Er�ndira was bathing her grandmother when the wind of her misfortune began to blow. So begins Innocent Er�ndira by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I thought of the story early this morning when the wind shook me awake, rocking the boat and setting halyards to rattle throughout the harbor.

The east wind is blowing today, the Santa Ana wind, and it�s a wind of misfortune for sure. All the crazies emerge when the Santa Anas pick up, blowing in hot through the canyons. For some reason, arson is a popular east wind activity, possibly because the dry wind can result in such spectacular fires. I don�t claim to understand the mindset of an arsonist, only the results of their efforts. Raymond Chandler�s story Red Wind tells of the Santa Anas, observing that �anything can happen,� meaning any bad thing, and it does feel true. The wind makes you feel prickly and irritable, and makes people snap at one another. On the news this morning was a report of a domestic dispute turned bloody, a man shooting his girlfriend, her mother, and her two children�one less than two years old. Ugly? Of course. But somehow, when the east wind is blowing, stories like that don�t come as much of a surprise.

And anyway, as I mentioned, all the crazies come out when the east wind starts to blow: arsonists, wife-beaters, drunks, people searching Google for seniorsizzle.com, and finding me, instead. (Yay.)

Well, people searching for seniorsizzle and DiorShow Ice Pearl mascara. It's all the rage, I tell you, and I'm very sorry I don't have any, because I'd sell it in a heartbeat to all the people who find my page in fruitless search of the stuff. (At a substantial mark-up, natch.) I may be able to manufacture a suitable equivalent. I'm thinking Elmer's glitter glue, with a new label. I mean, what the hell?

Anyway, back to the wind. There are ill winds all over this earth, this earth of ours, and they go by different names, for example:

• Bayamo: Violent, Cuba


• Chubasco: Comes with thunder and lightning, Central America


• Haboob: Sandstorm, plus, excellent name!, Sudan. I think "Haboob" is going to be my new name for a blowhard. "He's such a Haboob," I'll say, and no one will know what the Hell I'm talking about!


• Nor'easter: Fake name for a bad winter storm, New England (Note: there's a cranky old guy who sends postcards and letters all over the place in an effort to stop the use of this term, which is its own form of ill wind.)


• Pali: Strong winds over Honolulu (Side note: As a young man, my great-uncle Charlie fell off his polo pony in the Pali and hit his head, and talked like a child the rest of his life. Let that be a lesson to you.)

Anyway, you get the idea. These winds are everywhere, whisking their positive ions (which you'd think would be a good thing, and make everyone break into the Electric Slide out of joy, but you would be wrong) and causing mousy housewives to eye their husbands' throats and test the edge of their carving knife, or whatever Raymond Chandler wrote. It was something like that, to illustrate the idea that the ill winds cause deviant criminal behavior, which as I already mentioned, they do.

My favorite type of ill wind of misfortune, which I just learned about today from the Golden Gate Weather service, is this, and I quote exactly:

"Papagayo: A violet northeasterly fall wind on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and Guatemala."

I feel a kindred spirit.

Star of the day. . .Owen Wilson