Acts of terror, as revolting as they may be, supply us with a motive. Someone is angry about some foreign policy and takes out revenge on innocent civilians. Yet the timing of this horrible event is baffling. There is no current aggressive military action. The US have pulled out of Iraq, things are winding down in Afghanistan. Any enemy of the United States knows very well that any kind of terrorist attack on innocent civilians on American soil would outrage the world and result is a swift retaliation. Everyone knows that.

This “everyone” is a blethering fool. Nobody cares about what happens thousands of miles away. “The world” is in no way more outraged about what happens in the US than about what happens in New Zealand, Chile or Russia. The losers on Facebook who huff and puff in fake outrage that nobody in the US cares as much about an explosion in Syria as they do about the Boston bombing are as clueless as the author of the quoted post. It is normal to care about what is close and can affect you personally. It is also normal to feel a lot more indifferent to things that happen far away and have no impact on your own life.

I remember when I first came to Canada and was watching an investigative report on A&E, I heard the show host say that the whole world was eagerly awaiting the decision in OJ Simpson’s case. I laughed for 15 minutes at the stupidity of somebody who really believes that some stupid murder trial can be of interest to the entire world. Like the world doesn’t have its own trials, problems, issues, etc. in every single country.

What did I give my students in the literature course to make them moan with pleasure?

Answer: a grammar exercise. I have no idea why the students love grammar exercises so much but I have discovered that saying the magical phrases “And now create sentences with unreal conditions in the future, present and the past” and “Fill in the blanks with the appropriate form of the verb” before they fill out course evaluations always makes for very good evaluations.

Former President George W. Bush, in a new interview with Parade magazine, on whether the world is safer since 9/11: “I think it is.”

How can anybody measure the safety of the entire world without specifying what it is supposed to be safe from and for whom?

Seeing this interview made me remember this horrible feeling of looking at the leader of the country where I’m living and realizing that he is completely, totally, utterly, and impossibly stupid.

I still believe that a really evil politician is better than a really stupid one. Of course, this is a tough question. Stalin, for instance, was an incredibly stupid person who stupidly followed the directions given to him by a very smart and very evil person. He was about to start a nuclear war before he died and, unlike the evil but not stupid people, was not smart enough to consider what the use of nuclear weapons would do to the planet.

So what do you think, evil or stupid? Please don’t say that you prefer intelligent and non-evil politicians. We all do but there is nothing to discuss about that choice.

The uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said that the bombings had nothing to do with religion, that that charge is a fraud, he said, because he knew the family and the boys as children (i.e. he knew them to have been raised as secularists). Someone, he said, ‘radicalized them.’

Well, duh. Of course, Chechnya is not religious. It was part of the USSR. Nobody practiced any religion in the USSR. Since its collapse, it became fashionable among the very rich, the very uneducated, and the very nationalistic to fake some sort of religious allegiance but these attempts are always quite ridiculous. The idea of the fundamentalist Muslim Chechnya is promoted by Russian neo-Nazis,

So whenever you hear of a religious person with a Soviet heritage, it’s a good time to laugh.

Chechen terrorism is not about religion. It is also not about being part of something, like Al Qaeda. It is a very very different kind of terrorism which is why I’m saying that it’s terrifying. With large terrorist organizations, you can hope to destroy their leadership and shatter the organization. With Chechen terrorism, killing the leaders changes nothing. Dudaev is dead, Khattab is dead, Basayev is dead. What did any of it change? Absolutely nothing.

Chechen terrorism is the terrorism of deeply traumatized people who are enacting their historic trauma in this way. They can be connected to others or act on their own, but the reason is always the same: the 300-year-long tragedy of the Chechen people.

The Boston explosions were organized by Chechens?? This is one possibility no one ever imagined. And the tragic irony of Chechens now turning against the US is too striking.

This is the most bizarre development of all. Chechen terrorism is really horrifying (for obvious reasons). We are all in deep shit if Chechens have moved their operation to this continent.

My students in the literature seminar worked very hard this semester and never grumbled. Even when I had them read the Romantics, even when I assigned Unamuno, even after I tortured them with endless essays and castigated them for the smallest departure from the MLA format.

On the penultimate day of class, I decided to reward them for their hard work and perseverance. I gave them something that elicited moans of pleasure for the next hour. They looked rapturous. Their eyes shone with the gleam fanatics gets when in the presence of the object of their adoration.

“Oh I love this, I love this,” a student exclaimed.
“Oh yes, oh yes,” the group chanted.

After class, several students passed by my office.

“Thank you for doing this!” they repeated.

Question: what did I give my students to make them so happy?

Hint: no, I didn’t let them go home early. What kind of a stupid riddle would that be?

I’m happy to report that at this ripe age of 37 I have finally defeated my life-long tendency towards anxiety. I am yet to experience anything more liberating than getting rid of anxiety. Oh, not to worry about the scenarios of impending doom! It is a great feeling.

I have also gotten rid of most of my unhealthy compensatory mechanisms.

This year of my life was probably the most important one because I have transformed profoundly in the course of it. You only know how limiting your psychological problems were after you solve them.

And now I will go and eat my Birthday steak.

I just won an infant car seat in Vine. This is the best win ever because one thing I wasn’t looking forward to buying for the baby is an expensive car seat that will barely be used 3 or 4 times. Yay!