Thanks so much to the many, many people who wrote in to suggest solutions to my extreme bagitation. It was awesome to get all the advice, yet it was also kind of paralyzing, too, just how many Almost Perfect Bags there are out there:

- Hable Camper Messenger
- Bliebtreu bags nice, and expensive!
- Lizette Greco (cute, cute embroidered STUFF, including robots and chicken things!)
- Marc by Marc, oh MARC JACOBS!
- La Redoute (some cute clothes there, too, cheep!)
- Good Together's Hanabi Shoulder Bag
- J.Crew Nylon Tabloid Carrier
- Roo tote
- Marimekko Olkalaukku
- Roots
- Queen Bee Creations
- Cut+Paste
- The Seatbelt Bag
- Old Navy and The Gap
- Overland Equipment
- Timbuk2
- Casauri
- Triple 5 Soul
- Tumi
- Anthropologie's Safari Purse
- Bagalini
- SF Bags
- Maria Samuelson
- Acme Made
- Case Closed
- Target's Zip-top Laptop Carrying Case
- Good, fine, and old (since I was 19!) friend Jeffrey suggested the White Sandwich Bag #10, ha. Ha.
- And here's, yay, a pattern for all you capable and unreasonably attractive DIYers.

But my favorite of the bunch are these Almost, Almost Perfect Bag runners up:

Marissa suggested Eaglecreek's Nomad bag, which manages to meet all my many needs but insists on doing so in a variety of the world's most underwhelming colors:

Eaglecreek's Nomad bag, ho ... huh!

Verbminx sent me to poke around The Container Store, where I found the Hip-on Pack, which is dangerously close to being flappy, but actually offers zip-top access to its PADDED computer compartment, plus it features an unreasonable number of hidden pockets, which is a secret and long-standing weakness of mine.

The Container Store's Hip-on Pack, it has one million pockets!

Richard suggested CB2 (Crate and Barrel's stylish offshoot), and they do have this kind of awesomely Spartan bag called the Village Carry All (like, what, the town slut?):

CB2's compellingly straightforward Village Carry All in boring, snoring black.

And if it weren't for the vertical alignment, and the weird graphic screen (of, what is that, a computer? And the word "life" over and over? And, oh NO, "dream in code"!), CB2's Loop Version Bag would be specTACKS:

CB2's Loop Version Bag in a thunderously regrettable pattern.

Jaime recommended I check out Gravis, and I really do like their Checkpoint Bag, especially in "Military Mustard" (which manages to bring both Clue and trench warfare to mind all at once):

The Gravis Checkpoint Bag, with lipbalm pocket and "comfort fuzz lining" (and, I think, a damn flap!).

Kat, Snicoll, AND Julia all wrote in to suggest the delectable stylings of YakPak, whom I had written off based on what I remembered of their fussy fortune cookie bags, but who now appear to have an impressive array of awesome, affordable bags:

The YakPak Diamond Messenger (cute but flappy)!

The YakPak Breakout! (Pretty great, but why can't they show me a view of the inside, or describe the bag in any way whatsoever? YakPak? YakPak? YakPak, YakPak, YakPak.)

Nancy suggested I simply learn how to sew the thing myself at Muse (Stitch Lounge is another San Francisco self-schooling option). But as quite a few people pointed out, the bag in question is actually more of an advanced-skill kind of project, what with the cargo-pockets and zippers, zippers, zippers. And I just can't wait for my skills to catch up with my needs! So. The winner is ... Cinnamon of Poise, who so very, very kindly offered to reconstruct The Perfect Bag, to create The Perfect Bag Two, Electric Boog-a-deux! Better still, if the cloning is a success, she's going to sell a version of it on her own site, with $10 of each sale going to a non-profit of my choice. Isn't that glorious?

The only thing I have to do now is pick a fabric ... maybe camo? A Marine and RV fabric in Toast? Turbo Purple? Uh oh.

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And now, many months later, the Poise-constructed bag, she is here!

(PS: My diary has officially moved over to my official evany.com website. Let's meet up over there!)

(PS: My diary has officially moved over to my official evany.com website. Let's meet up over there!)