Even Bill O’Reilly was victim-blaming the organizers of the cartoon contest in Texas yesterday. His argument was that the contest wasn’t going to achieve anything anyway. I’m not even remotely understanding this logic. Since when is it OK to open fire at underachievers?

I don’t care what their politics are – these Garland people are heroes. While everybody just yes-butted the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and moved on, they are making efforts to prevent these deaths from being in vain. And that is beautiful.

Russians have exploded in rage and hatred at the news that Kate Middleton gave birth to a baby girl [link in Russian obviously]. Some are now engaging in public fantasies about the baby’s murder. Of course, the infant did nothing bad to them but she is a child of English-speakers, and the rage reserved for anybody who speaks the language is overwhelming in Russia right now.

Nobody promised that the rebirth of fascism was going to be all cute.

My book is going to be reviewed in two academic journals, Hispania and Letras femeninas. This is very pleasing news. Nobody wants to be the author of a book that was not noticed and got no reviews.

It’s weird that the author is never informed that her book will be reviewed, so she gets to search through Google to find out about the forthcoming reviews.

Two reviews for the first book are good, although, who knows, I might even be getting more.

Putin called Netanyahu to pressure him into backing out of the deal according to which Israel had promised to sell unmanned drones to Ukraine. Netanyahu chose to bow down and can the sale to please Putin.

A short time ago, Netanyahu made a similar call to Putin, asking him not to sell missiles to Iran. Putin chose not to bow down and can the sale to please Netanyahu.

Last year Putin publicly praised Goebbels in the meeting with the representatives of the Jewish community in Russia. But neither this nor Russia’s attempts to butter up Iran are influencing Netanyahu’s dedication to pleasing Putin.

On The Profit with Marcus Lemonis, there is a woman who works full-time for her boyfriend’s company. Her salary is $0. This means the woman doesn’t get paid. At all.

“She doesn’t need a salary,” the boyfriend bellows. “If she needs money, I’ll just give it to her.”

The woman stands by his side with an embarrassed, idiotic smile.

The guy’s not even a fiancé, just a boyfriend, so it’s not like the idiot has any hope of any future compensation.

Is anybody wondering why this woman is not finding anything hugely helpful in the stupid twaddle about “intersectionality” that contemporary feminism is all about?

Author: Toni Morrison
Title: God Help the Child
Year of Publication: 2015
Language: English
My rating: 6.7 out of 10

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest American writers of all times. She is also a Nobel Prize winner who actually deserved the prize, which is something that becomes increasingly rate. God Help the Child is nowhere near the level of, say, the author’s brilliant Beloved. Still, we should not reject a good novel only because we know that its author is a genius who can produce books that are much more powerful.

In her most recent novel, Morrison brings to the readers several characters who were badly damaged as children. They go through life carrying the destruction inside them and spilling it over everything and everyone they touch.

Bride and Booker, the protagonists, differ from the rest of characters in that they at least manage to allow for the suspicion that the damage done to them as children might somehow be linked to their current dysfunction. This sets them so far apart in terms of their development as human beings from other characters that they turn into heroic, exceptional figures.

It seems a bit of a waste to use the literary genius of Morrison ‘ s caliber to bring home the point that child abuse and neglect have consequences but Morrison was always extremely American in her interests as a writer. She writes about what’s needed at the time when it’s needed.

The novel reads very easily, and could serve as a great introduction to Morrison ‘ s much more complex earlier fiction. If you are looking for ” Morrison for Dummies”, this is it. And I mean it in the best way possible.

The sheer number of overfed pseudo – Liberal dudes publishing detailed mea culpas on how they used to love The Wire but now, after the recent Baltimore riots, no longer do is staggering.

It’s hilarious how they don’t see that this extreme form of narcissism is not cute. The desire to make everything in the world about themselves is not original. It is infantile and often pathological. Only a self-besotted fool will use what happened in Baltimore to blab for hours about his decade – old entertainment choices.

I’m sure that the idiots who write these pieces actually think they are performing a socially valuable activity this way. Stupid losers.

“What’s the common denominator, then, in what professors do all day? Translation. We translate from a field of knowledge to people who want to know about it. . .We all live in at least two worlds. One of those worlds is a world of ideas, of print and numbers, a world almost limitless and impossible to master, growing every time we turn our backs. The other world is the immediate and human world of classes, committees, office hours, deadlines, budgets, advising. Without being a citizen of both worlds, an active participant in both worlds, we are diminished, our ability to teach diminished. The dichotomy between teaching and research is no dichotomy at all if we understand that a professor journeys back and forth between two worlds, translating among many people.”

The Russian activists who are preparing a report on the Russian troops fighting in Ukraine were shocked to discover that the parents of the Russian boys who were tricked into going to fight in Ukraine and who died there are only prepared to tell the truth about their dead children if they are dissatisfied with the handout they got from the Russian government. The activists keep trying to talk about the dead Russian soldiers but the soldiers’ family members insist on bringing the conversation back to handouts. More often than not, the only reason they agree to talk to the researchers is the hope that the researchers will also be giving handouts. When they discover that this is not the case, their interest in talking about their children disappears.