A president’s approval ratings two months after inauguration do not matter because there is no election they can impact. Nobody will remember these ratings in 4 days, let alone 4 years. 

The endless triumphalist discussions of the ratings play the same role as the inane pussy marches. They create a sense that something big is on the verge of happening and prevent people from actually doing anything. 

Russian dissidents have existed for the past 15 years in the mode of “we are about to win.” In their narrative, Putin is about to flee the country in terror of the dissidents. In the meanwhile, Putin is as strong as ever. 

The triumphalist feelings of “we are about to get them! Something big is about to happen!” is one of the mechanisms by which consumer society keeps people docile. It substitutes the boring slog of grinding daily work that can bring change with the festive feeling of instant gratification that’s just around the corner.  

A brand that sells Jewishness to the Jew-curious. The disgust I feel for all of the participants is not to be described in words. 

It’s all about choice but only until the choices are made by people you detest. Then it’s all, “how dare you??”

And more on the fetish of choice. 

The best explanation for why the rich kids of #Occupy were so stuck on the rhetoric of 99%: “The class of liberal professionals who talk about reducing income inequality are not threatened by talk of taxing the 1 percent. But they would lose out from a broad equalization of incomes between the top 25 percent and the bottom 25 percent.”

Then this freak of nature won’t get a job and will blame the universe for it when the real reason for her unemployability is her insufferable self-pity. I took these hormones and functioned perfectly well because I’m not an immature drama queen. 

Anti-Romeo squads in India: this is what happens when you artificially create a shortage of women in a country. 

“The bars and cafes I visited all posted super-progressive signs that told bigots to stay out and welcomed people of all colors inside. Some even had Black Lives Matter posters. But once in these businesses, there were only white people.” So true! These poor fools try so hard to demonstrate how inclusive they are but their desperation scares people off.

Are these freaks for real? Surely, they have to be invented. It’s too horrible to contemplate the possibility that some poor girl might have actually been cursed with such horrible parents. 

No wonder non-academics think we are lazy. When, when will academics stop whining about the hardships of adulthood?

“If you believe in women’s freedom, you must support women’s choice to do whatever they want with their bodies.” I remember Echidne once said that soon we will hear claims that if women choose to have their faces beaten in by abusers, we must respect this choice. Of course, every form of subjection of women has been positioned as women’s choice. But the silly little bits of fluff like the author of the linked piece don’t know that. 

I don’t understand this freak out over a Christian sex educator. The worst she can do is make children laugh. The impact these teachings can have on anybody’s actual sex lives is nil.

A funny controversy broke out on Italian TV when a newscaster suggested that Italian men should marry Eastern European women for the following reasons:

They stay in the kitchen and cook. 

Yes, absolutely. We cook mountains of terribly unhealthy food the sight of which would give any doctor a heart attack. We also loudly denigrate any foodstuffs that belong to other cuisines and will make the life miserable for anybody who wants to eat them.

They’re women who clean the house. 

Yes. We also drive insane any husband who wants to do anything else but constantly improve with DIY projects the house that we clean.

They forgive adultery. 

Oh, absolutely. But only because Eastern European women cheat like they breathe. It would be weird not to forgive what you yourself constantly do.

They become mothers but don’t get fat. 

No, that’s a total myth. Getting fat is the central goal of our existence.

They always dress decently. 

Of course, there are different definitions of “decently”. If you mean the definition of “fit to be worn by a washed-out sex worker at a trucker hangout” or “fit to be worn by Kellyanne Conway”, which amounts to the same thing, then absolutely. 

They don’t whine, nag and complain. 

So true. Instead, we scream and throw cast-iron pans at people’s heads. 

And they obey a husband’s commands. 

Oh yes. We love to say things like, “My husband practically commanded me to buy the pearl necklace and I was forced to obey.” The terrified husband usually giggles nervously nearby.

These six female virtues make them great wives.

Without a doubt. The best wife is the one who guides the husband towards boundless joy with an iron fist and a crow voice.

Illinois still has no budget, and there will have to be more budget cuts at the University. Funds will have to be diverted from our campus to our sister campus which is struggling a lot more. 

I’m afraid that people will divert their anger onto the entirely innocent colleagues at the sister campus instead of directing it where it belong: stinking Rauner.

Hey, folks, let’s play a game. Let’s make a list of who is the Other for your national identity. Who is it very very important for you not to be like?

For, instance:

Ukraine obviously has Russia as its Other

For Russia the Other is the US (which is such a lazy choice)

For Canada, the Other is also the US but it’s also the only actual neighbor, so it’s not that lazy a choice

For Argentina, it’s the non-white Latin America (which means all of Latin America)

I have no idea who the Other is for India, for instance. Is it China? We obviously have no Chinese readers, so we can’t ask them who their Other is.

Canadians love to say didactically, “In Canada we believe that everybody has the right to free healthcare” and immediately follow this statement with a horror story of barely surviving Canadian healthcare. 

Wow, this ear infection is really bad. I thought Klara’s musical toy broke and tried to repair it. But it was playing perfectly well. I simply couldn’t hear it at a distance of 10 feet. 

Can anybody explain why when I give Klara a cored, skinned apple that I cut up into convenient little pieces, she pushes it away and tries to grab the huge apple that I’m eating and that she can barely hold on to? And when I relinquish it and bite into a second apple, she grabs the second one, too?

This is so true:

Joseph Stalin allowed the film The Grapes of Wrath to be shown in the Soviet Union, believing that to see an indictment of capitalism from within the beast itself would be salutary for the proletariat. The proletariat took another lesson from the film: The Joads, apparently the poorest people in America, had a Ford, a luxury no working man in the workers’ paradise could dream of.

Yes, Soviet propaganda had a tendency to fail in this really funny way.

The Ukrainian Post Office is trying to bring Amazon to Ukraine. Why did I even leave?