Mostly right now I'm working on getting this laid out and setup as something I can use. The comic there on the right is just a place holder for layout. It will eventually be linked so you can click it get the day's comic.

Just trying to add features back to kind of restore my weblog to it's former glory. I will try and continue posting each day as I do this construction work...

I'm sitting in front of the library in downtown Los Angeles. Breaktime. Just bought a coke from a street vendor who's there on the sidewalk selling hotdogs. Kid next to me has a coke, hotdog, and a bag of chips. Skinny kid in a baseball cap, large white t-shirt, and extra-large pants that gather around his ankles. He looks mexican, but later tells me he's half chinese and white and that he likes mexican girls. When I point out that they tend to put on a lot of weight as they get older he agrees.

I ask: "hey man, how big are those pants?"

"Size 48 in the waist and 36 inches long" he tells me.

"How do you keep them from falling off?"

"With a belt", he lifts up his oversized white t-shirt to show me the elaborate system he has for keeping up his pants. 3 inches of red boxer shorts show above the pants, "I tie them 'county style'", he shows me how the belt is assisted by something that looks like a a heavy black shoelace.

I can't figure what the shoelace is doing that the belt doesn't but figure he can't give me more detail without losing his pants. Later someone exlains "county style" means with a shoelace, cause they take your belts away when you're in the county jail. Guess they don't want you hanging yourself...

"You been in county?" I ask, "how long were you in there?".

"Six months... for robbery, but I'm not a gangster... I got two brother in there right now, one of them fighting 20 to life."

"What's he in there for?"

"Two counts of armed robbery and one count of rape."

He continues to tell me how he smokes methamphetamine, opening his backpack to show me a roll of aluminum foil he uses to smoke it with.

"Stayed up once for 10 days straight", this is when I notice how skinny the kid really is.

"See that guy there" the kid points at a black man in front of us who's fussing with a 10 speed, "he steals bikes, that's why he has that wrench in his back pocket".

As we watch the man, he unlocks the ten speed bicycle and rides away, steering the bike he's on with one hand and a 2nd bike with the other. Homeless guy with two ten speed bicycles.

"All this silver I'm wearing I bought myself" the kid gestures to the bracelet, an oversized crucifix and diamond earings he's wearing, "These earings were $400 each."

"What part of town do you live in?" I ask.

"No where, just on the streets".

He points to a destitute man that walks by: "I'll never end up like that."