Everybody is discussing Jonathan Chait’s essay. I read it and have only the following to say: the guy is intellectually impotent to a disturbing degree.

He has a really great collection of interesting anecdotes, yet he can’t even construct a semi-convincing narrative on their basis. His extreme laziness pushes him to string the anecdotes together with the help of the tired old “virtuous Republicans” versus “evil Democrats” binary. That’s been done a bizillion times already and it doesn’t get more exciting with every new repetition.
There is a definite problem with brainless idiots who feel perpetually sulky and aggrieved. This problem is not in any way linked to the aggrieved idiots’ pathetic excuses for political opinions. The world is more complex than the conservative / liberal division. And if Chait stopped sulking for two minutes, he might have figured that out.

A link in a link in a link in a link (seriously) let me to this brilliant column by a very talented student at the University of Michigan:

As I walked, I slipped on a patch of wet leaves lining the steps of the Hatcher, and I fell forward headfirst onto the steps of the library. If it hadn’t been for the left hand that I thrust out right before my fall, I would have ended up just another statistic in the war on colored people. As it were, a white cis-gendered hetero upper-class man came down the steps just as I was falling. He looked at me with that white man’s burden face that I see too often on this racialized campus.

The guy is seriously gifted. I laughed until I almost hurt myself. OK, I’ve got to go reread the piece because it’s too good only to be read once.

A group of pleasantly plump ladies at the gym is eyeing N with voracious interest.

Hey, pleasantly plump ladies! You’re pleasantly plump, you’ll have no trouble finding somebody in time for St. Valentine’s. But this gentleman has already been found by a pleasantly plump lady who’s not going anywhere.

First, New Yorkers were filling my blogroll with endless melodrama because there was going to be snow.

Now, New Yorkers are filling my blogroll with endless melodrama because there was no snow.

Everybody makes fun of the Brits for supposedly obsessing about weather but it doesn’t look like Brits are half as drama – queenish about it as New Yorkers.

When I was in Montréal 3 weeks ago, we a had an ice-storm that knocked out electricity in half the city. It was -38C (38 degrees below freezing) and there was a huge snowstorm. Montréalers, however, comported themselves with supreme indifference to the weather.

You’d say that’s because Montréalers are used to snow. But that’s not true. That’s just how things are: some people encounter tragedy and battle their way through. And other people experience the tiniest of setbacks and choose to fall apart.

So how does everybody feel about the Putinoid freak show Syriza winning in Greece?

As Russians would say, Greeks have degenerated to the point of enjoying sexual intercourse with mice.

Have you heard of Sonia Singh from Tasmania and her project Tree Change Dolls?

She takes the butt-ugly and scary Bratz dolls and makes them beautiful:

Check it out, it’s a great project and the artist is very talented.