Folks, wouldn’t it be great to see a Clinton / Carson race? This would be such a gift for Hillary.

These toy hedgehogs have been banned in Russia because authorities decided they were created on purpose to pervert Russian children. The representatives of the company selling the hedgehogs tried to explain that the offending parts of the hedgehogs were supposed to be bellybuttons and not whatever the authorities suspected them to be.

The authorities, however, said it was clear that hedgehogs were all female, which made the situation very suspicious.

Yes, it’s all for real.

Lithuania (one of the Baltic States) is eager to accept refugees but refugees are turning a cold shoulder to this small yet pretty European country.

Lithuania’s offer of welcoming refugees is sincere given that the country’s young people are emigrating at such a fast clip that there are fears there might eventually not be any Lithuania at all. Refugees here will be not a burden but valued contributors.

Lithuania has been working hard to make itself more attractive to migrants, and I hope the efforts pay off. I’ve been to Lithuania, and it’s a very nice place. Beautiful nature, great architecture, good health care, passable food. It suffers a bit from uniformity and insularity but that’s precisely what refugees can help turn around.

Folks, I’m at the gym and I just caught a glimpse of a TV report featuring a crazed cop assaulting a girl in a classroom in a really brutal way.

Does anybody have a link about what happened?

What is this, fucking Russia?

A health care practitioner approached me to extol the virtues of flu shots. In her pitch, she concentrated on “young girls” who “benefit enormously from flu shots” and suffer more than anybody else from bad cases of flu. I had no idea what all this yammering about young girls had to do with me, so I left.

Only now, several hours later, did I realize that “the young girls” were a way of flattering me in order to attract me to the idea of a flu shot. And I, with my literal brain, thought the woman was weird or confused me with someone who knew many young girls.

I now want to send my husband into that pharmacy to see if the lady will approach him with a story about young boys. Knowing N, he will be freaked out.

Few experiences are sadder than those of a Ukrainian who arrives at a Ukrainian food store located at an hour’s drive from her house and realizes that she left her wallet at home.

All this food – so near, yet so far away. Oh, the pain, oh, the cruel disappointment.

A Syrian refugee on the border between Slovenia and Austria says, “This is a war between Russia and the US. And we are the ones suffering. I lost 9 people from my family. This is wrong!”

Can we listen to the Syrian refugee instead of Kissinger, Carter, and every dumbass journalist who is chirping on the subject? Seriously, maybe it makes sense to hire a Syrian to write about Syria, a Ukrainian to write about Ukraine, etc. Otherwise, we get the kind of narcissistic, self-centered, projection – ridden analysis that keeps driving this country’s foreign policy into the ground.

Products that have been salted, cured, or otherwise processed to enhance flavor are “carcinogenic to humans,” the Paris-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found in its report, published in the Lancet Oncology. That puts processed meat in the Group 1 carcinogenic category alongside substances like tobacco, alcohol, and plutonium. And non-processed fresh meats like beef, pork, and lamb, among others, are “probably carcinogenic to humans,” the agency said.

The solution seems to be either to stop eating altogether or to just inject some polonium and be done with the whole thing already.

I’m trying to come up with things that are still OK to eat, and for now my list has one item: lettuce. Everything else will cause immediate painful death, it seems.

We also know that the main criticism against Hillary is that her positions change with the polls, and that she is not a person of substance. I do not agree with that completely, but I would be lying if I did not admit that it was reason for concern.

People are freaks. This is the best thing about Hillary, and they are whining about it. 

The last thing a politician needs to have is opinions of her or his own. A politician’s job is to promote the voters’ beliefs. The job description doesn’t involve foisting one’s own substance on the people whose interests you are supposed to represent. If you go into politics, remove all of your substance and fill the resulting void with the wishes of the voters. 

Do those who moan about Hillary’s willingness to change her opinions in order to please the voters prefer politicians who know that an overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want the government to shut down, do want stricter gun regulations, do want abortion rights, and do want higher taxes for the very rich, yet advocate for the exact opposite because of their stupid, redundant, and needless principles? 

I mean, if I support a politician, s/he better stick all those personal preferences up his or her anal cavity and represent me. Because that’s the whole point of representative democracy. 

I’m very glad I read The Story of a New Name, the second book in the writer’s Neapolitan tetralogy. I wasn’t that much into the first book in the series but that was because I’ve read too many Bildungsromane and am now allergic to the genre. Besides, these novels are supposed to be read as one big work of literature and not 4 separate books. So I take it all back, the books are great, they deserve to be read immediately.

People, seriously, you all need to go read these books right now because they are the literary sensation of the decade. Ferrante is constantly compared to Jane Austen but these writers couldn’t be more different. Ferrante’s protagonists, Elena and Lila, are trying to escape the degradation, the poverty, the intellectual stupor, the beatings, the sexual violence of their miserable neighborhood in Naples. These are – FINALLY!!! – female protagonists who are complex, profound human beings and not whining princesses in search for a substitute Daddy who will adopt them and protect them from existing.

I can’t remember when was the last time I found an interesting female protagonist, and here you have two! And they are different! Go read the novels! This is real world, real people, real situations, and not some sci-fi fantasy fairy-tale about superpowers and magic kingdoms.