The party went on for several more hours. Before Basia and I managed to head towards the door, we were exposed to:

– a lady from Belarus who demonstrated the famed resilience of the Belarus guerrillas in her sustained refusal to respond to Basia’s attempts to engage her in a political debate; 

– the Russian husband of an English-speaking woman who was insistently trying to discuss “that girl I picked up, oh, and that other girl I picked up” while his uncomprehending wife smiled placidly by his side;

– a fiftyish Jewish gentleman who managed to mention his Momma five times in the very first sentence he addressed to the group;

– a disgruntled professor of physics from St. Louis who had read Basia’s article on Ukraine and wanted to argue with her about it but was thwarted by the host’s piercing scream, “No, discuss anything but politics!!!”

– a boisterous Russian fellow who kept addressing me with, “What kind of [offensive word for Ukrainian] are you if you don’t even eat salo!”

– a colleague from my university who exclaimed, “Oh God, I am so very, very sorry” when I told her the name of the department where I work. It seems like being an object of unexpected and, frankly, unwarranted compassion was my role at that party.

After Basia and I finally emerged into the street, one of the guests caught up with us.

“You are Jewish, right?” she exclaimed triumphantly, pointing at me.

“What gave me away?” I asked. “The hair?”

“No, not just the hair. Everything about you screams Jewish!”

I wanted to explore the subject further but Basia chimed in with an aggrieved, “And what about me? I’m Jewish, too!”

“What, am I not enough of a Ukrainian patriot to be recognized as Jewish?” Basia asked as we walked to my car. “Everybody knows that all the fiercest Ukrainians are Jews!”

Reader Cliff Arroyo asks à propos Jodi Arias’s case:

“I can go overboard in my fascination with unsolved murder cases but this seems pretty open and shut. She did it and kept lying and whenever confronted with a lie changed the story shopping up for something that would make her look good.Is there any evidence that there’s more going on here?”

The reason why I’m fascinated with the case is its potential to answer a host of interesting and crucial questions.

Why has feminism reached such a total dead end? Because the measure of personal success within one’s peer group among women is still a single thing: marriage*. This is a much easier way of reaching success and recognition than the one which male identity imposes. Who needs to invest the effort into a lifelong process of achieving and then retaining success when you can just do this single act and be done with pursuing success in your peer group forever**? 

Jodi was thwarted by her victim in achieving personhood, fulfillment, recognition as a human being who is good at the art of life***. And there is absolutely no other form of fulfillment that her peer group would accept. 

Another reason why I’m interested in the case is its relationship to my research.

Jodi Arias is absolutely, scarily, outrageously similar to the characters of these female novels of development that I’ve been studying for years. Reader Pen, you’ve read Irlanda. Tell me the protagonist is not totally Jodi. She engages in horrifying crime simply because she needs to preserve her right never to grow up.

Well, now Jodi has achieved her state of bliss. She will not have to grow or work on achieving success. She wanted to end up in jail, which is why she did all she could to get caught. 

* And before you say “motherhood”, think: how much societal respect and veneration do single mothers get? I rest my case.

** Please remember that I’m not talking about you, an intellectual with several degrees and a complex, nuanced persona. I’m sure your vision of personal success is as complex as you are.

*** Do I need to keep repeating that this does not excuse the murder or can we just accept it once and for all?

Is anybody here as fascinated with the Jodi Arias trial as I am? I’m looking for a kindred soul to gossip about this.

That Trevor fellow was a total piece of work. Not that he deserved having his head cut off.

North Carolina is attempting a wholesale destruction of its research universities.

It is mystifying to me why Americans would just choose to destroy their higher education and turn the country into a backwards little place with zero capacity to compete on the world arena.

The word “lemmings” comes to mind when I hear of these self-defeating efforts.

At the luxuriously laid festive table, the host plunked a bottle right in front of Basia.

“What is it?” the curious Basia said, reaching towards the bottle. Then she saw that the label said “Putinka” and recoiled with a terrified moan.

“Why is it here?” she hissed. “Did you see this? I almost touched the vile thing!”

“It’s a brand of vodka,” I explained. “This is probably just a humorous postmodern gesture on the part of the host.”

“Postmodern, my ass!” exclaimed Basia who is not a literary critic. “Did you see the host’s shirt? It says “USSR” and has Soviet symbols on it!”

“Yes, but this is probably just a humorous postmodern. . .” I started but soon wilted under Basia’s severe stare.

“Let’s drink to the health of our. . .” one of the guests started.

“No, forget about that!” the host exclaimed. “Let’s all just go back to Russia to help OUR PUTIN!”

“Yes! To Putin!” cheered the guests.

“I’m so not drinking to that!” wheezed Basia, turning beet red. “And if you use the word ‘postmodern’ again, I will stick a fork into your hand. Glory to Ukraine!”

“Glory to the heroes!” I yelled*, drowning out the Putinoid noise.

* “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” is a greeting Ukrainians exchange in the aftermath of the Revolution.

So as you might remember, yesterday Basia and I went to the birthday party of the old Russian lady we’d never met before. The Russian lady was brought over from Moscow to Illinois a few months ago by her son, a college professor in St. Louis. She is lonely around here because she doesn’t speak a word of English and there is no Russian-speaking community close-by. 

When I arrived at the party, Basia wasn’t there yet, and I tried to to figure out whether the family we were visiting was Putinoid. The old lady, let’s call her Anna Vasilievna, was a concert pianist and seemed highly cultured and intellectual. She even managed to say “from Ukraine” instead of “off Ukraine” (that’s as close as I can translate it), which is one of the ways we always know a normal person from a Putinoid. 

“These are all good people,” I texted to Basia. “Approach without fear.”

Right after I sent this text message, though, things grew weird.

“How long ago did you emigrate here?” one of Anna Vasilievna’s friends asked me.

“I initially emigrated to Canada. . .” I started explaining and saw people’s faces contort with shock.

“That’s where my parents, my sister, and my two aunts are,” I continued. “In Canada.”

“Oh! We are so sorry,” Anna Vasilievna said with a look of profound compassion. Everybody stared at me with extreme pity. Somebody was patting me on the back. Everybody was making “Oh, that’s so sad” noises at me.

This was the first time in my life that saying I’m from Canada made people pity me. 

“What have you heard about Canada?” I asked. “What is it?”

“We have seen it on the news!” one of the guests exclaimed. “There is an uprising! Don’t you know? The Canadian government is about to be overthrown!”

I was stunned. It’s true that I don’t follow Canadian news very closely but could I have missed something so major?”

“Who wants to overthrow the Canadian government?” This was a question I never thought I’d ever have to ask.

“THOSE people!” Anna Vasilievna said in a tragic whisper and everybody around her nodded. “The Ukrainian Diaspora! Those are scary, scary people, like the Nazis. They march in the streets! And they want to overthrow the government! In Canada! We’ve seen this on television.”

“These are weird people,” I texted to Basia. “Be careful on approach.”

Governor Rauner announced that the program we currently have in Illinois that reimburses indigent people for a portion of the funeral expenses of their family members will be canceled.

Maybe he could further “save” money by using these corpses to fertilize the garden next to the Governor’s mansion.

So has Hillary announced yet? Or are we still waiting?

In my native city of Kharkiv, somebody put up a holy image where the enormous statue of Lenin used to stand:

I don’t see what the point was of removing Lenin just to substitute him with an image that is frankly irrelevant to Ukrainians.

It’s time to assume our history, such as it is. It’s time to stop imitating the Russians in their fake and showy religiosity that looks embarrassing in a country where less than 2% of people practice  (as opposed to blab about) religion.

These enormous religious images are an outdated barbarity that freaks out civilized people and sends the message that Ukraine is ready neither for Europe nor for modernity. And the saddest thing is that Kharkivities won’t even be able to say who it is in the image.

All religious denominations in the USSR collaborated with the KGB. So in a way, it’s fitting that Lenin would be substituted with the imagery of a church that disgraced itself with unrepented collaboration with the Soviets. It’s sad, though, that Ukraine should abandon one of its greatest achievements – breaking out of the restrictive and barbaric churchiness to become a fully secular state – in a rush, yet again, to put another idol in the place of the fallen one.

All of this talk about unhealthy food put me in the mood for something really healthy, so I came up with this recipe. It can easily be turned vegan if you remove the chicken.

First I fried some crushed garlic in a bit of olive oil. While it was reaching a golden shade, I added some ginger and carrots. Then I added skinless, boneless chicken thighs and seared them on both sides.

This was the perfect moment to turn down the heat and add some vegetable stock (water would be fine, too.)

As the meat stewed in the stock, I added:

– jicama sticks;
– French beans;
– bean sprouts;
– some chopped tomatoes that I had left over from making a salad;
– a few spinach leaves that I didn’t want to let go to waste;
– some fresh dill;
– a teaspoon of stone – ground Dijon mustard (if you don’t have real mustard, don’t use any at all);
– turneric;
– cumin seeds.

The whole thing tasted phenomenal.