I have had the dubious honor of becoming one of the leads – or sales targets – for unscrupulous salesmen of the kind you see in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Whenever you publish anything, salespeople arrive in droves, trying to exploit your belief that you are an unrecognized genius. For about a month, I got an avalanche of phone calls (including at work) telling me that Hollywood and Netflix are desperate to buy the rights to “my story”, and all that’s needed is for me to pay “a small cataloguing fee” for world fame to arrive.

I’m about the worst possible mark for these poor salespeople because I have no delusions of creative grandeur or dreams of quick riches. But the salesmen didn’t know that, so they kept trying until finally I got placed on some black list of “deadbeats” and they disappeared. Their techniques are identical to the ones you see in the movie. Apparently, there hasn’t been much progress in sales tactics since the 1990s.

I understand not wanting to live up to stereotypes but there’s no need to act as a complete idiot to disprove the stereotype of a smart Jew b

I just watched a bizarre video of a Russian army recruiter explaining to a bunch of 18-year-olds that “war is love, war is a friend, war is the future.”

But the craziest thing in the video isn’t even what the recruiter says. It’s that the young people whom she’s trying to encourage to enlist are… get this… masked and sitting six feet away from each other.

If there were ever a group of people who needn’t worry about COVID…

Did you hear that China has officially expressed dismay that the US shot down its spy balloon over US territory? How did that make you feel? I mean, these bastards are completely shameless, right? They send a spy balloon and then pretend that you are in the wrong for shooting it down.

Congratulations, now you know exactly how Ukrainians have felt every day for the past 350 years.

Damnation on the spying gadgets which can’t even use the intel they collect.

We watched a documentary about GameStop because N finds the story fascinating. For my sins, the CEO of a pet food company that will remain unnamed was mentioned in the documentary.

As a result, the Internet now thinks I have a pet. Everywhere I go, I get commercials from that pet company. Then, other pet companies joined in. My internet searches, YouTube videos and social media are now barking, meowing and oinking up a storm.

And I still don’t have a pet.

We are on a journey of exploration among movies and documentaries about dog-eat-dog capitalism. Today we went with the true classic of the genre, Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s exactly the kind of movie I like. No special effects, no high-speed chases, no gimmicks. Only acting.

This movie was made long before wokeness, so it’s pure enjoyment. Every actor is a star, and it’s impossible to say who does a better job because everybody shines. The environment in a shady sales outfit is rendered perfectly. This is exactly how it works in real life, with the dreaded board where everybody’s sales tally daunts the room, with the terror of a dry streak where sales begin to evaporate. To me, it’s an employment from hell but the salesmen in the movie (and in real life) clearly dig it. It’s a curious world, and the movie does it justice.

As I watched Glengarry Glen Ross, I thanked heaven for having a less talkative husband than the men in it. He probably says fewer words in a year than one of these salesmen do in an hour of screentime they share with 7 other extremely verbose gentlemen.

It’s a brilliant movie, friends. Highly recommended.