I’m the most considerate wife in the universe. My husband fell asleep during the World Cup final, so I now yell in my head and jump up very quietly. Which isn’t easy for a person of my natural graces.

I will never forgive my handyman for calling right when Argentina scored. Maybe it’s just as well if it was an offside anyway.

Germans are definitely the champions in falling down beautifully and wriggling in pain convincingly.

The speed of the Germans is about twice the speed of Argentineans. And that’s not good.

Argentineans play well but they could definitely get more awake.

A character in Rafael Chirbes’s novel Crematorio says:

The worst was discovering that democracy puts an end to politics. That was the worst. To spend 20, 30 years under Franco, demanding democracy, only to discover that when democracy arrived, its first message to you was that it had no use for you because democracy is the best way of destroying politics.

Chirbes is one of the best writers currently writing in Spain.

Continue reading “Bye-bye, Crimean Meat Pie!” →

So who’s with me in rooting for Argentina in the World Cup finals today? Argentina is the world’s only chance to show the Germans that they don’t own the universe. Plus, if there are both Germans and Argentinians living in your area, you know that Germans celebrate by getting sulkily and moodily drunk and trashing the neighborhood. Argentinians, in the meanwhile, celebrate by filling the neighborhood with the delicious smell of parrilladas.

It’s a no- brainer, folks. When was the last time Germans did anything for you? OK, there is the sausage. And I vaguely suspect my car must be German. And, in all fairness, they did come up with the word Bildungsroman. But that’s it!

Argentineans, in the meanwhile, have the best meat, the best movies, the best music, and the best version of Spanish anybody has been able to come up with.

Argentina totally deserves to win also because times have been tough and people need cheering up. And it isn’t like anything can cheer up a German anyway.

And if I haven’t been able to convince you by now, you must be German. In which case, with all due respect, I hope you lose.

After all of the grief and horrible suffering that their stupid parroting of Russia has already cost them, Cubans are committing the same mistake and crawling back to lick the Russians’ boots like diseased puppies.

Cuba has been bending over backwards, trying to please its former owner. It has refused to condemn the annexation of the Crimea (because, as we all know, Cuba is so totally anti-imperialist) and is now throwing a grand welcoming party to Russia’s dictator Putin. The 9 billion barrels of oil Cuba claims to have are needed by the Russians, so the Castros will gladly hand their only natural resource over to the country’s erstwhile abusers.

Just when there appeared a minuscule chance for Cuba to climb out of the hole it had dug for itself, the brain-dead ancient leaders of this pathetic little country decided that Cubans haven’t been screwed by Russians long and hard enough.

This is the kind of weaponry the Russian army used yesterday to shoot at Ukrainian soldiers from across the border:

25 Ukrainians were killed yesterday and about 100 were wounded so badly that the experienced medical personnel was fainting with horror when seeing the wounds. The number of the missile launchers shooting at Ukrainians was somewhere around 40.

I keep reading endless self-congratulatory articles in the Western media as to how Putin has been humiliated in Ukraine and how he has to count his losses. The people who write this crap are absolutely delusional. Putin is achieving everything he ever wanted in Ukraine. Here are his major achievements in Ukraine:

1. Russia’s ownership of the Crimea has been de facto recognized by everybody. There is no more talk about Russia returning the occupied territories to Ukraine.

2. The constant low-grade conflict maintained in the South-East of Ukraine allows Putin to get rid (by sending them to fight in Ukraine) of the bandits, nationalists, neo-Nazis, Chechens who have been committing crime and / or undermining his authority in Russia.

3. The West has demonstrated that it doesn’t in the least mind Putin’s constant (and aggressive) attempts to destabilize Ukraine.

4. As a result of this destabilization, Putin doesn’t have to fear that Ukraine will grow into a strong democratic state.

5. Putin has wiped his ass with both Merkel and Obama and has demonstrated that he is, at this moment, the strongest, most consistent, most highly supported leader on the planet.

Now compare this to the US’s “success” in Iraq. So who is it that should feel humiliated?

It’s high time we stopped feeling sorry for the “poor, humiliated Putin” and wondered why our leaders are allowing some KGB creepazoid from an illiterate, third-world banana republic to make such extreme idiots out of all of us.

6. Putin has used the events in Ukraine to quash all opposition at home and bring his approval ratings to incredible heights.