Brothers, I have a couple of requests for acts of kindness to ask of you.

The first comes from my friend Kyle Trouble. You may know him as an entrepreneur and (erstwhile) playboy. He lives in Kiev with his Ukrainian fiancee, with the aim of turning her into an honest woman quite soon. I receive his daily emails about living abroad, building businesses, and so on, but today’s email from him was a much more heartfelt note asking for help for a friend of a friend.

I’ll quote it here:

[N]early every-other week, when going to my girl’s parents home, I see Ukrainian International Airlines flight attendants catching their shuttle bus out to the airport. They’re hard to miss in their bright yellow and blue uniforms. I could have literally seen some of the crew that were on the flight just a week or two ago, waiting outside the metro for their ride to the airport.

That, and because Ukraine is my adopted home country now, it just…yeah, hits close to home.

And then, I found out that one of my best buddies here actually knew and went to school with one of the flight attendants.

She was a 24 year old girl who was enjoying her life as a flight attendant (judging by her Instagram photos).

My friend said she was a very bright and friendly girl, too.

Anyways, I’ve got my own opinions behind all of the politics and that stuff, but I’ll keep that to myself, for now.

I do have an ask:

• As of now, the Ukrainian government has only agreed to give the victim’s families $8,000.
• I don’t know what the airline will give, but it’s not like the USA where they would be obligated to pay out signifiant sums for an accident of this nature
• (i.e. I can’t imagine it being any MORE than that $8,000 the government is giving, they certainly won’t be getting a $100,000 sum or anything of the sort)
• The Iranian government? WWIII will probably kick off before they’ll give a single cent out, even though they’ve now accepted responsibility…and good luck suing them.

Hence, my friend Sam here has set up a GoFundMe for Maria’s family.

If you have anything to give, it would be very much appreciated.

This is the link to the page setup in memory of Maria Mykytiuk.

If you visit it, you can see that this was a lovely young woman whose life was cut short in its prime by the stupidity and misjudgment of a small number of people with itchy trigger fingers and without the sense that God gave a honey badger.

I won’t discuss the politics of the situation any further, as that would be classless and would not help relieve the grief and pain of any of the families who lost loved ones in that awful tragedy. But I would ask of you to help if you can.

Longtime Readers will know that I never ask you to give to any cause that I do not support myself. If you visit the GoFundMe page, you will see that I put my money where my mouth is – even though I am not actively employed right now.

Let’s be clear – doing this does not make me a good person, because I’m not one. Giving, in and of itself, does not make one good. But trying to help those in need when they are suffering – that is a Very Good Thing.

The second request is on behalf of one of our own, a loyal friend and Longtime Reader from way back in the earliest days of this blog.

Let’s call him CH – and no, it’s not Roissy or Heartiste or whatever that guy calls himself these days. He’s been a reader and correspondent of mine for years, since at least 2014 and possibly earlier. He is a musician and a writer of no small skill – I’ve read a few of his short stories and seen some clips of him shreddin’ the axe live, and he’s very good.

He is a devout Christian, a very deep introvert, and a genuinely righteous dude. About five months back he ran into a few problems in his old job, caused by a Gamma boss. Many of you have been there and you know exactly what that’s like. The inevitable happened and our friend lost his job. He spent five long months searching for a new one and only recently started up a new gig, but that time in between cost him a lot and he could use a little help and support.

To be clear, CH has not asked me to post an appeal for him. I offered to help him privately and personally, and I have done so. I ask you as readers to do the same, if you can. Please consider donating a few bucks via PayPal to him as he gets back on his feet.

If you do, he might just be able to get around to publishing some more of his short stories. He sent me a trilogy of stories involving comic book characters that, sadly, probably cannot be published due to copyright claims from the big comic book companies, since it is their IP that he is using to create, essentially, REALLY FREAKIN’ GOOD fan-fiction.

Just trust me on this one – the stuff that he sent over is way better than anything that the big comic houses are putting out right now for their flagship characters. It’s good enough that it could and should have been the basis for one of Rocksteady’s brilliant games – those of you who know RPG games, know exactly what I’m on about.

But, who knows? Maybe he’ll be able to rework the stories into similar-but-not-quite-the-same characters, sort of like Alan Moore did with Watchmen by making pastiches of characters like Batman and Wildcat, or like Jason Anspach and Nick Cole did with their wildly successful Galaxy’s Edge series, which is basically STAR WARS but way darker and grittier and a hell of a lot more fun than the woketard shit that masquerades as “storytelling” in the age of the Devil Mouse.

Anyway, that’s all conjecture for now, so let’s put it aside.

Basically, I am humbly asking you to give what you can to those in need.

As always, my friends, may the Lord bless you and keep you safe in these darkening times. You are in my prayers and I thank you for your time and patronage.