the screen. Viewers then are invited to lick it.

The inventor, Homei Miyashita of Meiji University, suggested it could be used to train cooks or sommeliers remotely, though I can think of other uses. 

Of course, Covid makes a nod in the initial sales pitch. "The goal is to make it possible for people to have the experience of something like eating at a restaurant on the other side of the world, even while staying at home," Miyashita told interviewers.

I hope it comes with smell.

-->Just because it’s The Post doesn’t mean it isn’t true dept: The NY Post reports: Canada’s federal government admitted to secretly surveilling its population’s movements during the COVID-19 lockdown by tracking 33 million phones. The Public Health Agency of Canada secretly tracked the devices to assess “the public’s responsiveness during lockdown measures.” 

Meanwhile, here in NYC, the city has TV ads urging people to download the Contact Tracing App. Yeah sure, I’m right on that one. You bet!

-->Prayer from the other side dept: I’ve been watching a lot of movies during the Covid isolation. One of the many great ones is THE MISANDRISTS, written and directed by my long-time pal Bruce LaBruce. It’s the story of a group of militant women who want to destroy all men and reproduce by cloning.

At the start of every day, the women pray. “Blessed be the goddess of all worlds that has not made me a man.” They’ll never know what it’s like.

See you in hell, redux,

MB

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:

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