I’m not sure if it refers to “men” or actual men, and if it’s actual men, then how do they prove they are connected to each particular abortion? I’m also not sure why they need 12 weeks. Is an abortion now officially accepted as such a tragedy that everybody involved spends months in recovery? Or is it a great feat that needs to be rewarded with a paid vacation?

The scariest part is that people who live in Quebec don’t know that daily deaths are in single digits.

The information comes up on Google with a simple search.

But they don’t search.

All they know is that the TV told them there are “13,000 cases.” What does that mean in terms of hospitalizations or symptoms? Nobody asks because they haven’t been told to ask.

I must have lived my life incorrectly this whole time because I swear to God and every saint that I had absolutely no idea people were capable of such sheepish behavior. They can’t even be assed to google it! It’s fucking creepy.

“We have so many cases!” they bleat. “13,000 cases!”

“How many deaths?” I ask.

“I don’t know but it’s A LOT.”

“It’s 9 today.”

“Oh, well. I don’t know about that. I’m not good with numbers. But it’s really bad!”

We are two years in, folks. And these gigantic doofuses haven’t even learned to Google for themselves.

The number of people who died with COVID in Quebec yesterday is 9. In response to this plague of Biblical proportions, the provincial government declared a lockdown and moved schools online until January 17.

The strength and painfulness of COVID restrictions in a given area depends on how strong the welfare state there is. More welfare means greater COVID restrictions. It’s easy to see why that is. People of Quebec are very attached to their extremely robust welfare. It will be hard to make them relinquish it. So they need to be disciplined harder, beaten down more severely.

I’m superstitious and like to close out the year with a really high-quality read because I’m afraid of jinxing the next reading year if I choose something crappy or even of middling quality.

My rule of thumb is that if I’m going to be reading in English, the book must be at least 20 years old. This dramatically increases its chances of not being crap. If it’s Latin American, it should be published after 1980. If it’s in Russian, it should be less than 10 years old.

I’m very OCD and weird about my reading. However, these rules are not useless. I have found a wonderful novel in English that I hope to finish tomorrow and share a review.

It’s good that my husband and I don’t both work from home because I discovered today that he sets himself a timer to keep his lunch break under 15 minutes. The concept of keeping a break under anything is so alien to me that I’d rather not know about this at all.

In other news, I’ve been cooking our New Year’s dinner, which is a multi-day affair, especially since we will be having company. As usual, I’m doing a typical Soviet menu. Soviet New Year’s food was a pretext for people to eat as much mayonnaise as possible but I’m out of luck because local Russian-speakers wiped out the Global Foods Store, leaving none of the familiar Soviet stuff. No mayonnaise, no Soviet-style pickles. A single can of peas (which are vastly superior to whatever passes for canned peas in North America) that I snapped up. No beets! It’s not New Year’s without at least two beet dishes.

By the way, in the last 10 years, in Montreal caviar at the same Russian store went from $35 a kilo to $130 a kilo. In St Louis, the price increase has been a little less steep but comparable.

The authorities of Quebec are conducting a multi-year experiment to find out if it’s possible to get the people of Quebec to grow some dignity and not be patient, submissive little bitches. For now, the experiment is showing that no, it’s not possible.

Let’s give it 4-5 more years as everybody else lives a normal life and shares stories about Quebec at a restaurant over a meal with friends.