Of Rice and Madness

"日本の米" was trending on my X feed this morning, "Japanese uncooked rice". Bad rice crops that began a couple years ago are continuing to be a headache as distributors who horded rice are gouging prices. It turns out, this has led to an increase in imported rice consumption, including my old friend Calrose rice from California. Maybe California will just gradually be imported, bit by bit, and I'll find myself home again in ten years without actually going anywhere.

I resumed watching Ally McBeal last night, a season three episode called "Seeing Green". I'd stopped watching the show for a while after waking up in the middle of an episode about Ally's mother with no memory of any of the events leading up to it. I finally figured out I'd slept through at least three and a half episodes which Disney+ dutifully unspooled for this insensible potato. I miss not falling asleep so easily.

"Seeing Green" continues to explore Ally's adorable dementia and her uncontrollable hallucinations of Al Green, who actually guest stars. Meanwhile, Billy joins a self-help group for men uncomfortable with their own chauvinistic instincts but finds he's actually quite comfortable with them. It's nice to see writer David E. Kelley realised how slimy Billy comes across and decided to lean into it.

X Sonnet 1939

Together, ants were making cake of hay.
No time was lost for horses built of frogs.
You see, perspective saved the drowsy day.
The moral lessons fade in corp'rate fogs.
No problem hurts as bad as jumping rails.
They whip the air and make the clouds their thralls.
But fire shrinks from wheels attached to pails.
The royal ice can thus afford its balls.
And now you see the flow of heaven's trade.
At ev'ry point, a check determines toll.
Disputed taxes call for Jedi aid.
A tariff war in space infects the goal.
The traffic words were bunched about the skirt.
A tattered hem would gather little dirt.