Klara is very unlike the way both N and I were as kids. At the music lesson, parents and kids sit in a circle. Klara always crawls right into the middle of the circle and starts rotating 360° to make sure that everybody sees and admires her. 

When I was little, nobody could have gotten me to stay at the center of a circle no matter what they did. 

The nasty Wiley Agency is so greedy and disgusting that they want me to pay them  $200 for quoting one of their authors in my not-for-profit book of literary criticism. 

Shame on you, Wiley. You stink. 

N told me to write this post and suggested the title because he doesn’t support my actions. He says I’m about to turn this country into an autocracy. Me! A quiet, modest literature scholar. I have sown the seeds of corruption that will destroy the republic, he says. 

What caused all this outrage is that I bribed the teachers at Klara’s school. They kept saying that their birthdays were this week, so I gave them gift cards. They hadn’t seemed to be super into Klara before the gifts. I had sensed some resentment over having somebody so young in a group where everybody else walks and talks. But now they rush towards me, knocking the rest of the kids off their feet, the second I appear and look super psyched about Klara. 

N condemns me, though, because he’s anti-corruption.

There’s no need to ask about the relationship between Putin and any Russian oligarchs. They are all members of the same criminal gang. And I mean it in the most literal sense. 

The anti-refugee boulders in Paris are a mini wall a la Trump. Just like Marine LePen is a mini-Trump.

A Gmail plug in that might help the especially gruff among us. 

The horrible things people do to babies. 

Does anybody understand why the Obamas need to make this weird public spectacle of their private lives? Or anybody, for that matter. Why not communicate these feelings privately, instead? 

With everything that’s going on, this idiot is still fixated on Halloween costumes? Unbelievable. 

Crammers. Sad but true. 

School vouchers help desegregate schools. 

How to learn a language. Great suggestions. 

Idiotic righteousness has infected movie reviews. 

Karen K has gone completely nuts: “So many readers and clients are wondering how to keep going under the turmpocalypse.  It’s hard.  Between protesting, writing emails, signing petitions, attending town halls, and sobbing in our beds, it’s quite difficult to get anything else done. Who has time to think, let alone publish?”

A mother ship from Russia has approached Connecticut in search of its lost child Micheal Flynn. Let’s hope it takes Trump back home, as well.

A well-meaning but tragically dumb academic goes on and on about how citizenship evil and should be done with because it degrades human beings and brings nothing but death.

If one were to tell the facile idiot that she is servicing the most pressing needs of liquid capital, she’d just stare at one with her little dumb eyes and not get a clue.

Since uh-oh turned out to be one of Klara’s very first words, I realized that I do say it a lot. Opportunities to say it abound because I spend all day dropping stuff, forgetting things, tripping over toys, walking into closed doors, stumbling into furniture, and spilling food all over myself. 

And this is great because it teaches Klara an important lesson: Mamma is not perfect. You don’t have to be anything even remotely resembling perfect to be happy and loved. I think this is a crucial piece of knowledge. 

Without meaning to or even knowing it was going on, this immigrant participated in the Day Without Immigrants. I had to cancel class because of a massive attack of barfing. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t count if it was unconscious. 

What’s really funny is the pouty wriggling of the losers who were all “Hillary is as bad as Trump” throughout the campaign. Like the brain-dead Susan Sarandon:

To the people that would “attack” her for her statements, she asked, “Really? That’s where we want to spend our time and energy?”

Sarandon sat stone-faced when Hayes pointed out that the “status quo” she feared may have just gotten “much, much worse.” . . . ‘Do you really think Hillary Clinton would have been worse?’”

“What is the point of even saying that?” Sarandon shot back…

If at least these fuckers had the courage to recognize the consequences of their actions. Why not just say, “Hey, I fucked up, sorry. Will try to blab less and chew more in blessed silence the next time around”?

N and I have never seen SNL but I can’t convince him to watch.

“A parody of Trump?” he says. “No way it can’t be funnier than the original.”

I find it hard to disagree.