This is how we do elegant dining. Stay tuned for a Soviet – style pig out on New Year’s.

Once again, I’m happy I’m nowhere near New York. It isn’t precisely cold where I am but I wore a sweater and a coat to go out today and had heating on in the car.

For the first time ever, I almost didn’t manage to park in front of the supermarket. I don’t know what it is everybody else is getting but I set out for some flour and finally managed to buy some. For two weeks, I’ve been trying to buy the blasted flour, but whenever I get to the store, somebody calls or emails or something happens to distract me and I end up buying sugar instead. I have so much sugar at home right now that it’s starting to look like a confectioner’s. And we don’t even have anybody here who eats white sugar.

A great Christmas gift from the US government: the US sanctions against Russia are expanded. Please remember that “sanctions against Russia” means “sanctions against Putin’s oligarch buddies that make it harder for them to engage in criminal activities.” 

Christmas is bringing out the inner degenerate in many people. Here is Juan Cole with a post titled “Would Syrian Refugee Baby Jesus be allowed to immigrate to the US?“

On the subject of Syrian refugees: it is no longer possible to have a conversation with a Canadian without them trying to manipulate you into some bizarre national identity affirmation game. I have already learned to avoid saying things like, “I’m seeing my doctor tomorrow” in front of Canadians because the response is always a didactic, “In Canada, medical care is FREE!!!” and then as an afterthought, “Oh, are you sick?”

Now I’m learning that the identity affirmation game has a fresh iteration. It goes as follows: a Canadian person interrupts whatever I’m saying with, “So. . . how many refugees is your state accepting? Because in Canada we welcome all refugees! It’s what it means to be Canadian!!! So wait, you were saying that your sister gave birth? Did you know that in Canada medical care is FREE!!!”

I love you, Canadians, but start getting over it because it’s annoying. Especially since I never come back at you with, “And how much taxes have you paid last year? Because here in the US. . .”

By the way, the game is most actively played by people who were not born in Canada. And that makes it even more weird because the idea of two foreigners exchanging these nationalistic slogans is way too bizarre.

My newborn nephew looks like an Inca warrior. Even when he sleeps, he has this resolute, serious look. My niece Klubnikis looked like this, too, when she was born.

These are Peruvian babies, in case people are wondering about the Inca connection.

Have you ever noticed that there has never been a massacre between atheists and agnostics. . .

Non-believers, we don’t murder anyone over religious disputes. We don’t murder people for their belief or their lack of belief.

That’s shockingly ignorant. Are people honestly unaware of the persecution and slaughter of religious people by atheists in the USSR? Nobody heard of the Soviet demolition of churches? The thousands of priests killed and starved to death in concentration camps? The killings of the faithful of all religions? Has anybody wondered why there were so few practitioners of any religion in the USSR? Was that an accident? Or a result of terror?

Human beings kill. Religious belief or lack thereof is just an excuse. And anybody who says “my religious, irreligious, anti-religious, etc. group is pure as driven snow while yours kills” is a dumbass.