Rekiwi's Blog

This made me chuckle.

I get the neighbor's daily paper. She can't be bothered to cancel her subscription and so I benefit, usually.

The other day, sifting through the sections, smudging my fingers with ink (how quaint), I came across this abomination.

Everything I've read about Ms. Moss reinforces my impression of a hollow shell, even the flattering articles.

I object to her existence because she's constantly tossed into my sight line as some apex of ethereal, unattainable beauty and all I can think about whenever I see her is this.

Will our children believe us when we tell them that M&M's were once unavailable in red?

Dark brown, light brown, yellow, orange, green...

There was always something missing.

Spoiled damned kids and their red and blue M&M's.

Marmite is the bomb!

I'm not quite sure what about being the bomb is good, but my old white dude's pop-culture filter is stuck somewhere in the 90s and it assures me that I have the idiom correct.

Having a Kiwi mom made Marmite unavoidable. As a kid, I thought it was poisonous axle grease that ruined toast, though I didn't find it nearly as viscerally hideous as my dad's braunschweiger. Pork. Liver. Sausage. *shudder* Of course, I learned to really like braunschweiger, but I can't eat it now. I can't eat anything that has one of the highest cholesterol dosages possible, outstripped only by items like pork brains. After you eat it you can feel the clumps of fat tumbling along your arteries.

Now I know better. Now I'm breakfasting on Marmite toast nearly every morning. I've almost emptied the little bottle left by my Kiwi cousin.

I'm not going to bother trying to describe the taste beyond sharp and savory, probably the epitome of umami. Really, how do you expect salted/exploded/rendered yeast to taste?

To all you Marmite haters out there, you're absolutely right. Now shut the hell up and go finish your Twinkie.

Oakland has been suffering from a high-profile crime wave recently.

Instead of the usual, mundane "man shot and killed in the Fruitvale" incidents, they now have bands of armed thugs hitting restaurants and businesses, sometimes right before closing, sometimes during the day.

This is unacceptable for several reasons:

1. Commerce in Oakland is going to drop off a cliff pulling tax revenue along with it.
2. Dark-skinned people with guns in Oakland are supposed to attack/kill other dark-skinned people in Oakland, not light-skinned people eating dinner.

You've got to hand it to Oakland's finest. Their advice to the citizens that they are so blatantly failing to protect and serve is "comply until you can't comply any more".

Really? And when would that be?

When you have no more cash and property to hand over? When you've been beaten unconscious? When you're lying in a growing pool of your own blood?

Soon we'll hear the usual bleating of the sheep: We need stricter gun laws! (Baaa!) The police aren't protecting us! (Baaaaa!) The government isn't taking care of us! (Ba! Baaa!)

Personally, I'd rather be a wolf in sheep's clothing, but concealed carry permits are harder to come by than hen's teeth in California. I think you need to be a celebrity or a politician. If you're just a regular joe or jane, then I'm pretty sure you need to be murdered before the sheriff or police department will consider your request.

I wish we didn't have to think about this bad stuff. I wish we could all just get along. In the meantime, Oakland's takeover robberies remind us that the line between civility and savagery is damned thin.