My 7-year-old chose this book at the Scholastic book fair held at her private Christian school:

What do you think the book is about? A girl and her pet kitty?

Nah, that would not be sufficiently ideological. The book is about a “non-binary” child who is trying to come out about her “pronouns” to her mom who is distracted by her new lesbian girlfriend.

I mean, you could argue that the cover does send a message about pussies.

Back in the USSR, we had this joke about a man turning on the TV and seeing Brezhnev. So he switches over to another channel and again sees Brezhnev. He switches over to the third and last channel (there were only three channels at best), and he again sees Brezhnev, who tells him menacingly, “Stop switching over, or else!” This is exactly like that. You can never relax and enjoy a cute story about pet kitties. Not even when you are 7 do you get a break from being indoctrinated, hectored and brainwashed every second of every day.

I swear to God, there was never an ounce of negative feeling in me towards the word “lesbian.” But right now there is because anything that is rammed down your throat with a hammer is bound to become unpleasant to you.

Inspiration and motivation are neurotic states sought by masochists to force themselves into unwanted activities.

More from Lea Ypi:

I received presents from my parents and we went to eat ice cream by the beach and to visit the funfair. On that occasion, they also gave me a yearly subscription to several children’s magazines. It was through these magazines that I learned about the fate of other children around the world. The magazine Little Stars was for children from six to eight years old, and on Children’s Day it ran a cartoon called “Our 1 June and Theirs.” On one side there was a fat capitalist wearing a fat top hat buying ice cream for his fat son, and on the floor next to the shop’s entrance two ragged children and a caption: “1 June never comes for us.” On the other side, there were Socialist flags, happy children carrying flowers and presents, holding their parents’ hands, waiting to buy ice cream in front of a shop. “We love 1 June,” their caption read.

Lea Ypi, Free

I was also subscribed to a bunch of magazines as a kid. People were forced to get magazine subscriptions at work. There were literary ones, women’s magazines, and children’s magazines. I loved them all. Yes, they were ideological and preachy, but have you seen Teen Vogue?

In her memoir about life in Albania on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, Lea Ypi gives this description of a family suddenly discovering the concept of commercials:

Whenever my father caught an advert on TV Skopje, especially if it was an advert for personal hygiene, he would immediately shout, “Reklama! Reklama!” My mother and grandmother would drop whatever they were doing in the kitchen and sprint to the living room to catch the last sight of a beautiful woman with a delightful smile on her face who showed you how to wash your hands. If they were held up for a while and arrived when the adverts were over, my father would declare apologetically, “It’s not my fault—I called you, you came late!” and this usually marked the beginning of an argument about how they were late because he never helped with anything around the house.

Lea Ypi, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History

This sounded very familiar. I remember the time when we first started seeing commercials on TV at the end of the Soviet regime. We loved them more than the regular TV offerings. Often we watched a program solely for the commercials. We didn’t really understand their purpose (and frequently the companies paying for them didn’t either) but they were mesmerizing. The life depicted in them was incomprehensible but very attractive.

I’ve felt sad that there have been no comments on the blog for 2 days. Turns out there have been tons of comments but the app decided not to show them to me. I apologize and will start answering immediately.

I have a strong suspicion that Murdoch fired Tucker Carlson because Trump asked him to. Trump can’t stand disloyalty, and Tucker’s text messages where he mocks and expresses deep contempt for Trump must have been humiliating.

Murdoch must want to get into Trump’s good graces because Trump has been going around calling him a RINO globalist.

The rest of the explanations offered by fantasists at left-wing outlets all sound stupid.

The main philosophical struggle of our times is between two philosophical systems.

One of them is based on the idea that there is an objective reality that exists outside of us. For the religious, it’s God’s law. For the secular, it’s the natural order. Within this conceptual system, human beings must understand this objective reality to the best of their ability and engage with it optimally on the basis of that knowledge. Humans have free will but it’s limited by objective circumstances outside of our control.

The second philosophical system is based on the idea that there is no objective reality outside of human perception. Perception is reality. Everybody has their own truth. Every individual is a law onto himself. “First there was the Word, and the Word was from God, and that God is every human being” is the summary of this system of thought.

We are caught between these battling philosophies of existence. They are completely incompatible because in one of them the source of truth and creation lies outside of our minds and in the other it lies within.

– household chores become enjoyable

– one of the activities you fantasize about doing in bed is sleeping

– when you see people gossiping about you, you can’t be bothered to wonder why

– when you say “no” to a request, you feel no need to offer an excuse or an explanation

– late nights have consequences

– characters in favorite movies suddenly begin to look very young

– it feels weird when strangers or young people address you by your first name

– the number of things you feel like you have to when you don’t want to do dramatically diminishes

– embarrassment becomes a long-forgotten experience

– young people start asking you for advice about their love lives

I experienced all this since last week, and I know feel thoroughly middle-aged.

Every psychoanalyst in North America just had a 3-hour-long orgasm with this movie. It’s really, really good, folks, but don’t watch it if you want to have a good time or enjoy yourself.

This is a movie about unbearable affects. Every single one of them is up there on the screen. If you are trying to discover your own like we discussed a while ago, watch the film, and you’ll have a pretty full list. The end result is intense, extremely funny in a disturbing sort of way, and very disgusting.

Look at all the unbearable affects listed in the movie and remember that this is the kind of stuff that lives deep inside your mind. The next time you feel like berating yourself for being lazy, disorganized, ineffective, or anything else that’s imperfect consider that this is the kind of shit that assaults you daily from the inside and be happy that you are managing anything at all.

Very good movie.

Work has been so peopley that I decided to go see a 3-hour horror movie. Sitting silently in the dark with nobody looking at me or expecting conversation sounds like a very attractive proposition.

However, the theater is so hellishly hot that I feel like the horror has started already.