The CIA opposed Vargas Llosa’s candidacy. “This fellow is going on and on about free markets, privatization, shock therapy,” they said. “And of course we’ll end up being blamed because people hear these words and immediately think of United States. We can’t afford being blamed for something else in Latin America.” 

This baby is something special. She just learned to take her dummy out of her mouth with her hand and put it back in. It is very hard and she struggles because both the mouth and the dummy are tiny but she’s persevering. I’m not helping because she needs to figure it out on her own.

Oh God, she just did it again. Wow. Four and a half months old.

In his autobiography, Mario Vargas Llosa tells of his failed presidential campaign of 1990. The poor fellow was desperate to talk about the economy in an indigent country ravaged by terrorism. Instead, he found himself in the midst of a religious war. All of a sudden, the Catholic Church decided to support the openly and proudly agnostic Llosa while the Evangelicals rallied against him.

Bishops were going on TV to praise Llosa and explain how his agnosticism was a sign of being even more Catholic than practicing Catholics. The Pope was trying to lure Llosa to visit him in the Vatican. Llosa’s supporters were plotting ways to make a wooden figure of Jesus during a Catholic procession open its mouth and say Llosa’s name. It was 1990, one could easily make Jesus speak with the help of a tape recorder. In the end, the still-stubbornly- agnostic Llosa was begging his comrades to stop blaspheming.

He lost the election to a fellow who disbanded the parliament, canceled future elections, and became a dictator. 

Because the hilarious and endearing magic of Latin American reality invariably rests on blood, corruption, and hopelessness. 

This is an email I just got from Hillary’s campaign. I guess we all know what this means. 

💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💖💖💖💝💝💝🌞☉🌜🎉🎊🎄🏆

Sorry, I just discovered all these emoticons and need time to get it out of my system.

I’m getting tired of hearing how people are supporting Trump out of “economic desperation”✋. Do you know any Trump supporters? Are they really that impoverished?Because the ones I know are anything but. 

My feeling is that the truly economically desperate in this country tend not to vote at all. And the folks who have the spare cash to buy a Trump baseball hat don’t count as desperate.

✋ This is a quote from today’s NY TIMES. 

Vine saw that I bought a solid food processor and 6-month outfits for Klara and decided it’s time for me to get pregnant again. So now it’s insistently offering me ovulation kits. It’s like, “Are you aware of how old you are, lady? Keep squeezing them out for there is no time to waste.”

I wish it had at least offered me some sexy underwear in between a breast pump and an ovulation kit.

Maybe I should agree to the kit because I’ve never experienced anything with better contraceptive qualities than these kits.

Since members of the British Parliament have complained about receiving several fundraising emails from Donald Trump, politicians in several other foreign countries have revealed that they’ve also been flooded with email requests for donations from Trump.

Forget the British Parliament, Australia and Iceland. What I need to know is: has Putin donated? Because money he doesn’t lack, and an opportunity to humiliate a potential US president in this way is something he’d pay very dearly for.

And hey, wasn’t one of Trump’s selling points as a candidate that he was rich and didn’t need to beg anybody for money and be in anybody’s pocket? Why is the whole country being humiliated like this while he trawls the world, begging for pennies and putting us in danger of losing power and prestige on the international arena?

Even the most brainwashed Russians are getting antsy. Yesterday, all they heard was that Turkey is evil, Turkish resorts are dangerous, Turkish tomatoes are rotten, and Turkish textiles are low-quality. For hours each day they listened to stories about evil Turkey, bad tomatoes, and dangerous resorts. 

And then today they are hearing that Turkey is great, tomatoes are tasty, textiles are chic, and resorts are super safe. This is too 1984 even for them. Russian Facebook is plastered with confused queries as to what one should really think about the tomatoes. Because deciding on one’s own if they taste right is clearly unthinkable. 

I’m almost feeling sorry for the poor freaks.

If you are planning on having diabetes, make sure you are rich. Otherwise, you are screwed and government officials will be happy to let you know just how much.

And this is how Russia fights terrorism. I’m sure Snowden fans will love it.

Russia’s secret services harass US diplomats around the world.

Is Airbnb turning into a scourge of peaceful owners and renters? Here is one disturbing example.

Rental detectives. Very disturbing.

Has upper middle class really grown so enormously?

The most powerful explosive bombs in the world apart from the nuclear bomb are being used against civilians right at this moment.

And this is yet another endearing feature of the fluid world. Creepy as hell, folks. A psychoanalyst would have a field day with this shit.

Remember Assange? He is still stuck at the Embassy of Ecuador. I wonder how come Putin didn’t want him.

Reflection is now in Google Playstore with a new cover! It will be so cool for Klara to read it one day because there are several more generations of Klaras in there.

Bernie is as immutable as ever. In today’s NY TIMES article he writes,

The median male worker in America today is making $726 less than he did in 1973, while the median female worker is making $1,154 less than she did in 2007.

Because women did not exist back in 1973. They appeared in 2007 with the sole purpose of proving some point about men.