My suggestion for men on how to achieve great marital sex and avoid being deadbedded within two years of marriage is this:

Choose somebody who wants you sexually and not only as a source of a relationship. Being in a relationship means something very different to women than it does to men. It’s a source of enormous peer validation and it is sought as a value in and of itself. This is an evolutionary survival mechanism. A pregnant woman or a woman with a small child would find it hard to survive without a man to feed and protect her. Even today it’s not entirely untrue, imagine in prehistoric times.

So simply look at what is being desired, you or peer validation. If it’s very important that the wedding is just so instead of that the wedding is to you, it’s a dead giveaway. If she posts a lot of perfect relationship moments on social media, that’s another. If she looks at you like a DIY project, if the narrative about the relationship is more important than actually being with you. Like that story about a woman who was on her boyfriend’s case because he wouldn’t send her romantic text messages every morning. It wasn’t about him but about the role he was supposed to play in the enactment of a perfect relationship. If that sort of performative shit matters, deadbed is on the horizon.

I’m feeling very misunderstood. I wish nothing but the very best to the rich, the very rich, and the mega rich. I’m so supportive that I’m in favor of a flat (not progressive) income tax and have been so forever. I’m very, very wishful that the rich should be extremely happy. All I ask is that they be very happy at a distance from me.

My sensibility is very proletarian. At work, I feel most comfortable with the janitor, the cafeteria staff, and the building workers. The only time I enjoyed talking to somebody at a reception, she turned out to be the cleaner.

Now that I’m a permanent diabetic, I told everybody I know that if I become loopy, it means I missed my meal time and they need to stuff some food into me.

The problem is that I’m naturally goofy and my behavior tends to be unusual. Nobody knows when I’m diabetic loopy and when naturally loopy.

Trump has hit the government of the Putin-loving socialist Gustavo Petro in Colombia with serious sanctions. This is so great, people. I had no idea action on immigration would be so swift and decisive.

This is not the first-term Trump. This is so much better.

Matt Walsh’s documentary Am I Racist? that was extremely popular with viewers and was a cultural phenomenon wasn’t nominated for the Oscars. But a Russian warmongering propagandist Yura Borisov is nominated for a role in a film that was made, in the words of its director, “to remove the stigma that’s been applied to prostitution.”

Hollywood is celebrating whores and propagandists of the lowest caliber.

I kept hearing it’s “a frozen tundra” back home but when I arrived it was so warm we were in short sleeves outside half the day. Warm weather follows me around, so if you want a thaw, invite me over.

I’m resigned to the spring with my springtime table decor:

It’s so good to be home. I made a tub of borscht and am ready to rest from all this rest I’ve been having.

Yes, it’s a book by Joyce Maynard. What can I say, I’m hopelessly addicted.

This time I decided to try Maynard’s contribution to the true crime genre titled Internal Combustion. Maynard investigated the case of a Detroit woman who murdered her husband and pretended she had the battered woman syndrome. The jury correctly saw through her ruse and sent the vicious killer to jail for life.

As I’m telling this story, you probably think that Maynard’s position regarding this case is that the killer wife was a victim because women always are, and so on. But that’s not the case. Maynard is never predictable like that. She makes the story of a white woman who killed her white husband amongst friends and acquaintances who are white and Asian be about… black people. There are no black people in the story, so how can Maynard possibly make the book about them? Well, duh. Didn’t I mention that this happens in Detroit? And Detroit blacks were very racistly affected by the racist white people white-flighting the city because of race riots. This happened decades before the crime but still!

Maynard receives confirmation that the case she investigates is about race when she hears a rumor that in jail the murderer wife once gave a dirty look to a corrections officer. Who was black! Ray-ceesm! What else can motivate convicts to give nasty looks to their jailers?

There are fascinating aspects to the story that Maynard refuses to investigate because she’d rather prattle about the absent African Americans. The murdered husband had a very bizarre relationship with the neighbor’s wife but she was Asian, so not of interest to Maynard. Soon after completing Internal Combustion, Maynard went on to adopt and then re-gift two black girls, so we know what the consequences of her White Saviorism were.

I’m now reading the most famous Maynard novel that was turned into a movie starring Nicole Kidman. After that, I might lay off Maynard for a bit. Or not. This is too much fun to stop.

I took a 15-hour flight from Madrid to Chicago yesterday. A passenger had a pulmonary embolism two hours into the flight. Thankfully, there were two doctors on board and they seem to have told the pilot he wasn’t going to make it until the end of the flight. We got diverted to Ireland, and the ailing passenger was taken away to get help. I don’t know what happened then but we saw one of the doctors crying. It’s a male doctor, Spanish, and not young. This is why I’m worried about the passenger. I’ve been trying to find out what happened but there are no updates. The airline representative at the airport was asking passengers for updates, so she’s clueless.

President Trump gave Ukraine an actual (as opposed to Biden’s imaginary) permission to strike objects deep in Russia. Daily, heavy strikes are gladdening my heart. Not words but actual strikes.

None of this is being discussed in Western media because people here aren’t ready for reality. I’m very glad it’s not reported because what’s the point? People are attached to their fantasy that “Biden was for Ukraine.” Why hurt their feelings by revealing the complexity of life?

My flow lasts between 53 and 56 minutes. By flow, I mean the trance-like state when you are completely into whatever you are doing. Everything else falls away, and you are focused on what you are doing, be it reading, writing, translating, grading, or preparing the quarterly report. It’s the state of heightened creativity and concentration.

The flow is extremely enjoyable. It’s been described as

the biggest neurochemical cocktail [that] blend[s] all six of the brain’s major pleasure chemicals and may be one of the few times you get all six at once.

Steven Kotler, The Art of the Impossible

If you’ve experienced it, you know that it is, indeed, very pleasant.

I don’t know why my stretches of flow are always timed so exactly at 53 to 56 minutes.  It’s one of those things that one’s brain does that are incomprehensible and really cool.

Is anybody else on here into chasing the flow? How long does yours last? What do you do to kickstart it?

By the way, I’m back stateside, and regularly scheduled programming will now resume.