These days, whenever you start doing anything, you always end up doing sales. I developed a great new course but now I have to write an ad for it in order to sell it to colleagues and students. I started working on a translation order for a petroleum company but it turned out that what they want me to do is translate an endless series of sales pitches.

By the way, these sales pitches I’m translating are very effective. After a week of work, I’m experiencing a profound desire to buy compressor fluid for my air turbine.

When Columbus came to the New World, he would disembark on an island, hide somewhere in the bushes, and mumble the legal formula of taking possession of the land in the name of the Spanish Crown. After that, the land would be considered Spain’s and the indigenous people who’d try to defend it would be considered treasonous. I don’t need to tell you what was done to them, do I?

This is exactly how the Russian-speaking scammers in Canada act. They sell tickets to what is supposed to be a meeting of entrepreneurs. They only accept credit card payments and insist that every attendee provide a separate credit card number. After everybody gets sufficiently drunk on free alcohol at the meeting, they mumble in passing that money will continue to be withdrawn from the credit cards until the attendees somehow signal their wish for the payments to stop. The scammers don’t belong to any specific company, don’t have a website, and are impossible to be located, so good luck finding them to communicate your wishes. When they disappear with your credit card number, you can just sit there and hope to God they don’t hand it over to their gangster brothers back in Russia.

People who believe it would be great to live in the era of wild capitalism are very stupid. I experienced the 100% unregulated capitalism, and our FSU countries are still living it. Let me tell you, it’s a very bad way to live. It’s scary, it’s dangerous, and unless you are a ruthless bandit, you don’t stand half a chance.

“There is this unfortunate stereotype that all Russian-speakers are gangsters and scam artists,” the presenter at a meeting of Russian-speaking immigrants in Montreal said last night. And then he immediately proceeded to defraud the poor schmucks who came to the meeting. A scary-looking Russian gangster was hovering behind the presenter.

This was a meeting called “Together We Are Strong!” and its goal was to steal 350 credit card numbers from the attendees. It was done in a sly manner that precluded most of the immigrants who were there from understanding what was going on. And those few who did clock on to the scam are too terrified of the Russian gangsters who were there to protest or even report them.

An unlimited number of alcoholic drinks was served at this event. I will let you guess how that was helpful to the scammers. The event was sponsored by a gentleman called Gleb Trubetskoy who claims to work for DundeeWealth which is a subsidiary of Scotiabank. DundeeWealth and Scotiabank, are you aware that this scam is being run under your auspices? 350 people were defrauded last night at this event.

It is truly tragic that Russian-speaking immigrants only get together in order to victimize each other in some way. It is even more tragic that venerable and legitimate Canadian institutions allow themselves to be dragged into the fraudulent practices of the Russian-style wild capitalism.

I will post this announcement in Russian in hopes that somebody will Google these scammers and avoid going to their events.

Дорогие друзья, пожалуйста, не ходите на бизнес-собрание “Вместе мы – сила!” Это мероприятие организуют мошенники, которые будут снимать деньги с вашей кредитной карты без вашего разрешения. Ни в коем случае не давайте этим людям свою кредитную карту! Они принимают оплату только по кредитной карте по одной простой причине: ОНИ ХОТЯТ УКРАСТЬ НОМЕР ВАШЕЙ КАРТЫ. Генеральный спонсор этого мероприятия – Глеб Трубецкой из компании Dundee Wealth. Господин Трубецкой, стыд и позор принимать участие в подобном мошенничестве!

Повторю: бизнес-собрание “Вместе мы – сила!” проводят бандюки. Не ходите туда, это мошенники, они очень опасны.

I have noticed that adding some pine nuts to a salad always makes it a happier, more joyful dish. And the salad becomes more filling which means that you don’t need to add anything else for it to be a very good dinner.

I really dislike the nuts that seem to be very beloved by Americans – pecans and macadamia. And I always detested almonds.

I just had to share this. Imagine what a real photographer with an actual camera could do with this scenery.

P.S. The quality of these collages is much higher if you click on them.

I just took these around the campus.

For every sleazy and pathetic little joke of a college in the midst of rural Godforsakenland, there will be a bunch of verbose crazies ready to defend the most exploitative and vicious practices this scam of a college employs to defraud teachers and students.

Some people just make me sad:

When Dr. Bella Ellwood-Clayton began to research female sexual desire, she found a commonality among women in long-term relationships — one that many of us can surely relate to. While, initially, women’s libidos tended to match their male partners’, as the relationship progressed, sex fell lower and lower on the list of priorities.

Jennifer  Armstrong put it perfectly:

Another manufactured myth to make old biddies feel better about their trampled lives.

Very true.

Today at the jewelry store we were waiting for N.’s Mogen David to get fitted with a chain and saw an ad telling men to buy a ruby “to rekindle her desire.” Yes, because all women are whores whose desire needs to be stoked with jewelry.

Today N and I went on a date to this amazing place that made us feel like all-American teenagers. I’m sure my US readers know exactly where this photo was taken but can people from overseas guess?

It is unbelievable that the moment I published a post denouncing Bates’s exploitation of teaching faculty, some bully came to my blog saying s/he knows who I am and threatening me.

I’m sure this is some crazy who has nothing to do with Bates. There are always these freakazoids who troll people’s blogs trying to find fresh victims to persecute.