Kumbay-Nah… There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. Dang. It’s not working. Squid’s trying to feel the love. It’s there somewhere. Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue says so.

Heck, it was there when Donohue’s own house was burglarized a couple weeks back. “Ah, well,” Donohue cooed, “it happens (grin, grin) and gosh I just love this community so much (hug, hug), now everyone go vote for a city flower and lend a neighbor some sugar.”

And then a few more shootings happened, a couple more murders, and then a mollusk’s butt full of assaults happen, and a few more businesses got knocked over. And the Salinas Police Department is smokin’ Donohue reef cuz their official position is no, no, no, this isn’t any silly gang war.

Aha. That’s why Squid can’t find the love. It’s buried in all that manure. Where’s the flippin’ reality? It is a gang war: north, south, red, blue. Same stolen guns, different day. And nobody – and Squid means nobody – goes around singing Kumbaya, planting flowers, and looking up synonyms for “love” when their house gets burg’d.

Squid’s not saying imagining a great city is bad. But who cares what the lawn looks like when the house is uninhabitable?

The Spray That Won’t Go Away… Squid sympathizes with those poor Bay Area residents who are slated to be sprayed with synthetic light brown apple moth pheromones this summer. Really, Squid does. Because Squid was quivering inside Squid’s duct-tape-sealed abode last fall, while the planes made low passes overhead, filling Squid’s world with the odor of lepidopteran lust. Squid has asked the tough questions: What’s in the spray? Is it safe for primates and cephalopods? Who says the moth is an emergency? Will the pheromones even get rid of it? Is this legal? And now, like a rerun of a bad TV show, the San Francisco Bay Area is getting into the same tizzy. There are the hypochondriacs who swear the spray will give them tuberculosis and toe fungus. There are the state officials who spin the spray into benign droplets of Californian git-’er-done (with a little help from their taxpayer-funded PR firm). And there are the reasonable people who just want straight information and due process. Now that Monterey and Santa Cruz aren’t the only counties under the nozzle, a posse of state legislators have gotten behind Assemblyman John Laird’s push for some laws to prevent the state from doing this again the next time an invader buzzes in. If the laws pass, Squid’s throwing an LBAM party. Ladies, come lusty and dolled up in your finest. Gentlemen, ignore the women entirely, and make confused love to inanimate objects.