I WAS FRAMED! or Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column

 I Was Framed ... or Mykel's Blog for October

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's October 2023 Blog/Column 

I Was Framed!    

by Mykel Board

The instrument that measures all other instruments– the human nervous system– has its own laws, and one of them involves always seeing the results one wants to see until and unless something really startles the brain enough to reframe its experiences. --Robert Anton Wilson

Popular authors do not and apparently cannot appreciate the fact that true art is obtainable only by rejecting normality and conventionality in toto, and approaching a theme purged utterly of any usual or preconceived point of view. --Edwin Baird

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me. – Barbara Kruger

It’s slightly pornographic… or could be. Just three fingers... lady’s fingers clearly... but what’s between them? Is that a urethra canal? Could it be the centerfold of a “men’s” magazine? Will the Google gods post this behind a SENSITIVE CONTENT SCREEN? How about if we look at the picture another way? Maybe that can tell us something different about those fingers:

Flash to the motel room: The floor is bloody… The door hangs on one hinge… lopsided as if forced in from the outside… it was.. Lying on the couch is a woman… clothed only in her own blood. Her vacant eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. A man… scruffy… wearing a beat up overcoat... sits on a chair at the desk. On either side of him is a cop. One tall… macho looking.. a strong chin cleanly shaven. Squinting, the disheveled man can read DETECTIVE BASTINI. The other cop is somewhat shlubbier… beer belly just poking over the front of his belt. The name on his badge is not visible to the sitting man.

“You realize this looks pretty bad for you,” says Detective Bastini.

“But officer,” says the disheveled man, “you gotta understand. This was a set-up. I was framed!”

You got it buckaroos! I want to write about FRAMING! How our entire view of the world, of people, of good and bad… right and wrong... is all about framing. And framing is everywhere… what we see out of a window is framed… what we hear on the news… what we listen to in a punk club… what appears in store displays… It’s all framed. White-washing, green-washing, pink-washing, ad-washing, even face- washing… BUILD THOSE FRAMES!

Yeah, I’m going to repeat myself here. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. I often repeat myself. But in saying what I’ve said before, I’m going to frame it with a frame. Show how you’ve been tricked by what the frame let in the picture and what it kept out.

So says the Google search. I don’t have time to dig further because my stomach is begging for release… Last night was Drink Club and I’m paying for it now. Aaaahrgh! I feel like I’m being fist-fucked from the inside. The pain… the pain… the bathroom… the toilet… sit down… ahh… ahhh… aaahhhhhh! An explosion… splashing down with the force of a space capsule in the ocean. BLOOOF! BLOOF! BLOOOF! Feces-filled water splashes back up... dribbling drip… drip… drip back into the muddy waters below. No, I can’t see it, but I feel it… against both lower cheeks… and the back of my thighs. 

Ecstasy! Poetry in brown! I just sit a bit and enjoy it... closing my eyes to focus on the relief. Then the wipe… the double wipe… the pull up… What’s that? A hard-yet-squishy feel. I again pull down my boxers. A brown stain discolors the top… right near the elastic. A single dingle-berry... hanging by a hair… too high up to reach through the legs… still there. I have to go around the side… grope for it. Aaaah, if only I could pay someone to make sure I’d got the last one before pulling up. A pro to take care of errant hanger-ons… to save my underpants… and my embarrassment at the laundromat. But wait... a dingle-berry remover!!! I’ve created a job! All I need is someone to fill it. Get it? It’s easy to create a job, though likely it’ll be a shitty one. 

It’s the frame! If we only look at jobs… at how many people are employed or can be employed… we mistake the Mona Lisa fingers for the painting. If we frame it as happy people... fulfilled people… people able to live a good life… then Biden’s 6.6 million jobs are meaningless. 

MOST jobs are worthless. They contribute nothing and may do more harm than good. 

That guy sitting at his desk shuffling electrons to buy and sell stock… What does he contribute? The greeter at Walmart... the CEO of a tech corporation... the maitre ‘d at a restaurant… bookkeepers… corporate lawyers… insurance brokers… advertising copy writers… the list never ends. Framing “job creation” instead of “life improvement” skews the equation.

It’s sometime in the late 1970s. Milton Friedman has already won the Nobel Prize for his defense of the crime of capitalism. The local PBS station shows a short series where Friedman explains his theories.

A twenty-something me sits in front of the TV as Friedman walks around the streets of New York, talking to the camera. He passes a beggar.

“It seems cruel,” says Friedman, “but if we don’t support this man… if we don’t give him money… he’ll have to get a job. The state… other working people… will not have to pay for him”

I close my eyes… take a deep breath… wish for the beggar to jump up, slam a lead pipe into the back of Friedman’s head… grab his wallet and take off. “There’s your have to get a job, motherfucker!” And I smile.

I tell this story to my Ayn Rand-loving friends. “No Mykel,” they tell me, “That’s what the police are for. They catch the guy and throw him in jail.”

“Where he’s supported by the state… working people,” I answer.

WORK --more precisely HAVING A JOB-- is something that’s lauded by Communists and Capitalists alike. There’s dignity in having a job. And a gauge of any president’s performance is whether or not he creates FULL EMPLOYMENT! So, destructive and useless jobs are better than no jobs at all. NO THEY AREN’T.

Let’s move the frame. Let’s value the ability to enjoy life. The ability to help others enjoy life. Lets value a smile on a poor man’s face more than a billion dollars in Jeff Bezos’s pocket. If there were no garbagemen, who would take away the garbage?

Who takes it away now? Who removes the banana peels from your kitchen? YOU DO! The garbage is taken away because it needs to be taken away… not because there are garbagemen.

I can hear Literary Device complaining now.

“Forget about garbagemen, Mykel,” she says. “What about doctors? Teachers? Architects? Those things take years of study. Are you going to have everyone be her own doctor?”

“Not quite,” I answer. “But I can tell you that I get paid to be a teacher. It’s my job. I’d do it though, even if it weren’t my job. I love doing it”

There are enough people who love doctoring and teaching doctoring that –job or not– they’d do it. With so many worthless or destructive jobs gone, people will be able to do what they love. Think of all the kids that want to be doctors or firemen or athletes, but end up stock brokers or insurance salesmen as adults. Are they happy wearing their white shirts and ties... spending a third of their lives moving electrons from one computer to the next… I bet MOST people are unhappy in their jobs, especially the useless or harmful ones.

Move that VALUE frame. Value humanity... satisfaction... time... rather than having a job. You’ll get a much nicer picture.

FLASH TO The Every Little Bit Helps frame: I generate a lot of garbage. No, I’m not talking about this blog. I’m talking real, physical stuff. Junkmail… bills (always shredded and thrown out), old magazines, plastic containers from yogurt, deli sandwiches, styrofoam trays from frozen chicken… the list goes on. The only garbage separating I do is pulling out the deposit bottles and cans. I put those in a separate clear plastic bag and leave that outside for the street people who live on bottle and can deposits. Many of them are my friends.

According to Green Matters, only around 9 percent of goods separated for recycling are being recycled. But there’s the frame. If you separate your soup cans from your bleach bottles you’re part of that every little bit. You can go ahead and buy your Campbell’s 12 pack and your Costco size bleach bottle. You’re still doing your part. But if we expand the frame… include the rest of the Mona Lisa... we can see the whole picture.

We can see that there’s a relationship between feeling good about your consumption… and consuming more. It’s okay if I buy so much more than I need. More to throw away…more junk… I RECYCLE… so it’s all right.

NO IT ISN’T! Recycling encourages consumption. Consumption encourages waste (and corporate profits). In this frame, RECYCLING MAKES JUNK. Instead of framing the junk our consumption makes, why not frame the consumption itself? Instead of recycling, why not avoid buying in the first place?

FLASH TO the war in Ukraine. Oh, the bad guys invade. “We” have to help. It’s good guys against bad guys… a typical American frame… cowboy movies… war movies… comic books. The good guys need to defeat the bad guys… the invaders. Send in weapons… train the soldiers… beat the war drums… put up Ukrainian flags. Measure success like in a war movie. CHASE THEM OUT. MAKE THEM DIE. They lose. We win. What can be more American than “Winning isn’t everything… It’s the only thing?”

But let’s use a different frame. Let’s keep score… if score must be kept… a different way. Let’s use a GOLF frame, instead of a comic book frame. In golf, the lowest score wins. So players work hardest at getting the lowest score. How ‘bout if, instead of keeping score by advances and retreats and downed airplanes or destroyed infantry, we count dead people. The fewer dead, the better the situation. So if “we” want to get a good score, we provide negotiators instead of bombs. We offer cash, concessions, trades, to keep the number of dead low. We exchange the frame of winning and losing for one of dying or not dying.

NEXT FRAME INTRODUCTION: It’s called “pre-judgement” and includes one of my favorite idioms of the last decade or so. It too is an extension of the American good guy/ bad guy frame. That is, anything done by a badguy must be bad. If the cowboy wearing black picks up a a dog in scene one, he’ll shoot it in scene three. He can’t be NICE to the dog… he’s a bad guy. That phrase I love is Trump Derangement Syndrome

FLASH TO Miami beach: It’s crowded. Throngs wanting to get in their last wave before Hurricane Bruce slams the coast and ruins their fun. If you walk quietly in a corner of the beach, you’ll see what looks like a typical American family: a chubby balding man… gray chest-hair, a woman, obviously his wife, with bright red hair, obviously from a bottle. A boy and his younger sister play on the bright blue picnic blanket spread in the sand. The boy carries a plastic bucket and a little plastic shovel. The little girl is empty-handed.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear that they are speaking French. Maybe they’re tourists. With a peal of kiddie-laughter the empty-handed girl grabs the bucket from her brother and runs toward the ocean. The brother gives chase, finally catching up and wrestling the bucket free. Then he pushes his sister who falls into the increasingly violent waves smashing against the shore. The girl washes out to sea.

“Aide! Aide!” screams the father, as the little girl is rip-currented further and further from shore.

Donald Trump, passing by, hears the shouts. Not taking the time to remove anything but his shoes, he runs to the water and jumps in. Powerfully, he swims out to the girl, grabs her around the chest and… careful to keep her head above water... brings her safely back to shore.

TRUMP MOLESTS TODDLER AT THE BEACH is the headline in The Times the next day… along with a photo of Donny Trump in the water with his arm around the girl’s chest.

For so many people, Trump is incapable of doing anything right… of doing a good deed. If it appears good… pardoning non-violent offenders, keeping the US out of war, downsizing The Pentagon… there’s always some reason it’s BAD. Getting out of NAFTA and TPP… disastrous trade bills that would have allowed international trade with no oversight. Slave conditions unanswerable by the US courts. President Trump saved us from them.

No he didn’t. Come the answers. Those were good for trade… come the TDS answers… except for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC who also opposed the treaties when they were presented by the Dems… those treaties are left out of the frame.

And finally… briefly… a pair of frames I’ve written about before: the GENDER frame and the RACE frame. Seeing abortion as “a war against women” where most of the anti-abortionists see a war against murder. Or seeing street crime and armed robbery as BLACK street crime and BLACK armed robbery instead of POVERTY-INDUCED street crime and POVERTY-INDUCED armed robbery. Framing… framing… framing.

So please… face the wall and look at that picture. Take it down… open the back and spread out the painting so the unframed parts become clear. Then REFRAME it, so those twat-showing hands become the Mona Lisa.

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]

→ Framing Step-by-Step Dept: There’s a great step-by-step analysis of news- framing in the New York Times. It’s not published on any of the monopoly-internet sites, but you can find it here.

→ How you react DEPENDS dept: Many of you know that I’ve gone through radiation treatment for prostate cancer. Called Cyberknife, the treatment itself is painless, though expensive. But the cash expense is only part of the problem. I pissed in my pants on the way home from the last treatment. I’ve been wearing (and needing) DEPENDS ever since. I have daily brain fog and the only time I’m not tired is late at night when I should be sleeping. If cyberknife is recommended for you… consider it VEEERRRRRY CAREFULLY, before you agree to it. You have been warned.

→ Put A Bag On It dept: The Canadian Broadcasting Company reports that in an environmental move, rock climbers in British Columbia have been encouraged to use WAG BAGS, to shit in. The idea, you shit in a bag that contains deodorizing chemicals, and then carry the shit with you, out of the wooded areas where you dispose of it at home. Sure, that’s gonna happen. Yeah right.

See you in hell redux,
MB


THE NATION AGAIN

I’m a long-time subscriber to the The Nation. It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely, when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends” would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.

I found, in an old issue, a great argument against those who charge “What Aboutism” when others make points about a parallel issue outside the frame. The author’s basic (and correct) point of view is that the anti-whataboutism argument justifies hypocrisy.
Then there’s Thomas Graham who spots a little more subtlety in the Ukraine war than the media and the current war-mongers are showing.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

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:

Jason Rodgers sent me his book Invisible Generation… free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian (in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I find the book, I’ll give you some more details.

Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachlorette!

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

Follow The Science? or Mykel's Blog for September 2023

 

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE? or Mykel's September 2023 Blog

   

Follow The Science? ... or Mykel's Blog for September

You’re STILL Wrong

or

Mykel's August 2023 Blog/Column 

Follow The Science    

by Mykel Board

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” - Albert Einstein

“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” - Albert Einstein

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.” - Douglas Adams

The foot bone connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone connected to the back bone,
The back bone connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone connected to the head bone,
Oh, hear the word of the Lord!
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun',
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk aroun'
                                             --Delta Rhythm Boys, 1941

It’s the big lecture hall. 200 seats… theater style… a lectern and a speaker… the world-famous Chemist, Dr. Hans Zarkov. He wears a white lab coat.

To the right and left of the lectern are huge matching plexiglass cubes. each one is 7 feet tall by 15 feet wide and 15 feet long. Inside the cubes are students who volunteered for this experiment in science. Each cube has a small tube connected through one wall. The other end of the tube is connected to a large gas canister. Each tube connects to a different canister.

“Good evening students,” says Dr. Zarkov… with just a hint of a Slavic accent. “Today we will talk about the scientific method and how we can separate myth from reality. You remember the principles.

Now let us look at water. A simple substance… made of hydrogen and oxygen… which for years has been labeled a necessity for human existence. But is it? Let us examine in detail... by experimentation… the scientific method… to see what it is in water that supports human life.”

The doctor walks over to the cubicle on the right. A few students inside press their faces against the plexiglass like children looking into a toy store window.

“You know that water consists of two ingredients… hydrogen and oxygen. But is it the water or the ingredients that promote life?”

The doctor taps the cubicle. “Start the gas,” he says.

Students in the front of the lecture hall can hear a faint hissing sound as the gas enters the cubicle. The students inside look toward the pipe opening. A few smile. One suddenly breaks into a dance. Before long, there’s a little circle. They’re dancing the hora. The doctor smiles, gives them the thumbs up, then turns to the audience.

“That was the oxygen,” he says.

Then he walks to the other cubicle.

“Start the gas,” he tells the tank operator.

Again a faint hiss… but the young people inside the cube do not look happy. A girl in a tight sweater… wearing yoga pants... begins to cough. The group moves away from the pipe… crowding into a corner. Several others in the group begin to cough. One young man, short, with a carefully-trimmed unshaven look, lies on the floor of the cube. Before long another collapses, Then another… soon the cube is filled with unmoving bodies.

“That was the hydrogen,” says the doctor. “And you are witnesses today. You can see that water is NOT what preserves human life. It is oxygen –and only oxygen– that preserves us. Hydrogen is a dangerous poison. It can kill. It is the scientific method that has proved it. Congratulations to those still alive. You have graduated from students to scientists.”

FLASH TO MORPHOLOGY 101: Professor Board stands at the front of the class... in front of a whiteboard. He wears a GG Allin t-shirt and torn jeans. His long hickory pointing stick leans against his desk… between the whiteboard and the class.

Students bend over their notebooks, furiously scribbling Board’s words. Board turns his back to class and writes a list of words... in red marker... on the whiteboard.

snore
snot
sneeze
sniffle
snout

Then he turns back to the class. “Yeah, we got snow and snake… but they’re not part of the group I’m talking about.”

A very butch girl, sitting at a desk in the first row, half-raises her hand accompanied by an attention-getting snort.

“Okay, Dr. Board,” she says. “Are you going to tell us what this is about? Or do we have to guess.”

Board lifts one nostril in a condescending sneer. “I’ll let you guess,” he says. “Waddaya think?”

“They’re all NOSE-words,” answers the girl, pulling her shoulders back like she’s just volunteered for the suicide squad. Board grabs the wooden pointer. Holding one end, he smacks it on the desktop. THWAP!

“BINGO!” answers Dr. Board. “You got it. Many –maybe most– words starting with SN are nose words in English. The letters SN are called semi-morphemes to distinguish them from full morpheme like inter and hypo.

“Now look at these…” Dr. Board turns his back to the class and writes:

sculpture
scoop
scar
scab
schizophrenic
scatter

“I got it!” the professor hears a call from the back of the room and turns around, again slapping his hickory pointer against the desktop. THWAP!

It’s Tommy Lee, a Chinese foreign exchange student. “They all mean cut or divide… I always wondered why scissors started with sc and not a plane old s. Now I know!” As he speaks, Tommy not-so-subtly scratches between his legs. “That SC,” he continues. “It’s a semi-morgue.”

“Semi-morph,” corrects Prof. Board, “but you got the idea.”

And YOU, dear reader? You got the idea? Science is about cutting… about dividing… about looking at the part… the butterfly in Brazil… and not counting that tornado in China.

It’s easy to see the evils brought on us by science. Can you say Hiroshima and Nagasaki? You got trans-fats, margarine and Round-up insecticide? I guess few people reading this are old enough to remember the pregnancy drug Thalidomide... a sedative staple for new mothers.

Everyone was taking it. The science said it was a great medicine. Besides being a sedative, it was a strong anti-nausea medication for pregnant women with morning sickness. Then they realized…

Whoops!

There is a publication, I think from the same folks who publish Consumer Reports. It’s called Worst Pills Best Pills… comes out every month and lists all the mistakes pharmaceutical scientists have made in the recent past. There’s a ton of ‘em.

And doctors? When there once was “a family doctor” that took care of everything, doctors now specialize in tiny pieces of the body... specialties cut into tiny sub-specialties.

Doctor X never sees the connection between the head bone and the toe bone. He barely knows the toe bone exists. He’s a head man.

TRUE STORY: I call my urologist after a biopsy, its anesthesia, and its antibiotics gives me the shits… for days! What should I do?

“Go to the emergency room… or urgent care or something,” he tells me. “I’m not a gastroenterologist.”

At a later appointment, I overhear him telling another patient “you have a lot of sugar in your urine.”

“What should I do about it?” asked the patient.

“That’s not my department,” says the doctor. “You need to talk to a specialist.”

There are a few doctors who consider themselves “holistic.” But they don’t enjoy high status in the medical profession. Insurance usually won’t pay for them.

The scientists who developed plastics – or the gasoline engines-- never saw the coming pollution crisis. Now the “solutions” to those problems create problems of their own. Batteries in electric cars and scooters require rare mineral mining that destroys seabeds and turns the ocean red. The vehicles themselves spontaneously burst into flame. Wind farms to generate “clean” electricity kill thousands of birds. Electric replacements for coal factories start out-of-control wildfires.

It’s the semi-morpheme of SCience that’s the problem.

FLASH TO HIPPOCRATES: He’s just finished writing his new doctors’ oath: First do no harm. Now he’s in the lab with his students.

The doctor holds a squirming mouse by the tail. Turning his Greek head to look behind him, he calls on one of the boys in class to help demonstrate the scientific method.

“Dimitrios,” he says, “come here and hold the mouse on the table so it doesn’t move. I want to show you how we examine what makes it move in the first place.”

The boy grimaces… obviously not a fan of mouse-holding. But he walks up, takes the creature from Hippocrates, and holds it to the table by the head and tail. The doctor takes a sharp pointed knife and thrusts it into the soft belly of the mouse. A little pop of blood comes out of the animal as the knife goes in. Soon the pop becomes a puddle.

The boy, somewhat upset at the sight lets go of the mouse… It doesn’t move. “How are you going to find out about movement?” asks the boy. “It’s not moving!”

To its credit, science has recognized the problem. It’s called The Observer Effect. It says that the instruments used to measure something change the thing being measured. Unfortunately, scientists don’t realize that THEY are the instruments.

If all this weren’t bad enough, what happens in the current state of science worship is that those who say THAT’S WRONG… those who give an alternative viewpoint... are demonized as stupid or evil. It’s often the press who does the demonizing… sometimes the government.

Then there’s Robert Kennedy Jr, running against Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries. So what does he think about the Ukraine war? Or about the current dollars-for-death policy of the US? Is he going to save Medicare? And censorship from the right and left… what about that?

You won’t find answers on the news or from the Biden attack ponies. There’s only one issue for them. RFK is

ANTI-VAX

No matter that he has other political opinions about other things. The VACCINE is the focus. No matter that he has had vaccines that have been (sort of) proven over time: Smallpox, Polio, etc. He’s had ‘em all… except for the COVID VACCINE.

And what about Bronny James, son of LeBron James… a heart attack at 18! Was he vaccinated? You’ll never know from the news reports of the collapse. They talk about heart attacks and “sudden deaths between 2004 and 2008” What about during COVID time? What about among the vaccinated or not? Any difference? Not a peep.

And for me? What about ARTLESS drummer Michael Evans. In his fifties, a wildman... peak physical condition… not a drug user… a healthfood fanatic. BANG! Heart attack. Did he have one of those vaccines? Which one? We’re not allowed to ask. Just asking the question means we’re spreading conspiracy theories… misinformation.

If science is a process of hypothesis, testing, adjusting and correcting hypotheses, as my friends claim… then how can you gag those who say the hypotheses are wrong? How can you prevent those who believe that thalidomide causes birth defects or that the earth revolves around the sun from expressing those beliefs? How can you call them spreaders of misinformation, when scientists themselves explain their science as a history of misinformation?

But wait, there’s more. Back to Professor Board… It’s the SC… the cut… the examination of the part… sometimes the microscopic part… to make your hypotheses.

I remember as a kid my father read me a story about some blind men who were introduced to an elephant and were describing what they felt. Wikipedia tells it this way:

The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. Another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

The blind men are the men of science. Scientists recently reported that alcohol in any amount is unhealthy and cancer-causing. This conclusion came through the scientific method. When you elbow the scientists in the ribs and ask about cultures famously long-lived like those in Eastern Russian and Okinawa… and oh yeah, a recent Dutch study that found that people who drink more live longer.

“It may be something else in the culture that contributes to the longevity,” say scientists.

“It may be EVERYTHING in the culture that contributes to the longevity,” I answer.

When a philosopher asks What is love? The physicist answers it’s electrons traveling through the nervous system stimulating body parts in reaction to another person. The chemist says it’s a chemical soup of Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Serotonin. One biologist on the internet says, “we might think about love as the emergent result of neurons firing in the amygdala.” That is the nature of science… blind men feeling an elephant.

How ‘bout asking a poet what love is? Well, those of us old enough to have gone to school when poetry was as important as STEM might remember Robert Burns:

My love is like a red red rose
That’s newly sprung in June
My love is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune

Cutting it to pieces is not a description. Someone who’s never fallen in love will not learn what it’s like from a firing in the amygdala. Love is poetry.

The world is like love. If you don’t see how the wing-flapping butterfly in New York is related to the typhoon in Japan, you can’t see what makes up the world. If you slice and dice and microscope the cosmos, it is no longer the cosmos.

Yes, I hate science. What science tells me today will not be true tomorrow. In fact, the mistake may kill people –a lot of people– while waiting for its correction. The cosmos is a vast interconnected whole… but it takes a poet to know that – not a scientist.

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]

→ Don’t Look Under the Mattress Dept: The Epoch Times reports Helen Grus--an Ottawa Police Service detective is being charged with “disorderly conduct” for investigating the vaccination status of the mothers of deceased infants. She sent two emails to the Police Chief to discuss a spike in infant deaths and a number of police officers with COVID-19 vaccine-related heart problems. Ms. Grus faces a charge of “discreditable conduct” for conducting an "unauthorized project" by probing into the sudden deaths.

→ Department of Truth Dept: YouTube has introduced a new medical misinformation policy that will censor any medical or health-related content that doesn't align with claims made by the World Health Organization. YouTube earlier had a "COVID-19 Misinformation Policy" webpage that stated that the platform doesn't allow content that "poses a serious risk of egregious harm” and spreads "medical misinformation" contradicting what the WHO or local health authorities (LHA) say about the COVID-19 pandemic. The webpage now redirects to a "medical misinformation policy" page that expands the censorship rule to "specific health conditions and substances" rather than COVID-19 alone. Content that contradicts guidance on treatments, including promoting "specific harmful substances or practices" not approved by authorities or the WHO as safe and effective, also won't be allowed on the platform.

→ A Petition I Can Sign Dept: I wish I could sign the now-closed Change.org petition to refuse Jeff Bezos re-entry to earth after he takes a trip on the Amazon Space Rocket. Such a good idea, but I guess the question was Who do you send the petition to? The UN army? Anyway, I’m glad to see it got over 200,000 signatures. I just wish I was one of them.

See you in hell, redux,

Mykel Board

THE NATION AGAIN

I’m a long-time subscriber to the The Nation. It’s the only lefty publication that I find myself not only agreeing with, but also getting inspiration from. Strangely, when I post this stuff on facebook, no one looks at it. My “friends” would just rather call me a “Trumpist” or a “Republican” for all the times I don’t follow the party line. If it’s printed in THE NATION, it should give me street cred, right? Yeah right.
    This time, Jeet Heer writes about how NATO has become a first world fortress against the rest of the world… and how the allies support for Ukraine (and not, for instance, African democracy) is bringing back cold war politics and leaving out the poorer countries of the world.

Then there’s a regular feature “by the numbers.” You draw your own conclusions:

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

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:

Jason Rodgers sent me his book Invisible Generation… free! And I lost it. Jason, a long-time partner of Suzy Poe, has been bugging me to review it… and I can’t. So the best I can do is promote it. I have a lot of respect for Jason… he is a libertarian (in the best sense of the word), and a super-smart guy. When/if I find the book, I’ll give you some more details.

Video of the week: My long-time friend Sid Yiddish appears on a YouTube DatingGame-like video. Guess who wins the bachelorette!

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