Yes, book notes! I managed to read something. This is good.

My initial search for contemporary Ukrainian literature worthy of the name produced no results but I didn’t give up and consulted a specialist. The specialist (also known as Dad) gave me a list of titles, and I’m happy to report that, apparently, the problem wasn’t with the literature but with the publishing industry. The combination of weird noms de plume, horrendously written promotional blurbs, off-putting titles, and vulgar cover art conceal wonderful books.

Take Luko Dashvar’s Milk with Blood. “Luko’s” name is actually Iryna Chernova. A perfectly normal name that sounds nothing like the mildly obscene pen name. Talking about obscene, I will spare you from having to see the cover art of this novel. Suffice it to say that I’d be embarrassed if anybody saw me holding the book. And I don’t embarrass easily. And the title? Oh, lordy.

But the novel itself is excellent. Very Ukrainian, very intense. The female protagonist is what I’ve been looking for in a character for years. Strong, stubborn, very complicated, and not given to clucking like a headless chicken about her insecurities.

I don’t think it will ever be translated because half of the joy of the novel is in the language. But let me tell you, the story is excellent. It’s hard to surprise me with a plot anymore but this one. . . came completely out of left field. World War II is mentioned, and most of the action happens in the USSR. These two things are enough to put me right off a book. But “Luko” (brrr, that pen name) writes about them in a way that does not annoy me.

I will proceed down the list, squinting at the cover art because it does the books no favors.

Obviously, this is a very minor inconvenience but I’m speaking at an in-person conference on March 25 and I’ll have to say the word “Mariupol” several times. Because that’s where the action in the novel I’m analyzing takes place. (Yes, a Spanish novel set in Mariupol, Ukraine. How was I supposed to know what was going to happen to Mariupol when I proposed the talk months ago?) I can’t say “Mariupol” without bawling. I know that it’s stupid to complain about something like this. But I’m not looking forward to making a spectacle of myself at the conference.

I also have a student doing a research paper on this novel and now I can’t grade it. I see “Mariupol” on a page, and then I don’t see anything else.

The photos of heavily pregnant women and moms with newborns trying to evacuate are tragic.

Minimal advancement, my ass.

Here’s another example of how easy it is to manipulate people. Apparently, the MSM massively posted a couple of old photos from Ukraine. One is of Zelensky in uniform from last April and another of Ukrainian children greeting troops from 2014. Why not use more recent photos, I don’t know. Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe stupidity. Maybe something else.

Immediately, internet sleuths discovered that the photos are old. As if there were any shortage of new ones but OK.

“We are being manipulated!” they wail. “Ukrainians are manipulating us!”

Yes, you are being manipulated. But not by Ukrainians. In Ukraine, everybody has known these images for a long time and knows what they are about. You are being manipulated by your own media and are reacting exactly how they want.

To give an example of how the media manipulate people, I’ll briefly discuss the CNN report on Ukraine I saw yesterday. Mind you, it was a single report, not two different programs. So you can’t say that two different talking heads were offering two different perspectives.

The report insistently transmitted two contradictory messages:

1. Situation in Ukraine is dire and urgent help is needed.

2. Russian troops have only managed to achieve “a minimal advancement” into Ukrainian territory.

What is a regular person supposed to think when hearing this contradictory message? “There’s something fishy going on. I can’t be bothered to unravel this mess.” Which is exactly the goal that the CNN is trying to achieve.

If the CNN said openly “don’t care about Ukraine,” many people would be prompted to care just out of the spirit of contradiction. With this primitive manipulation tactic, they achieve the goal much more easily.

By the way, the part of the programming that is a lie is point 2 about “minimal advancement.”

Stay alert and assume that what they are trying to say is the opposite of what they are actually saying.

To distract myself from everything bad, I enrolled in an online course on the contemporary political novel in Spain. The course is 2 hours a week for 3 months. What attracts me to the course is that in a reading list of 22 authors I only know two. You’d think it’s impossible to find Spanish authors I don’t know but yes, it is. This isn’t my kind of literature (too postmodern) but I want to expand my horizons.

The course starts in early April, so now I need to plough through the reading list. I’m actually really excited about this. I loved being a student and now I can briefly go back to being one. I used to be a mega pest as a student. Let’s see if time has taught me anything.

It’s also cute to observe the starry-eyed gullibility of people who should really know better.

“Biden says the US will stop buying Russian oil!”

“And you believe him because. . . why, exactly? Because he’s been so honest about everything else?”

“But he said so!”

Ah, well, in that case.

Immediately, the Biden administration declared it will be buying oil from Venezuela. Venezuela destroyed its oil capacity years ago under the orders from Russia. “Buying from Venezuela” means buying from Russia through the backdoor.

But you go right along. Continue believing that the same politicians and the same media who lied to you for years about everything else are now all of a sudden completely honest and are sincerely helping Ukraine.

Because they say so. And it must be true if they do.

What’s really funny is that the right-wing position on Ukraine is identical to what the left-wing position was in 2014. Right-wingers unearth the hoariest gossip from the NYTimes and the NPR circa 2013-14 and present it as their own insight. Nazis in the Ukrainian army, the civil war in Ukraine, there is no invasion, the CIA organized the 2013 revolution, etc. Even the weird obsession with Victoria Nuland has once again reared its ugly head but this time on the right.

In 2014 I heard this silliness from the left, and now I’m hearing it from the right. You’d think they might remember whose playbook it is to call the people you don’t like Nazis and fascists. Forget 2014, this happened in Canada just a few weeks ago. The memory should be fresh. But no, if the left is running around and screaming “Nazis!”, we should, too. What’s next, criticizing Ukrainians for being anti-BLM and ‘transphobic’? Give it a few weeks, and we’ll see Tucker rant about racist Ukrainians. The right in Spain is already doing it.

This is the reason why the left always defines the narrative. The right can’t be bothered to create its own and always poutily tags in the rear. “You racist!” “No, you racist! I can be a better you than you possibly can.”

In other news, energy to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has been cut. Reactors can’t cool if there’s no power.

Today we went out to celebrate the International Women’s Day which is a big holiday in our culture. Of course, at the restaurant there were TVs on every wall, and I was stuck right in front of the CNN coverage of the war in Ukraine, which didn’t do any wonders for my digestion.

This was the first time I saw any US coverage of the war, and all I have to say is, people, I beg you, don’t blame Ukrainians for the failings of your news channels. The MSM were garbage long before the invasion. This isn’t on Ukraine.

I’m glad, at least, that I can get news from directly on the ground and report them here on the blog.

It’s pretty unbelievable that, with all the resources it has, journalism in the US is such exceptional garbage.

Russia doesn’t want to confess the real numbers of its soldiers who died in the war. So how to explain the high death count?

Of course, they blame it on COVID and COVID-related heart disease. Everybody’s favorite excuse for an inconvenient death count. An unexpected wave of COVID is an excuse for another lockdown. What’s not to like?