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

 

Grits Up In Flames

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's March 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is pissing me off. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! FIRE! FIRE! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But wait! There’s more… 

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

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

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

“Nothing like quick fingers,” I tell him.

He smiles… then frowns. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you in hell,
Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you in hell, redux,

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

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

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

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

 

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

 

The Importance of Being Ernestine

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's February 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes! Yes! …..     No!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you in hell,

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available.  Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.  Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

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

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

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

I hope it comes with smell.

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

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

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

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

See you in hell, redux,

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Jim Testa moved his long running zine, Jersey Beat, to the blogosphere awhile back. You can read it here. Jim also recommended a kind of unique album… in a style you don’t see to much of these days… or any days. Neo-Hassidic Rock Opera. You can stream the album here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

My long time pal, Jim Hayes rightfully complained about my leaving out his blog. He’s a great writer, so it was a tragic omission. Here it is.

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

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

Back To The Future or Mykel's First Blog of 2022

 

Back To The Future or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's January 2022 Blog

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's 

January 2022 Blog/Column 

Back To The Future

by Mykel Board

Living sends a person not into the future, but back into the past to childhood and before birth, finally, to communicate with the dead. --Jeffrey Eugenides

“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.” - John Guare

No matter what happens, you always have the past to look forward to. –Mykel Board

“Waaaaa!!!” I scream.

“Fred!” says Mommy. “Look at Mickey! His mask is off… must’ve fallen and we didn’t notice.”

“Mickey!” says Dad, “I’m so sorry. I’ll get you another mask right away. 

“Nee wah wet oh dah peep-po she you shmyle!” I say through my tears.

Dad smiles, “That’s right, Mickey. You learn well! Never let other people see you smile!”

“Waaaa!!” I scream again, shaking the stroller side-to-side. “Waaaaa!”

“Okay,” says Dad, “I’ll get a new mask from the DPC (Disease Prevention Center)… next to the lifeguard station. We can’t let little Mickey feel naked.”

FLASH AHEAD 7 YEARS: In school, Mickey has become Michael… years before Michael becomes Mykel: 

It’s a big class… 20 of us. I wear dark blue slacks, a white shirt and a bow tie.  We sit at desks... 1 student to 1 small desk…  plexiglass walls between those desks. 

Mrs. Hauser… gray dress... white and gray top part… like a bib... stands in front of the room… hands sternly on her hips. She frowns 

“Michael Board,” she says. “Please stand up.”

I look around as if it’s not me she’s talking to. 

“Stand up!” she says in that special teacher’s voice. 

I stand up.

“Now, Michael,” says Mrs. Hauser. “We just got a report from the cafeteria…”

She stops, as if waiting for me to say something… to fill in the blank. I stand stone still… keeping stone quiet.

“You know the problem, don’t you?” asks the teacher. 

I shake my head. 

“You know where you were standing… on the lunch line… you know how close you were… You were right behind Janet Kaprinski. You could practically touch her!”

I and look behind me at the cute girl... in a frilly yellow dress. She stares straight ahead… like I’m not there. 

“How far is six feet?” Mrs. Houser asks me.

I spread my arms as wide as I can. 

“No!” says Mrs. Houser, “You are a child. You cannot show six feet with your body. Put on your rubber gloves and touch the glass between your and Robert Gottlieb’s desk.”

I put on my rubber gloves and walk to the partition … touch it. 

“Now, walk to the other side of your desk and touch the glass between your desk and Linda McGunnigal’s desk.”

I walk to the other side of my desk and touch the glass.

“That’s six feet!” says the teacher. 

I don’t say anything. 

“Spread your arms again,” says the teacher. 

I do.

“That’s how close you were to Janet Kaprinski,” says Mrs. Hauser. “And Janet Kaprinski is ANOTHER PERSON!” She speaks the last two words in capital letters.

“And what do other people do?” asks the teacher. 

I shrug. 

“Class?” asks Mrs Houser, “Can you tell Michael what other people do?”

“OTHER PEOPLE MAKE YOU SICK!” shouts the class in unison. 

“Again.” commands Mrs. Houser.

“OTHER PEOPLE MAKE YOU SICK!” they shout again… louder this time.

FLASH AHEAD 8 MORE YEARS: I’m making the trip to THE CITY… a Long Island Railroad trip about 45 minutes from Hicksville... masked... of course. I sit in the window seat. My best friend David joins me on this adventure. He sits, socially distant, in the aisle seat. 

In this universe, there are cellphones in 1965. I pull mine out and check the time. 

“WE SHOULD BE THERE IN 10 MINUTES,” I shout to Dave. 

“WHAT?” he asks… both of us mask-muffled in the train.

We pull into Penn Station… get out of the train… leave the platform and look for the INDEPENDENT train line to Greenwich Village. My parents took a trip there once and they said it was where “the weird people hang out.” Sounds right up my young alley. 

“Look! Right there! There’s a sign.” 

“I think that’s the one we have to take,” I say to David.

“What?” he asks. “I can’t hear you.”

I shout through my mask. “I think that’s the one we have to take to go to Greenwich Village.”

He nods. 

We follow the sign to the next sign and finally come to a token booth. Dad has explained the system. 

“FOUR TOKENS,” I shout through the booth window. “WE WANT TO GO TO GREENWICH VILLAGE.”

The clerk looks at us from behind his masks. I can see his eyebrows raise in amusement. I make sure I can’t see him smile. 

“THAT’LL BE EIGHTY CENTS!” He shouts back to us. “GET OFF AT WEST 4TH STREET.” 

I push a dollar under the glass in the booth, and he pushes back four tokens and two dimes. I wave to him... hand two tokens to Dave. We put them in the turnstile slots and walk onto the subway platform. 

There is a scream. We look toward the end of the platform. A man is pushing a woman against the wall. He has pulled off her face mask exposing her naked nose and mouth. She opens her mouth to scream again, but the man covers it with his hand… a human mask... forcing her head against the wall. 

“Let’s go help her!” says David, taking off for the other end of the platform. 

“NO, WAIT!” I shout. “Don’t do it! OTHER PEOPLE MAKE YOU SICK!”

I take out my cellphone and focus it on the couple struggling at the end of the platform. I motion to Dave to do the same. 

“Walter Cronkite will pay good money for these pictures. We’ll be on TV!” 

“You’re right!” says David, pulling out his own phone and starting to film. 

BLAM! FLASH TO WHAT PASSES FOR REALITY IN 2021: Of course, 20 cent tokens and cellphones never occupied the same space-time continuum. And my father would never have rewarded me for avoiding the smile of a stranger. 

But people have little else to do during lockdowns and social distancing... they fuck like bunnies and drop a ton of puppies. I have four new nieces, all having come forth from between young legs during the last year. 

Those kids will have lives like my fictional childhood. They’ll feel naked without their masks. They’ll be afraid of a stranger’s smile. They’ll see strangers as little more than sources of infection… or fodder for a TV news story. I’ll be dead before they’re young adults. 

Lucky me.

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 emailwith SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.  Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

–> Tit for Cat Dept: The NY Post reports that on a Delta Airlines flight from Syracuse to Atlanta, a woman tried to breastfeed her cat. The cat was not happy. Other passengers had mixed feelings. 

Flight attendants repeatedly asked the woman to return the yowling cat to its kennel, but she refused. "Her shirt was up and she was trying to get the cat to latch ... and the cat was screaming for its life," said  a flight attendant who was on board during the incident. The woman was taken away by security when the plane landed. It's unclear what happened to her cat. 

–>Where’s that Cellphone Camera When You Need It dept: Yahoo News reports that a 98-year-old COVID-19 victim's body was dissected in front of a paying audience in a Portland, Oregon, hotel ballroom.

A funeral director in Baton Rouge said that the body of the man had been donated for “medical research” to a private company called Med Ed Labs.

Instead of research, the body was dissected at a $500-a-ticket event at a Portland Marriott Hotel. The dissection was organized by a group called Death Science, which has more than a million followers on TikTok and says on its website that it educates people on "scientific fields and topics that relate to the deceased."

–> I’m surprised department: How did they let this news out? Almost 5 dozen people suffered blood clots after receiving the Johnson and Johnson COVID vaccine… the majority in women under 50. The CDC revised its recommendations, saying the J&J vaccine should be a last resort. I guess the US will ship the remaining doses to Africa to show how generous we are. Stay tuned for more… and there will be. 

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

Wrong Questions or You're STILL Wrong, Mykel's December 2021 Blog

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's 

December 2021 Blog/Column 

Wrong Question

by Mykel Board

“Change the questions you ask and the way you view the issue will be transformed.” - Isaac Yu, 

Being in possession of all the answers holds no appeal at all, but owning a good pocketful of unanswered questions is, to me, like bread to the starving. --Cathy Johnson

Clamps… big metal clamps… shaped like upside down U’s… hold my shoulders to the floor. And my wrists… and my ankles. Another metal clamp… like you might see in a dentist’s office or a porn movie… holds my mouth open. 

A big man in a soldier’s uniform stands over me with a bucket. I’m guessing it’s filthy water. I’m guessing right. He pours it into my open mouth. I’m drowning… coughing… spitting up… water down my throat… into my lungs… dripping down the sides of my face. As I cough… some of the water goes up through my nose… forcing booger-laced snot out onto my face… into my eyes. 

“Now,” says the man, “let’s try this again. Where is the next terrorist strike against US forces?”

“How... should... I... know?” I sputter between coughs, tears and frantic efforts to breathe through the water in my lungs.

“You are Milad Borazjan,” he says. “You are from Teheran and work to plan terrorist activities.” 

I cough… spit up some more water… “I’m Mykel Board,” I say. “I’m from New York and I teach English to Japanese businessmen.”

My interrogator frowns. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” He asks.

“You didn’t ask.” I answer. 

FLASH TO NEW YORK… November. I sit barefoot… in my underwear… a formerly plush green robe hangs loosely over my naked body. I  try to think of a way to introduce this blog about asking the wrong questions. Maybe I’ll put myself in the US torture center in Guantanamo… an inquisitor asks me about terrorist activities, rather than asking who I am. 

I get this mail from Common Cause, asking for money to help support a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United. That’s the Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to contribute unlimited funds to political candidates. 

“Wouldn’t we be better off,” they ask, “if we could get the huge amounts of corporate funds out of politics. Wouldn’t that help make elections fairer?”

WRONG QUESTION!

Here are the top 15 richest people in America:

Any one of them is richer than 90% of US corporations… unless they run those corporations. The right question isn’t whether or not we should permit corporate money in politics… but whether or not we should permit ANY money… especially private money… in politics. 

Should we again have Fairness Doctrine TV laws? Should we ban all paid political advertising? Those are the right questions. 

Hold on! There was a snap… PiKoop! Klip! A shake... then silence. I recognize the sound, though my punkrock damaged hearing won’t tell me if it’s from under the dresser to my right or from the kitchen behind me. I check the dresser… First try! Yeah!

There, fresh as a freshly slaughtered lamb, lies a mouse in a snappy trap. A vague smell of death rises from the little gray body. The small metal bar crushed Mickey’s little skull, his mouth still around the Wasa bread wired to the bait lever. He bleeds softly from the ears.

Got what was coming to him.

“Hey Mykel, you’re blaming the victim!”

“Mice eat my food! Their shit spreads disease. Their pawing and scattering keep me awake at night,” I answer. “Sometimes the victims are at fault… they SHOULD be blamed.”

FLASH TO  KENOSHA WISCONSIN: a jury of 11 whitefolks and one colored guy, find Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot… with an semi-automatic rifle… three protesters at a Black Lives Matter demonstration. Two of those shot were killed. 

So far, there have been only a few demonstrations, one riot (in Portland, where they riot at a loud fart), at the not-guilty verdict. In any case, there is nothing to compare with the riots after the police killing of George Floyd. Why?

Rittenhouse was found innocent because he was attacked and had to fight off his attackers with his rifle. He was a victim, don’t you know? No choice but to pull the trigger. 

Of course, the guy did ride into town carrying a semi-automatic rifle. But no one asks “Is the victim responsible for the crime?” If you’re a victim, you must be innocent. You can’t go around blaming the victim. Isn’t that right? 

But what if we say no? What if we say sometimes the victim IS to blame? What if we ask, “Why did the victim go to a demonstration he hated… with a loaded semi-automatic rifle?” “Why go anywhere at all with an semi-automatic rifle, unless you intend to use it?”

Maybe we’d get different answers.

But wait, there’s more. Spikes in crime… in gun violence… in random attacks. Every day, someone’s cellphone or some security camera captures pictures of a masked man in a hoodie attacking innocent bystanders… and mugging, mauling or murdering them.

Conservatives ask, “Doesn’t this prove we need stronger laws to get these criminals off the street? Won’t locking them up keep the rest of us safe? Where are the cops when we need them?”

And they answer that it’s the anti-police demonstrations, the defunding, the disrespect for law and order that makes the crime shoot up like a penis in a whorehouse. 

Liberals ask, “What about homelessness, COVID-caused poverty, the emptying of prisons with nowhere for the prisoners to go?”

And they answer, “Crime increases because it’s the only thing criminals know. Non-violent criminals are released onto the street without homes, without money, without ways to live. There are no mental health services for the homeless. All they know is the crime they learn in prison. Jailing makes criminals. It doesn’t cure them, right?”  

WRONG QUESTIONS!

The right question is taboo in 2021. That is: What are the effects of mask mandates, and a society used to people wearing masks in public?” 

Look at an old Western. The bank robbers have kerchiefs over their noses when they hold-up banks. Stage coach bandits ride, faces kerchief-covered as they race after the Wells Fargo stage coach. We know they’re criminals because they cover their faces.

The question should not be, “Why is there so much crime?” But, “Why are there so many criminals?”

In 2021, criminals commit all sorts of misdeeds for the same reason dogs lick their balls… BECAUSE THEY CAN. 

Wear a hoodie and a mask and you’re invisible. Cellphones, security cameras… what do they capture? People in masks and hoodies. Much (most?) of the increase in street crime comes because people wear masks… and that it’s not strange… not a sign of criminality… nothing to worry about with the stranger behind you in a hoodie wearing a mask. EVERYONE is wearing a hoodie and a mask. It makes crime soooo much easier. 

FLASH TO MY LOFT BED: I take her left nipple into my mouth… suck on it… play my tongue over it. Then the right nipple. I feel a hardening between my legs. I gently take her wrist to move her hand down there… wrapping her fingers around the stiffness.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she says, “just put it on the night-table. I’ll smoke it in the morning.”

When I Google “Size Matters” I get 6,080,000 links. When I look for “Size Doesn’t Matter.” I get 13,000. It shows you what counts. 

Take vegetarians… (I know. I know.) 

There are three main reasons people are vegetarians: 

1. They think it’s healthy.

2. They think it’s better for the global environment.

3. They feel sorry for the animals. 

Let’s talk about the last one. When you see pictures of the poor animals being murdered by farmer Joe or Kenji Sakamoto, you see BIG animals. You see cows, whales, porpoises. If they’re talking about China or the Philippines, you might see a dog or two. I’ve never seen a PETA billboard with a picture of a cockroach or a mosquito… or even a mouse.

I’ve heard sorry-for-animalists trying to explain that the big animals feel pain, and insects don’t. The ability to feel pain is also used by anti-abortionists when they talk about the fetus. “How can we kill it? It feels pain.” 

Now that scientists suspect that plants feel pain, that argument goes out the window like a wounded housefly. All that’s left is the emotional tinge of a sad-looking cow-- or a fetus picture blown-up human size.

“Does X feel pain?” 

WRONG QUESTION!

Not that it’s the wrong question to ask, but it isn’t the REAL question they ask. 

The real question vegetarians ask is: 

“Does the animal scream or otherwise show pain like humans show pain?” 

For vegetarians, like for most others, size matters. They’ll tell you it’s about reverence for life, but they take the lives of flies and roaches with a casual swat. If they can’t see the pain of what they murder, it doesn’t count. 

Their real question is:

“Is the animalBIG enough that we can see the pain and feel guilty about inflicting it?”

That question tells us more about the asker than the answer. Size matters, you see. 

If you want to talk about killing animals… or fetuses… the question SHOULD be: 

How can we act morally in the world and find a principle to make life-death decisions?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to that one.

Yeah, sometimes I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have all the questions. But finding those questions is more important than finding the answers.

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]

–> Anyone can show it off on YouTube dept: The internet was supposed to democratize music, but as it turns out, it turned into an oligarchy. The American Prospect reports: 

For the main streaming companies—YouTube and Spotify—music is really a loss leader, incidental to data collection, the advertising that can be sold off that data, and the promise of audience growth to investors. “Spotify is benefiting from every single artist on the platform driving fans to them,” said Chris Castle, an entertainment attorney who used to work at A&M Records. “The labels say they give you exposure. The answer is that you can die of exposure.”

Remember when the labels were worried about home taping? How much money that lost? Naw, you don’t remember, you’re too young. 

–> Speaking of exposure dept: In a repeat of the notorious piss-in-mouth show at Gilman Street in the 90s. The lead singer of Brass Against pissed in the mouth of a fan at their show in  November. The loudwire website did a story on this, but unfortunately it was not accompanied by a video. Oh wait, I found the link! The band itself is weird enough, doing brass versions of Rage Against The Machine  and Tool.  Glad to see this kind of stuff is still going on in the ever-stuffier twenty-first century. 

–> Right again dept: I’ve written about the evils of recycling and how it does more harm than good. You’ve probably heard about the hundreds of neighborhood recycling programs stopped because of my writing. (Yeah right.) Now, The Tampa Bay Times reports on lead-poisoned workers, and a spread of the poison to surrounding communities… from where? From a lead recycling plant, of course. 

See you in hell, redux,

Mykel Board

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