Harold L Daniels is an author of psychological thrillers from the 1950s. I don’t even remember how I ended up with a copy of The Accused but it’s really great, my friends. I highly recommend. The novel is structured somewhat like a courtroom drama but that is simply a plot device.

Beautifully and simply written in an uncluttered style that lacks pretentiousness, The Accused tells a story of Alvin Morlock, a 35-year-old man who has just enough culture and sophistication to hold a modest job as an English instructor at a third-rate college but not enough to know how to enjoy life. In a bout of lonely desperation, Alvin meets Louisa, a woman of absolutely no culture and the coarseness of a shoe scraper. All Louisa wants out of life is chug beer, play shuffleboard at her local, and randomly bet on horses. She deeply detests Alvin for being more evolved than she and he despises her for being so primitive.

What, then, are they doing getting married?

I read the book in a couple of hours, and it’s been a profound pleasure. Remember that there’s no better military maneuver in our ongoing battle for focus than reading a novel.

The same people who rightfully complain about everybody suddenly becoming “open Nazis” based on absolutely nothing cannot resist the lure of engaging in the exact same name-calling:

“You are a white supremacist!” “No, you are!” “No, you are!” “No… Mommy! Billy said a bad word!”

The next step is to start censoring Roald Dahl to make sure we get our turn.

Truly, this screeching of “rayceeesm!” whenever you disagree with somebody should stop. People should be able to express their opinions openly. Public figures aren’t made of sugar and won’t melt because somebody criticized them strongly.

A fresh joke from Ukraine:

In a brave counterpoint to Biden’s visit to Kyiv, Putin visited the other end of his long desk.

Biden is in Kyiv! We knew he was coming but it’s still huge news.

Remember that a year ago Biden thought Kyiv would fall. And now he’s celebrating Ukraine’s strength in Mikhailiv Square.

I don’t have the right to be proud of being Ukrainian but I sure am proud of being American.

God bless these United States.

P.S. It’s 4:15 am, I’m on an Uber going to the airport, trying not to cry (too loudly) to avoid freaking out the driver.

P.P.S. As the news dropped, regular, peace-loving Russians are exploding on social media, demanding a nuclear strike on Kyiv.

P.P.P.S. The official Russian media are trying to suppress the news, keeping it out of the TV coverage. Putin must be very upset because it was always his biggest dream to be loved and embraced by the Western leadership. His biggest achievement in life that he never got over was being complimented by George W Bush. Thank God in heaven that Biden is not Dubya. Or Obama without whom we wouldn’t be in this situation at all.

Reading books is all about leisure and focus, both of which are high-luxury items.

Cue the peaceniks who will now tell China and Russia to stop escalating:

Ha ha, obviously, it’s a joke. China and Russia are always poor innocent victims for our peace-loving anti-escalationists.

The problem with the movie To Leslie is its investment into magical mentality. If you are a raging alcoholic who abandoned your small child because of your addiction, steals from relatives, prostitutes yourself, and ended up in the streets, do you know what you need to do? Just quit! Easy-peasy! Gosh, I wonder why all homeless addicts don’t do it. Maybe nobody told them it’s as easy as that.

If you are a falling-down, slobbering drunk, don’t worry! A good man is bound to fall in love with you and solve all your problems.

If you drank away all your money and became homeless, it’s fine. You’ll be offered a job with room and board. And don’t worry about being too much of a mess to show up to work. The job will still be there waiting for you as you barf your guts out during hangover.

If you are a minimum-wage motel maid, that’s not a big deal. Just save money and open your own business. It will only take a few months to save up to open your own diner.

The smug, clueless entitlement of the people who make such movies really gets to me.

I heard about this movie because the lead actress is apparently getting cancelled for being too white or something. I can’t be bothered to unravel the Byzantine complexities of this particular offense to the inflamed sensibilities of the martyrs to social justice but I went ahead and watched the movie.

To Leslie could have been great. The female star portrays a degraded, miserable alcoholic very well. The first half of the movie is exactly the kind of film I like. We see a messy, often sad, sometimes heartbreaking, occasionally ridiculous life. Everything is real, everything is just like it is. I started feeling hopeful it would actually be a good movie.

But then, of course, the ridiculous Hollywood obsession with massaging everything into an implausible happy ending swept in and turned the movie into a joke. To accommodate the silly contortion of the plot, the actors turn into plastic figurines, and everything falls apart.

The concept of an obligatory happy ending is one of the many gifts given to us by Christianity. I often hope, however, that this would be the gift we sometimes denied. This way we could enjoy something beyond the exact same saccharine story where everything always ends well in the exact same soporific manner.

The movie is a waste of time, in short.

We are trapped in an unhealthy symbiosis of woke overreach and anti-woke reaction. They need each other to exist. They feed each other. They function as a closed system that’s not outwardly oriented. Their interaction can’t generate new ideas, new solutions, or any meaningful action at all.

Woke and anti-woke are in love with each other but the joyful, orgasmic union they keep experiencing is sterile. They are too similar, too closely related to be able to procreate. Their pleasure is masturbatory and as such never quite satisfactory enough.

We know woke and anti-woke by different names. We can call them progressives and MAGAs. Far left and far right. BLM and January 6. Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson. Taylor Lorenz and Douglas Murray. The name doesn’t matter. What matters is that their passionate embrace is choking all life out of our public sphere. Their enthusiastic coupling is so loud, showy and boisterous that we are constantly duped into expecting some progeny to pop out. But there will be none. They’ll keep providing each other with opportunities to scratch the itch of outrage. They’ll keep competing who is the biggest victim in their dysfunctional lovefest. But they’ll never move on from each other.

Klara and her cousin, a boy her age, created a game that feeds both her need to take care of small, helpless creatures and his need to go to battle against ferocious enemies.

In the game, he’s an abandoned baby tiger that she brings home and nurtures. He grows into a huge, strong tiger and rips apart the enemies who threaten her.

Nobody suggested the game to them. They wanted to play, discovered that their needs were very different, and found a way to accommodate both. Adults should learn from kids how to do this elegantly and easily.