Yes, people,  I will now drown you in cuteness. The happy snowcouple are just the beginning.

And if anybody else feels like emailing me to complain about “depressing posts”, I will start posting pictures of big, fat cupcakes shaped like fluffy kittens.

You will yet beg me to depress you some more.

Let the Russian – speakers stop complaining that I never do anything for them.

Моя новогодняя ёлочка

Как видите, под ёлочкой два весёлых снеговика. И неужели вам не передастся их хорошее настроение? И пусть радость не покидает вас в течение всего наступившего года, чтобы к его концу вы могли сказать, что 2015-й запомнился вам только хорошими событиями!

Получить свою ёлочку.

Am I the only American who doesn’t understand why we didn’t zap that North Korean ICBM designed to hit the United States on the launch pad back in 2007?Seems like everybody, liberals and right-wingers, agrees we don’t need to worry about Kim’s silly ol’ ICBMs. Kim’s just acting up, trying to get our attention.

Well, if Kim was trying to get my attention, it worked. I’m funny that way – every time somebody aims a nuke-capable ICBM at me, I overreact like you wouldn’t believe.

Ah, so there are two people on the continent who think this. I was starting to believe something was wrong with me, but War Nerd says exactly what I think:

The name of the town where North Korea tests its missiles says it all about our reaction: No-Dong. That’s what US presidents have been showing for almost forty years, every time North Korea slaps us in the face: no dong whatsoever.

Yes!

The point is, the North Korean military threat is serious. Saddam never posed a threat to the American homeland; Mu’ammar Gadhafi was a paper tiger from the get-go; but North Korea is crazy enough, and tough enough to press that nuclear trigger as soon as it’s operational.

YES!!! I mean, not “yes” to North Korea pressing the trigger, obviously, but “yes” to somebody finally being in agreement with me over this and not making me feel like a weird alarmist.

This book was the best gift ever. It also has an enormous therapeutic value that I will discuss in a later post.

So did you hear that Dr. Phil started an online medical service? I guess it makes sense: if the proles don’t deserve actual in-person education and have to content themselves with the online crap, why should they have access to real medical care? 

The next big thing is online dentistry.

Here is a hilarious collection of stories from one of my favorite bloggers :

Sometimes I really do wonder where the camera is concealed http://what-was-i-doing.blogspot.com/2014/12/sometimes-i-really-do-wonder-where.html

I don’t have time to comment on blogs, so this is my only way of telling bloggers I dig their writing.

Here is a really great post by a very talented blogger about the need to create a grand narrative for progressives. He gives some great suggestions as to what that narrative might be.

I also have a suggestion for an overarching progressive narrative: the nation-state is dying and a new liquid state is arising. We need to mobilize and make a supreme effort to ensure that up to 60% of the population isn’t kicked off this train and lumpenized.

Gay marriage, abortion rights, etc are great causes but in the new liquid world they won’t be a concern. It will all be about money and resources. For many people,  marriage us not going to be a concern at all. This is already true for a significant number of people. Let’s work to ensure that as many people as possible retain the capacity to worry about their marriage and contraception choices. Because we are going in the direction where a minority will have all of the choices in the world and the majority will have none whatsoever.

And please don’t come to me with the defeatism of how this is a foregone conclusion anyway. Let’s be active agents of our own existence. Let’s find a new narrative and start advancing it.

My doctor is absolutely hilarious. I went in for my regular checkup last week, and he told me to lose weight. This morning, I got a phone call from a gentleman saying, “Hi, I’m Dave from Dr. Rabinowitz ‘ s office. He asked me to call and remind you that you need to lose weight. I will call next week to remind you,  as well.”

So now I’m weeping with laughter and I don’t know how I will manage to collect myself for the final exam I’m administering in 9 minutes.

Russia ‘ s most venerated rock musician said that the war with Ukraine will end when Russians turn off their TVs.

Of course, there is no evidence that Russians are about to ease up on their favorite drug.

If Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are what our choices will be reduced to in 2016, that will be a crying shame. Can’t we at least come up with a couple new names, or are we doomed to be trapped forever in these pathetic efforts to replay the 1990s?

Yes, everybody had a grand old time in the 1990s but they aren’t coming back. It’s time to let this fantasy go.

I was given Gary Brecher’s The War Nerd book as a gift, and it’s great fun. Here, for instance, is an excerpt on Colombia:

The historians I’ve been reading – typical bleeding -heart college professors – all try to say Colombians aren’t really violent. Oh no!  It’s America’s fault, or it’s the United Fruit Company’s fault, or whatever… So how about a little truth for once? As in: Colombians kill. They’ve done it nonstop for 400 years. They’ll do it for another 400. That’s part of the reason it’s hard to explain the current wars in Colombia, because they’re just a little episode in one long war that will never end.

Finally, somebody with something refreshingly reasonable to say about Colombia. And in Mexico,  instead of one long war, you have a periodic flare-up of insane violence. A new century hits, Mexicans start killing each other. By the fourth decade of the century, they get whatever it is out of their systems, it all settles down, and there is stagnation under a benevolent dictatorial power until a new century arrives. And then the cycle repeats. The drug wars and the Americans are just an excuse. And since Americans enjoy being an excuse for the shitty behavior of others, then everybody is happy.