On Security Measures (Some Backfire, Natch...)

And nothing on "Paranoia" spoken out loud as a "shut-down" word:

Karen Melton-Stewart, today's sort-of heroine...

(One moral of the story: it's not fun to be a tattle-tale, but it could save lives! You might be the only one with the correct thing to say in the room!)

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Stonyford, California (formerly "Stony Ford," or "Smithville," IIRC in Wild West days - always and to this day unincorporated - when my family's property was among other things passed through by itinerants with their own portable foundry), ZIP 95979, was pasture land, as well as cowboys and Indian territory - well, Stonyford has always been interesting to describe to others in terms of its geographic location: it's essentially, in this day of Google Earth and Google Street View, a town of 139 souls (as far as the census goes) just on the Glenn County and Colusa County borders, in the Western mountains, about an hour North of Clear Lake.

Now, San Francisco is home to a lot of non-Northern California people, and the name of "Colusa," named after an already semi-mythical Chief Colus, is pretty much unheard of by a city that has a lot of historical ties to it; the OG who shoeshines his box with his windex downtown might know of East Park and have fished for bluegill and catfish there, but Scott Wiener's staff sneers the name "Stony-ferd" quizzically, even though the stone from which the Ferry Building was built was quarried right here in Sites, California, off the I-5, and then bustled down the Sacramento River as it runs through Colusa, California, to the delta and beyond on steamboat; VIP families had second homes in the city of Colusa, or would weekend at, say, the Olympic Hotel on Eddy to catch theatre shows back in the day...

(Speaking of the former Olympic, it is now converted to low-income apartments by TNDC. I lived in unit 212 for 4 1/2 years; in retrospect, it was a fine personal security measure to tell neighbors at social events that I was from "Mendocino County, up North"; nobody, among the pinay, Chinese, or old white gay dragons had heard of Colusa - okay, maybe Michael had - but also, it was a WEIRD FOUR AND A HALF YEARS, and truth be told, I was just using old counter-espionage trickery: it's more convenient to namedrop a County that has immediate, everywhere recognition, and I WAS living in a holding pen for elderly CIA assets: Chinese dissidents, pinay who'd lived in Riyadh, divinity majors... You see where I'm coming from THERE. No disrespect to Colusa County pride!)

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Perennially, almost traditionally, seniors and the disabled are taken horrible advantage of by scammers and grifters, so here's a public service announcement:

Note to special needs: do you know OCD people? Sometimes they annoy us, doing necessary stuff, but too often, and the wrong way... But we can learn a little lesson from our obsessive-compulsive friends and family: remember, not only be careful of phishing Web sites (ask a friend what phishing with that spelling of "ph" is, if you can't look it up...); and don't tell vital information (banking stuff like balances or your banking institution's name) to strangers; be sure to change your passwords and pin numbers on occasion: passwords for e-mail, social media, and banking you might change every two to three months; pins for ATM and Debit cards: change those, too, sometimes -  work out a schedule with your social worker/counselor!

SHIP'S SECURITY: "And remember: when going to the ATM or bank to get cash, take along a buddy you can trust! (Ideally not a redshirt yeoman, who might die on the way there or back!)"

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PS links to my Gofundme campaign and Venmo (the latter 'cos I'm personally broke) site on the sidebar to the right.... If you're feeling "CRAIGSLIST hooker-CLIENT GENEROU$")...

Casual, Red-Eye Reflection

Dear fellow souls,

When I consider topical (Trump-derived and culminating-in-Trump) kerfuffles, what should come to mind but your average, inner-city, devout-Muslim owned-and-operated bodega... No, there's no liquor, but there are plenty of cigarettes; you can buy a $2.oo charger for your janky old flip phone (a nod to the geographic and socio-economic reality); and you bet the hot dogs are halal -- BUT THEY ARE A YEAR OLD AND THE CONSISTENCY OF SHOE PLEATHER. The business struggles in a way, when half mulled-over, it seems no urban American small business should.

Non sequiter-like, I now jump to the dynamic obviously shared between what and who really animate the Trump phenomenon; and its objectively more disparate and odd-bedfellows opponents: both "sides" exemplify, agree upon, and talk past each other about the imperfections in the modern human world that truly imperil humanity's long-term viability.  We truly are in the end-times, and what's at stake is our species-wide Linus binky best described as being a comforting, penultimate-resort fear we have that for certain, whether or not we continue to survive is to an unfairly large degree our responsibility, and will be decided by a painfully lucid, collective decision-making process, global in scope (Cylon model 2's faux-philosophical mutterings on our worthiness of survival be damned...)

Calls of "Let them in" at Dulles? Check and weak-yet-advantaged countercheck... The rigged game plays out, and even if you're as sappari Japanese as Zatoichi, playing your weighted die in a personally unfamiliar yakuza gambling house, presuming too much even as you are fundamentally certain never to incur traditional physical punishment, ultimately uncertainty takes over, and nothing is as our faith would have it.

Crisis will not be forever deferred... It inshallah will be upon those of us who live to endure that moment. The many recently deceased luminaries of American acting and performing no doubt earnestly pity the remaining billions who have yet to perish... (Thank you -- presumptuously -- Miz Fisher, Miz Reynolds, Miz Tyler Moore, et alia for your sorrow and compassion I now know you surely cast back at us from the sweet hereafter. Please rest in peace... May we endeavor to carry on.)

(I loathe what Mr. Trump appears to be about, but smvrti satya needs be connected by the ligaments of karma to the world of similitudes, which is so helpful to mullahs, rabbis, and other such boddhisattvas, whose burden and joy it is to successfully instruct the more fortunate among us... I right now, more than anything, am just keenly, primally and uselessly stung with my enviable place among hoi polloi, comparing as I cannot but the President's lot with mine...)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I guess what I'm wondering, in (you might self-servingly, blamelessly argue) a neo-liberal way, is this: is it so cruel, objectively, that refugees and immigrants be excluded? What quality of asylum does our greater-in-aspirations-than-in-concrete-accomplishments nation offer? Bootless speculation? Mayhap -- I'm hardly any more an agent than the sicaria running inexcusably toward the worst cardinal direction from obvious consequences, or a 1990s London party girl who just kind of got stranded with a murky immigration status in San Francisco lo these last twenty-odd years...

As always, yours in trying too hard to be of more use than a MSM pundit or an holidays-with-family-dinner-table-screaming match, and falling inevitability into the usual contemptibility,

American and human William R. Way
URGENT House Renovation Campaign - Venmo...

...Or donations can be mailed to:  WILLIAM R WAY PO BOX 206 STONYFORD CA 95979

Matt Lucas Must Die

TOM BAKER NARRATING (I AM A LAZY CALIFORNIAN):  "...After all, mustn't we each of us in his turn find doom, and, mayhap, that which lies beyond...?"

[THE KITCHEN OF A FLAT AT 23 FITZROY ROAD.  MR. LUCAS TENTATIVELY ENTERS, AND COMES TO STAND ABOVE A WOMAN'S MODESTLY ATTIRED BUTTOCKS.]

MR. LUCAS:  "Um, Sylvia dear, I don't know how American ovens work, but I daresay you'd know by now whether or not the pilot light is out....  Sylvia?  I can tell there's more going on here.  We've all noticed that something's been amiss with you for quite some time...  Sylvia?  Please talk to me...  Fine!  Have it your way!  God, you are self-involved, though...  Honestly, girl...  Anyway, where are the children?"

[MR. LUCAS EXITS AS HE ENTERED...]