This Time It's Personal With A Side of Extreme Prejudice Served Up With For Real Sauce!

The loss of Puerto Rican crops this year is a harsh reminder of a history lesson I remember from going to school in Japan: Rice *is* LIFE! Do please find your favorite Puerto Rico relief effort, and donate what you can! (I know this might distract from my own personal blegs, as not only do I have the Way family's housing issues to consider - my own part in them - I am currently broke and wouldn't mind a little sum'n-sum'n ticked my way on Venmo.com to user William-Way-5. But this first paragraph's for the people put out this hurricane season....)

こめ - "ko-meh" - 米rice

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Note to Mrs. Chris Isaak of the Outer Sunset (Bai Ling, or 白靈): On-trend on the W. Coast FOR HER include silk, skinny denim, light statement jackets, nautical themes, athletica, (for our people) leatherette accessories, and bold patterns.

Dressing the Mister? Slim button-ups (short-sleeve and with a factotum tie is tres happening), light statement jackets (maybe denim or a varsity starter for a young look), dark slim denim (my Han-Yi brand jeans pictured below give you an idea of hue, but I'm 40-somethingay and go for skinny rather than slim), again with the bold patterns, early 2000s dot-com era backpacks and shoulder bags, and again with the nautical themes (keep those docksiders!) All advice courtesy of the bold young men and women who sacrifice so much for their country... AT CROSSROADS TRADING CO., OF COURSE!

Hot Fashion! You are fashion and style!

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(@ #USMC #Mikey): It's been a while since I sent first a letter, then a postcard, to the good people at Quantico; I've heard neither from them (which I would have), nor from you, young Mikey - you should know multiple ways of contacting me by now... But it doesn't mean of course what I'm supposed to think it means; some people really are stupid in their malice - it's a good thing you enlisted and saved their lives thereby. Without both your risk-taking and especially my own, truly volunteered, life-long civilian help, they would have drowned in the fucking rain by now, they're so damn dumb...

But enough about poisonous people and the shit they do to us... I long to live with you, and you can do my pedicures, and I'll squeeze the blackheads on your back; I'll cook good food, and you and your boys can watch those stupid movies and play video games... I want us to run away together to Alameda, or San Diego...




...Or have you taken your papers and walked? I still and will always want you... Find me, and let's work it out!

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I would love for the situation centered around ALL-TOO-CLOSE-IN-PROXIMITY neighbors to be cute as some rom-com starring Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson, but it's not. These folks are, like, totally "Yikes! Zoinks! Jinkies!" Heebie-jeebies all around, with really offensive hijinks to boot. (Eso es lo que pasa: I'm talking about the brujo and his sneering, heroin-chic, heather leather-and-woodchips, walking-dead wife.)

EMPHATICALLY DISLIKE. Oomph in the emphasis. (Okay, I like the man personally, but I find him untrustworthy and prone to suspect behavior; as for her, my heathenness comes out, and I find myself terribly averse to the living dead - SHE'S A FRICKIN' CORPSE ALREADY! NOT COOL TO HAVE AROUND, AS I AM TRYING TO ENJOY A REAL LIFE HERE, GET MARRIED AND AM ENTITLED! I AM MALE BRIDEZILLA IN THIS!)

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In fourth grade, at the long-demolished-IIRC-due-to-redistricting Woodrow Wilson Elementary in Richmond, California, there was a little blonde girl, Summer. One fine fall day, a bunch of us boys banded together to bully her white-trash ass: we stole a teardrop-shaped, amber-colored hard plastic bauble from her, then kicked it around the asphalt playground - in the process, scratching it up horribly. She cried, and I think it was Sheldon, or Hunter, or I (or maybe even a teacher, or one of the indomidable girl trio of Christina - unlikely - or Leah or Katie... Anyway...) who prevailed upon the rest to go to her and individually apologize once we learned that her dad had made the pretty, precious thing FOR HER EXPRESSLY while incarcerated.

Only today do I realize he had crafted her, at great risk to his few liberties and privileges, a blade; he gifted it to his little girl (perhaps by proxy, through the mom or other family) to use it as a weapon should some sonofabitch mess with her (we are talking '84 or '85.)

But of course, all she knew was that it was something beautiful her jailbird dad had created for his baby girl - she did not at all immediately see in it something to ARM herself in some - heaven forfend - MERCENARY fashion. Nor did I, for that matter, until this very writing today, and I've always loved blades and cutting edges [FULL DISCLOSURE: I was raised by a former sailor who was a staunch Second Amendment Dad.]

My point is, it just goes to show you about certain "evil voices" - voices I've perceived and the source of which, communicated with - and the occasional philosophy behind them: that poor character comes from impoverished stock.

IT. DOES. NOT. (Cf. the Eichelbergerians.)