Mykel’s Post-MRR Blog

Number ??? July 2019

Johnny Pissoff vs 
Mykel Pissed-Off

by Mykel Board

FLASH TO 1968: The Fugs release one of their greatest albums: It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest. On that album is a song called Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel. I don’t really understand what it’s about, but I love the name. Johnny Pissoff! I can see him… dressed in black… wearing a fedora-- like Dick Tracy… walking into any room… just his personality making people clench their fists and want to get up and leave.

FLASH TO MARCH 2019: The facebook message comes from some guy named Gary. I never met him in person, and don’t know anything about him… except he likes NO FX, “but I never wear shorts.”

Hi Mykel, starts the message, your columns lately, I donno, they seem like retreads. I’ve been reading you since like 1942, so I guess I’ve got more on you than most. But what I want to know is what is it like being Mykel Board. I mean, what are your days like. What do you do in ordinary time, when people are just driving to work or walking down the street? These days, you just write about politics, but I can get that anywhere. Please, Mykel, be punk again.

FLASH TO JUNE 2019: My long-term pal and Jersey Beat editor, Jim Testa, is talking to me. Jim has become a regular at our salon at the Algonquin... with Dorothy Parker. Dorothy is quieter than she’s known for being. It might have something to do with being dead. The rest of us take up the slack.

Mykel, says Jim, your columns lately, I donno, they seem like retreads. I’ve been reading you since 1942, so I guess I’ve got more on you than most.

“Okay Jim,” I answer. “I’ve heard this before. What do you want? You want me to be punk again?”

“No Mykel,” he says. “I want you to surprise me.

Wow! An interesting pair of messages… and honest too. I guess I HAVE been just treading beer lately. So maybe I should chronicle a day or two in my life. Maybe that’d be punk enough for Gary…. and surprise Jim.

But allow me one paragraph of opinion.

OPINION: Fat asses never look good on guys. On gals, they’re unpleasant when they bulge from the sides, like a deformed peach. They work wonders when they protrude from the back, coming out 3-D like one of those Gambian koras-- an instrument that look as beautiful as it sounds. Those master-asses make you want to nestle your face between the folds, and dig your pink oral organ deep… forcing the sphincteral flesh to tighten around your eager tongue.

FLASH TO MOST ANY DAY ON A NYC SIDEWALK: The three young women walking slowly ahead of me all have the width-- not the depth.

The cliché is that it’s only the tourists who creep along NYC streets...the time-obsessed locals maneuvering behind them… trying to pass to get wherever the fuck they need to go.

That’s not true in 2019. It’s not only tourists. It’s every one with a fuckin’ cellphone who walks slowly on the NYC streets. And here are three of them… walking ass to ass… leaving no sidewalk space to get by.

I come up behind them.. breathing loudly… panting. It doesn’t help. Their ears are plugged white with some Apple doodad that frees them from the responsibility to watch where and how they’re going.

I rest my hands on the nearly touching shoulders of the two girls closest to the street. I press slightly… to separate them.

They turn towards me… simultaneous what the fuck expressions on their too-made-up faces.

“You left half an inch for someone to pass,” I say. “If you spread out just a bit more, you can have the sidewalk completely blocked.”

The three girls shirk back, as if I’d asked them to look at my penis.

I pass between ass number two and ass number three and continue walking.

On the subway now, I stand, having given my seat to some geezer even older than I am. It’s only a 20- minute ride anyway. I can read my H. L. Mencken standing up.

“GRAND CENTRAL STATION!”

Time to get off the train.

The doors open. The crowd outside the steps forward. Two guys in particular, both young… jockish… wearing almost identical blue business suits… one with a navy tie with Greek letters… the other a black tie with small yellow polka dots…. push their way into the car before those of us leaving can leave.

WAIT! I shout at them.

They turn to look at me.

“Fuck you,” says the one with the Greek letters on his tie.

They’re the kind of macho muscled men that give both Wall Street and heterosexuality a bad name.

“Look,” I say, “Just because you can get married now, doesn’t mean you have the right to push people around.”

I watch his eyebrows come together until he figures out what I’m talking about. By then, I’m outta there.

FLASH AHEAD: The scene is K-Mart. I’m here to buy a cheap alarm clock. Mine broke when I was trying to set it while drunk., It slips from my hand… plunges from my sleeping loft to the hard wood floor below… smashes to plastic shards. I’m here to buy a new one. My self-imposed spending limit is $10.

A colored girl, in a red and white t-shirt is patting the blankets at the bottom of the escalator.

“Excuse me, Miss.” I say, “could you tell me where the clocks are?”

“I don’t fuckin’ work here,” she shoots back. “And I’m a MISSES, not a miss.”

She huffs off and I feel like shit.

I wander the aisles looking for clocks. A guy in a suit… light grey with fine black lines through the material… bright white shirt... a black tie with LV and those kind of symbols all over it in brown. I didn’t take a picture of him, but I found a similar one on the internet:

He’s in his early 20s with one of those haircuts that you see on posters for BUSINESS SOLUTIONS. carefully parted, trimmed-- like he gets a haircut every day… one lock precisely dripping on the forehead, saying I’m suave. He reminds me of a slightly more sophisticated version of those two guys who pushed past me on the subway.

No idea what he’s doing here. Maybe he wants to see how the 99% live. Maybe he’s just getting a snack for the train to Scarsdale.

I walk over to him and tap him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Mister” I say. “Could you tell me where the clocks are?”

I wish I had a picture of the look of horror in his eyes. But it makes my day… certainly makes up for the faux pas with the red t-shirt girl-- at least in my Johnny Pissoff mind.

LUNCH TIME: Flash to SWEETGREEN… an awful vegetable-oriented (pleonasm?) restaurant. They billboard advertise all over the city with close-up pictures of teens with something green stuck between their teeth. I’m eating here because I feel I SHOULD. I don’t want to die from lack of lettuce.

I’ve got my salad ordered at the counter. Someone mixes a bunch of green stuff together and hands it to me. In order to make it half-palatable, I ask her to throw in some chicken. Maybe I mishear, but I could swear the salad makes a TSK TSK when I ask for the chicken.

I carry the bowl of salad from the counter to the cashier… who looks a lot like the woman I mistook for a K-Mart sales lady. She rings it up. “That’ll be $14.85,” she says.

I fix my face in a way that tries to show I’m used to paying $14.85 for a salad. I pull a twenty from my wallet.

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking not sorry at all, “we only accept Visa, Mastercard, or American Express.”

“What the fuck?” I say, finally losing it. “I have 8 credit cards here, but I’m not going to give you one! You know what credit card only means? It means that new immigrants who don’t have bank accounts yet can’t buy your $14.85 salad. It means that people on the lam from ICE… people who don’t want to leave a paper trail… can’t buy your $14.85 salad. it means that people who hate banks, who don’t want every transaction to be processed for a fee that goes to Chase or Citibank can’t buy your $14.85 salad. It means that cash, paper currency LEGAL TENDER (I speak those words in capital letters) is no good in your shop. I’m outta here.

I walk out, leaving my $14.85 salad on the counter.

Sometimes, I wonder what it is that creates the need to piss people off. Of course, that’s what punk is all about, but punk didn’t create the need. It WAS CREATED by that need. As time passes and the facebook world makes is easier and easier to piss off and be pissed off… the world does not get any punker.

Of course, those of us who live in America live under the punkest president ever… but-- even then-- I’m still not sure I get the whole thing. I’d like to look at it up close. Examine piss-offedness under a microscope. What is it? What does it do? Are there different kinds of piss-offedness? Is there good piss-offedness and bad piss-offedness?

Ben Weasel, who is no slouch when it comes to pissing people off, once said that I don’t intentionally try to piss people off. It is simply the fact, says he, that I so strongly believe in what I do, that the inevitable result is people getting pissed off. Those aren’t his exact words, but the meaning is close enough.

I donno.

I don’t try to piss off people… at least not people who are poor or those who have enough of the world against them already: cripples, the chronically depressed, those working shit jobs for shittier wages, the homeless. Sometimes, though, I can’t help it. That cashier in Sweetgreens was probably a minimum wage working poor. I wish there were a way I could piss off SWEETGREEN without pissing off the poor shlubs who work there. Let me know if you find one.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email to god@mykelboard.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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group: 

readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-→Shoot if you’re sad to be gay dept: Philippine President Duterte made a speech to Philippine expats in Japan. In that speech he said that he “used to be gay” but cured himself with the help of several beautiful women. After his marriage, Duterte said “I hate handsome men… and now prefer beautiful women.”

→Forty Days Dept: This Week magazine reports that the owners of a full-scale replica of Noah’s Ark are suing their insurance company for rain damage. The arc is connected with the notorious Kentucky “Creation Museum.” The owners claim they didn’t get enough money for the damage suffered by the arc from recent “heavy rains.” I have no comment-- except a smiley face-- on this one.

→Fact is funnier than fiction dept: Congressman Devin Nunes filed a $250 lawsuit against Twitter for making fun of him. The reason? A tweet said “the Nunes cow” was “udderly worthless and it’s past time to mooove him to prison.” In 2017, Nunez Nunes co-sponsored a law called the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act.” It did not pass.

→ Pimp yourself dept: I’m rebuilding my LINK CONNECTION database. If you have a cool blog, or newsletter, or something else with a URL, let me know (even if you’ve already done so). You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. If I like it, I’ll link to it and let you know. Then you link to mine and I’ll link to yours. It’ll give us both two extra points in the Google search engine. Send the link via email to god@mykelboard.com

See you in hell,
MB

You’re Still Wrong Mykel's Blog for June 2019 or MAKING SHIT UP

Mykel’s Post-MRR Blog

Number ??? June 2019

Making Shit Up

by Mykel Board

Everything was made up by people that were no smarter than you.

--Steve Jobs

I’m tellin’ ya’. I saw it with my own two eyes. We’re recording the extra tracks for GG’s HATED Roir cassette. Yeah, the cassette… musta been in 1986. GG insists on a mic where he can stand and throw himself around. I think Chicken John is on guitar. Evans is definitely the drummer…. a live recording. GG is singing “I WANNA FUCK MYSELF. ” At the end of the song GG screams I WANNA FUCK MYSELF. FUCK MYSELF.

He walks back to Evans and rips a drumstick out of his hands. Then drops his pants and shoves the drumstick up his ass. Up and down… back and forth… Splinters anyone? But that’s not enough… pulling the drumstick out from his ass, he shits on the floor. Not a splatter shit, but a dogshit shit. Individual turds… cucumber size… lying stacked like French bread in a bakery.

But wait! There’s more! One by one, he picks up those turds and shoves them BACK into his ass. Moving his stomach like an Indian fakir, he sucks each one back into its ancient home.

None of that happened. I made it up. You believed it because you know about GG… and you know about me. You’ve heard rumors. You want to believe it’s true. That’s what I want to write about this month. Making shit up.

Making shit up is different from lying… or maybe it’s a kind of lying. Lying is just saying something that isn’t true… usually for your own face-saving benefit.

“The dog must have farted.”

That’s a lie.

Damn, there’s that neighbor’s dog. I love it… I always keep dog cookies on hand for when it paws the door and begs to come in. Leaves a slime over my face after licking me hello. I love her, but she does have poor digestion. Farts up a storm… the smell lingers in the corners like a nerd at parties… You never know when it’s going to make an appearance…

That’s making shit up.

There is some creativity in making shit up. Some extra believability that comes from the surrounding stories. A novel is making shit up.

Though there are always cries of LIES! LIES! LIES! in politics, much of it isn’t lies, but people making shit up.

Most of what you think you know is just stuff people made up. Here’s some of it:

• THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WAS INVENTED TO PRESERVE SLAVERY
• IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRAT IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, YOU’RE VOTING FOR TRUMP
• DONALD TRUMP SAID THE RACISTS AND NAZIS WHO MARCHED IN CHARLOTTESVILLE VA  WERE GOOD PEOPLE
• SUPPORT FOR GAY MARRIAGE AND TRANSSEXUALS IN THE MILITARY IS PROGRESSIVE

All that shit is made up. Some is “inspired by real events” but most of it comes from the same process that created Alice and the White Rabbit.

Let’s take the Electoral College. For the non-Americans and I’ll explain.

The Electoral College is the US system for deciding the president. Instead of just counting the raw number of votes for each candidate, there is a group of electors. More populous states have more electors than less populous states. Every state, though, has at least three electors. Alaska has three electors. California has 55. (NOTE: Alaska was never a slave state.)

The reason for this system was to give some voice to the rural/farming states. If elections were decided by pure vote tallies, the populous states-- with the mega-cities-- would decide every election. The needs of farmers, ranchers, and small town dwellers would never be met. A candidate would only have to win the cities to win the elections. Fuck everyone else. With the electoral college, Wyoming doesn’t have a BIG voice (3 electors), but it has a voice. With direct election, it would not. (Wyoming was never a slave state.)

So where did the idea that the Electoral College was related to “preserving the rights of slave states” come from?

In an article called, “The Electoral College was explicitly designed to protect slavery,” The Raw Story website writes:

In order to guarantee that the nonvoting slaves could nevertheless influence the presidential election, Madison favored the creation of the Electoral College. 

The Convention then accepted the idea of an Electoral College. By this time the Convention had already agreed to count slaves for representation under the three-fifths compromise, counting five slaves as equal to three free people in order to increase the South’s representation in Congress. Thus, in electing the President the political power Southerners gained from owning slaves (although obviously not the votes of slaves) would be factored into the electoral votes of each state.

Yo, buckaroos! The 3/5 compromise is a COMPROMISE… get it? It was included to stop an impasse between the slave states who wanted the entire population counted, and the non-slave states who didn’t want the slaves counted at all. It was NOT about preserving the slave states… but only about representing them. [NOTE: My pal Richard mentioned that, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, EVERY STATE was a slave state. So the idea that the E.C. was created to protect slave states is ipso facto ridiculous!]

The 3/5 compromised decides the NUMBER of electors in the electoral college. Yes, it is unfair. Counting a population that can’t vote to decide votes is nasty and wrong. But that doesn't mean the electoral system should be abolished. Saying so would be like saying convicts who have served their time are not (in most places) allowed to vote. That is unfair. But it doesn't mean that all voting should be abolished.

So while there was a relationship between slavery and the WAY electors were chosen… the connection between the electoral college and slavery is just…. well, made up. And worse, this is 20-fuckin’-19! I can guarantee that in the 2016 election, NO SLAVE STATES were benefited by the electoral college and they won’t be in 2020. (Actually, they’re ALL slave states… but that’s another blog.)

Related to this is the incredible notion that if you don’t vote for the Democrat in the 2020 election “you’re voting for Trump.”

By now, you already know that we have an Electoral College… and it has a useful function. It may need some tweaking, but it doesn’t need abolishing. Even if you don’t agree with that, you know that it won’t disappear before 2020.

The reality is that most states are either Democratic or Republican. In those states, ALL the electoral votes will go to the Democrat-- or Republican. It doesn’t matter how the individual voters vote. NOT voting for the Democrat in New York… or not voting for the Republican in Alabama… won’t change the fact that New York’s electoral votes will go to the Democrat and Alabama’s to the Republican.

I could vote for my penis, and that would have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election (or, for that matter, on the outcome of my penis.) Only in the swing states-- that is the states that change from year to year-- do individual votes count. Those states are: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire. North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. About a quarter of all the states.

Some of those states are BARELY swing states. Arizona, for example, has voted Republican in nine of the last ten presidential elections. And Wisconsin has voted Democrat in eight of the last ten elections. Not very swingin’.

So if you’re not in a swing state (and nearly ¾ of voters are not) … not voting Democrat is… well… not voting Democrat. It is registering a complaint… If anything, it’s a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, and a message to whichever party… I don’t like the shit you’re throwing at me.

That is a far cry from voting for Trump. That part is completely made up.

Next comes Trump calling the Nazis and Klansmen of Charlottesville, VA “good people.”

Here’s what happened: A demonstration was organized in Charlottesville, Virginia. The general organizing theme was around the removal of statues associated with the confederacy and southern history during the US Civil war. There were as many counter-demonstrators as demonstrators. One man drove a car into the counter-demonstrators, killing one person.

On a news show, Donald Trump said the following:

You’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people – and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too. (Complete text of the TV interview here.)

On Twitter, Nation Magazine sports writer, David Zirzin says Condemning Israel is not anti-Semitic… calling Nazis and White supremacists “good people” IS anti-Semitic.

I searched for the exact Zirzin quote, it looks like it was deleted. There were a ton of comments that he just made it up. It wasn’t his idea, of course, and I don’t blame him for thinking Trump said Nazis were good people. Lots of folks believe it, even though it was made up. Trump’s comments, in fact, CONDEMN neo-Nazis and white nationalists. But that story doesn’t fit the narrative. So someone just made up the story… putting the “fine people” together with “neo-Nazis”… reconstructing the whole speech… making up a new one… and POW! People believe it.

Now let’s look at the support for Gay Marriage and Transsexuals in the military. Supporting these institutions is PROGRESSIVE. While opposing them is FASCIST.

Is Friedrich Engels FASCIST? As one of the founders of Communism (for the millennials, Communists are not fascist… or Nazi), Engels wrote about marriage and how it is used as an oppressive tool to maintain women in a subordinate position. Marriage and its associate rules push people into forming family units where there is a bread-winner and a housekeeper. It makes one person reliant on the other for sustenance… and even gives a financial value to that dependence. The value makes its appearance in ALIMONY when the marriage breaks up.

In order to encourage marriage, the US government… and private enterprise… awards several bonuses to married people that are not awarded to individuals in other relationships. Take insurance… please!

In civilized countries, the entire population is entitled to tax-payer funded medical care. There is only government-provided health insurance… and it doesn’t matter if you’re hitched or not. In the US, medical insurance is paid for by employers. The law requires employers to pay for the SPOUSES and children of workers. If you’re not married, it only pays for you.

In recent times, there was a “domestic partnership” provision, that required companies to pay for people living together (het or homo), if they registered. They didn’t have to be married. This cost employers a ton of money. With gay marriage, domestic partnership is dead. If you’re not married, someone loses insurance. The employer doesn’t have to pay. The insurance companies don’t have to insure. Thousands of people who had the legal freedom and independence that comes from NOT being married, have suddenly lost that. They’re pushed into marriage for the insurance. And some for the tax benefits of joint filing.

But wait, there’s more: ADULTERY is a valid legal reason for divorce. Divorce means a big payment in alimony. So marriage pushes people into MONOGAMY. A religious rule turns into a legal rule with the stroke of a wedding ring. The free love ideals of the REAL progressives dies in a religious fury encouraged by the government. Gay marriage is NOT progressive. Marriage itself is not progressive, it is government control of love and sex? Does that sound Progressive to you?

Interestingly, there have been some new voices talking about the evils of family… and THEY are progressive.

And Transsexuals in the army? Oy vey! It’s like an antebellum southerner asking Should transsexuals be able to own slaves?

That’s not the question! The question is should slavery be abolished?

Since WWII, the US military is a murder machine... killing more people than all other countries combined. Should transsexuals have a right to participate in that?

Of course not! NO ONE should have that right.

And the last made up stuff I want to talk about is something I’ve written about before, so I’ll be brief.

Lack of gun control causes mass killings and school shootings in the US.

In Switzerland, every family has a gun.Wikipedia reports that Canada has a million more registered firearms than the US, with a population of 10% of that of the US. Canada is one of the most peaceful countries on earth.

Gun violence is not caused by guns. It’s caused by violence. You’ve already read that-- in modern times-- the US has killed more people in other countries than all other countries combined. And, it has cheer-led even more. America is a country that thrives on war movies… or superheroes winning the day… by killing.

America puts less value on life (except, for some, unborn life) than any other country in the world. It’s just made up that guns make violence. It’s easy to see that a culture of violence creates violence. As for local/legal murder, aka The Death Penalty, the US (with the exception of Japan: one death penalty in the past 20 years) is the ONLY first world (sic) country that still has that penalty. So you tell me, how is it GUNS that make the violence here?

- end -

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-→Nice quote dept: Speaking of gun laws, Morgan Freeman had some nice words about mass killings in America. He included America’s fascination with CELEBRITY (he is one)… and it’s certainly something to consider.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine?

People who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

-→Unfortunate simile dept: You know what a fan I am of Godwin’s law… which states that given enough time, every internet discussion will bring up Hitler or the Nazis and after that further discussion becomes useless. Can you imagine climate change?

William Happer, chosen by Trump to evaluate the risks of climate change, said:

The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world-- and so were the Jews.
End of meaningful discussion.

--> Jokes become reality dept: Just like 4chan’s successful attempt to provoke the easily-offended left. (They pretended that the OK sign was a secret WHITE POWER sign… and thus made it one.) It’s clear that this is another case of a joke becoming reality. I think 4chan is the Yippies of the right. 

 

-end-

You’re Still Wrong Mykel's Blog for MAY 2019 or MIND-MELDING FOR DUMMIES

Mykel’s Post MRR Blog

Number ??? May 2019

The Truth About Liberals and Conservatives

by Mykel Board

Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

--Charles Krauthammer

Can it be him? I don’t think so. I think he’s dead. I’m sure he’s dead… but here he is, walking down Houston Street… as plain as a photon gun. I walk quickly to pass him… take a look over my shoulder… then stop… unable to resist the question.

“Are you… are you...” I start.

He smiles.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes I am.”

“But I thought you were dead,” I tell him. “I read it in the papers… even saw a memorial service.”

He laughs and tells me, “You know we live two hundred years. Tops in the Federation, I think.”

“Ok,” I say, “I’ll buy you a drink. Let’s talk.”

FLASH TO THE PECULIER PUB (my favorite bar in New York over 100 kinds of beer… the first beer bar in NYC). We sit in the back, by the mosaic of Van Gough’s Starry Night made completely with beer bottle caps. He looks up at it.

“Fascinating,” he says.

“This is kind of perfect timing for me,” I tell him. “I've been trying hard to understand people. I have friends I don’t get. I can’t make sense of how they think. If only I could do a Vulcan Mind Meld, I thought, I could understand the way they think. Now’s my chance.”

“I can teach you,” he says.

Just then, Nicole comes over with the beer menu. Spock looks confused by the large number of choices.

“Get something FOUNDERS,” I tell him. “It’s the best brewery in America. If you like dark, but not too bitter, try the Breakfast Beer… It’s got oats in it… that’s why they call it breakfast beer.”

“You have a lot to teach about beer,” he says before looking at Nicole and saying, “Give me one of those.”

“I’ll have an all-day IPA,” I tell her.

She goes off. I lean close to Spock and speak almost in a whisper. “I’ll teach you beer,” I tell him, “if you teach me the Vulcan Mind Meld.”

“Deal!,” he says.

FLASH TO THE BLACK SHEEP: It’s my favorite bar in midtown. Friendly Irish pub… a nice assortment of Irish waitresses, and always a free shot of Jameson’s to end the night. Across from me sits Brandon, my only white millennial drinking buddy.

“He’s got such little hands,” says Brandon. “How could you like anyone with such little hands?”

“I don’t get it,” I tell him, “I mean I don’t understand the relation between little hands and the ability to govern.”

“Mykel, Mykel, Mykel,” he says shaking his head. “You just don’t understand, do you? It’s all part of the same picture… if someone is so evil… any part of him… hairstyle, handsize, pot belly… is also part of that evil.”

Now it’s my turn to shake my head, “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t get it. Would you mind if I tried a Vulcan Mind Meld?”

He laughs.

“No really,” I say, reaching for his face.

“Now cut it out guys,” says Maria, the Black Sheep Waitress. “You know I believe you should have the right to get married and all that… but please…. Not at the table.”

I laugh… but don’t let go of his face.

DOOOOZZZZZZ.

FLASH AHEAD A FEW DAYS: I return from work. It’s been a hard time… trying to pull myself free from Brandon’s mind… separate this is me… from this is him. I need to relax… and learn. Maybe relaxing will allow me to more completely experience his mind.

I sit in my desk chair… swivel it around to face the TV… and turn the TV on. There’s a picture of a burning church… looks like a Cathedral.

“Fuck,” I think, “it’s those Norwegian Heavy Metallers… burning churches again. How can people like that music?”

Then a banner flashes on the bottom of the screen. NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL… PARIS.

“Holy Shit! I’ve been there… it’s beautiful… and it’s burning down. It’s older than Noam Chomsky.”

Then, the upper right corner flashes FOX FIVE NEWS. What a relief! It’s on Fox News. So it can’t be true. Whew! That was scary.

It’s a spring day in April. At least it should be… There should be budding flowers... organic cherry blossoms. It should be a day where we celebrate our connection to the universe… our oneness with all the righteous people of the world… and it’s raining. That orange fucker in the Whitehouse has pulled out of the Paris climate treaty and made it rain! How many homeless will get soaked… pneumonia.. because of that bastard? April showers my ass… it’s GLOBAL WARMING. And this is only the beginning.

Soon, it’ll be so hot… the sky will be filled with such radiation… Not a speck of humanity will survive. New York will be under water… Africa gobbled up by the Sahara… California destroyed by rampant wildfires… all because of that fucker in Washington.

I can’t go out in that… it’s probably not regular rain in the first place. It’s ACID RAIN. Every drop that lands on me is the seed of a future cancer. Okay, I’ll stay inside for now… wait for it to stop. I’ll give my black friend, LeRoy a call and maybe we can go out to someplace inside. See a Michael Moore movie… I’ll think of something.

The rain has stopped… I walk outside and see taped to my mailbox downstairs a folded piece of paper… yellow… official looking…

I peel it off and check it out. It’s a fucking ticket!!! Failure To Adequately Separate Recyclables. 35 fuckin’ dollars! Me? I separate everything! Compost… (that goes to the composter in the bathroom, where in six months it becomes food for the potted herbs.), paper, metal, glass… I even roll up the tinfoil and stick it in the metal can. What the fuck?

Wait a second! I get it. It’s THE RUSSIANS. They’re fucking with the rules. They want to confuse people so they’ll give up on recycling. They’re trying to destroy the environment… fill the seas with plastic… make Americans live in a sea of unrecycled garbage. When we’re swimming in our own filth, Putin won’t even have to launch a missile… We’ll just be ripe for the take over… The Soviet States of America… Just you wait, it’s coming soon.

Stop! Stop! Stop! I understand how they think. I can’t take any more. I’m exhausted. I force the alternative mind from my head and return to myself. Weak… drained... I fall asleep.

FLASH AHEAD: I’m recovered and ready to pursue my quest. I won’t find a conservative here in New York… I’d better try some place more conducive to that mindset. Alabama or Mississippi would be the cliché, but I want to find someone closer. Frat boys have the Trump mentality, I don’t know if there are fraternities at NYU… seems like there are too many Chinese and Jews to have them… and I don’t remember seeing any Greek letters on university buildings. There’s the NYU chapter of Young Americans For Freedom. All I need to do is wait outside as a meeting finishes, then I can mind meld with one of them.

Perfect, it’s late… dark… and the YAF meeting is just getting out. I lurk in my Inspector Gadget drag in a doorway in the next buildings. A crowd leaves first. I’m waiting for a straggler. There’s one, wearing shorts and one of those polo shirts with wide stripes… horizontal… no jacket.

I step out of the shadows.

“Excuse me,” I say.

He turns and looks at me.

“I’m not a homo,” he tells me, “so what do you want?”

I stare at a spot on his face, just below his right eye.

“I was going to ask you if you had a cigarette,” I tell him, “but I just noticed you’ve got something under your eye. Here I’ll get rid of it before it gets IN your eye.”

I raise my hand to touch his face. He flinches, but lets me. I’ve got him… both hands now… The Vulcan Mind Meld!

DOOOOZZZZZZ.

I can feel the transfer… like a second brain inside my head… pushing… pushing… slowly taking over… there. I’ve got it. I release him… dazed and staggering… and I head back to my apartment to see what happens.

Wow! That’s some headache… don’t remember the binge, but I’m feeling the hangover. Must’ve been from that bottle of rotgut I took from the street bum. Asshole asks me for money.. like I’m a bank or something… Gave him a taste of shoe leather there… and finished his bottle… maybe that was a mistake. Some Bayer should fix me up. I like that company anyway… they made millions selling AIDS blood. What genius! Turning bad blood into profit… an example for our time!

Whew! That’s better. I just need some sleep now. Maybe if I jerk off to some Iraqi War videos… Those Muzzies explode in blasts of machine gun fire… nothing as soothing as that.

The alarm rings at 8:30 in the morning. I slap the snooze alarm, then fall back into a fitful sleep. I vaguely remember a dream. Something about a Mexican waitress.

“Yo puta!” I called to her in my best Spanish.

I don’t remember anything else. It’s shopping day. I need to go out and buy white bread and ground beef for the week to come. It’s only a three block walk, and this is New York fuckin’ city... nobody can keep a car here, because the socialists in charge have made it too tough-- and expensive-- to own one.

Leaving my building, I see a fat old lady picking through the trash in front of my building. As she walks around the trash, she limps noticeably… favoring her right leg. She tears at the plastic bags, probably looking for bottles she can turn in for their deposits at the corner store.

She looks at me as I pass… half smiles a toothless grin… and holds out a wrinkled hand.

“Get a job!” I shout at her and then pick up the pace.

They should just kill them off. Why not? They’re doing no good for anybody. They’re not producing… not creating wealth… just get rid of ‘em. It’d be as easy as a tight room full of gas… or better still... throw them in the clink and make ‘em work for their room and board. Make license plates, repair roads… I dunno. But put ‘em to good use.

At the Stop and Shop I fill my cart up with discount ground beef, eggs, and anything else cheap enough not to be organic, cage free or Jezuz fuckin’ Christ vegetarian. Sometimes I think the fear that animals must feel waiting for the slaughter… and the actual pain of death… adds something nice to the taste of meat.

Back home, I sit in front of the TV with a just-cooked hamburger and a Coke. Made that sucker myself… better than Wendys!

Digging the remote of the pile out of skidmarked underwear on the floor, I turn on the TV.

It’s the fuckin’ news. Some crying kids pulled from their parents at the Spic border. The kids scream as their parents resist arrest... try to pull away from the cops toward the bawling brats. I hope this report gets to Mexico. Take away MORE kids, I say. Teach those fuckers a lesson. Let’s see how anxious they’ll be to invade if it means their puppies get thrown into cages. Nothing like a few untreated measles cases to really teach them a lesson.

I chuckle.

Then his face. The Prez. I had my doubts when he was elected. I watched him on TV and thought he was a wimp. YOU’RE FIRED! What the fuck? Anyone can fire anyone… people SHOULD be fired, that’s how they learn who’s boss. I remember thinking he should have said YOU’RE DEAD! That’d really show ‘em.

The libtards just don’t get it. They can’t figure that it’s life… dog eat dog… People are SUPPOSED to die. That’s the idea. The best win. They fight and the best win again. If you keep fighting, you always get the best… and the best get rich. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Getting the best… and getting rich.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-→Newest holocaust denier dept: According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Jewish Pope Benjamin Netanyahu, says that Hitler did not want to exterminate the Jews, but was persuaded to do it by… you guessed it… Muslim Arabs. If this appeared in The Onion, we’d laugh at it. But the world is stranger than The Onion.

→ Proving the cliches dept: The Israeli newspaper above, installed a special program to block it’s pages from any browser using an AD-BLOCKER. In other words, you HAVE to put up with their money-makers if you want to read what they have to say. The income is more valuable than the news… Sometimes it’s sooo tough being a Jew.

→ Texas Jerkoff dept: A proposed bill in Texas that would impose a fine for male masturbation is making its way through the state’s legislature. House Bill 4260, called the “Man’s Right to Know Act,” would punish male masturbation with a $100 fine, and require men who want Viagra to be subject to a rectal exam.

Though proposed as a satire of restrictions on women’s rights, the bill is actually moving though the Texas legislature and may become law. I wonder if they’ll have a special branch of the police force… the frig patrol?

→ I hate hotels… but dept: I’m a couch surfer. I’d prefer to stay on someone’s cum-stained sofa than in the fanciest hoity toity Ritz. It’s a bed, for fuck’s sake. But, I’m tempted by a “special cabin,” I read about.

The Gas Station along Texas Highway 304 near Bastrop now offers overnight stays in some newly built cabins behind the station. Why stay there? The old filling station was the setting for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre-- one of the greatest horror films ever made. Manager Ben Hughes says the Coke machine in the movie is the same one that’s now in the restaurant, and they have a van parked outside that’s an exact replica of the one in the film. Now you can stay in one of those four mini-cabins. But Hughes promises the staff won’t try to scare you: “We want to make sure that everybody that comes out has a good time... not just freakin’ out or anything like that.”

           I say, too bad on that last part.  

- end -

You’re Still Wrong Mykel's Blog for APRIL 2019 or ME... NOT ME

You’re Still Wrong

Mykel's Blog for APRIL 2019
or

ME... NOT ME

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

-- King James Bible, Matthew 5:30a

April showers bring May flowers. People also consider this month the start of REAL spring… rather than the official start at the end of March. Reality sometimes is difficult to pin down. I don’t have the answers here… Let others decide, for me that’s not what’s important. For me, it’s the time to consider what the hell ME is in the first place. Or maybe it’s better to say, to reconsider. Only death… or its fear... is more powerful than simple deep thought in making a decision. Let me completely frank here. Some of what follows was inspired by others, but the actions were all mine.

Here’s what happened:

Getting out of the shower, I see a naked me in the steamed bathroom mirror. Instead of standing in front of it and jerking off to me jerking off… as is my usual wont… I stop to consider.

“That is not me.” I say… out loud to the no one else who is there. “That is a reflection of me… an image formed by light bouncing off my body into the mirror… and then bouncing back to my eyes. A series of bounces… that’s all… certainly not me.”

That leads me to consider anew… as is done in the spring when the leaves and grass are new… what is ME. I can say it’s not the reflection in glass, but what is it?

Standing in front of the mirror I rub my hands over my body… not in an erotic way, but as a blind man might determine the shape and consistency of a new object by feeling it.

“Is this me?” I think. “This nose, this nipple, these ribs, this asshole, these knees?”

Of course not. They are things I use to walk, to shit..., to smell… my nipples? I can’t think of a time I ever used them to do anything special. Old age has taken away their even minor erotic content. They do nothing for me now. These legs? I could use a wheelchair to move. My legs --like a wheelchair-- help me go from one place to another. If they help me, then cannot BE me. This asshole? Thousands of people shit out of a hole in their abdomen… into a bag that gets emptied at night. They are still THEY… with or without a working asshole.

Holding on to the towel rack to steady myself, I lift my leg so I can rest my foot on the closed toilet seat. I consider its blue veins and stubby toes with nails that always get caught on the side of my socks. I focus on the little toe. What does that even do for me? Why do I need it?

I lift the foot off the toilet and balance on one leg. The foot that touches the ground and keeps me balanced just uses the big toe and first two little toes… that’s all. The little toe just wags there… useless... not me and not helping me.

I put my right foot down and head to the medicine cabinet to find a razor blade. I have a pack of those old-style single edge razor blades. I keep them in the bathroom out of habit… I never use them for shaving (does anyone?), but I have a box-cutter I use to actually cut boxes so I can mail stuff out that I sell on eBay. I don’t need the box cutter now. Somehow, I want to get closer… with the blade… this is personal.

I put a towel on the top of the toilet and then rest my foot on it. With my left hand, I hold the towel rack like one of those rails cripples use to transfer from their wheelchairs. My left foot is firmly (I hope) planted on the tiles of the bathroom floor. Taking the razor blade, I set the sharp edge on top of my foot… the one on the toilet… right where the little toe connects to the meat of the foot. Then I press down… hard.

I expect a squirt of blood… like in the movies… a money shot… but that’s not how it is. The blood only leaks…. around the sides of the razor… Two little rivulets... joining at each end... to flow down over my foot to the towel below.

I expected massive.. unbearable pain… instead it’s more like the throb of arthritis… a dull pain that somehow seems to be happening to someone else. I press harder… the blade stops… makes a scraping sound… bone, I guess… I wiggle the blade, looking for the soft spot between two bones. FUCK!!! THAT HURTS!!! I clench my teeth to stifle a scream… close my eyes… take a deep breath… and cut deeper.

I’m moving closer to sawing than just pressing down... like you’d use a knife to separate a drumstick from the rest of the chicken. The blood puddle has grown and now drips down the towel to splash drop-by-drop onto the floor. I take a washcloth to wipe away the blood from the cut. My toe hangs from my foot on a piece of something yellow. Cartilage? A tendon? What do I know? I never went to medical school.

I set the razor blade down on the towel. Holding my hanging toe between the thumb and first two fingers of my right hand. I tug on it, stretching the yellow tendon… or is it cartilage… like a stubborn rubber band. Then I twist it. A complete revolution… two of them… a third… there is a crackling sound… something gave way… at the same time I feel my body react. Maybe the pain went over the edge… maybe it’s loss of blood… I can feel my anal sphincter lose its tension… I shit… a thick liquid… shit. I can feel it drip down the back of my leg… the standing one… I pull the toe completely free from the foot. I stand.. that toe is not me.

I set the severed toe on the towel and reach for the washcloth to bandage the foot. Reaching… reaching… In the mirror, I catch a glimpse of the feces running down the back of my leg just before I lose consciousness.

First it is warm, then it is cold. I feel the tile… an irregular hardness beneath me… but something is wrong… different. Then it’s a soft… gooey feeling… under my hip… I reach down and scrape the goo from the floor next to me. The smell of shit hits my nose like a prizefighter’s glove…. powerful.. almost physical in its strength. Unable to lift my head, I raise the hand to my face, covered in brown nearly a glove of feces… Nausea rises from my stomach… I retch. Warm liquid rises in my throat and drips out my mouth to the tile below. I feel it flow between my face and the tile on the floor.

It’s only then that the pain hits.

Not a sharp stabbing pain, but an intense throb… in a vague location on the lower half of my naked body. The pain narrows… like a camera focusing… my right leg… my foot… ah the toe! I remember the toe… I pass out again. 

Next time I awaken I feel a bed beneath me. At least I think its a bed. Soft… with the cold feel of linen over my body as well as under it. I’m on my back. a thin line of something wet drips from the side of my mouth. I raise an arm to wipe it away. Something stops me… at the wrist… as if my arm were tied to something by a rope. My arm IS tied to something by a rope. I feel the strap around my wrist… I open my eyes… above me… on the ceiling is a super-bright white light. Closing my eyes I try to turn onto my stomach to avoid the light. I cannot turn. My legs as well as my arms are restrained… tied to the edges of the bed… or something… like kinky sex play… this is not sex play.

I scream… happy to find out there is no gag in my mouth... I scream again… not a word just a deep lungful of scream… I hear a door open. Over me… bent from the waist… looking at me like a one of those view-from-the patient operating room movie shots… is a nurse… or at least someone dressed like a nurse.

“You gave us quite a scare,” she says… her raspy voice reminding me of some sexy movie star whose name I can’t remember.

I look around the room… there are a couple other beds… near me is one of those hospital trays on wheels… In another bed, a patient lies on his back… longish gray hair spills on to his pillow. He too has a rasping voice… It’s not his voice. It’s the sound of air pumped from a small white machine into a hose that goes directly from the machine into a hole cut at the base of his neck.

“What were you high on when you tried that stunt in the bathroom?” the nurse asks.

“Cartesian philosophy,” I answer.

She frowns.

“Your dinner is on that tray,” she nods to the tray on the wheelie thing. “I’ll be back to feed you in an hour or so. Right now, get some sleep.”

I look at the tray. Some nameless junk food with a fork, spoon…. and knife!!! Yes! I can’t believe the luck. Stretching my hands... my wrists... my body… pushing against the restraint… I reach for the tray… just managing to get the edge… a fingernail grip. Scratch… scratch… scratch… I claw it toward me… I reach… got it!!! Running my hand up I feel for the knife… I can turn my head enough to watch my hand… up onto the table… feeling the thin paper on the tray… closer… closer… Yes! I got it. The handle anyway.

Moving ever so slowly… afraid to drop the thing… I hook the edge under the cuff that holds me to the bed. I slip the blade between my skin and the cuff… cutting into the cloth… sawing as much as I can… half an inch at most… I can expand the tear… an inch… an inch and a half…I saw back and forth… slowly… agonizingly slowly… the knife works its way through the cuff that binds me. Ah… ah… ahhhhhh! I pull up hard and hear the rip as my hand breaks free.

Yes! Yes! There!

Yes! Yes! Holding the knife in my right hand, I plunge the blade into my abdomen… slicing hard.

- end -

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

→ Truth in Rumors Dept: The urge to perform comes back… like herpes. And yes I got it again. The details are too much to put here. The short form is that Chad Kroeger and I met at Hard Apple Core… the famous NYC gay punk club. He was sitting at the bar, not looking too happy….. just staring down into his beer.

     “It’s too much!” He said, “Just too much.”

     Yeah, you’ve probably heard rumors. The schedule, the criticism, all of it was getting to be too much. Chad wanted to step back… just play and let someone else be the front man. Yep, I start on the Canadian tour beginning in Toronto on May1, exactly one month from today.

        Check the Nickelback tour schedule here.

→ Truth in Rumors Dept (part 2): You know by now that Maximum RocknRoll has gone belly up… kaput… though they will maintain a web presence… probably for a few months… until the reality sets in. In the meantime, former editrix, Miriam Bastini, has already taken the reins of a new publication Maximum HipnHop. We’ll see what happens to that one. I expect she’ll fire R. Kelly.

→ Going against my principles dept: Those who’ve been reading me for a long time know that I’ve opposed gay marriage from the get-go... straight marriage too… at least as a government recognized institution. Marriage is religious. If you want to do it, go ahead… but don’t ask for or get any benefits from Uncle Donny.

          Still, I did agree to be best man at the wedding of George Tabb and Ben Weasel. I didn’t change my opinions, but friendship beats politics any day. You can see the wedding pictures here.

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:

• David Goldberg's Busy Microbes Blog
• And another Goldberg:goldberg.wordpress.com
• I post a blog for Kyle Nonnemon, in prison for a ton of shit. He's a smart guy, with a passion for industrial metal and a general detestation of humankind. You can read his blog at: apothelema.blogspot.com (last minute note, when I tried to post a link to Kyle's blog to facebook's SATANISM (Satan's Music Lounge) and DEATH METAL (Death Metal) pages, the administrator censored the link. Wouldn't want anyone in jail (bad people!) associated with DEATH or SATAN, would we?
• 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.
• And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his .Mishegas Master Blog

CONTACT REDUX: You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.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. Subscribe to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group

 readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.