The Anecdote To Your Problems or Mykel's August 2024 Blog: YOU'RE STILL WRONG

You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's

August 2024 Blog/Column

The Anecdote To Your Problems

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.

                    -- Margaret Fuller

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
                    -- Douglas Adams

Honey to heal a wound. Cherries for gout. Cod-liver oil— blech!—to keep your eyes healthy. Your grandmother and her doctors probably swore by these fixes, and now science is catching up with them.
                    -- Jen McCaffery and Tina Donvito

Anecdotal fallacy is when someone uses a personal story or a few individual cases to make a broad claim. Just because it happened to one person doesn't mean it's a universal truth. The bigger picture often involves research and data that can offer a more accurate view.
                    --Practicalpie.com

Practicalpie...You’re wrong!

                    -- Mykel Board

I’m more frustrated than a chimp with his fist stuck in a jellybean jar. My left testicle itches… not the whole thing… just one spot.. about an inch down from where the skin joins the leg. It’s a narrow piercing itch, like I’ve been stabbed by a knitting needle and instead of pain, the reaction is… ITCH. As intolerable as pain… as severe as pain… only not pain… itch. I’m at a table in the library… a great old building... used to be a church, I think. A winding staircase connects the floors. The table, nice wood, about 5 feet wide by 15 feet long. Seven other people sit at the table… about two feet between us. I feel like I have to grab myself… between the legs… and scratch, rub… or insert my hand under my belt and rake my nails over the offending part. I’m too shy to do any of that… Yeah, there’s the bathroom under an arch on the other side of the reading room. Must be all-gendered because a line of people… boys and girls… waits to get in. I can’t wait.

I move my left hand under the table… pretend I’m scratching my knee. Slowly, I raise the hand up scratching my thigh. I realize my upper arm, pressing against the table shakes the furniture. People look at me, squinting in anger. I stop scratching. Now I squeeze my thighs together, rubbing them… one against the other. No… no… this won’t work. I can’t take it. I stand… the itch gets vaguely lighter. I walk out of the library…. Run home… grab a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the rack on the bathroom door… drop trou… bathe the affected part in 90%… ow… ow… ow… aaaaah. Relief.

FLASH TO ABSTRACTION: Strangely, I find people who are non-religious… even atheist... talk about their advantages as being blessed. They talk about being grateful for their good hearing or their ability to write books. I don’t get it. If you are BLESSED with something… who (what) did the blessing? You can’t be blessed unless someone blesses you. On Passover, I bless the matzoh. I do the blessing. The matzoh is blessed. It is not part of the ritual for the matzo to bless me. I don’t know how it could.

Jordan licks the tip after giving me the best blowjob I’ve had in years. I’m GRATEFUL. I received the gift from Jordan. I’m grateful TO Jordan for the gift. You cannot be grateful for something unless you’re grateful TO someone.

FLASH TO REALITY: I am grateful to my friends who disagree with me. There are a lot of people in the world who disagree with me. Most I’ve never met. Some stopped being my friends because they don’t like my politics, my attitude, my brown skin tags. But I also have friends who I’m grateful to for continuing the discussion. For contradicting me, but remaining friends. For sitting and talking and disagreeing… for pointing me in a new direction… for teaching me how other people think… for putting up with my scratching under the table. My friends tell me about the way they look at the world. Sometimes they think things, maybe repeat what they’ve heard elsewhere, try to discuss with logic. Even when they get to the eye-rolling stage, they don’t give up on me... at least they don’t give up being my friend. I’m grateful to them for their friendship… for their willingness to explain… for their presence. I’m not blessed to have such friends. No one gave them to me. But I am grateful TO them.

“Okay Mykel,” says literary device, “can you put the pieces together? What does being blessed, being grateful, and having cool friends have to do with an itchy testicle? Can you connect the dots… er… scrota?”

Ah, literary device. I’m lucky she’s there whenever I need her. I’m grateful to myself for inventing her. The gist of this blog came from a lunchtime conversation I had with Jim and Dawn. They are two of my friends who often disagree with me, but despite that disagreement, remain my friends. I’m grateful TO them for that. We’re talking about the American healthcare industry. I say that I’ve been to 71 countries, and among the ones called First World, the US system is the worst… even beating some Second and Third worlders. It’s the only country you have to PAY for an ambulance to take you to the hospital. And I’m talkin’ hundreds of dollars.

[NOTE: Since I posted this, a European friend has told me that they charge 71 euros in Belgium for an ambulance. That's still less than half of what they charge in New York, See how important anecdotes are?]

I tell them about my pal Marilyn, who when in England suddenly developed a stomach something or other. She was staying in a cheapish hotel, and crawled to the concierge to ask how much a doctor would cost and where she could find one.

“If you’re sick you go to the doctor… or a hospital. It doesn’t cost. You just go,” comes the answer. “Want me to call you an ambulance?”

“How m.. m… m…?” starts Marilyn.

“Pay for an ambulance? That’s crazy.” says the hotel lady. “That sounds like something from a Sci Fi movie. You know: dystopia.”

“Anyway, I don’t need one.” answers Marilyn. “Could you just get me the address of a doctor? I’ll take a taxi.”

I don’t know the diagnosis. A rotten crumpet maybe. But she saw a doctor, got diagnosed, maybe a prescription… and it was over. She paid the cab fare… that’s all.

“That’s anecdotal,” says Dawn when I relate the story. “You can’t go by what a person says. You need the science… the statistics.”

“Okay,” I say. “How ‘bout my London pal Alestair?” He had the same kind of prostate cancer I had. Went for the radiation. 20 treatments… one every two weeks. He just finished up… 7 months after diagnosis.

“Still anecdotal,” says Jim. “I’ll look it up. The cellphone comes out pop-doodle-pop.

“Google lists long wait times as one of the worst things about the British system. See? You can’t go by anecdotes.”

“You trust Google more than you trust my friends?”

“It’s science,” answers Dawn. “An anecdote is only what some people say happened to them. It could mean anything.”

SPEAKING OF THE INTERNET: Wikipedia tells me: Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It’s one of the best, and best-known critiques of applied statistics. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point. The phrase was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.

FLASH TO MY BALLS: I don’t need Google-verified statistics. Rubbing alcohol works for me, so I use it. If you have the same problem, try it. If it doesn’t work for you, try something recommended by someone else. I posted a question on facebook asking people what they used in a way NOT recommended by the manufacturer or a white-coated salesman in doctor drag. Here are a few of the answers:

• I use Claritin over the Rx for my vertigo.

• Antiperspirant on feet. If I use it in the armpits, my lymph nodes swell up, so I have to use antiperspirant-free deodorant.

• Flonase for vertigo and mosquito bites

• I’ve heard that mouthwash is effective against an itchy scalp.

• I use yeast infection creme (Monestat) behind my ears

• I use the heartburn med Tagamet (which is a histamine blocker) and sucks for heartburn as an antihistamine to treat hives and allergies.

• Skin so Soft by Avon of all people repels deer ticks and mosquitoes

All this information is ANECDOTAL… yet I’d try any one of these tricks in a minute, over a scientifically proven (and advertised) cure. Anecdotes are REAL PEOPLE. They are not statistics. They are not victims of control groups, placebos, or tests the results of which will reverse themselves in 2 months. Anecdotes are my balls and Marilyn’s British stomach virus. Google statistics don’t mean a damn thing.

This is a religious-like worship of an absolute GOD of science with Google as its bible. It claims a truth as demanding as the belief that Jesus walked on water. It is a belief that rejects PEOPLE It rejects experience and replaces it with numbers.

I once got a mailing from some atheist group. It came with a sticker that said I BELIEVE IN GOOD… adding an O to the religious mantra. Well, I believe in GOODMAN… Frank Goodman who lives next door. And I believe in Abdula, Owasu, Tetsuya, Bob… and all the humans out there who have tried it out and passed it on. I believe in bodies more than test tubes... experience more than statistics… health reports more than dissection.

I WANT anecdotal evidence. If science tests 100 people and 76 of them get hair regrowth after drinking piss… I want to know what’s up with the other 24. Are they more like me? Do they have something special that keeps the baldness?

One of the most important people in my life is Sid Yiddish. I’ve voted for him for President in every election this millennium-- except when I voted for Obama. (What a mistake THAT was.) Sid will not eat food or take medicine if he doesn’t like the taste. He doesn’t eat fish, drink anything cola-flavored, hates mint and licorice. If he tells me something “is bad,” I know enough to ask, “Is it because of the taste or because it doesn’t work?” He is a real person and his opinions and recommendations can be narrowed down and explained. Those 24 people who had no success with piss drinking… Did they even try? What makes them different than the others? How could I ever know?

Get it? In my anti-science rampage, I’m running my jeep through the crowd of science supporters… flinging them… bloody... from the grill… left and right… ahead too so I can run them over. The story of their demise? ANECDOTAL of course. It’s not science until we have a test case… a crowd of Christians perhaps… crossing the street. Slammed into with a Tesla... the scientific method. Does the same thing happen both times? Is it reported in a respectable journal? Were the subjects strictly controlled? Does Google know about it?

Jen McCaffery and Tina Donvito (see quote at the beginning of this blog): You’re Right! Anecdotes are the Olympian runners. Science can only catch up.

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]

→ MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH Dept.: Right after the Donny Trump ear attack, my pal Ed. opined, “It’s a fake! It sounded like a pop gun” He was met with a pooh pooh chorus. But I just read about how Teddy Roosevelt’s “attempted assassination” guaranteed him the presidency for a second term. And the more I think about it, the more it seems logical. What are the odds of such a close call? Some innocent shlub takes a bullet “to show the attack was real.” Who compared the deadly bullet with the one in the ear? No one! Isn’t it convenient that the shooter was killed before he could be questioned? Holy Lee Harvey Oswald batman! Next blog: CONSPIRACY?

→ COVID-24 DEPT: And speaking of conspiracies. Isn’t it a bit odd that the weak candidate, Joe Biden, should come down with Covid just in the middle of his campaign? After the bigwigs call on him to cut his losses and run, POW! Isolate in Delaware. In national policy, the guy wasn’t so bad. If he weren’t such a war-lover, I’d almost vote for him. Looks like the Dems are gonna lose everything this year. (I almost wrote “this ear”). LATE NEWS: Joe pulls out of the race. Turns it over to Kamala. Frankly, I think Sid has a better chance this year than he’s ever had before. He’s got my vote… again.

→ TOLD YOU SO DEPT: BBC News reports that one of the recent winners of the Nobel Prize for medicine discovered a breakthrough drug after poring over 2,000 ancient herbal recipes. Dr Tu Youyou's discovery, the anti-malarial artemisinin, derived from wormwood, is credited with saving millions of lives. From opium in poppies, to quinine derived from the cinchona tree, to digoxin from foxgloves, there are many gems unearthed from the past that have true testable medical benefits. All this was pre-science… just anecdotal… hundreds of years of anecdotes. Science is just catching up.

→COULD SEE THAT COMING DEPT: USA Today reports that Dustin Ebey, 35, a math teacher from north Texas, has changed his legal name to Literally Anybody Else and is running a write-in campaign for president of the United States. ABC13-TV reported that Else has revealed his running mate, Neal David Sutz, a New Yorker who is currently living in Switzerland. Else said Americans deserve better than the divisive, partisan electoral system we currently have. "This name gives everybody something to point to, to channel, that belonging to one movement, to one message that could hopefully have a meaningful impact," Else said.

See you in hell redux, 
MB

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:

Mike Diana often censored great Boiled Angel comic artist invites you to check out his material. Take a look at it at: http://mikedianacomix.com/boiled-angel 

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners.

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the US

Here’s an update on the current URL for Sid Yiddish’s Dating Game (type) entry.

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.

And for a quiet smile and a much needed break for you and the dog, try G.C. Adams’ YouTube entry.

You already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their online version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys. Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher!

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brian asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.

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

EVERYONE Is Above The Law or Mykel's July 2024 Blog Entry

   

EVERYONE is Above The Law
or
Mykel's July 2024 Blog
aka  You're Still Wrong

The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread. 

– Anatole France

“The law roasted her to death at a slow fire.
                        –Mark Twain in The Prince and The Pauper

Practically all laws, whether they forbid me to take your car, outlaw racial discrimination, or coerce the payment of taxes, impose somebody’s morality on somebody else. 
                     –Stephen L. Carter

--------------------

I stand with half a dozen people at the northwest corner of Broadway and Houston Street. A cacophony of horns blasts from the barely moving cars and trucks. If this were a symphony, every thirty seconds or so, a conductor would cue a VROOOM VROOOM screaming from motorcycles... and cars that wish they were motorcycles. No one looks at the traffic lights. The red-handed DON’T WALK sign hides behind the school bus blocking the crosswalk at the corner.

From our standing-at-the-corner crowd, an attractive young woman in twat-shaping shorts, steps from the curb into the traffic. Stepping hard… intentionally… she weaves her way through the cars to reach the divider in the middle of the street. Her move has given me the courage to try it… and I twist and turn my way to the middle divide. So does a mom pushing a stroller. Then a tourist trying to follow his cellphone map.

Slowly we wind our ways through the traffic until one by one we reach the other side of Houston Street. None of us notices or cares about the lights… and it’s the same for the traffic we’re weaving through. They don’t care either.

FLASH TO WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT: I tried asking Google (actually DuckDuckGo) how many federal laws there are. It turns out nobody knows. The last attempt to count them was in the 1980s. The result “was scattered among 50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law.”

Of course, there are also state, city, and local laws… new ones coming and going every day. The laws are constructed –some by accident, some by intention– so that EVERYONE will be a lawbreaker at one time or another.

I haven’t been in high school since 1968. It’s likely things have changed since then. When I was in school, Social Studies taught us that America was a Nation of Laws. Unlike dictatorships… like Russia, where HUMANS rule arbitrarily, in America everyone must obey the same laws. It doesn’t matter if you’re Al Capone or Jane Fonda. The law applies to all of us.

“In America, everyone is equal before the law,” Mr. Greenspan told us. “There is no aristocracy here… no dictatorship.”

Even then, I thought something was fishy about that idea. Al Capone was a gangster. The guy behind the machine gun that The Untouchables were always fighting. But what sent him to prison? TAX EVASION. He didn’t pay the government on the money he stole from those dead guys. It seemed to me that mass murder from the end of a machine gun was a more deserving crime than tax evasion. But that was the only way they could get him.

FLASH AHEAD TO 2325: A teenage Mikhail Boardinov is struggling against the body lock placed on him by Robocop4870-UB.

 “You are under arrest,” says the 4870… whose mellow voice is uncannily like that of HAL in 2001.

“What for?” asks Boardinov. “I know you don’t like what I say sometimes. But I have a right to say it.”

“Of course you do,” answers the Robocop. “This is a free country… You’re not in Russia.”

“Then why am I being arrested?” asks Boardinov.

“You know why,” says the Robocop. “You’re not being arrested for your beliefs or your writing. You’re being arrested for breathing without a license.”

“How do you know I don’t have a license?” asks Boardinov, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with my vocal opposition to the merger of AmazAppleGoogleSoft with the US government, would it?”

“Of course not,” comes the reply. “You know about climate change. You know how bad carbon dioxide is for the earth. Humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. You know that the law requires a breathing license for every citizen… and that all citizens must document at least 3 periods of one minute each day… where they stop breathing in order to help save the planet. You are a selfish bastard… not caring about the earth or anyone in it besides yourself… and if you had a license, you’d show it to me.”

FLASH TO 2024: As I write this, Donald Trump has finished his trial about paying a pornstar hush-money^®, but like Al Capone’s trial, the reason for the court is violation of some business expense reporting.

Donald Trump is an outsider. Before his previous term in office, he was without experience with the Washington politicos. He was a businessman and an entertainer. And he lived his life according to the rules of those professions. I can’t imagine a successful businessman who doesn’t have an accountant or lawyer he pays to fiddle the books. The pornstar makes the news. Few people know – or care – about the buisiness law.

In Florida, they’re bringing Trump to court for boxes of classified documents on the floor of his bathroom. No he didn’t piss on them, at least not as far as I know. He didn’t do anything with them except leave them in his house. And they raided that house. The Feds tore the place apart looking for… for whatever they could find. A little later they raided Joe Biden’s house too. Found a few classified docs. Poof! that was the end of it. No big deal for Joe, but Donny Trump had to go to court.

And now the Repubs are getting into the act. They can’t get Joe, so they go after his kid… cooking up a violation of some federal gun laws for an ILLEGAL purchase of a revolver... a decade and a half ago… and they’re still looking to dig up some law to prove the kid’s an undercover secret agent for Ukraine or someplace else in The East.

GET IT???

There are so many laws in this country that anyone at any time is guilty of violating something. The function of the law is NOT that all people are subject to all laws. That would mean jail for EVERYBODY. The function of the law is to provide a means for powerful people to GET those they don’t like. It allows good-old-boy cops to arrest black drivers going five miles over the speed limit. Not because they’re black (wink wink), but because THEY VIOLATED THE LAW. They were speeding. Laws allow colleges to break up peaceful demonstrations, not because the big donors don’t like the ideas of the protesters, oh no, ever that… but because the demonstrators were OBSTRUCTING. And that’s AGAINST THE LAW.

Mr. Greenspan was wrong. The purpose of the law is not to make some rules that apply to everyone equally all the time. The purpose of the law is to control or punish people the lawmakers don’t like. American elections have become not who wins at the ballot box, but who stays out of court… and the corollary, who stays out of jail.

Along with the US, other third-world countries have adopted the same system. Pakistan and Thailand have both jailed the “opposition,” using the law as an excuse. Nelson Mandela spent 20 years in prison in South Africa before JUSTICE finally beat LEGALITY and he became president.

Of course Donald Trump is guilty of violating the law. Every one of those people crossing against the light on the corner of Houston and Broadway was guilty of violating the law. Every person in the United States is guilty of violating the law… or a law… or multiple laws.

The law does not “hold violators accountable.” The law provides the violation to punish people out of favor with those in power.

See you in hell,

Mykel Board

LATE ADDITION: Just before I’d planned to post this, the Supreme Court issued a decision saying that “Presidential Immunity” means… er… Presidential Immunity. Much of the plot to let the courts, instead of the voters, decide the next president has been lost. That’s a good thing. Friends and regular readers know I’m a Trump agnostic. He’s done selfish and serve-the-wealthy things, Can you say cutting rich and corporate taxes? But he also kept us out of war, opened up a dialog with North Korea, and pardoned thousands of non-violent jailed humans. I don’t think his election will mean DEATH TO DEMOCRACY. Democracy has been dead a long time.

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]

→A FISH LAW DEPT: Hand-fishing without a license is illegal in Kansas. Anyone who plans to hand-fish must first get a hand-fishing license in addition to a hook-biting fishing license. Even with a license, however, it is only legal to hand-fish flathead catfish from sunrise to sunset June 15 through August 31 along the Arkansas River, all federal reservoirs beyond 150 yards of a dam, and the whole stretch of the Kansas River. Everywhere else, you have to keep your hands to yourself.

 → SPEAKING OF FISH AND HANDS DEPT: In Gainesville County, Georgia, it is against the law to eat fried chicken except with your bare hands. As for enforcement: in 2009, a 91-year-old visitor from Louisiana was arrested and charged for eating fried chicken with a fork. 

→ GETTING MARRIED ON THE WAY DOWN! DEPT:  Unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be fined or jailed in Florida. You know sometime, somewhere, a bachelorette parachuted on Sunday. It was her passion. Then, some unrequited state legislator decided to teach her a lesson. I’ll get you, you bitch! Take THIS law!

There are a ton more of these super-weird laws. You can google them. At first, they seem funny. But there’s something sinister behind all of them.

→ IT MAY BE A CULT… BUT Dept: I’ve been on the LaRouche mailing list for a long time. The cultishness and conspiracy focus have usually put me off them. But they are often so logical, and print news that you just can’t get elsewhere. This is a translation of part of a Putin speech… and it makes a lot of sense

See you in hell (redux)
MB

THE NATION AGAIN:

In the newest issue are a couple of worthwhile columns: There’s a good one by Adolph Reed Jr. It’s sumarized in this quote: Liberal policy offers sympathy to those sleeping on the streets, but stops fhort of giving the shewhere to live..

And there’s another good one by the often right, Jeet Heer, on the necessity of cleansing the Democratic Party of the remains of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, and building a true alternative to the Republicans. Also the column talks about the Dems abandoning young people (Hillary Clinton on young followers of Trump vs. Bernie Sanders fans: “At least they shave.”)

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions many I’d 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:

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners.

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth, superstar comic writer, Justin Melkmann and possibly the next vice-president of the US, Charles Bukkake.

Here’s an update on the current URL for Sid Yiddish’s Dating Game (type) entry.

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.

And for a quiet smile and a much needed break for you and the dog, try G.C. Adams’ YouTube entry. 

You already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their on-line version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys. Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher!

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.

Longtime writer, Randall Fleming, has a new book out about the reversal of flag desecration. In his view, the right And more generally it’s about political violence in the 21^st century.

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.

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. mykelboard@gmail.com

Hijacking The Rainbow or Mykel's June 2024 Blog Entry

 

   

Hijacking the Rainbow 
or
Mykel's June 2024 Blog: You're Still Wrong

 

Florida is where woke goes to die
                            -- Gov. Ron DeSantis

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.
                        — Maya Angelou

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
                    --Kris Kristofferson made famous by Janis Joplin

It was while giving a speech in Washington about the British theft of the Elgin marble from the Parthenon. I described the attitude of the current British authorities as "niggardly." Nobody said anything, but I privately resolved — having felt the word hanging in the air a bit — to say "parsimonious" from then on.                         --Christopher Hitchens

I think I’ve told this story before. I must’ve. It was an epiphany… a life changer. Google tells me no. Google tells me there are no instances of “Mykel Board” and “Miles Davis” occurring on the same page. Who am I to argue with Google? Am I the one to stand in front of the charging train with my hands out in front of me, while a little baby lies crying on the track? Sorry kid, but I’m getting out of the way. Maybe I’ll come to the funeral.

I only vaguely knew of the word WOKE I didn’t get what it meant… something about being aware… with some kind of racial overtones. Nothing that would stick. I probably heard it sometime in the late 1960s, but I was too involved in taking LSD and stopping the Vietnam war to bring it into full consciousness. It laid in the background… written off as a fashion word… until the 1980s or so. I knew that lots of white people were using the word… that couldn’t be a good sign.

My high school buddy David told me about Miles Davis. David is the only person I know who loves music and doesn’t give a fuck about genre. He hates (or loves) NOTHING on principle. He just tunes into the sound and judges from there. David had seen Miles in the 60s, when we were in high school together. I had no idea what the jazz guy sounded like… only that he was a famous jazz musician… maybe the most famous jazz musician in the world. Normally, talk about jazz artists would go in one ear and come out my asshole. But David’s report of this Miles event… since double checked by Mr. Google... was something special.

In Manhattan, around 1959, Miles Davis was driving through midtown Manhattan in an expensive car... could have been a Mercedes. A cop (in New York in the 1950s the words “white cop” were a pleonasm.) stops Miles and asks him to get out of the car… show ID…

“Why’d you stop me?” asks the trumpet player. “I wasn’t speeding or nothin’.”

“You don’t fit the car,” answers the cop.

BOING! Awareness bops into my brain like an erection at a strip club. A thought I’d never thought before. A realization I’d never realized before. An epiphany. If it were me driving, I wouldn’t have been stopped. No white person would have! Suddenly, I was WOKE! What a beautiful and right word. What a sudden consciousness… like something zen. Like realizing that… hey… boys can be cute too. Just POW!

What a wonderful word WOKE was. What a perfect expression of learning. A word that should not be used easily, but one that expresses a moment of awareness… especially of something that happens to people who are different from you. Wow.

Then that beautiful word changed meanings. It became… mostly in the hands of right-wing Republicans… clichéd... what used to be called Politically Correct. [NOTE: Those Politically Correct or their initials PC also changed meaning. Their origins lay in the glory days of the 60s debates between anarchists and “New Leftists” on one side and the traditional Marxists on the other. The “new left” used PC as an epithet against the Marxists. George Bush Sr. got hold of it somehow and twisted it to mean “doctrinaire” “unthinking allegiance to cliches” etc.]

Woke lost its exquisite meaning of “sudden awareness of someone else's reality.” It came to mean dictatorial, literal, a leftist political crowd follower. Such a beautiful word… wrecked... destroyed... hijacked by the right.

FLASH TO A THUNDERSTORM: The end of it. The breaking sun through the mist of raindrops that never achieved the weight to fall to earth. The sky becomes a prism. Sunlight filters through. Everyone my elderly age remembers ROY G BIV red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet… the colors of the rainbowy, learned before knowing what exactly indigo was.

When Jesse Jackson ran for president, he gathered supporters among blacks, whites, yellows, men, women, old, young. All this before “diversity” became a cliché. Jackson used the metaphor RAINBOW to show the mix of people who supported him. His supporters were The Rainbow Coalition. Rainbow was EVERYBODY… all kinds of people… coming together for something new… something great.

FLASH TO PORT AUTHORITY BUS TERMINAL, in Hell’s Kitchen NYC. 2019-- slightly pre-pandemic. An attractive teenage boy… brown hair just over his forehead… the slightest hint of a mustache on his upper lip. He wears white PUMA sneakers, tight black Levis, and a rainbow-colored shirt. Not a strict hard-lined rainbow, but a soft rainbow, where each color slowly fades into the next.

I watch him from my seat on a waiting room bench. Yeah, he’s a beauty, but probably a year or two before legality. It’s not worth the effort… or the risk. I watch someone braver and about 5 years younger than me… with a full head of hair… slightly gray at the temples.

Gradually, the older man sidles in on the boy. He says something, touching the kid on the arm The boy turns to him and starts yelling. His English is accented… something central European.

“Get away from me!” shouts the boy. “Why are you touching me?”

“Your shirt,” says the man. “You’re advertising yourself.”

“What about my shirt? It’s a nice shirt. That’s all… just a nice shirt.”

The man steps away... turns his back to the boy, and pretends to read a newspaper he picked up from a vacant bench. The boy walks quickly out of the waiting room. He stands... remaining near the track gates, by the departure/arrival board. Here and there his concentration flits from the train information sign to us in the waiting room .

This time it was the encyclopedia Britannica… not Google… that explains:

It goes back to 1978, when the artist Gilbert Baker, a gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. Baker later revealed that he was urged by Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., to create a symbol of pride for the gay community. Baker decided to make a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride. As he later said in an interview, “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, to get out of the lie. A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’”

The first versions of the rainbow flag were flown on June 25, 1978, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. Baker and a team of volunteers had made them by hand, and now he wanted to mass-produce the flag for consumption by all. The various colors came to reflect both the immense diversity and the unity of the gay community

It was not until 1994 that the rainbow flag was truly established as the symbol for gay pride. That year, Baker made a mile-long version for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Now the rainbow flag is an international symbol for LGBTQ pride and can be seen flying proudly all around the world.

The idea of rainbow was the sum of the parts. A unity of colors, genders, ages, philosophies. In 2024, all those parts have shrunk to: Vagina, Penis, Anus, Mouth, and where you put them. Rainbow parades ban cops, NAMBLA and, maybe these days, gay Republicans. The people behind the flag are less diverse and colorful than a McDonald’s burger offering. That beauty, that unity of differences has become little more than a pick-up signal meaning “Hey, wanna fuck?”

The gay liberationists have stolen the rainbow. And now only men can be gay! Women are lesbians and their “L” must come first in any alphabet of homosexual letters. The same thing, of course, happened to the word gay itself… which appears in its original meaning in old songs that people chuckle to.

Sometimes, it’s possible to take back a stolen word-- make a negative into a positive. One of the best examples of that is QUEER. Its first meaning was strange, unusual, different… with a negative connotation. Then, it homofied. I remember my father telling me how when he was in England during the Second World War, one of the British soldiers complained that he was “feeling queer today.” Dad moved to the other side of the room.

So even in the 1940s, QUEER had become attached to homotude… but kept the negativity. Then the queers took it back… with PRIDE.

It was such a joy listening to people use QUEER as a brag. You bet I’m queer. Different from you boring hets. I’m different and love my difference. I’m so fuckin’ queer… kiss me now!

Nigger is another word that twisted and turned its way through history. Mark Twain used it without negativity… just to identify race… maybe with a slight tint of downtrodden… former slave. Then it took on a negative meaning. A pejorative so fiercely taboo, that it’s unprintable… censored in TV… referred to as “the N-word,” replacing FUCK, which had been the F-word, (and now can be heard on every cable TV show). Nigger took over as the number one bad word. Even words unrelated, but that sound vaguely like nigger, are banned… or at least avoided. Check out Christopher Hitchens’ quote at the top of this blog.

But black folks picked up NIGGER and ran with it. (I hate the euphemism “African-American.” Most black people have no history in Africa and there are plenty of white folks who are REALLY African-American.) Yes, Nigger became natural in Black English. A wonderful spit in the face to the white people who used it with a sneer.

Yo! White boy… I can say nigger because I am one. It’s a marker… it’s the way I talk. You CAN’T say nigger… because you ain’t one.

So, as with QUEER, the recipients of the negative took it over and stuck it to the original users, while keeping it for themselves.

FLASH TO WHAT THE FUCK I’M TALKING ABOUT

One of my longtime fantasies has been to write a book called Hijacking the Rainbow… something about Woke, Rainbow, Fascist, Freedom, Queer, Liberty, Hold To Account, all those ideas that have been turned upside down, lost or reversed their meaning. I figure here I can break the ice… start the ball rolling… try them out… get the ink scratched on the parchment by putting things down in a blog. I hope the feedback from this blog and the act of touching fingers to keys will bring me out to get my writing ass in gear. Maybe a reader or two can suggest an inclusion. I’ve already gotten a good suggestion about how the words “gender-affirming” have come to mean ‘gender-rejecting.” We’ll see what “fantasies about writing a book” becomes. More word changes and ideas are welcome. Please use the comment section of this blog for your suggestions. And don’t let the creeps hijack your rainbow.

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]

→ HEY, YOU CAN’T SAY THAT! Dept: After complaining about words lost to language change, censorship, or wokitude (new/negative meaning) I came across this “list of banned words” compiled by Lake Superior State University. It’s actually a list of words and phrases that various contributors say SHOULD BE banned. The site doesn’t really want to impose censorship. The list has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. It’s having fun expressing annoyance. It includes one of my many pet peeves: “No Worries” when used as a synonym for “You’re Welcome.”So the guy holds the door open for me as I enter the prostate radiation room. I thank him. “No Worries” comes the answer. I’m having fuckin’ radiation next to my fuckin’ balls!!! Don’t tell me NO WORRIES.

→ SCARIER THAN THAT DEPT: There is an on-line program that will make your job easier by censoring “sensitive words.” Say the inventors: Text Censor is The World's Simplest Text Tool and the world's simplest browser-based utility for censoring words in text. Load your text in the input form on the left, specify all the bad words in the options, and you'll instantly get censored text in the output area. Powerful, free, and fast. Load text – get safe text. You can try it yourself here.

→ FETUS? ARE YOU SERIOUS? DEPT: The Jstor Daily reports that during the Trump administration, the CDC was instructed not to use certain words and phrases in its public reports. Science-based” and “evidence-based” are on the list of the banned words, along with “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” and “fetus”.

See you in hell (redux)
MB

COMMENTS: For some reason Google wasn't allowing comments. So I'm posting this one here from Tony Autoharp. (anonyarena@yahoo.com):

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I don't think anyone wearing a rainbow shirt or any other kind of shirt is "advertising" themselves and it is not an invitation for random strangers in a train station to touch you uninvited. If this man is interested in someone, he has a mouth. He can use it to ask first. This is not difficult. "I like your looks and I am attracted to you. Do you like me?" And from there if he gets an affirmative reply he may ask "May I touch you?"  There is a step-by-step process to these things. But just sitting down next to someone and immediately starting in with grabby hands, and blaming that unwelcome behavior on the shirt the kid is wearing is not just impolite, its inappropriate. It is no different from Trump broadcasting to the world "I don't even wait, I just kiss. And when you're a star they let your do it; you can grab 'em by the pussy and do anything." These self-entitled assholes ruin everything. And that man in the train station probably ruined the joy of wearing a nice colorful shirt for this young man. And that's just sad.  It is quite probably he now feels like he's never want to wear that "nice" shirt again, because it is now connected to an unhappy experience. That's how you coat rainbow colors with a tarnish. 

I have never interpreted the Rainbow Flag to mean "I wanna fuck."  I don't know who thinks these things. 

I also don't hear black people use the "N" word the way you seem to.  The "er" sound at the end is usually changes to an "a" sound. Whatever the case may be, you know the old saying "like the pot calling the kettle black?" Well, that's how come it can be used as a symbol of solidarity. It does not matter if the pot calls the kettle black because both are black - no harm/no foul.  It means something else entirely if the white porcelain pitcher in the fancy china cabinet calls the kettle on the stove black, to emphasize that different distinction and imply that the while porcelain is superior. That's not only snobbery, it can quite seriously be something far worse, more ugly, and even a prelude to something dangerous.

Queer is a little different. A non-Queer may call an LGBTQ person "Queer" if that is how that person self-identifies. It's all about context. Say it with love and respect and you will get love and respect in return. Say it in the context of insult and antagonism, that's something else again. There is a chasm of difference between, "I love you, you colorful, brilliant and wonderful queer you. Keep on dancin'!"  And "You fuckin' queer, you ought to be shot in the head for dancing like that in here!"  The former is an encouragement. The latter is a threat.   

The question of "hijacking" (which is not a word that I use so much but would use the more accurate words like "appropriating" and "redefining") words and symbols, is a question of something that is all too often beyond our control. The swastika used to just mean "good fortune." World events forever transformed it, "re-defined" it, and now we can't unsee what we see when we see it. Even when we see it in its original Himalayan or Tibetan or Native American tribal contexts, it will always be jarring to see it. The late 1970s punk rockers tried and failed to re-define it as "rebellion" but that didn't work. At some point meanings of certain words and certain symbols just permanently change, and there's we can do about it because there's no going back. Or if it does, it will take thousands of years and a lot of cultural forgetting to reach that point. I think that is probably no longer possible. We no longer live in the Stone Age. There are no more "forgotten" civilizations. After the information age took hold, anyone can look up anything on Google and find it, even where "Mykel Board" and "Miles Davis" may appear in the same place. This makes cultural "forgetting" a much more impossible task because our collective memory is now stored at at our fingertips in an instant.  We may try to "redefine."  But the reason propagandists have been so successful at changing the meanings of words and phrases like "woke" "critical race theory" "feminist" and "liberal" is not because anyone let them do it. They do it because anyone with enough determination, money and power behind them CAN do it.

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BACK TO THE NATION DEPT: The newest issue of THE NATION has a great column by Kali Holloway on why TikTok banning is such a bad idea. (As is most (all?) censorship.) It again makes me point out that THE NATION is the only lefty magazine I know that is often right (I mean CORRECT) about things.
    Besides the Holloway column, there’s also a good one by Ginny Hogan (strangely, but slightly, different on the website than in the magazine) with the pull-quote talking about the up-coming presidential election.

We have our two candidates.
One of them is deeply uninspiring,
and the other is Donald Trump.

Time to subscribe, I’d say.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

READ THIS AGAIN!! Lots of new stuff here:

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions many I’d 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:

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners.

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth, superstar comic writer, Justin Melkmann and possibly the next vice-president of the US, Charles Bukkake.

Here’s an update on the current URL for Sid Yiddish’s Dating Game (type) entry.

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.

And for a quiet smile and a much needed break for you and the dog, try G.C. Adams’ YouTube entry.

Christopher Selden has a bandcamp entry for his band Crooked Ghost. I say any band with a publicity photo like this deserves at least a listing… maybe an orgasm or two.

Y ou already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their on-line version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys. Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher!

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.

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.

Longtime writer, Randall Fleming, has a new book out about the reversal of flag desecration. In his view, the right And more generally it’s about political violence in the 21^st century.

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. mykelboard@gmail.com