N left for Washington because he needs to renew his stupid Russian passport at the stupid Russian Embassy. He will back tomorrow but we are already exchanging endless phone calls and text messages and acting like lovesick teenagers.

I always feared I would never love anybody for real because nobody would be perfect enough but N is so perfect that I only fear death because it would mean I won’t be able to spend any more time with him.

There has been another explosion at a chemical factory in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. There is a storage of nuclear waste at the factory, which makes the explosion very disturbing and dangerous.

Donetsk is in the hands of terrorists, so the Ukrainian authorities are prevented from accessing the factory and assessing the levels of radioactivity.

The terrorists are drunk and high most of the time. They have been acting in increasingly erratic ways since Putin started giving indications that he’s abandoning them to their fate (until, at least, he is assured that the World Cup will not be moved from Russia.) The terrorists are getting antsy, shooting at each other and blowing things up.

This is a really ridiculous situation that is fraught with all kinds of danger.

N took pity on my battle against the invading hordes of Putinoid rabbits and built me a tall fence with a door that I can use to go inside and remove weeds:

“Sometimes, I’m really glad you are not Jewish,” I joked.

I gardened for 2,5  hours the day before yesterday and for an hour yesterday, and now my whole body hurts. Gardening accesses the muscle groups that the gym equipment just doesn’t reach. And I still have more weeding to do today.

I curse the day when I agreed to write an article for the volume on gendered spaces. This is the most theoretically thin area of knowledge I have ever encountered.

For instance, a volume on gender and urban studies that I’m reading right now informed me that women are forced to choose the kind of hobbies that allow them to be flexible enough to care for their children. And this is why  so many women play bingo.

I kind of thought that bingo was a pastime people enjoyed when they were well past the age of child-bearing. I mean, how many women with small children do you know how belong to a bingo club? There is a bingo place close to where I live and I am fairly sure that even the most amazing advances of modern medicine are not likely to turn these bingo players into parents (or even grandparents, to be honest) of small children.  

[Millennials]  want something “relational and experiential, oriented toward being present to the spiritual based in the self, the other and the world instead of in structures of belief, belonging and behaving associated with traditional religions.”

Wow, Millennials are crazy smart. I don’t even understand this sentence, and they not only get it but actually want whatever is described here.

Good news! “In the October 2014 Heartland Monitor, just 38 percent of adults said they expected their finances to improve over the next year. That rose to 44 percent in the February 2015 poll, and inched up further to 47 percent in the latest survey. . . The share of adults expecting their finances to improve over the next year has increased 7 percentage points among whites, 10 points among nonwhites.” And before you start rolling your eyes as usual, please remember that if a Republican president achieved this kind of thing (which never happens, as we all know), his base would know how to promote and celebrate it and not yes-but it to death.

The owner of a “relentlessly gay” yard is asked to make it less gay by a “Christian” neighbor.

Idiots abound: “If the United States arms Ukraine—and announces that the policy is an explicit effort to kill more Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine—its impact on Russian public opinion is likely to be the opposite of what advocates say they intend. Indeed, it could transform the war there from a popular but essentially optional effort to help separatist forces and civilians in eastern Ukraine into a necessary conflict against a hostile American proxy.” Of course, Russians already believe that they are fighting against Americans in Ukraine and Putin has been telling them this for months. But hey, when did ignorance ever prevent any blabberer from blabing?

“Most of us in higher education would give vital organs to never again hear a student say “I’m just not a math person.” Nobody is. Math is a set of skills and a way of thinking, and it can be developed through sustained practice. But that means accepting the possibility of having to work hard to get it. It means having faith that not getting it the first time doesn’t mean that you never will.” Hear, hear!

“We don’t need another president who merely holds the top spot among the pampered elites of Washington,” said Jeb Bush in his speech. Seriously, what makes a guy say something that opens him so wide for ridicule?

“Sometimes I wonder if people have actually read the Bible they claim to be following. Jesus got angry—a lot. Sometimes getting angry is the only right thing to do! There are things in this world that should make us all very angry indeed.” Very true.

A weird author weirdly auto-censors.

Gymnasts in burqas.

And Quebec continues doing weird things. Of course, the province is bursting at the seams with money, so I guess its officials believe they can afford to engage in stupid nitpicking.

And our favorite brainiac Scott Walker has antagonized the UK’s David Cameron. This is the kind of blabby fool that some people see as our president. Seriously, people.

In the meanwhile, the UK is busily creating even more special snowflakes: “Homework could be abolished at one of Britain’s leading independent schools as part of reforms to stem an “epidemic” of teenage mental illness.”

Laura Kipnis is still defending herself from weird allegations by weird people.

Montreal city workers water shrubs while it rains. Who cares about the critical depletion of the planet’s aquifers when there is a bureaucratic quota to fulfill?

[Spanish] Kids who go to daycare before the age of 3, do significantly better in school.

“A majority of Germans (58 percent), French (53 percent) and Italians (51 percent) say their country should not use military force to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia, the survey found. At the same time, the survey found that 68 percent of Europeans were confident that the United States would come to their aid should the need arise.” I don’t even know what to say about this show of complete loserdom. Americans have spoiled Western Europeans rotten and it has got to stop.

Have you heard about bibliotherapy? It’s a cute, if probably quite useless, concept.

“We are told that sex — excuse me, that sex with cis men — is a scarce commodity that we must work very, very hard to earn.” Really??? Sex is hard to get for women? Where? In what society? Jeez, where do these bizarre people even come from? I can’t even imagine what it would look like for a woman to “work hard to earn sex.”

Mothers are all different: “A mother was unhappy with the $3 knit crop top her daughter purchased on Amazon, and put the garment on the family cat instead.” My mother actually forced me into a much, much, MUCH more revealing knit piece that you can see at the link causing me all kinds of trauma.