I told N about the Colorado ruling.

“But why?” he asks.

“They claim it’s because of the “insurrection””, I explain.

“What insurrection?” asks N in absolute sincerity.

Imagine the happy, happy reality where you never had to hear about the “insurrection” and, most importantly, never heard the people you respect use the term seriously.

Nayib Bukele is the first good leader that Central America has known in forever, and he’s been bullied by the US for not being democratic enough.

But yes, we are giving one hell of a performance as a country, acting like a senile degenerate with a death wish. I actively avoid domestic news because they are relentlessly embarrassing.

This is a great country, with an extraordinary history, with an exceptional culture, with amazing accomplishments, with wonderful people. We just need to get out of this… funk and stop acting like bloody idjits. Everybody’s watching. This is embarrassing.

Speaking of fun Christmas pastimes, N’s company announced today that they’ve been acquired and the workers have to stay for a remote general meeting at the end of which they’ll discover who will be made redundant in “the restructuring”.

N’s job is safe but that was a cruel exercise.

Once again, Klara won the reading competition at her school. She beats every grade up to and including the eighth the second year in a row. But that’s not the surprising thing in this story. The literature professor’s kid reads, big whoop.

The reason why I’m writing about it is that she got a bag of prizes, one of which is a bottle of soda. These are supposed to be multicultural prizes, and the soda is Mexican. My kid had never as much as had a sip of soda in her life before this. What is this, learn to read and earn childhood diabetes as a reward?

Also, in terms of multicultural prizes, she already has multicultural prizes in the person of every single one of her relatives. Mexican soda and Brazilian chips have nothing on us.

On the positive side, she’s started on The Chronicles of Narnia. I missed that experience as a kid but I heard these books are a classic. Curiously, as much as she loves to read, she refuses even to consider reading on a Kindle. “A real book has PAGES, Mommy!” she says with a scandalized look when I suggest that it might be unnecessary to lug 5 thick volumes in her backpack wherever she goes. As if I didn’t lug my own hefty volumes, as well.

Are you completely ready to enjoy the living daylights out of the season?

I’m coughing, wheezing and wobbling but I’m starting to enjoy the season nonetheless.

Now contrast this with the way things are done in Spain. I contributed an article to a monographic issue because the editors asked me. They specifically asked me. And I did.

After receiving no news since May, I emailed them to ask for an update.

“Yes!” was the chirpy response. “We’ve had the results of your peer-review available since August. But we forgot to send them to you. Make changes and return the article to us by Thursday at the latest.”

Thursday in Spain is Wednesday here, so I have until the day after tomorrow. And I happen to be sick and unable to do intellectual work. I have no idea how I’ll do it but of course I’ll do it.

Obviously, I received no apology or “God, this is embarrassing.”

Another thing I want to mention in regards to my Ukrainian correspondents is their exceptional tactfulness. They only send me emails during my working hours. I never asked for this but every time a person calculates the time difference and proceeds on the basis of my convenience and not theirs.

When I contrast this approach with the entitled, rude tone of those Cali students I posted yesterday, we can immediately see a difference.

Folks, you’ve got to see this. This a random page from the proofs of my new Ukrainian book:

How pretty is this?

Very.

And so fast! I’ve never seen anybody work this incredibly fast. When the editor told me they’ll have the book out by the end of the year, I thought he was… embellishing. But no, these are very serious people.

I’m so psyched.

There was an attempted armed robbery at a store in town. The robbers were two 20-year-old dudes, one 18-year-old and one 12-year-old kid. A neighbor who was at the store during the robbery said she was shocked to see the gun-wielding 12-year-old because he’s so scrawny she thought he was 8.

Obviously, the dumb bastards are from out of town because the store they decided to hold up is right in front of the police station. They were apprehended immediately.

The robbers were Jewish.

No, not very believable, is it?

They were from India.

Not believable either, eh?

Greeks. They were immigrants from Greece.

Doesn’t work, does it?

It’s not even that he was disinvited. It’s the exceptionally rude and contemptuous tone of the letter that’s shocking. Americans don’t talk to each other like this in professional settings. These are students who are addressing a much older, very accomplished gentleman. It’s not normal that they speak to him in this pissy, hectoring tone.

Leaving aside the political aspect of the conflict altogether, this is a collapse of all norms of sociability. It’s the sociophobia that Spanish sociologist César Rendueles warned us about a decade ago. Adult people are incapable of exercising age-appropriate social skills and are unaware of how horrid they look.