Sad Song: You're Still Wrong: Mykel's October Blog

 

A Sad Song: You're Still Wrong: Mykel's  October Blog

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's 

October 2021 Blog/Column 

A Sad Song

by Mykel Board

There are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone. 

                                                                                  --Nicole Krauss

Staring at my picture book, she looks like Mary, Queen of Scots.

She seemed very regal to me, just goes to show how wrong you can be. I'm gonna stop wastin' my time. Somebody else would have broken both of her arms. Sad song, sad song. Sad song, sad song.

                                                          --Lou Reed

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.

                       – Lemony Snicket

It starts in that no man’s land between your belly and your chest. It’s a pressure… something on your diaphragm. You struggle to breathe...  your chest rises and falls in deep sighs. Slowly it creeps up… deep in the back of your throat… the spider in the old lady who swallowed a fly… then you feel it in your nose… your eyes… those little parts of your eyes closest to each other… wet… they fill ever more... soon you can’t see… you squeeze your eyelids shut... tears pour out... dripping down the side of your face… You look to the right and left to see if anyone’s watching you… Your nose runs. You wipe the tears… the snot… on your sleeve.

Sadness is inexorably… though understandably… linked with death. People cry when someone close to them dies. It’s the same everywhere. 

I ask my Kenyan pal, Albert, if men cry in Kenya. He says, “Sure, men cry when someone dies. It’s normal.”

Sometimes, we’re sad when people we’ve never met… but have admired… die. I cried when Thurman Munson died. I’ll cry when Jimmy Carter dies. Okay, got that. 

But there’s a kind of sadness that’s not about death. A kind of sadness that doesn’t reach up the throat… doesn’t end in the nose or the eyes... a kind of sadness that is like a giant press, squeezing your lungs… squeezing the air out of you… making you feel like shit for no reason except the sadness itself. 

FLASH TO THE SECRET KOREAN BAR; It’s above a deli on the corner. There are no signs for it… you just have to know it’s there. You enter through the deli, walk up the unmarked staircase in the back and POW! There you are. 

I’m walking up those stairs right now. 

“Yeoboseyo!,” I shout from below. It’s Hello in Korean, but only for answering the phone... never as an in-person greeting… except by me. 

“Mykel!” shouts Jenny from upstairs… behind the bar. 

“How’d you know?” I shout back. 

When I get upstairs, Jenny has poured me a mug of Hite beer. She pushes it over the bar to me as I sit in front of her. 

Andy, an ABK (American Born Korean), hangs out in the bar and is a friend. 

“Andy,” I shout at him from the other side of the room. “Come and sit next to me. We’ll talk. Have a Hite!”

Andy sits on the next stool. “Mykel,” he says, “nice to see ya! I’ve been feeling like shit for the past week.”

“I hope I didn’t make it worse,” I tell him. 

It takes him a second. Then he laughs. 

“How’s the deli job?” I ask. He works at a Korean deli, chopping salad, preparing the take-it-weigh-it-and-pay-it food that Korean delis invented. 

“You know, chop chop,” he says, his right hand making a fake karate move. “So close to Grand Central, lots of tourists and businessmen. Not my favorite people.”

I talk to the bartender, “Jenny,” I say, “give Andy a Hite on me.” 

She pours him a beer. “Mong chung eeee” we say in a fake toast. (It actually means You Moron!) 

“You look unhappy,” I tell him. “Did something happen today?” 

“Something happens every day, Mykel,” says Andy. “When I look in the mirror, I feel like shit. I want to cry. It’s….”

“Huh?” I say, nearly choking on the beer, “You’re a smart, good-looking guy. I wish I saw what you see when I looked in the mirror.”

He smiles halfheartedly… and puts the tips of his index fingers at the edges of his eyes. 

“See these? Slanty eyes!” he says. 

“Come on,” I say, “you speak perfect English… Well, I mean you tawk like a New Yawka.”

He looks at me… very close… fixing his eyes on mine. Then he says… very slowly and very LOUD.

“WHEN… PEOPLE... SEE... ME... THEY... TALK... LIKE... THIS... LOUD... AND... VERRRRRRY…. SLLOOOW. THEY... EXPECT... I... CAN’T... UNDERSTAND…” He speaks, staring directly into my eyes projecting  profound pathos.

“But…” I start.

“You don’t get it, Mykel,” he says. “I know you. Sometimes you play the outsider, the one who never fits… but you CAN fit if you want. I have no choice… I’m ALWAYS the outsider… always the foreigner… no matter how American I am.”

He slaps his own cheek. “I hate my face. I hate being born this way. And sometimes it feels worse than ever...”

I feel a giant press, squeezing my lungs… squeezing the air out… making me feel like shit for no reason except the sadness itself. 

My adventure with Andy took place at least 15 years ago. But all these years later, the sadness still creeps up on me when I think about it.

FLASH TO NOW… RECENTLY: TVs, newspapers… The New York press is filled with… stop the press. A restaurant worker is assaulted… cellphone videos prove it… punches traded… three against one… all girls… a catfight. 

What happened? The worker politely asked for COVID vaccine proof. It’s required by law, you know… can’t eat inside a restaurant without your Covid-card. And for that she gets punched? For that, she’s wounded and has to be saved by patrons pulling the evil Texans off the helpless young lady. 

New Yorkers know that Texans are violent anti-vaxxers who don’t care if the whole world comes down with the plague. Just like them to attack a helpless girl only following the law… doing her job. 

It’s all too pat. The video shows the attackers are black women. The attackee is invisible. Facebook is alive with posts… those evil Texans. Not only do they want to make the rest of us sick with their no-vaxxing, but they attack a hostess who’s just doing her job. 

The news always describes the attackers as Texans. The minions… especially the New York minions… some of the most conformist people in the world… build on the anti-Texas outrage. Ted Cruz… Trump supporters… No respect for other humans... They only love guns and their version of God. 

Looking at the rage in the three black women… looking at the reports with no comments from the attacking side… Seems as clear as a knee on the neck that there’s an unreported racial side to this. 

How could you say that Mykel? They’re from Texas. They just want to kill people… unless those people haven’t been born yet, you know, fetuses… They’re the only ones with a right to life… get it? haw haw haw.

BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP! The news unfolds… the waitress wasn’t white. She was Asian. The attackers were all vaccinated. They were being pestered a SECOND time to show their proof… Did someone else’s cellphone catch the word Niggers among the crowd… the staff? 

Yes, I was right. I should be happy. I should be shouting I TOLD YOU SO from the top of the Empire State Building… dancing naked with a suck this you dumb New Yorkers sign hanging from my penis. 

But I don’t feel that way at all. Instead, I struggle to breathe...  my chest rises and falls in deep sighs. Slowly it creeps up… deep in the back of my throat… Being right makes me sad. The news: all lies… the people… my friends… true believers of those lies. So sad.

Some movies are called tear-jerkers. Usually chick flicks, they’re structured to make the viewer cry. I remember one called Once Were Warriors… a New Zealand story about the Maori. I cried at that one and then was pissed off at myself for being manipulated into tears. Now that I think back on the movie, I realize I cried from the film structure, not from sadness… like I laugh at Moe, Larry and Curly. 

Tears can come from pain, laughter, anger, frustration… as well as sadness. Sadness can only come from reality… from the realization that something is really wrong. 

There are people in the world who don’t feel the sadness…. who aren’t aware of the pitiable pain of our lives… who watch the TV news and are outraged… but not saddened. That, in itself, is sad. 

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 Way Out dept: 

Seems to me, when the government requires creative people to be creative for those they don’t like, the answer is to do lousy or offensive work. This web designer doesn’t like homosexuals? Ok, make a website where every click on every link will bring you to queerbait.com. You want to prove a point by hiring someone who doesn’t approve of you? Have your gay wedding cake with an icing picture of a little boy impaled on a devil-dick. It’d serve you right.

–> My kinda school outing dept: Mass Live reports: Students in Boston rode a party bus, complete with a stripper pole and neon lights, on a school field trip. Why? There’s a national school bus driver shortage. They have to take what they can get from private companies.

Eleventh grade Language teacher, Jim Mayers tweeted about the experience on Sept. 17.

“It is a funny story, but there actually is a real bus shortage and it speaks to major flaws in our education system,” said Mayers. “This in no way is a reflection of anyone involved in planning the trip. We were trying to have a fun day with the kids and that’s exactly what happened.”

I say: the only way to top “a fun day with kids” in a stripper bus with poles and neon… is to have actual strippers. 

–> Rising rents dept: The LA Times reports that a family owned crypt with neighbors Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe is taking bids for a luxury deathplace. Bidding starts at $2 million for the no-bedroom… er… flat. 

–> Shaving lifespan dept: CNN tells of published research that says that eating a single hot dog can take 36 minutes off your lifespan. Joey Chestnut, one of my few heroes, has won the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest for the past several years. He estimates he’s eaten more than 19,000 hot dogs. He’s not dead yet, but the clock is ticking faster than for most people. If he’s buried next to Hugh Hefner, I might visit him one of these days. 

-->Speaking of Death Dept: I just wanted to give a sad nod to the death of Michael Evans... long time ARTLESS drummer and drummer around town (God Is My Co-Pilote, False Prophets, and a ton of others). One of the few people who switched easily from punk to avante garde to jazz to Afro-Caribbean... and just a great guy. 

See you in hell, redux, but I expect Evans will not be there to greet us. He's jamming with Ginger Baker.

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 here... 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's a few 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 too 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

TOXIC or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's Blog Sept 2021

 

You're Still Wrong: Mykel's  September  Blog... Toxic 

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

September 2021 Blog/Column

A Toxic Environment!

by Mykel Board

“I’m not perverted, I’m just Italian.” --Andrew Cuomo

“No one should ever work.” --Bob Black

“Capitalism is slavery where the slaves have to pay their own room and board” –Mykel Board

“I had complained to friends that the Governor would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs” --Lindsey Boylan

=======================

“I can’t breathe!”

“Quick, clean out his nose… I can see it... filled with coal dust. He’ll smother!”

Cough… answer, “I’m not putting my fingers in another man’s nose! That’s disgusting.”

“He’ll die! Get it? He’ll die!”

Virgil knees on the filthy mine floor. Tentatively, he puts an index finger into Homer’s left nostril… scrapes it around… pulls it out… black with snot and coal dust.

“Now the other one, fast!”

Virgil pushes his finger into the right nostril of the man under him… twists… then back… and again loosens a pile of black dust. The tip of his finger is coated when he pulls it out of the man’s nostril.

“Now push on his chest… hard… make him breathe.”

Virgil puts a hand on either side of Homer’s chest… pushes hard… again… a thin stream of black drool oozes out of the corner of Homer’s mouth. Another chest press… another black drool down the side of the man’s face… then a cough… then another cough. Tears run from the corners of his eyes to the black ground beneath his head.

“He’s gonna make it. We’ll fix up a side-tipper and get him out of here on the tracks. The fresh air will bring him back.”

“Can’t we get him a doctor?”

“Are you kidding? The boss’d kill us! That’s just what we need... a safety-hazard report at some fuckin’ hospital. Joe Biden already wants to shut us down.”

FLASH TO a huge farm... hundreds of acres... somewhere in the West...strawberries. Bare-handed and bare-headed... dozens of workers bent over… stooped,,, to pick the berries. They too cough.

“Ay, madre-mia,” says a 22-year old Maria, just starting to show her pregnancy. She coughs.

“No puedo hacerlo mas. Voy a morir,” she coughs again. It’s the Round-up… pesticide...carcinogenic… dangerous to a fetus as well as to the mother.

No time to worry about cancer now... earn that $7500 for a year’s work. Bend and pick… bend and pick… bend and pick.

Ay, me duele la espalda,” she says.

“Shhh!” says the next worker. “Screw your back pain. You want to pay for that baby? You want to get pushed back to Mexico? Don’t complain! At least you have a job.”

She doesn’t know it yet, but she also has cancer. Her baby will be stillborn. 

And there’s this, directly from the internet

Amazon delivery drivers are reporting working ten to fourteen hours in a shift. This is in part because drivers are not allowed to return any packages from their routes, meaning drivers can make over 160 stops per shift.

With the Mentor app constantly monitoring drivers, every stop has to be accounted for. That leaves most drivers with no time to use the restroom on their ten hour shifts. Drivers need to use public restrooms such as ones inside grocery stores, so if their route does not include an area that has such a location, drivers have to make a long detour that could cost them their job. Because of these strict measures, drivers report using empty water bottles in their vehicles instead of stopping to use the restroom

LeRoy Jackson’s truckseat has molded itself to his ass. He spends nearly 14 hours a day there. On the floor, in front of the passenger seat… in a basket… half-filled with piss… is a jar. It’s that time again.

Pull over… hate to waste a minute or so… but if you gotta go… Could do with a shit too… but this rig’s got spyware up the ass. Too long stopped… not making deliveries… and you’re outta there.

Just a quickie… pull over… pull it out… just over the lip of the jar. Aaahh aaaahhh, shit. Filled the jar, spilled all over the place… and I got a delivery… 17 minutes to make it… computer checked. .. Better pull out... haul ass… Now!

Off the shoulder... into traffic… fuck!!! Nooo! Nooo!!!! BLLLLANNNNG!

Ellen’s face hurts from smiling. Bad jokes… send it back to the kitchen… too cold… too hot… “Miss… excuse me Miss!” She smiles. On her feet all day… rushing from table to table… balancing enough dishes to compete with a circus juggler… She smiles. $2.13 an hour, the U.S. minimum wage for tipped workers. (Look it up) plus what the cheapskates leave on the tables… That’s it. She smiles.

On her feet all day, Ellen comes home beat… ready to go to sleep… to hit the hay. She’s working six days a week to pay the $2000 a month she needs for her one-room NYC apartment. On the seventh day, she barely moves.

She puts up with the tugs on her skirt… the food complaints… the no tips for bad food as if she were personally responsible for the cooking. Sometimes she can wiggle her ass for a few extra dollars… or wink at a regular who stands so close to her when he speaks that she feels the saliva spray on her face. His handlebar mustache and affected cape make him look like a magician. If only he’d disappear. He’s there every day and she wants to kill him.

She’s a robot, she thinks. Same thing… day after day… no… I guess not... robots don’t collapse exhausted. Back to work… “Hey miss,” the tug on the skirt… the wrist-grab of the customer when she hands him the bill… the smile she gives in return. 

Hey you! Got it? Yeah you… you Karen… you whiner who thinks that being touched on the back is toxic. People die from their jobs… lung cancer, skin cancer, exhaustion… death… That’s toxic. Having a brain-dead job just to pay the rent. That’s toxic. Working with coal, asbestos, insecticide… that’s REALLY toxic.

But for you… another person touches you?… eeeewwww cooties. Joking about boyfriends? Intolerable! The job conditions have to fit YOU rather than the other way around.

Those at the bottom… the miners, the truck drivers, the waitresses... can’t just quit and find another job like you can… They die from work or they die from hunger… or a firing squad in a nation you can’t imagine. Or they suffer for two dollars an hour or whatever else they can squeeze out of people they hate.

Let me tell you… You fragile little Faberge egg… YOU are the toxic one. You are the one who has others shaking in their Nordstroms from fear of saying the wrong thing or touching you any more than shaking hands… and even that… don’t you just bump elbows these days? Doing push-ups? Oh, the horror!

Yeah you… You know how many people WISH they could get a $20,000 raise by fucking the boss? And you’re complaining that he asked.

Andrew Cuomo is rich enough to find other things to do. But how much fear is he bringing with him anywhere he goes. How much do John and Jane Doe fear from doing or saying anything inappropriate?

All jobs are bullshit. It’s the nature of work. Yours isn’t hunky dory? Then quit and get another bullshit job. Work 60 hours a week shifting ones and zeros from one computer to the next. As long as no one speaks to you.. or (Goddess forbid) touches you… you’re okay. Then the work isn’t toxic, right?

You wear a skirt and high heels to work… and (get this!) he looks at you!! How will you ever recover?

Do me a favor. Sniff some asbestos before you go to sleep. Do it often enough and you’ll learn a bit about toxic.

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]

–> Can’t find a webpage dept: A great story on the deteriorating conditions in the mining business appears in In These Times the September 2021 issue. I can’t find it on-line, so try to get a print copy. Called Dying To Make A Living, the coal conditions the article reports on are just horrible. 
          Wait, a reader, Don Smith, has found a link to the article. Here it is: https://inthesetimes.com/article/contracted-coal-miners-illinois-injury-danger

–> Dying for a job dept: The World Economic Forum reports that more than 2.3 million workers die every year as a result of occupational accidents or work-related diseases. That’s the entire population of Houston, Texas... killed every year from WORK. The alternative? Ah, how many times have I referenced this? You should have it memorized by now.

–> Evil Governor dept: While the women of America are sticking their pins in Cuomo dolls, the former governor has used his last days in office to grant pardons to 22 immigrants who were at risk of being deported. "New York stands strong in our support for immigrant communities," Cuomo wrote in a statement.

–> Not related dept: This one is from the Darwin Awards… that distinguished group of intellectuals who award the prize to those who clean up the future of the human race by offing themselves in their stupidity. I like this one it because it highlights another pet peeve! Cellphone fuckin’ selfies. Besides describing the awardee’s adventures, the Darwin folks offer some great advice:

25 March 2017, Mexico: Standing on a truck on an airport runway, our Double-Darwin Award Winners, Nitzia and Clarissa, chose a regrettable location for a cell phone selfie. Ms. Corral, 18, and Ms. Miranda, 17, were attending horse races that were held on a track adjacent to the runway. The noise of the races and the desire for a new profile picture distracted the young women. They did not hear the motor of the descending aircraft, and the wing of the small plane that struck and killed them instantly.

People, wake up to the plain hard fact that a mobile phone is a deadly distraction! Mobile devices take our awareness away from the physical world, and the Darwin Awards archives are stuffed overflowing with testimony proving the tragic truth of this.

Cell phones will kill you! Put them away and allow your senses to receive input from tangible reality. Please share this regrettable cautionary lesson, a public service announcement, #yourdeathmatters

–>Speaking of cellphones dept: Apple will be putting spyware in its operating system. Ostensibly to combat kiddie porn, the spyware will be looking at your pictures and videos and reporting any nastiness it sees to “the proper authorities.” And what will it be doing with the information it gleans from those non-kiddie pix? Hey, what a coincidence, that Antifa demonstration I just filmed showed up at the FBI. Imagine that? How did that happen?
The Electronic Frontier’s details on this are 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

KIDS ARE NOT US or You're STILL Wrong Mykel's Blog Aug 2021

 

You're Still Wrong: Mykel's  August Blog... Kids are NOT Us

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's Blog for August 2021

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise. --Wilkie Collins

In the past-- when conventional wisdom viewed parents as the paragons of virtue who could do no wrong, struggling to civilize wicked children who could do no right,-- psychiatrists validated the parents' claims about their children. (They still often do so.) Today-- when conventional wisdom defines parents as defective adults and potential sex abusers who can do little that is right, misgoverning innocent children who never lie-- psychiatrists validate the children's claims about their parents.  --Thomas Szasz

                                                                                  

Five-year-old you walks with mom through the Middletown shopping mall. You pass an ice cream shop. In the window: two rows of ice cream cones, six cones in each row. You wonder how they get them to balance… stand up straight on those tiny points… You recognize chocolate… the first cone… then something a little lighter… fudge maybe… then bright green… then darker green… spinach color. I know… you were never a fan of green. Me neither. 

The top row is a copy of the bottom one, except the top row has a strawberry… upside down… on top of each cone. 

You tug on Mom’s dress.

“Why don’t they melt, Mommy?”

“They’re not real ice cream,” Mommy answers. “They just look like ice cream. That way people will know what the store is selling.”

“Can I get a real one?” you ask. “One that’s cold and makes brain freeze?”

“Of course,” says Mom.

“Can I get two real ones? Five? Ten? A hundred?”

“You’re big now,” answers Mom, “five years old. You can decide what you want.”

You walk into the store. Mom speaks to the clerk. 

“We’ll take one...” says Mom, “of everything.”

“Okay Mykel” comes the off-stage voice. By now, you recognize it too. It’s The Literary Device… of course.

“What’s your point,” she asks. “I know you’re trying to prove something. What is it? Most parents are too indulgent?”

“Nope,” I answer 

“Capitalism makes fat kids?” 

“Nope.”

“Something about little kids’ ability to make choices?”

“BINGO!” I answer.

Your Daily Kos feed tells you that extremists are “waging war against Trans Youth.” What exactly is that war? On one side are people who think little kids shouldn’t be making big  decisions. On the other side are those who believe little boys and girl should have the right to decide if they get puberty delay drugs. Those drugs change the body’s natural system of hormones, delaying puberty from the usual 11 to 13 until 16 or 17 or later.

Imagine giving an 8-year-old the right to buy a machine gun. Hah! Even the extremists don’t think that. Ok, how about driving a car? Yeah, right. Even the Germans don’t think that. Eight year olds don’t have the right to choose to have sex or not. How long does sex take… 15 minutes if you’re lucky. But they’re “not mature enough” to make that decision. The can’t decide on 15 minutes of nookie, but they can decide on something that has repercussions for the rest of their lives. 

“Hang on, Mykel” answer the Literary Device, “why would someone want to have puberty delayed? So they won’t grow facial hair?”

“Nope”

“So they can sing in the choir without getting that operation?”

“Getting closer,” I say.

“Then what?”

“They want to delay puberty until they’re old enough to decide for themselves if they want to be a boy or a girl,” I explain.

“But, doesn’t puberty itself help with those decisions?” asks T.L.D. “I mean it’s the rush of hormones that picks gender… not some TV show you watch when you’re a toddler.”

“BINGO!” I answer. 

Wokedom calls laws banning medically unnecessary puberty blockers or hormones “anti-trans youth” laws. It should be up to the child, they say. But then why shouldn’t it be up to the child to have 100 ice cream cones? Or get diddled by Uncle Ernie?

Those who say Black Lives Matter is racist, know that the name doesn’t mean ONLY Black Lives Matter but Black Lives Matter TOO. They claim ignorance just to cloud the issue. 

Those who say Defund the Police means let criminals run wild, know that DEFUND doesn’t mean UNFUND.  It means REDUCE police funding to support social services to make the police less of an occupying army. 

Those who say denying hormone blocking medicine to children know it doesn’t mean anti-trans, but that children are too young to make ANY life-changing decisions for themselves. Every animal knows that.

You know those hump-anything pets that you have to brush off your leg? Do you have to brush them off puppies? Of course not! You see bulls mounting cows on every dairy farm with a bull and a cow. Do you see them mounting calves? No! NATURE has decided it’s best to wait for the hormones… for puberty.

ASIDE: There are societies where parents choose their children’s gender. When I visited Tahiti, I met some Mahus. The ones I met were all women born as boys. 

“What’s the story,” I asked a chubby Mahu sitting at my communal table at a Tahitian barbecue, dressed in a beautiful Pacific Island gown… hair adorned with a single bright flower.

“My parents already had two boys,” was the answer. “They needed someone to take care of the things girls take care of. You know. To cook, and keep the house nice. The boys have to cut the crops and take care of the animals. So they decided I would be the girl. Now I’m grown up and I want to get married... to a woman.”

“Will you change the way you dress?” I asked. “I mean, wear a suit or something?” 

A look of horror passed over my speaking partner. “I LOVE the way I dress and I can’t afford new clothes. And why would I change?”

So even in cultures where parents choose the “gender” of their children, that gender is only changed in clothing and tasks. The physical equipment remains the same, and the biological urges belong to each individual. [END OF ASIDE]

Oh yeah, one more thing. If we allow every immature kid: [NOTE: Maturity is AFTER puberty kicks in… delayed or not] to pick a gender it will DECREASE gender equality.

Every tomboy girl who likes sports and hates dresses… who goes through a phase of wanting to be one of the guys… who wears baseball hats and isn’t afraid to slide into home plate… will want to be a “real” boy instead of a tomboy woman. 

Every sissy boy who hates football... who likes to wear bright colors... who’s scared of bugs… and likes to jump rope with the girls… will want to be “real” girl instead of a femmy boy. 

Just think of how much beautiful diversity the world would lose without swaggering women and men in hotpants. 

So how… and when... does one decide? 

Instead of some arbitrary age, God/nature/biology invented PUBERTY… a natural separation between childhood and adulthood. There’s a reason both Romeo and Juliette were in their early teens. There’s a reason that Bar/Bat Mitzvah boys and girls say (at 13 years old) “Today I am a man” or “Today I am a woman.” Puberty isn’t random. It’s a signal. Nature makes the call. Let’s leave it that way. 

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]

→ LGBTQRSTUVW+ will eat itself dept: The Advocate reports that there’s been a spate of anti-Boy Georgeism among the alphabet community. Why? In a brave stroke of genius, the singer asked his twitter friends to leave their pronouns at the door. Good advice in general, though I’m pretty sure the door wanted to be referred to as THEY, rather than IT.

→ The bats did it dept: As I write this, the first case of the LAMBDA Covid variation has hit the US. More spreadable, deadly, and vaccine defying than anything that came before. Yet there are still people who say, “naw, this is all natural. Just spread from bats to people in a Chinese wet market.”

There have been wet markets in China for hundreds or thousands of years. There is ONE virus research center in China… there for less than half a century… in the city where the current plague started. Oh sure, just a coincidence.

→ Build That Wall! Dept: The Huffington Post reports that seven Canadians were captured after entering Vermont illegally from Quebec by driving across the lawn of a library built in both the United States and Canada. They were returned to Canada under COVID-19 health rules.

The Haskell Free Library was deliberately built straddling the border in the early 20th century so people from both countries can use it. The entrance is in Vermont. Canadians were allowed to enter the United States to visit the library without having to go through customs..

Since the plague, the border inside the library has been closed, but people are still allowed to yell to each other from either side.

→ He ought to suck on this dept: The Washington Post reports Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been hospitalized. No, it’s not COVID. We know the mainstream liberal press loves it when non-masked, non-cootiephobic people get the plague. But this is something else… HICCUPS.

His have persisted for more than 10 days… They’re so intense that he’s been hospitalized while doctors try to figure out the cause. I say it’s the Omega Variant.

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.

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. 

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.

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