The book I’m reading mentions that Nirvana was the voice of the generation that was young in the 1990s, that it expressed our way of being like nothing else.

So I Googled it and listened to a few songs. Now I’m offended on behalf of my generation. The music is soporific. The singer is ugly and scuzzy even for a rock star.

The author of the book and I had very different nineties.

The house is filled with happy shrieks of children, the smell of fresh laundry, and the aroma of a pie right out of the oven. Snow falls outside in large fluffy clumps. I made big progress on my article today. We got an extra turn at church again this week. A book I’ve been waiting for finally arrived straight from San Sebastián.

Winter is great.

Here’s the pie:

It’s actually a zapekanka, not pie. Tvorog, ryazhenka, some coconut flakes, a splash of milk, eggs, sugar, flour. Apples and pears.

Yep. And I’ve been warning about it since 2014.

Make a list of everything you get from the nation-state. Schools, policing, welfare (from which you benefit even if you’ve never gotten a government check), libraries, museums, national identity, national pride (from which you benefit even if your life is so opulent you never felt it), etc. It’s all gone.

Make a plan for how you will do without it. While these slowpokes are taking forever to figure it out, you can spare yourself the bother of hoping it will all magically reverse. And you can get a jump on them. It’s all about competition now. Make sure you win yours.

Imagine it’s five years later. February 13, 2026. Nothing changed. Masks, distancing, everything is closed, everybody is on Zoom, no schools for kids, no travel for you, etc.

Don’t tell me it’s impossible. A year ago, did you think it was possible? Did you have any inkling that it would all still continue a year later?

How old will you be in 5 years? Imagine you already are and you’ve spent not one but six years like this.

Will it be OK? Will you get angry? Six years total, a large chunk of your life. Eaten away under the guise of “two weeks to flatten the curve.” Will six years be enough? Will you be ready to stop then?

If so, then why wait? Let’s stop now. Remember, it ends when we realize it’s all (the operative word being “all”) completely ridiculous and stop taking it seriously. It ends when we decide it ends.

-6°F. Finally, the hour of my revenge against the folks who think +90°F is “beautiful weather” has arrived.

Ten degrees lower, and it will be completely perfect.

(Lower than -6, obviously. Not +90. At +90 nothing helps).