Turns out that Trump’s statement that Mexicans are rapists was a clear case of projection. Trump is a rapist himself. We’ve got ourselves some interesting candidates. A rapist, a kindergarten jihadi, and a flabby sibling rival. 

On Dr. Phil I saw this sixtyish, paunchy, balding, mumbly, piss – poor fellow with a record and a history of being a victim of scams who’s absolutely convinced that a beautiful, busty, 20 – year-old multimillionaire is passionately in love with him.

You’ll say Dr Phil chooses pathological people for the show on purpose but I met crowds of such guys in my life. They exist, and they are extremely numerous. This is the male quality I despise and detest: a profound conviction that no matter how ugly, insignificant, unsuccessful and pathetic he is, every beautiful, brilliant and successful woman on the planet will perceive his interest in her as the greatest gift from God. They go through life, accumulating rejections, lonely and unwanted, yet this conviction is unbroken.

Yes, not all men. But so many. So scarily many. And the more patriarchal their country of origin, the more likely they are to be this way. Western European men under the age of 50 are rarely this way. Latin American men – very often, with few exceptions that I’ve seen. Eastern European – very often. Middle Eastern – pretty much always. Of course, educated, well-read, naturally brainy men from any culture manage to avoid this mindset but they are not in the majority on this planet.

This sense of entitlement does not stem from men’s high self-esteem. When I see a piece of sausage I crave (which is, of course, every piece of sausage in the world), it does not occur to me to wonder if the sausage wants to be eaten by me or if it has a better candidate in mind. The possibility that the sausage can want to have any input on its fate is ludicrous because I don’t perceive the sausage as a sentient being. Even the most insecure person on the planet doesn’t wonder about sausage ‘ s feelings and expectations.

That’s how it is with these men. The idea that women are sentient beings with desires and preferences never visits them. And rejections don’t hurt. If an iPad or a GPS refuses to function properly, I can feel angry but not rejected, humiliated or hurt (unless I have very specific psychological problems that are not under discussion here.)

Obviously, these men have zero chance of establishing satisfying connections with women. They end up having to buy, force, and bully women into being around them.  They have to sublimate their need for emotional connections into homosocial pursuits, aggression, violence, etc.

Of course, Hillary’s disapproval ratings have soared. She made a horrible impression during that CNN interview and she can’t manage to look even remotely sincere to save her life.

Voters mostly don’t understand or care to understand what politicians are saying. They react to a visual and not to an audio. Trump looks sincere. Hillary looks fake. I understand she can’t summon charisma out of nowhere but she’s got to be working with psychologists who can teach her how not to annoy people.

The good news is that Jeb comes off as flabby, dithering, weak, and also insincere. At least, when his brother talked, you could see that he actually really believed the idiocies he was spouting. Jeb, on the other hand, doesn’t sound like he believes what he’s saying.

Visiting breakfast places at 6 am is a very funny experience. The staff treats one with the care and attention reserved for the terminally ill and apologizes profusely for everything.

It must be extremely hard to work with people early in the morning. That’s the time when you see everybody’s worst side. I once woke N up at 4:45 am for an early flight and discovered the side of him I never want to see again.

After the debacle of the sad movie about a gay guy who killed himself (sorry, I suck at titles), N has been refusing to go to the movies.

To lure him into a theater, I chose what I thought would be the safest, completely non-traumatic genre of romcom. I never watch this kind of movie, so I thought it would be fun to explore something that’s new to me and that wouldn’t make N feel sad.

We made plans to go to Trainwreck which sounded like an innocuous little flick. Who could have known that it would prove so deeply controversial that a mass murderer would choose it as a site of a killing spree in a town where I almost went to work instead of my current place?

And now N doesn’t sound that interested in going.

Everybody is making fun of the people who’ve been investing their money in gold. Their losses, however, are puny compared with those of Russia. Putin’s obsession with investing the country’s cash reserves in gold has cost Russia about 15 billion dollars.

So. Guess who’s going to Florida for 15 nights?

Since this will be such a long stay, we got a place that’s something between a condo and a hotel. It isn’t Airbnb because I would never get over betraying the working class both with Uber and Airbnb in the same month. But it’s a new model for us.

We will stay on the beach and do nothing else whatsoever. N and I both love very passive vacations where we lazily stroll from the beach to a restaurant and back.

In the UK, there seems to be a great interest in travel writing. There are tables showcasing travel literature (and not only from today but also dating back to the 1950s, 1960s, etc) in every book store. And these are fascinating books by talented authors. Not the Susan Gilbert type of pablum but good, solid writing. I never considered myself a fan of this genre but I couldn’t help getting glued to these displays in Oxford and London.

In the US we don’t seem to have much interest in travel writing. Aside from the nauseating Eat, Pray, Love, which wasn’t really about traveling, nobody seems to know any books belonging to the genre. And there are definitely no special displays in bookstores.

And to those who look at Trump’s buffoonery and feel like sighing “O tempora, o mores”, I have this little reminder:

Many of the people who are fighting on the Russian side in Ukraine are the same protesters who came out into the streets in 2011-2012 to protest against Putin and his falsified elections. This might seem illogical but it isn’t. 

I remember reading the reports from those protests in Russia and laughing so much I had tears pouring down my face. One protester after another would write on their Facebook wall, Twitter or blog: “After the protest, we went out to a restaurant to celebrate.” This sounded so funny because Ukrainians don’t leave the site of a protest until they get what they came for. I can’t imagine a Ukrainian who’d go out to celebrate a protest that lasted 2 hours and achieved nothing. Of course, the Russian protests were a failure because people congratulated themselves so much for simply attending and never actually did anything beyond that.

The former Russian dissidents of the 2011-2012 know that they messed up royally and ended up strengthening the Putin regime. Accepting and supporting with weapons in their hands that very regime while trying to kill the pesky Ukrainians who are so much better at political protests is a way of making themselves feel better about the resounding defeat they experienced 3 years ago.