Friday, July 01, 2022

Guns and Abortion or You're STILL Wrong

 

 

Why You Can't Think Right
or You're STILL Wrong,
Mykel's July 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

It’s okay to dislike worms because they’re ugly and slimy animals. It’s not okay to dislike worms because they might be snakes. --Brad Crandall


No, I'm the human here. I'm the life at stake. I'm the one with fingernails, who feels pain. Me. — Alicen Grey

Women and our right to choose were going to be challenged. I went out and got me four abortions. I stocked up. The doctor was like, 'Listen, you're not pregnant.' I said, 'Hey, just shut up and do your job. I'm exercising my right while I can, dammit.”
- Wanda Sykes

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. --James Burgh

I walk down Houston Street in Mykel Board drag… fedora, trench-coat… you know. There is construction. Fuckin’ NY fuckin’ U, tearing down supermarkets, parks, housing. Putting up ugly glass monsters to rent at outrageous prices to the few who can (or whose parents can) afford the blackmail called tuition.

As I pass the boarded up section I see a young woman on the far corner. Just my type: butch demeanor, flannel shirt, blue hair, bright red Chuck Taylors... dressed like a skinny young lad, oh boy! Somehow she seems oblivious... just standing there statue still, looking straight across the street.

Suddenly she raises her arms above her head, touching the finger tips together in a ballet pose. Then she jumps… up and down like a rope jumper without a rope. Then she starts kicking… a cancan dance… a Rockette at Radio city. Then comes the twirl.. hands still over her head, she twirls... jumping on one foot then the other. Jump… kick… twirl… jump… kick… twirl.

Foot traffic stops. People on the sidewalk freeze, watching the young woman. At the light, on the other side of West Broadway, an older woman... gray hair... neck bent down in a perpetual bow... holds tightly to a leash. On the other end of the leash is a little poodle, pulling valiantly... wanting to cross the street.

I see the older woman’s mouth move as she shouts at the dog. I can’t hear what she says, but it doesn’t matter. The dog wins and pulls the woman across the street.

The older woman tries to pull the dog away from the whirling dervette… Little Fifi is having none of it. Pulling closer he wants to see what’s going on with the spinning figure. He soon finds out.

One of the spinning kicks catches the dog… lifting it up… the dog like a limp dishcloth over the red sneaker. Then the kick out. The dog flies… onto Houston Street… smashes onto the pavement right in front of a large black SUV. I can’t hear the squishing noise as the dog turns into white fluff on a bed of viscous red liquid, but I’m sure there is one.

There is a scream. A girl scream… that, I can hear despite the traffic and my punk rock deafness. I spot a young woman, loose jeans, bright red blouse. She’s on the other corner… where the old lady and the dog were. First she screams as the dog is turned into mush… Then she races across the street… to do what? Attack the dancing woman? Recruit help? Sweep up the doggie pieces?

The young butch girl still dances in circles, kicking out her feet. If anything, she whirls faster and harder than before.

The woman in the red blouse keeps screaming while crossing the street.

Stop it! Stop it!” she screams.

The dancing woman is oblivious, but as the younger woman approaches… you guessed it… a flying foot in a red sneaker catches her in the stomach. Instead of lifting her up like a little poodle, the foot slams into the young woman’s belly and pushes her into street traffic. She falls on her back on the street. A taxi screeches to a halt just in time to save a second puddle of blood.

There is a tough-looking black guy, with a fresh growth of beard… right next to me… frozen like I am... looking at the mess. Then, he looks at me.

Come on!” he says. “Let’s go!”

Under his leadership, we run toward the spinning woman. The other guy tackles her, grabbing her around the knees. When she falls, I lay across her body, pinning her as best I can to the sidewalk.

Men! Men!” shouts the butch woman on the ground. “All you want to do is control women’s bodies! That’s all you want.” She tries to twist away and escape us.

You have no right to stop us. Men should not control us! Women should be free to do what they want with their bodies!”

NO THEY SHOULDN’T!

Okay Mykel” comes the voice. I recognize it immediately. It’s Literary Device... come to the aid of women everywhere.

Women should be free to do what they want with their bodies along as it doesn’t hurt anybody else.” she says. “You know what they say: my right to swing my fist ends at your chin.

BINGO!

Therein lies the entire abortion argument. Is abortion hurting/killing another person or not. Of course, I’d include pets in that, as in no one has the right to hurt an innocent animal friend.

Let me make this clear. I’m pro-abortion… in fact, I don’t think there are enough of them. One look at the offices of government, Judge Judy, facebook debates, or the upper levels of any bank, pharmaceutical company or insurance bureau will show you how much better the world would be had there been a lot more abortions.

But I want to call a worm a worm. The ONLY valid discussion in the abortion debate, is the question if a fetus is a human being or not. The anti-abortionists are not trying to control women’s bodies. They’re trying to control what they see as murder. They’re wrong, of course.

Human beings are born. There isn’t a human alive who wasn’t born, whether by natural birth, surrogate birth, artificial insemination, who knows what. A fetus, by definition, hasn’t been born and is therefore not a human. A fetus is still attached and blood-nourished in its matriarchal cage. Destroying one is more like removing a cancerous tumor than murdering a child. Abortion should be free, safe, on request, with no more regret than the removal of a burst appendix. Get on with it!

But, don’t make a mountain out of a wombhill. It’s a medical procedure... no more a plot to control women’s bodies than the snipping out of a breast lump.

I walk back from the kicking woman adventure. On the way. I have to pass the very ugly New York University owned buildings in Washington Square Village.


Washington Square Village NYC

If you look carefully, you’ll see a row of windows just at the ground level. The unfortunates who live in these apartments expose their daily lives to every passing stranger. Most have curtains drawn to cover their nakedness, or to keep prying eyes from watching the hot wax and ball gags. But on bright sunny days, the curtains are open, and it’s one of my life’s many joys to stare in the windows and see how other people live.

Today, I see something a bit disturbing. In one apartment, about 2/3 down towards Mercer Street, a young man stands at a long metal table. On the table are two boxes. They’re the same size and shape as the fruit and vegetable boxes you might see at the local farmer’s market. But each of them has an orange and black symbol on it. I recognize the symbol from the x-ray machine at the dentist’s office. It means RADIATION!


The guy in the apartment wears khaki shorts and a red t-shirt that says A&F on it. Somehow I don’t think that means Agnostic Front.

He is leaning over an oblong object that looks like a huge anal plug, with the tip cut off. His hands are plunged into the thing and seem to be tinkering with a pliers and screw driver. I climb through the narrow garden up to his window and tap on it. He looks up, first frowning, then changing that to a big smile.

He pulls his hand out of the butt plug to write something on a piece of paper and hold it to the window.

COME ON IN! APT 1G, JUST ASK THE DOORMAN!

I go to the entrance, enter, and tell the very doorman-looking doorman, a black guy in a crimson uniform… I’m going to apartment 1G. He calls the occupant… then motions me down the hall to the apartment.

I ring the doorbell. The door opens and there’s this guy… slightly taller than I am… in the same clothes I saw through the window.

You’re Mykel Board, right?” He asks.

I nod.

Wow, just the man I want to see… one who’ll understand all this. I’m a big fan.”

I follow him from the doorway to the room I saw from the window. In the corner of the room, hidden from window-view, is a stack of the crates... all with those black and yellow stickers on them.

Are you some sort of x-ray technician?” I ask pointing to the boxes.

He laughs.

More than that, Mykel,” he says. “I’m building an atomic bomb… a real one! I got the specs from an anarchist site… darkweb, ya’ know?”

I feel my already too-white skin pale further.

You’re serious?” I stammer.

You bet,” he says. “How else am I going to protect myself? They have a pistol. I need a pistol. They have a rifle. I need a rifle. They have an A-bomb. I need an A-bomb. The only thing that stops a bad guy with an thermonuclear device, is a good guy with an thermonuclear device.”

I swallow… hard.

Look,” he says, “A-bombs don’t kill people. People kill people! It’s in the constitution. Right there in the second amendment. I have a right to the same weapons the government has.”

NO YOU DON’T!

You certainly should be able to buy a musket… just like any citizen of 1776. I guess a six-shooter is okay, too. You don’t need a background check… rights shouldn’t be denied because of past mistakes. But... you’re not entitled to an atomic bomb, or a semi-automatic machine gun.

It’s not a question of who can buy a gun. That right is guaranteed to everyone. It’s a question of what gun people can buy. Congress has compromised exactly the wrong way on gun control.

So called “Red-flag laws” punish people for what they say on facebook or in emails to their friends. They punish speech and set a horrible precedent of denying rights to people because they may commit a crime in the future.

How many people won’t seek help for mental problems, because the act of seeking that help may deny them a gun.

It’s like: “Hmmm, you cannot leave your apartment after 9PM. We’ve seen you drunk on the street at midnight, and if you drive then, you might hit someone.”

No! No! No! Innocent until PROVEN guilty. Not guilty and punished without there even being a crime! And the craziest of the new laws: If you’ve been guilty of wife-beating (now called spousal abuse) it’s not enough. The girlfriend/boyfriend loophole closed under the Biden-signed law prohibits gun ownership to anyone convicted of any close-friend abuse… matter who or how long ago. This this new rule places a new penalty on gun owners accused or convicted of these crimes, and applies to those who were convicted years or even decades ago.

Knowledge of this new penalty changes the plans behind any decision regarding your legal defense, such as whether to take a plea deal. For a large number of people who pled to a misdemeanor simple assault charge for no jail time, this would mean, even 30 years after it happened with no further offenses, they are a prohibited person in possession of firearms. No grace period for getting rid of them. So, those who pled guilty to get the crime behind them, no longer have that option. You’re gonna need a lawyer and a lot of bucks from now on.

Let’s get this straight. People don’t mass-kill innocents who can’t protect themselves. Semi-automatic rifles mass-kill people. Even plain old AR-15s where you have to pull the trigger 70 times to fire 70 shots… they kill people. One guy with a knife may be able to do away with half a dozen little kids, as long as there’s no burly guard to pin his arms behind his back. With a simple pull-and-reload rifle, you may be able to shoot, reload, and shoot again, drop a few more before the cops can come in and put one between the eyes.

With a semi-automatic, you can spray a crowd… a classroom… a supermarket filled with a race you don’t like. A-a-a-a-a-a-a! Pow! Yeah, the constitution guarantees you can arm yourself. But it doesn’t guarantee what those arms can be.

Laws need to focus on the shooting, not the shooter.

Who knows what will happen between this and next month? Right now. I have plans to write about other ways you don’t know how to think. About how it’s RIGHT to shout fire in a crowded theater? About how free speech is more than the first amendment, and how it includes the right to be heard as much as the right to speak? About how immigration should be free and unlimited… welcome mats instead of borders. We’ll see how far I get with that.

But before then, something stupid is bound to happen, and that could change the blog focus… or maybe there’ll be a nuclear war. Biden seems intent on provoking one. It’s tough to get decent internet in a bomb shelter. But my neighbor down the street… He’s ready for it.

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]

--> The hits keep coming dept: Highland Park IL, another shooting 7 dead, weapon "more than 70 rounds were fired from the gunman's high-powered rifle, which was similar to an AR-15." Here's the report from ABC news.

Second amendment solutions dept: The Huffington Post reports former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens released a campaign ad that shows gun-toting supporters bursting into the homes of his political enemies and “hunting” them.

“I’m Eric Greitens, Navy SEAL,” the gun-toting candidate says. “And today, we’re going RINO hunting.”

For those who don’t know RINO means Republican in Name Only, and, these days, refers to Republicans who are not Trump supporters.

Speaking of fans dept: I had drinks and snacks with Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnis. Great conversation, and though we disagreed on immigration and abortion we got along well. When I posted on facebook the details of the meeting, the reaction was horror and reprimand.

“How could you drink with such a horrible person?”

“Do you know he said to kill and strangle people?”

What the fuck? I wrote the Artless tune, “We Want Nuclear War.” The Dead Kennedys wrote “Kill The Poor.” In “53rd and 3rd” Dee Dee Ramone sings about slitting someone’s throat! Then, of course, there was GG Allin.

What do you call that?

PUNK ROCK is what you call that. 


 → How much punk rock do you hear in Russia dept: In a completely fresh view of the Ukraine situation, an interview on Al Jazeera brings a really fresh perspective to that war. So much I suspected, turns out to be right… and even stuff I didn’t suspect. You can see it here.

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


Wednesday, June 01, 2022

Hate Crimes or Mykel's Column/Blog for June 2022

 


 

Hate Crimes
or You're STILL Wrong,
Mykel's June 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

Hate has gotten a bad name during the last twenty years or so.
                   – Mykel Board, liner note to the You’ll Hate This Record Record 1983

I don’t hate nobody.
            – John Howard, Grand Dragon KKK, Laurens SC

What has changed is that since the 1990s, the term "hate speech" has expanded like a rapidly blossoming tumor to cover so many things that weren't "hate speech" back then. For example, the word "tranny,” or being against illegal immigration and gay marriage. And back then, a "joke" was not the same thing as an "attack… “Free speech v. hate speech" is an absolutely false dichotomy, and you've swallowed it hook, line, and sinker
                   –Jim Goad

It’s true that I hate black people, but not for being black — it’s because they’re people.
                 Jim Goad

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
                             –H. L. Mencken


ITEM ONE: On December 14, 2012, white, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed twenty white school children ages between six and seven at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. He also killed six adult staff at the school, and his mother. Then he killed himself. Authorities say his motive was unclear, though there is some evidence he was fascinated by the Columbine High School shooting of 1999. The Sandy Hook shooting was not classified as “a hate crime.”

ITEM TWO: On May 19, 2022 white, 18-year old Payton Gendron entered a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo NY. He shot and killed 11 black and 2 white people of various ages. Authorities say he was radicalized by recent posts in the internet. The shooting is classified as a hate crime.

WHAT’S THE POINT? There is a smorgasbord of emotions… but they don’t have equal status in 2022.

LOVE? Me? I’m not a fan of romantic love… It’s usually just a tool to sell movies, a cover for another emotion: LUST, or a cover for its cousin: INSECURITY. But I’ve still got the love

I love my family, especially the black sheep. I love punk rock. I love sex. I love pistachio ice cream. I love the Yankees winning a World Series or a good shoot-em-up with Riki Takeuchi. I love the way mothers pull their little children closer to them when they pass me on the street. I love it more when those same kids look back at me and smile.

LOVE used to have its own crimes: Crimes of Passion, they were called. Katoom! One bullet through the wife and the milkman... in flagrante. Crimes of passion were “mitigating circumstances”… a reason for mercy... not a reason for increased punishment. People understood Love Crimes and felt sympathy for the perpetrator.

FEAR? Me? I’m afraid of having a stroke or getting cancer or Alzheimer's. I’m afraid of crazy people with axes or guns. I’m afraid of being alone for too long… of being stranded with no real human contact. I fear being falsely accused of a crime... Antifa screaming in the background BELIEVE THE WOMAN!

HAPPINESS? Me? Orgasms make me happy. Seeing myself in my relatives makes me happy. (“You know what, Uncle Mickey,” says my nephew. “I never want to get married. I want to be like you… free.”) Riding roller coasters makes me happy. Going to diners… wearing a gangster hat… drinking and eating with friends or strangers… all of that makes me happy.

SADNESS? Me? Human stupidity makes me sad. Seeing people I love acting knee-jerk, illogically, like the masses or the TV news tells them to act. That makes me sad. The deaths of friends or people I admire makes me sad. E-books and name-calling on facebook makes me sad.

I could guess the poor white guy at the elementary school in Connecticut was sad. Suicides are usually sad.

In 2022, the number one emotion is HATE! Me? I hate broccoli. I hate jackhammers. I hate bicyclists who ride on the sidewalk or go the wrong way down one-way streets. I hate pollen in the spring… and in the fall. I hate the way my stomach turns every grain of food into gas. I hate expensive cars. I hate cars that are just trucks in drag. I hate people with hairy legs who wear shorts. I hate the way gray hairs grow out of my nose and I don’t notice them until they’re long enough to cause people to speak to my nose instead of my eyes… like guys who talk to big tits instead of the woman behind them.

I hate people who stand on the walk side of escalators. I hate people who pad down the sidewalk in slow motion texting away on their fuckin’ cellphones. I hate subway passengers who try to squeeze into a car before anyone else has left. I hate people who exploit the word HATE to make a buck. I hate rich people who pay no taxes. I hate pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and hospitals that make fortunes on people’s sickness.

I hate landlords who foreclose on tenants and put people on the street. I hate mayors who serve those landlords and politicians who say taxes are theft, when the real thieves are the corporate shills filling their campaign war chests.

I’m so filled with hate that a pinprick to my belly would unleash a torrent of hate so big it’d drown a beached whale. HATE is the most common, the most widespread, the most human of emotions. It’s also the most taboo and the most punished.

Are there hate crimes? You bet your white hood there are hate crimes. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hate crimes. The cop who stopped Miles Davis on the highway while he was driving his Porsche because “you don’t fit the car” committed a hate crime. Refusing to teach kids about race when they themselves know that little Mary Ivory has a very different life from little Brianna Ebony. That’s a hate crime. Red-lining by banks is a hate crime. Purposely misreading “Black Lives Matter” as Only Black Lives Matter is a hate crime.

More hate crimes? How ‘bout sending weapons and “training” soldiers to Ukraine, but not to Tigray? Or worse, opening the US to the free-flow of Ukrainians, but not to the free-flow of Ethiopians… That’s a hate crime. The Texas shooting of eight prostitutes (six were Chinese-Americans) was a hate crime... not hate against Orientals, but hate against sex workers.

Are MOST crimes HATE CRIMES?

Only the ones that make the news.

But what about the other emotions? How come only hate gets special treatment? A lot more crimes are committed because of greed than because of hate. I want that car… your wallet… your wife… your bank account. I want that bank commission… those bragging rights. Why aren’t there special laws against GREED CRIMES?

It’s fashion. Hate is in now, and it gives the authorities an excuse to limit speech they don’t like. They say hate is caused by internet disinformation and radicalization. Stop that, and you’ll stop hate. Facebook and Twitter have been ever-increasing bastions of “hate” censorship. Joe Biden was this close to establishing a Department of Truth in the US government… in the name of fighting hate. Can you say 1984?

In US law, “Hate Crimes” have higher penalties than greed or lust or sadness crimes. Hate crimes don’t deserve any special punishment. A person killed for his wallet or a person killed for his race are just as dead. The invention of special penalties for hate crimes only further divides the educated from the uneducated… those who know what names to call their victims and those who don’t. If a white guy with a gun learns to say “Take that, asshole!” instead of “Take that, chink!” he’ll get off easy.

FLASH TO HICKSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL, 1966. It’s my Far Eastern History class with Mr. Horne. We’re discussing the very beginnings of the Vietnam War. In those days... before parents feared teaching their children how to think.. Mr. Horne would divide the class into those who thought the US should do MORE in Vietnam, and those who thought we should get the fuck out.

Okay,” said Mr. Horne, “I want the war supporters to debate the war opposers by taking sides. I want you to argue for the opposite of what you believe. I want to you learn how the other side feels.”

Fuck, I loved Mr. Horne… I learned so much from the guy. (He wore combat boots to class.) We learned empathy! We learned how other people felt. We learned to criticize our own thinking. I only wish critical thinking… or thinking at all... weren’t such a taboo in 2022.

Ewwww, you can’t teach kids about race or talk about GAY in class. That teaches them people are different. We need to teach that everybody is the same. That’s how we fight hate… by being the same as everybody else.

When we don’t learn to think… to think critically... we have caricatures. Instead of understanding how the other side thinks, we put them in a box, wrongly invest them all with characteristics we don’t like… and then reject them.

All anti-abortionists are against government programs for children. All BLACK LIVES MATTER supporters believe white lives DON’T matter. And the list goes on. We make people we disagree with into HATERS… and then we hate them for that. Fuck, I just hate that kind of thinking.

See you in hell.

LATE NOTE: As I prepare this blog, word comes of a shooting in West Texas. An elementary school… 14 students and a teacher. It appears the shooter was white and the victims were a hodge-podge. I guess that means it wasn’t a HATE CRIME, but who knows? These things change every 10 minutes. I heard the guy with the gun also shot his grandmother. Old people… if that isn’t a hate crime, it will be.

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]

Crimes of Pission Dept: Oliver Willis reports that police found a 16-second phone video showing someone pissing into a bag of milkshake mix at Arby’s. It turned out to be the manager of the place. According to the cops, on the day the video was taken, the restaurant sold at least one ice cream float and about 30 to 40 milkshakes. Nobody noticed.

Nuclear Taste Dept: ABC News says A small brewery in Finland has launched a NATO-themed beer to mark the country’s bid to join the military club. Olaf Brewing's OTAN beer has a blue label with a cartoon of a beer-drinking medieval knight-in-armor emblazoned with NATO’s compass symbol.
     The beer's name is a play on the Finnish expression “Otan olutta,” which means “I’ll have a beer,” and the French abbreviation for NATO, which is “OTAN.”
    The brewery owner described the new lager as having “a taste of security, with a hint of freedom.”

Knock knock dept: A Nigerian law website reports on a Peruvian funeral where a woman pronounced dead after a car crash shocked mourners by banging on the inside of her coffin. She had been announced as a fatal casualty after the crash which also took the life of her brother-in-law.
    The woman was placed into a coffin ahead of her funeral. The next day, mourners gasped when they heard knocking at the start of the service.
    Her relatives, who had lifted the coffin onto their shoulders, immediately lowered it and opened the lid to find her alive and peering at them.
    Police in Peru are now investigating the incident, which took place at the hospital where the woman first received treatment. I wonder if the doctors will be charged with a hate crime.

Buy Me dept: Oh yeah, I have a few copies of the You’ll Hate This Record Record left… for less money that you’d expect to pay. Check it out here.



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



Sunday, May 01, 2022

Bi bi binary or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel Board's blog for May 2022

 


 

Bi Bi Binary
or You're STILL Wrong,
Mykel's May 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

The binary approach is an obsolete school of thought in the process of structuring human perception towards reality. The true nature of reality fits better with a spectrum approach.

- Toba Beta


Human beings have a strong instinct toward binary thinking, a basic urge to divide things into two distinct groups, with nothing but an empty gap in between. We love to dichotomize. Good versus bad. Heroes versus villains. My country versus the rest. Dividing the world into two distinct sides is simple and intuitive, and also dramatic because it implies conflict, and we do it without thinking, all the time.

- Hans Rosling,


Binary paths belong in bygone past. All things civilized are non-binary. - Abhijit Naskar,


Love cannot be defined, caught, cast in stone, or archived. It's something we have no control over. Love is completely analog. Love can never be digital. --Vicky Krieps


You’re either part of the problem of part of the solution. --Black Panthers

You’re wrong. --Mykel Board


Comedians are famous for their repertoire of phrases used to tame hecklers.

Yeah my mother used to tell me that too.

Your mouth works, now try your brain.

If I was as smart as you, I’d be stupid.

We’ve all rehearsed comedy comebacks… when people ask: BANG, you got a stock answer good for anyone... any time.

Q. Did you go to business school?
A. No, I got an education.

Q. Is it hard being a Jew?
A. No, it’s easy. All you gotta do is have a Jewish mother.

Q. How’s your hearing?
A. What?

When I meet someone, it’s never long before we talk about sex. Not (necessarily) sex with each other, but in general. I use the word vagina within the first 20 minutes of a conversation with a new person. Doesn’t everyone?

And while judging the desirability of every passing stranger (usually on a scale of one to a hundred)… or while talking about bars long gone and sorely missed… a new friend will inevitably ask, “Mykel, are you gay?”

Ah, my stock answer… pops out like a drunk’s penis from a vagina. “No, I’m not gay,” I say, “but most of the guys I’ve had sex with have been gay.”

So you’re bisexual?”

“Trisexual… try anything.”

The usual response is an I’ve-heard-it-before eye-roll. Maybe with a headshake.

At nearly 80 years old, I have slightly more real-life sexual energy than my hero, Tuli Kupferberg… and he’s dead. Bisexual and trisexual just don’t do it for me any more. Gimme a video.

So, as I’m masturbating to Lief Blowher (look her up on xvideos). On the upstroke, it occurs to me that sex is like linguistics, Covid, the Ukraine war, Donny Trump and racism. Binary in the 21st century. The Greeks didn’t have binary sex. They just had sex. Who the hell invented homo and hetero? And now it’s worse, with an alphabet of sex letters that you either are or you aren’t. A wombload of ones and zeros disguised as LBQTABCDEFG.

Ok, speaking of letters-- actually letter sounds-- here’s a quick linguistics lesson-- the structuralist school, as I remember it from 1987. For the structuralists, speech sounds are like computer language: ones and zeros… plusses or minuses.

The F-sound in English is made with the inside of the lower lip touching the upper teeth. Air is blown through the narrow opening and the vocal chords do not vibrate. Plus labial, minus voice.

The F-sound in Japanese is made with both lips close together, and air blown through the narrow opening. The vocal chords do not vibrate. Also plus labial, minus voice.

But they’re are not the same sounds. Structuralists jump through binary hoops to distinguish them. The Japanese sound is plus bilabial. The English sound minus bilabial. The English sound is plus tense (lower lip). The Japanese sound is minus tense. Hoop after hoop.

The list goes on. Adding more and more pluses and minuses… but why? I explained the difference between the two sounds in two sentences. What use is all the plusing and minusing? Why the thirst for binary? So it’ll fit in your computer?

To be fair, binary-tude has been with us at least since the Chinese flipped heads or tails with the I-Ching. But it really took off with computer storage and little bits being either ones or zeros. Now it rules everything. There are people in jail and others probably killed for having the wrong series of ones and zeros on their computer hard drives. The death penalty! That’s how much binary is worth in 2022.

Binary destroys thinking. It gives two options… if it’s not A, it must be B. If he’s not good, he must be evil. Nuance dies. It’s impossible to think outside the box without thinking of another box.

Another example… real life: I’m in Japan… trying to enter a restaurant in Shitamachi, Tokyo. Shitamachi strictly translates as downtown. But is actually closer in meaning to oldtown. I notice an interesting restaurant… frayed red lanterns hanging from the roof. Looking through the window, I’m happy to see there are NO WHITE PEOPLE inside. Oh yeah, my kind of place.

I pull on the door handle. The door doesn’t open. I pull again... harder. It still doesn’t open. What an idiot I am! In some countries, doors open out, some open in. I get it.

I push the door. No results. I can see the people inside looking at me and laughing. I push again. Inside, a chubby guy wearing a black suit, puts down his chopsticks and walks over to the door. He slides it open.

FOILED AGAIN BY BINARY THINKING!

The US must be one of the world’s most binary countries. (Israel: Jew or not-Jew is also way up there.) American movies divide the world into good guys and bad guys… heroes and villains. TV news reports on criminals and life-savers. Wars are right or wrong, good or bad. People, the same. Meet someone new? First thought: are they good or bad?

Text books show the history of earth as a series of good guys fighting bad guys. The side that has death camps are the bad guys. The side that kills hundreds of thousands with atomic bombs… and poisons millions of a future generation… they’re the good guys.

Maybe it’s not American… maybe it’s natural in humans. Two hands, two feet, two nostrils, two ovaries, two testicles… everything we can see in our bodies is one, two or ten. Our bodies are digital. It may be natural, but it drives me batty!

A famous punkrock writer and producer has called me a “Trumpist” because I said that president hadn’t gotten us into a war… and did the right thing by pulling us out of the Trans Pacific Partnership. Donald Trump is the absolute epitome of the binary. You either love him… and whatever he does is GOOD… or you hate him… and whatever he does is BAD. There’s no reasoning… No nuance. No need to do any thinking whatsoever.

But wait! The problem is not Donny Trump… it’s the whole idea of GOOD and EVIL. From fairy tales to facebook, you divide up the world. Trump is EVIL… and anything he does is evil and if it’s not evil, then you have to prove he didn’t do it? Instead of seeing him (and all humans) as a complicated ANALOG combination of positives and negatives and deeds and desires that are neither positive nor negative… You see DIGITAL. If someone is EVIL you have to explain away the good,,, deny it exists. It interferes with the binary.

Donald Trump was responsible for one assassination and no wars. Joe Biden droned a car-ful of medical aid workers… and has jailed more migrants than Donny ever did. Am I a Trumpist for pointing that out?

Then there’s Hitler, the Godwin embodiment of evil... What do you do when you find him on YOUR SIDE? Hey vegetarians. How could you be a vegetarian? Hitler was a vegetarian! Instead of saying, “okay… he was right on that, but he did a fuck of a lot more harm than good,” you scramble to prove “NO! It ISN’T TRUE! HE WASN’T A VEGETARIAN!”

I once posted on facebook the cliché that Hitler made the trains run on time. First answer? “No he didn’t. That was Mussolini.” Second answer? “No, he just made the train crews SAY they ran on time. They were really still late.” You cannot admit that someone EVIL can do anything good. It destroys the binary.

Then there’s sex. You’re STRAIGHT or you’re GAY. Okay, there are so-called bisexuals, but many doubt even that. One of the main sources of pride in my life is that my friends who call themselves straight, tell me Mykel, we know you’re really straight, but only claim to like guys because it’s extreme and outrageous. My friends who call themselves gay (or lesbian… a completely unnecessary word that means “gay woman”) tell me You’re really one of us, but you only claim to like girls because it avoids the stigma of being gay. Stigma in 2022? Jeezus fuckin’ Christ!

Yeah, there’s the BISEXUAL argument… but it’s BI… it’s digital. Another file folder to fit in. Sex is not digital… it’s analog! There is a whole range of sexual tastes: age, hairstyle, clothes, weight, body shape, body hair, personality. Our tastes are more than just a decision based on innies and outies.

But you, my digital friend, you self define… Like Biden is good, so everything he does is good. Or Trump is bad, so everything he does is bad. You define yourself as STRAIGHT. You’re not allowed to even consider sticking your dinkle into another man’s dent… or you’re GAY, so, even though that girl looks sooo good, you don’t do it because… well, because you’re GAY and gay people don’t do that. Even defining yourself as BISEXUAL doesn’t work, because then you’re saying there are people who are NOT bisexual. That makes another digital divide.

Tuli Kupferberg, when he was alive, wrote a song about getting old:

Once I was a sexual (two words), but now I am asexual (one word). I got those later life asexual blues.

We are all, more or less, SEXUALS. Of course we have preferences. I like Founders Breakfast Beer more than I like Budweiser… but I’m still a beer drinker. More people you find yourself attracted to may consider themselves men than consider themselves women. But that shouldn’t define you. Once you put yourself into a little labeled container, you lose your analog. You are no longer free, but only have the choice to move from one container to another.

One of the binariest of the binary is MALE or FEMALE, man or woman. Even at birth, someone says Choose one! Now! You’re allowed to change your mind… once. Then, that’s it.

People who would rage against a pre-pubescent spending a half hour having sex, now support their right to permanently and surgically CHOOSE their gender (one of two, of course) while their age is in the single digits. If they’re not sure… they can take drugs that will delay puberty “until they’re old enough to decide.” This is just crazy since:

1. The hormones released in puberty help with the decision to choose gender and are often the cause of pre-pubescents’ changing their mind on the surgery. So delaying puberty delays the BIOLOGICAL age and makes the “choice,” not a choice at all. The decision is still made by a newly pubescent who needs maturity to decide.

2. Why choose at all? Several cultures have more than two sexes, and one of my best friends is a guy… with a twat. Many regret the surgery and more just find that it didn’t do what they expected it to do.

Why not let kids play? Let little boys wear dresses. Let little girls play football. Call the kids what they want to be called, and after they’re old enough to decide (puberty at the earliest) on surgery, let them decide.

But wait! There’s still more!

War is probably the nastiest and most dangerous of binary thinking… and it’s effects. Take the Russian Ukraine invasion. Putin is the new Hitler… and there’s no indication he gets the trains to run on time. His reported popularity in Russia is 82%. Why so popular? Are ordinary Russians also EVIL?

Putin’s enemies cannot accept that. They have to scream foul. Fake figures… the opposition is in jail… he’s really hated but everyone in Russia is afraid to say so. In war, there are only good guys and bad guys. If a bad guy is popular, then the people who like him must also be bad.

If there’s a war, the bad guys rape and pillage… commit atrocities. The good guys protect “the innocent.” It’s binary… digital. No matter how analog the reality. No matter how much good or evil from both sides… no one can see it that way.

There’s a war… it’s a movie: Cue the pillaging~ Cue the rape! Cue the dead women and children (Men? Ah as long as they’re not children, then it’s no big deal. It’s a war. Men die. That’s what they do. The horror is when women and children die.) Cue the atrocities.

And it’s all the fault of one man… One macho guy in Moscow. Every raping penis… every apartment building missile… every closed escape route (whose escape routes? Why women and children, of course. Men have to fight and die. That’s what they do.) Every “civilian” casualty is personally ordered by the next corollary of Godwin’s law. The EVIL VLAD PUTIN!

Oh the list goes on. People are either anti-mask or pro-mask. Anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine. Trump-lovers or Trump-haters. “The other side” is stupid and EVIL. OUR side is smart and GOOD.

Well, join the army! The ANALOG army. The army of the subtle. The army of no sides… but infinite nuance. The army open to men women and those who are both… or neither. The army that marches out of step… not giving a shit about matching the stride of the next person. See you in that army… or not.


See you in hell… or not

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]

Speaking of non-binary dept: The New Republic reports that, traditional treatments for substance use disorders, take place in expensive residential facilities, demand total abstinence from all drugs, and rely heavily on group therapy and the 12 steps. The magazine writes about a new system called PROP that doesn’t punish or control those in the program. Instead, PROP holds substance use on a continuum and gives people the power to determine their own treatment goals: Some might want to be abstinent from all drugs; others might reduce their substance use to more manageable levels. A completely logical-- analog-- approach.

Speaking of non-binary Chapter 2 dept:
I write this during Passover. This is the time of year where most Jews do not eat any wheat products… except matzo. And do not eat or drink anything with yeast in it. So what’s that got to do with analog? 

An analog Rabbi!! Yes! Reuben Zellman, a California rabbi is the first intersex student to graduate from reform rabbi-school. The rabbi is, of course, active in social causes, but is most interesting because of the lack of binary. Yes! My kind of… er… person! L’chaim!


See you in hell... or not (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 

BOING! or Mykel's December 2024 Blog: YOU'RE STILL WRONG

  BOING! or Mykel's December 2024 Blog: YOU'RE STILL WRONG You’re STILL Wrong Mykel's December 2024 Blog/Column BOING! ...