Sorry for the absence, everybody. I’ve been partying and celebrating my birthday. But now I’m back with a news update.

NATO will be holding military training in Estonia, next to the border with Russia. American troops are taking part in the training.

Now when somebody starts on with the ignorant “Putin invaded Ukraine because he was bothered by the NATO presence close to Russia’s borders”, you can tell that person to stop being an idiot and learn some facts instead.

N demonstrated that miracles do happen and understood that “But don’t you already have a handbag?” is not a fruitful line of reasoning.

The handbag is actually purple in color.

Basia ‘ s birthday was 2 days ago, and she asked everybody to avoid saying the word “Putin” around her on that day.

But I’m taking a different approach. On my birthday, I will speak about Ukraine as much as I want, and people will simply have to put up with it.

Just in case people want to keep asking me where I find all those Putinoid idiot lefties:

So, U.S. troops have arrived in Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops. The United States appears intent upon meddling with the situation between Russia and a state that was part of Russia for more years than the United States has existed before being split off during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, despite the fact that there are no (zero) national interests served by doing so.

The loser is so mind-bogglingly stupid  that he thinks Ukraine was part of Russia*,  yet he totally needs to keep opining on the region and promoting the goals of Putin ‘ s far-right government.

By the way, what happened to the idea that Liberals championed victims and opposed victimizers? And what happened to the belief that Liberals did not support regimes that eviscerated unions, worked to destroy reproductive rights, bashed gays, demolished the separation of church and state, invaded their neighbors, and promoted racism? Is the hatred for Ukraine so strong that all these values can be easily discarded?

And happy birthday to me, by the way.

* Ukraine was part of Russia in the same way as Mexico was part of Spain and the US was part of England. And if only anybody knew how tired I am of repeating this phrase. Why are people so smug in their stupidity?

My birthday is coming up and celebrating is always a challenge because it coincides with the end of the academic year. Of course, I’d never allow a mountain of grading and paperwork to prevent me from celebrating, so here is what I have planned:

1. After uploading this post, I will drive to the airport to collect my sister who is coming from Montréal to celebrate with me.

2. Then we will buy a mountain of ethnic food at the “Russian” store in St. Louis.

3. Tomorrow, we will visit the salon for massages and pedicures, and then N is taking us out to a cool new restaurant.

4. On Sunday, we will have a small Birthday party with pro-Ukranian overtones. Basia is coming, and we will compensate ourselves for the suffering of last week’s party at the Putinoids’ place.

5. And on Monday, my sister and I will visit the only pretty street in St. Louis.

There is no grading scheduled here but I pointed out to the students that I never persecuted them for handing in stuff late, so now it’s their turn to extend me the same consideration. Students agreed.

Panagiotis Kammenos, Greece’s right-wing Minister of Defense, is a vicious anti-semite and a It’s a mystery why the supposedly starving Greeks want to have this pig-like fellow as their Minister of Defense. The fakely Liberal Syriza happily allied itself with this freak’s party and scooted over to Russia, another neo-liberal, right-wing paradise.

Now Kammenos is making unhinged statements about Russia saving the Crimea from the “fascist Ukrainians” by annexing it. Greece’s politics is so bizarre that I don’t even know any longer if the word “fascists” is meant as a compliment when it comes from this guy. Kammenos insists, obviously without any proof, that the “fascist government of fascist Ukraine” was persecuting Greeks in the Crimea.

How sad it is to see a formerly great civilization degenerate into something like Mr. Kammenos.

P. S. The Greeks are now saying they never made any such statements and that the Russians invented the whole story. Serves them right for hanging out with Russians.

Just saw on the news that a 78-year-old man is being charged with rape for having sex with his wife who has Alzheimer’s. In the meanwhile, a woman who got teenagers drunk, engaged them in a bizarre orgy and then had sex with them is not being charged with anything but “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

The esteemed audience I’d clamoring for the photos of the hair. Please prepare yourselves because it’s some crazy hair:

Sorry, no makeup today. I still haven’t managed to get myself together.

I love how it reflects the sun.

What many people miss about the Putin regime is how sensitive it actually is to public opinion, despite its authoritarian tendencies.

Sweet Jesus on the cross. What “public opinion” can there be in a country where the media are owned by the state and even online expression is increasingly policed by said state? Putin hates being criticized. But Putin is not the regime and the regime is not Putin. His personal quirks and foibles should not be conflated with the regime at large.

Getting the economy on a more even keel and improving living conditions for the silent majority is high on the list of priorities for the Kremlin.

You’ve got to be every shade of fool to believe that the Kremlin wants to improve the living conditions of the majority. In 2011-12, the Kremlin saw pretty much the entire (small) middle class of Russia march against the regime. People who achieve a higher standard of living tend to develop a series of needs that go beyond getting food and shelter (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, hello?). If there are more people who have the resources and the leisure to think about politics, travel, see the world, get their information from any other source than Putinoid TV, the likelihood that there will be discontent with the regime increases.

As I told you a couple of days ago, the massive forest fires in Russia that are devastating entire regions in Siberia are barely getting a footnote in the Russian media. The victims were told by the authorities not to expect any aid. This information is extremely easy to find online. Yet a silly bit of fluff who considers himself a reporter sweeps the facts aside and relies, instead, on the stupid lies Putin offered in his lying press conference that only the congenitally dumb take seriously even in Russia.

Everybody is joyfully and dumbly quoting the following bit of idiocy:

Moreso than any time in the past, today there are huge numbers of students flocking to college who have zero ability to succeed there. Universities of course want to retain these students, and in order to do so they have to create a massive bureaucracy of support services. Any skill tangentially related to completing college level work now has a lavishly staffed support center devoted to it on campus. A writing center, a study skills program, tutoring services, a math helpdesk, a massive bureaucracy devoted to the shockingly large share of students diagnosed with various disabilities, and anything else you can imagine.

It’s true that an enormous number of underprepared students come to college. This is especially true for public universities that cater to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. And it is true that a lot of remedial teaching has to be done to get students to the point where their writing and reading skills would at least somewhat approach a normal adult level. 

But this crucial work is not done by the semi-literate paper-pushers. It’s done by professors. For free. There is no “massive bureaucracy” at the math help desk or the writing center. Just think about it, how would a bureaucrat manage to help a student with math? The whole idea is bizarre.

I’m heading over to campus in a bit to dedicate the time that is my own to helping precisely such underprepared students. I get it that I will never be compensated for this work. But at least I’d like to see an acknowledgment that this is the work that professors do.