My spellchecker started trying to attach the names of people from my phone book to the words I write. It’s beyond weird.

Example. Let’s say I have a friend called Archie Bunker in my phone book. So whenever I write the word “dollar”, the spellchecker changes it to “doll Archie Bunker.” Or say, I have a Facebook contact called Edna O’Brien. Whenever I try to write the word “damned”, the spellchecker tries to change it to “damn Edna O’Brien.”

It’s both annoying and very funny.

Eighteen years ago tomorrow I came to this continent. I’m proud of how I spent these 18 years, of all the knowledge I gained, the hundreds of books I read, the psychological problems I solved, the life I built. 

The thing I kept wondering about eighteen years ago was what would happen if I had to confront real hardship. Would I deal with it with dignity? Or will I prove to be weak and pathetic? The real hardship didn’t take long to make an appearance, and I faced it with dignity that still makes me proud. 

As recent immigrants, we’d go for walks in residential areas, gawking at houses and lawns of the kind we’d never seen anywhere but on TV. It was incredible that actual, normal people could live like that. Their way of life was mystifying.

I only just now discovered Vargas Llosa’s long-standing and painful relationship with Israel, and I’m shocked at how similar it is to mine. It’s rare that I don’t get disappointed in a writer when I learn of his political engagements, but Vargas Llosa is that exceptional case. 

I agree with the writer that it is devastating to see how Israel is canceling out its indisputable and great achievements because of its quite deranged need to engage in violence, persecution, hatred, and propaganda. Vargas Llosa is 80, yet he is still working hard to bring the truth about the occupation to the world. This is admirable. And the value of what he’s doing is enormous because everybody knows he’s not an anti-semite and his criticisms are not inspired by a knee-jerk dislike of everything Jewish.

I don’t understand how anybody can argue, like Frank Bruni does in NY TIMES, that a choice of the running mate in a presidential election is immaterial. Has he forgotten 2008 and McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin? McCain was on the verge of winning the election and the right veep could have put him over the top. Instead, we all know what happened and how he flashed his chance to win down the toilet.

Or take the 2012 election. Obama was bombing in the debates until Biden went out of his way to charm everybody in his debate and gave Obama a chance to find his bearings and start delivering. 

The prospective veep might not always help in the literal way of delivering the state they are from but there is a myriad other ways to help or hurt a candidacy.

I’m very fortunate that my husband is not prone to getting suspicious or there’d be trouble. Every weekend for months I leave him at home with the baby and set out to fetch the Cultures of Spain textbook from campus. And every time I come back without the blasted textbook.

All kinds of things- weather, power outages, thieves, AT&T, etc – have been conspiring to prevent me from finally fetching the damn textbook. Every weekend N asks cheerfully, “Are you off to fetch the textbook? Good luck.” And every time I come back without the textbook. 

This weekend I tried to fetch the textbook twice. In the process, I found N’s favorite cookies at an out-of-the-way store, bought real Soviet cucumbers ready for pickling, searched fruitlessly for dill stalks needed for the pickling, returned library books, but still don’t have the textbook. 

Do you know what the Russian is for ” a diaper”? 

Pampers. This was the very first brand to hit the freshly formed post-Soviet market in 1992, and the brand name became generic. (We also refer to a photocopy as a xerox for the same reason, for instance.)

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I discovered that Pampers are actually a pretty sucky brand. They leak, they feel wet, and they are decidedly inferior to Huggies. I feel very betrayed by capitalism. 

The problem with whiny little boys is that they exist not only in songs but everywhere else. Right now, they are moaning all over my blogroll about Hillary’s plan to relieve the college debt burden of young entrepreneurs. First of all, eww, entrepreneurs. They are so disgusting. What, they actually want to make something happen and create some jobs instead of writing interminable screeds on how “we can’t have nice things” because the world is too evil and confusing? Those jerks.

Besides, Hillary’s plan is pedestrian and incrementalist. So totally unlike Bernie’s grand vision of micromanaging from the White House the way professors at public colleges organize their offices. That plan would have totally changed the world, ended global warming and achieved global peace. Because that’s what a real political revolution looks like. And that’s what boring old fogeys like that Hillary with her tweaking of unimportant details like somebody’s annoying college debt will never understand.

No, real revolutionaries don’t care about such trivial, little concerns as somebody’s capacity to work and succeed. They are all about planetary visions and great transformations that will happen the moment we institute the office of diversity on every campus. That will immediately make college free and nobody will need to worry about debt because there will be plenty of “nice things” for everybody all the time.

And ice-cream.

The phenomenon of glorifying infantile boys is so explosive that now there is even an adult woman singing “I’m a lost boy from Neverland hanging out with Peter Pan.” One literally can’t turn on the radio without hearing the creepy voices of adults posing as little boys. It’s scary as all hell. And a tad nauseating. 

The only place where dissidents in Russia can still express themselves is Facebook. It’s their only public platform and they use it not to post photos of pretty kitties or share inane slogans about the importance of smiling but to publish long, interesting analytical articles on political subjects. As a result, Russian-language Facebook is the most interesting Facebook of all. 

Of course, Russian authorities are unhappy about this development. They are smart, though, and quickly learned to use the very American nature of Facebook’s policies against the dissidents. The way that Facebook works is that if a thousand people complain that you microaggressed against them with a post that says nothing but “Good morning”, Facebook will ban you, no questions asked. So thousands of Putinbots file complaints about the pain and suffering entirely anodyne posts by dissidents supposedly caused them, and Facebook immediately bans the dissidents. 

Facebook is trying so hard to be apolitical and avoid choosing sides that it has become very easy to use to silence opposition. The illusion that one can remain outside of politics is very dangerous because if you don’t choose your politics, somebody will choose it for you. 

Race was one of the reasons why Vargas Llosa lost his 1990 presidential election. Voters of indigenous ancestry chose the first-generation immigrant Fujimori with his shaky command of Spanish because they perceived him as one of their own in a way they didn’t perceive the quintessentially Peruvian writer Vargas Llosa. 

Throughout the campaign, Fujimori was referred to as “el chinito”, or “a little Chinese person”, a term of endearment that included the Japanese Fujimori among the Peruvian indigenous people. Peru is profoundly racist, and its indigenous / mestizo majority is very aware that the power and the prestige belong to the whites. 

The desire to see somebody who looks like oneself finally come to power in Peru led voters to imagine the wealthy and corrupt Japanese immigrant Fujimori as a poor and downtrodden indigenous fellow of Amerindian origins. Everybody knew, of course, who Fujimori was, but the need to believe that a rich liar who despises voters is actually “one of us” never dies.