I’ve been expecting it, and today it finally happened. A deer jumped out of the woods right in front of my car.

I’m very proud that I managed to cause no damage to the dear or anybody else in this situation.

Have you heard of this study that is getting massively publicized?

Dr. Vijay Singh and colleagues used data from a larger national survey. The 500 men were asked: “Over the course of your relationship, how often have you ever done any of these things (pushed, grabbed, or shoved; threw something; slapped or hit; kicked, bit, or hit with a fist; beat up; choked; burned or scalded; threatened with a knife or gun) to your current spouse/partner?” Nineteen percent admitted they had done so at least once, the team reported in Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. “If men could enter responses in a private way, (the percentage) could have been even higher,” Singh noted.

This study would have a lot more value if the questioning had been conducted of both men and women. Out of the 14 behaviors described here, I engaged in seven. Obviously, there is no excuse, these were horrible, horrible things to do. But it bothers me that these actions are presented as something that men do when, in reality, it is what bad people do. Bad people irrespective of gender. I think we are strong enough to acknowledge that.

20-25 = drafting a floor plan.

25-30 = laying the foundation.

30-35 = building the walls.

35-40 = installing the roof.

40-45 = decorating.

45-50 = a) looking at the whole structure, freaking out and trying to drive off on a red Harley or b) looking at the whole structure, sighing contentedly, and settling in to enjoy it for the next 50 years.

A shooting instructor was teaching a 9-year-old girl to shoot an automatic weapon. She accidentally shot and killed him. I just heard on the radio that the instructor’s family wrote a letter to the girl saying they don’t blame her for anything.

I mean, yeah, ’cause THEY totally would have a reason to blame HER. Their relative put a dangerous weapon into a small child’s hands, and now she will have to live the rest of her life knowing that she killed a person. But they are totally not blaming her. Freaks.

Our secretary found a new job, and now we have to work without an administrative assistant at our department. This means that whenever the Chair is in class, nobody can access the storage room because only he has the key.

Those of us who have to attend the Careers Fair today have been wandering with sad and wistful looks on our faces around the locked storage room because it contains the flyers we need to take to the fair.

Of course, I realized that this wasn’t going to work, stole a key, broke into the storage room, and retrieved the flyers.

And this is how myths about the criminal proclivities of “Russians” are born.

I came to work and discovered a colleague removing the flag of Canada from the wall where we are keeping all of our flags and hoisting the flag of Quebec in its place.

“Wow, I thought I’d never see the day,” I exclaimed. “Has something happened I’m not aware of?”

“I guess you haven’t been to Quebec in a while if you have to ask!” the colleague responded.

I’m not sure what’s been going on but I’m glad this happened after my sister left because she’d freak. She’d think this was done to spite her personally. Here is our new flag: 

The flag of Canada has been relegated to the closet.

 

Do people follow the news at all, I wonder? Regular Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine weeks ago. Has nobody heard about that?

Has nobody heard of Putin’s efforts to conceal the deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine?

Has nobody heard that the bodies of these soldiers are being heaped into mass graves while their families are forbidden to mourn their husbands and sons?

Has nobody heard about a Russian journalist who published an article about such grieving families and on the next day was beaten unconscious?

Has nobody heard about the mothers of these Russian soldiers who are begging the Ukrainian government to return their POW sons unharmed?

Has nobody heard any of the stories published by Russian soldiers who are never even informed where they are going and then find themselves in Ukraine and told to kill?

Has nobody heard that the Organization of Soldiers’ Mothers in Russia is waging a campaign to prevent soldiers from being sent to Ukraine to die?

Has nobody heard of an entire platoon of Russian soldiers that, according to official sources in Russia, all died on the same day while being “on vacation”?

And then people describe all these events as “difference of opinion among Ukrainians” and wonder why I call them Putinoid. Just priceless.

 

When people try this hard, one has to get suspicious:

Eastern and Western Ukraine have different histories and this sometimes leads to differences of opinion. Blogger Clarissa denies this, says that there are no differences of opinion among Ukrainians.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing on this blog, denying that there are differences of opinion. That’s totally my entire mission.

I know it’s useless to argue once people have decided to accept Putin’s propaganda but I just can’t help it, I’ve got to try.

You and I, Steve, very obviously have different histories, would you agree with this statement?

And we also have a very obvious difference of opinion here, would you agree with that?

Still, these different histories and opinions are not provoking us into trying to kill each other, do they?

In my own family, I have a group of fiercely pro-Putin folks who live in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas (right in the war zone). But none of those people have taken up arms or are even remotely considering doing that. There is an enormous distance between having “an opinion” and taking a Kalashnikov and shooting into your neighbor’s face. 

“Eastern Ukraine” is not fighting “Western Ukraine.” If you look at a map, you will see that “Eastern Ukraine” is overwhelmingly peaceful. Only a tiny little territory, less than 1% of the entire territory of Ukraine is in the hands of terrorists. You can see it here on the map marked in red:

And now a small question for you. Look at the area that is marked in red on the map, the war zone. Historically, this is a predominantly:

a) Russian-speaking, or

b) Ukrainian-speaking area?

What language did the most fiercely pro-Putin members of my family grow up speaking in the 1980s and 1990s in the Lugansk region?

If you can’t answer that, can we agree that your “opinion” on the subject of current events in Ukraine is not extremely well-informed? In any case, I promise that I still have no desire to murder you for it. Weird, huh?

Israel joined the ranks of countries that are refusing to sell weapons to Ukraine.

Back in 1936, everybody refused to sell weapons to the Spanish Republic for the exact same reason: they didn’t want to provoke Hitler and make things “even worse.”

As we know, that totally worked out. Not. One would hope that, among all countries, Israel might have a distant memory of that but no such luck.

There are several things that symbolize “the good life” for me. One of them is a clock that projects the time onto the ceiling in huge red numbers:

(I took the photo from my bed last night).

Many people would freak out if they had the time hovering above their faces in red all night long. I, however, achieve bliss when I see it. The ceiling just doesn’t look as good when there are no red figures on it:

The funny thing is that my sister has the same clock and she feels exactly the same about it. There must be a psychoanalytic explanation for this obsession with seeing the time hover above one’s bed but I’m too lazy to look for it.