This s my haul from the expo. I’m especially proud of The Monster and the Trollope, which I got for the ridiculous amount of $5. The Monster is all the rage right now, and I need my own copy because the book sounds very usable. 

I could have kept going, and the temptation was strong but I only have one small carry-on and a book bag, and they can only house so much. 

God, I love the MLA book expo. If I returned in the last hour before closing, I could haul away a crazy number of free books. 

The best time to go to the MLA book exhibit is on the last day because everybody is preparing to leave and giving away books for free. I have no idea how I’m going to transport all of it. 

The first musical I ever saw was Carnival! In 1990 I was in London on a school exchange trip and we were taken to see the show. We were Soviet kids and completely weirded out by the whole thing. The genre was incomprehensible to us. 

Ten years ago, N took me to my first Broadway show to see Color Purple. It was our first really big date, we were crazy in love, and I was predisposed to like everything on that trip. But we were both completely baffled by the musical. We didn’t get the plot, couldn’t understand the pronunciations, and left the show feeling utterly confused. A little later he took me to see Hairspray. I’m not easily bored but during this show we were both bored stiff. So we concluded it wasn’t our genre and stopped going. 

This year, though, I saw two Broadway musicals, Lion King and Miss Saigon (today). And I adored both of them and had the best time. So I wonder. Have I become Americanized and absorbed the culture to the point that I now understand the genre? Or has the genre progressed so much in the last 10 years that it’s simply very superior to what it used to be?

The talk went well, by the way. There were very few attendees because many people couldn’t make it even to their own sessions. I lost my convention badge, so I’ll have to go to the book fair in somebody else’s. Which means I won’t get to feel proud standing next to my own book at the exhibit. 

I don’t have many friends but the ones I do are all very profound people. I have a very busy brain that needs constant stimulation. It’s a hyperactive brain that contrasts with my slow and sedentary physical body. 

So when I’m forced to be around superficial people who don’t constantly make me think and see things differently, I experience physical pain. My head begins to hurt. It’s not an affectation, I really suffer. 

That’s also why I’m so rough with newcomers to the blog. I can’t stand having my time wasted on pompous yet trivial observations. 

And it’s always, “I don’t get why you are friends with this person.” Because she’s profound and fascinating, but you wouldn’t get what those words even mean, that’s why. 

A journalist announces triumphantly on the news, “Nobody in the Trump administration addressed the book’s claims that Trump acts like a child! I wonder why that is!”

She totally missed her calling as a stand-up comedian.

I’m finally in NYC and too exhausted to do anything fun. So I left the hotel in search of a deli nearby. On the way there, I passed a strip club. The doorman in shiny buttons looked at me and boomed, “You need a hat. And a warmer coat!” It was very funny that a doorman at a strip club would worry that I was underdressed.

Folks, I’m trying to board but this long article on Russia made me weep with laughter. It contains gems that could translate into American realities as “Oprah procures prostitutes for Obama and his friends, so she brought in Ashton Kutchner to have sex with Hillary, and there are now compromising photos of naked Hillary.” 

There are also less funny parts, such as burying the fact that Navalny is a neo-Nazi. 

There is a couple of semi-lucid paragraphs but they are buried under mountains of pure, unadulterated crazy. Russians are known for being extremely good at taking the piss out of foreigners while keeping a straight face. It looks like the poor journalist was pranked all over the place and never realized it. 

P.S. Why would anybody in their right mind assume that Trump would find photos of himself having sex with a beautiful, young starlet compromising? Because the cultural norm condemns it? Really? 

I read this kind of article and I want to retch. I also got no sleep today so I’m queasy as it is but this shit doesn’t help. An excerpt for those who don’t want to click:

Based on the excerpts now available, Fire and Fury presents a man in the White House who is profoundly ignorant of politics, policy, and anything resembling the substance of perhaps the world’s most demanding job. He is temperamentally unstable. Most of what he says in public is at odds with provable fact, from “biggest inaugural crowd in history” onward. Whether he is aware of it or not, much of what he asserts is a lie. His functional vocabulary is markedly smaller than it was 20 years ago; the oldest person ever to begin service in the White House, he is increasingly prone to repeat anecdotes and phrases. He is aswirl in foreign and financial complications. He has ignored countless norms of modern governance, from the expectation of financial disclosure to the importance of remaining separate from law-enforcement activities. He relies on immediate family members to an unusual degree; he has an exceptionally thin roster of experienced advisers and assistants; his White House staff operations have more in common with an episode of The Apprentice than with any real-world counterpart. He has a shallower reserve of historical or functional information than previous presidents, and a more restricted supply of ongoing information than many citizens. He views all events through the prism of whether they make him look strong and famous, and thus he is laughably susceptible to flattering treatment from the likes of Putin and Xi Jinping abroad or courtiers at home.

I’ve been reading a variation on this piece for a year. A year. And for just as long I’ve been writing a variation on this post. 

We are in the midst of an enormous transformation of the global economy that will affect and is already affecting all of us. And instead of talking about that, this is what we are doing? Producing outrage-generating listicles about the limited vocabulary of somebody who is not only a billionaire and a TV superstar but also the most successful US politician at the moment?

I’m reading an article on Cambodia – Cambodia! – and the byline mentions Trump in big bold letters even though the article has fuck-all to do with him. It’s like people are stuck and can’t move on. Seven more years of this collective madness? And then they’ll run Omarrosa and she’ll obviously win, and the whole crazy obsession repeats?

And then folks wonder why so many people don’t even consider voting. It’s very hard to care about any of this because it’s so completely ridiculous and divorced from any reality. 

I just almost got the Reagan Airport evacuated. I left my bag on the ground and walked away for 30 minutes while I was chatting on the phone about the complexities of learning Basque. When I came back for it, there was a police cordon and dogs sniffing for explosives. In my defense, I got up at 2 am to make this flight and had spent the last two days leaving the house to go to the airport only to have my flight cancelled the total of 6 times. This kind of thing screws with my brain something major.