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

 

 

Hate Crimes

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's June 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are MOST crimes HATE CRIMES?

Only the ones that make the news.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you in hell.

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

Mykel Board

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

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

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

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

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

See you in hell, redux,

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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

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

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a couple video links.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Bi Bi Binary

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's May 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

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

- Toba Beta

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

- Hans Rosling,

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

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

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

You’re wrong. --Mykel Board

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

Yeah my mother used to tell me that too.

Your mouth works, now try your brain.

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

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

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

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

Q. How’s your hearing?
A. What?

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

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

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

“So you’re bisexual?”

“Trisexual… try anything.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOILED AGAIN BY BINARY THINKING!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But wait! There’s still more!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you in hell… or not

Mykel Board

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

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

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

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

See you in hell... or not (redux)
MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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

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

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a couple video links.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Change of Heart

or You're STILL Wrong,

Mykel's April 2022 Blog

by Mykel Board

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

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

--Stephen L. Carter

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

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

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

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

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

Whew! I needed that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yo Mykel, how’s it goin?”

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

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

“Nope,” he answers, “what happened?”

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

Kevin shakes his head.

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

“Waddaya mean?” I ask.

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

I can feel myself starting to get pissed off.

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

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

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

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

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

I take my leave and walk through Union Square

A bearded guy, wearing black, blocks my path.

“Are you Jewish?” he asks.

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

He laughs. “Did you set Tefillin today?”

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

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

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

But wait! There’s more:

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

“Nice day, isn’t it?” he says.

I nod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We talk for a couple hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mykel Board

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

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

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

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

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

MB

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

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

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

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

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

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a couple video links.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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