This is what I don’t get. American celebrities rent themselves out to Russian oligarchs to come to their parties and serve as exotic poodles that the rich guests stare at. Yes, they get paid for it but aren’t they rich enough already? Why would somebody like Demi Moore, for instance, demean herself like this for a few bucks?

I’m not talking about B-list starlets like Brittany Murphy who overdosed at a Russian oligarch’s party and died as a result*. Or Mila Jovovich, who rents herself out for really sad, paltry sums to go to drunken parties organized by these oligarchs. These characters don’t have a choice but to trawl parties in hopes of a payout. But the truly famous ones, how come they don’t believe it makes sense to preserve their dignity intact and refuse this sort of jobs? It’s humiliating as shit to have bored rich ladies and gentlemen gawp at you, point their fingers and laugh, like you are a freak. Or is nothing humiliating if you are getting paid?

I don’t get this.

* Make sure you look at the Wikipedia entry about Murphy and the causes of her death. It’s beyond ridiculous.

To thank you for being great readers, I have organized our very first blog giveaway. For those of you who like Panera or know somebody who likes it, this giveaway will randomly give out a $25 gift card.

Follow the link and enter the sweepstakes. The results will be known in 3 days.

Unfortunately, it’s only available for US residents for now. Let’s see how it goes and if it works, there will be more giveaways in the future.

Another giveaway will be organized soon for international readers. International readers, what would you like to see in the giveaway? It has to be something I can give you over the Internet. Will an Amazon gift card work?

I’ll leave this post at the top of the page for the moment.

P.S. Since there are already 776 entries in the giveaway, I removed the post’s stickiness.

For the first time in years, N and I have a chance to go to the movies. What should we see, Wonder Woman or Beatriz is at Dinner? 

I’d like to see All Eyez on Me about Tupac but the times don’t work for us at all. 

And another cutesy baby story. Klara is very excited about her new skill of identifying and naming objects and phenomena. 

Yesterday, she fell and scraped her knee. Of course, she started crying, and I picked her up, and she was crying, and then suddenly a neighbor turned on his lawnmower. Immediately, Klara interrupted the crying and announced, “Mower!” She kept repeating the word “mower” for the next 5 minutes, having completely forgotten all about the scrape. 

All of these inexplicable things and loud noises that used to scare her lose their capacity to terrify once she can name them. Language is truly an awe-inspiring thing.

When she woke up today, Klara started demanding that I wash her toes. I wasn’t going to do it because she’d been sleeping, and the toes were completely clean. 

She kept repeating, “Toes! Wash water! Wash! Water!” as I dressed her. 

Once she realized I wasn’t in any hurry to wash her toes, Klara thought for a second and said, “Please!” So of course I washed them. 

I honestly had no idea such little kids could communicate so well. 

This glowing belief in one’s own extraordinary virtue and the obsession with denouncing the sinful nature of others that you can see in the article linked in the previous post are the scariest things I know. 

I remember watching George W. Bush on TV and feeling terrified of the luminous conviction in his own goodness that seemed immune to reason or logic. A few months later, he started bombing Iraq.

Or these senators who want to cut Medicaid. They are convinced that nothing like poverty and indigent illness could have happened to them because they know how to live correctly, they are too good for this to happen to them. 

The political flavor these fanatics happen to have at any given time is irrelevant. At the core of their being lies a narcissistic wound that requires that spectacles of punishing the sinful and rewarding the righteous be constantly staged.

This piece was written by the kind of academic I am ashamed to share a profession with. The holier-than-thou earnestness is so Soviet in tone that it feels like I’m at a 1983 meeting of a Komsomol cell. What a disgrace. 

An Oklahoma doctor is facing five counts of second-degree murder charges following the opioid overdose deaths of her patients.

Finally! If only there existed at least a tiny little chance that the companies that engaged in blatant false marketing of opioids could be brought to trial. I’d be a happy, happy person if I got to see that. I once again recommend Dreamland by Sam Quinones for a brilliant investigative report on these vicious criminals. 

Klara said her first sentence yesterday. She was working at her easel and I heard her say quietly to herself, “Happy baby, happy baby.” This was super cute. 

Once a cause wins a resounding victory, should it pack up and go home or keep looking for things to fight for?

I’m thinking the former because if not, you start seeing Pride get degraded all the way to Jew-bashing and. . . I don’t even know how to describe this shit. See for yourself. 

Make sure to scroll all the way to the end for a photo that will restore your faith in humanity after the insanity quoted in the post.