What kind of an outlandishly dumb idiot eats food containing butter and eggs while being on antibiotics for a gallbladder inflammation?

Yes, that would be me. And no, it wasn’t pretty.

A fellow on the news is promising that the Nunes memo will have an impact on the next elections.

These clowns are certifiable.

Did you, folks, see what women in Iran are doing? The feminist protests? That’s what real feminism is about, and it’s so beautiful and inspiring to see the photos of women from the protests.

I hope that the courage and the dignity of Iranian women will inspire people around here to remember what feminism is supposed to be about. And maybe they will finally realize that publishing stories about how “I became his girlfriend because I thought he’d help my career but he didn’t, so I now realize he harassed me*” is not about feminism.

* This is from the Concordia scandal.

There is this kind of therapy that urges people to make an effort to forget (they call it move past or let go of) everything and especially everybody that wounded them in life. And this is supposed to bring relief.

Basically, the social is privatized in this therapy and an individual is told to assume the psychological costs of everything. The idea is that if you can’t make an effort to make yourself more agreeable, then it’s your fault that you are unhappy. This form of “therapy” doesn’t recognize the existence of any factors but the free will of freely choosing neoliberal subjects who exist in a total social vacuum.

The problem with all this that the free market individual who can choose to let go to increase his productivity is an ideological construct. It’s a fantasy. Real people don’t function like that at all.

The 600-page novel I’m rereading right now is one of the cutest texts I ever read. And that’s no mean trick, given that it’s about Basque terrorism. It’s a mega bestseller because of how incredibly cute it is. It took forever to get a paper copy because even with 27 reprints in 2 years it’s still sold out.

Every time I buy a Spanish book on Kindle, I discover I want to work on it and have to buy a paper copy. It’s very annoying because it’s such a waste.

From FB:

I used a behavior chart for my daughter when she was younger. I would write whatever behaviors we were working on on our big chalkboard in their playroom. Example: saying please & thank you, washing her hands after pottying, using words instead of whining, etc. She would get a check mark for the day or a check mark each time she did something correctly. To start with, she’d get a check mark each time I noticed the behavior. As the weeks went on, I would give them more sparingly. If she earned “10” check marks in a week then she could pick a small prize, trip to the park, ice cream, or whatever item you like.

It makes me physically ill to read this kind of thing. And this is from a local FB group, so then this kid is released into the general population right around here.

The analyst says that in ten years or so, when people understand what the ubiquitousness and the obsessive use of smartphones are doing to children, they will dramatically reduce their use. I’d love to believe that but when I see these FB discussions, I simply can’t.

I seriously can’t even reread this quote without getting very nauseous. And nobody did anything like this to me. It’s just that simply knowing that this is being done to a toddler is painful.

German food, for instance, is absolutely delicious. I still remember every dish I ate in Germany. But the problem is, I can’t recreate these recipes here. The ingredients are not the same. I only discovered what asparagus is supposed to taste like in Berlin. Or strawberries. German strawberries don’t taste like plastic. So of course anything you cook comes out tasting better.

By the way, folks. The food at the Indian buffet is not low-fat, right? I want to think it is but I want to avoid another trip to the ER.

That low-fat diet I have to be on turned out to be really great. I sleep a lot better, I’m losing weight again, I have tons of energy. The only problem is that the diet requires me to spend my life cooking because everything needs to be fussed with for ages to taste good. Plus, the food disappears faster because it’s less filling.