The CEO of the largest Russian media conglomerate died yesterday at the age of 57. The numerous media under his control spent years obsessively promoting the idea that evil Americans want to conquer Russia and impose “the gay lifestyle” on Russians. The TV and radio channels under his leadership were yelling “Western gays are coming to get you!” all day long.

Curiously, this media mogul died in the US, in a hotel located in Washington’s Dupont Circle, also known as the gay Mecca of the continent. It seems like the fantasies about the irresistible attraction of gay life promoted by his media stemmed from personal experience.

And by the way, this fellow’s entire family is living in the evil, corrupt West, just like the families of all Putin cronies.

Hardwicke went on to make one of the most biggest films of the last decade: 2008’s “Twilight,” which grossed $393 million worldwide. But with success in Hollywood came more setbacks. After “Twilight,” Hardwicke tried to get other projects off the ground, including a retelling of “Hamlet” starring Emile Hirsch, but financiers balked.

Yes, sexism is the only explanation for why nobody wants to invest into a film version of Hamlet directed by somebody fresh off making Twilight. What else could it possibly be?

And the hypocrisy is really cute, too. For as long as this person manages to make a shitload of money from celebrating sexism in her stupid flick, sexism is just peachy. But the moment sexism stops being quite as profitable, she begins to denounce it. It’s a mystery why nobody wants to give any money to somebody this dishonest and clueless. (As well as petty, resentful, and infantile, as you can see from the rest of the linked piece.)

N and I love theater and often go to our regional rep. The audience tends to be on the elderly side. N and I are often the youngest people in the room.

What I find weird is that this season the theater decided to put on a play about teenagers who are preparing a school report and talking about their relationships. My teenage years are so far behind that I can’t muster any interest whatsoever in the subject. And I can’t imagine suddenly finding it fascinating when I turn 70.

It just seems like a very weird play to put on for this particular audience where most people are way too old even to be raising teenagers, let alone to remember their own teenage years very vividly. 

Questioning an individual’s narrative of the self  is not only an act of extreme assholery but can also cause intense pain for people who have the experience of being victims of emotional abuse. One of the favorite techniques of abusers is to make their victims doubt their perception of reality and, hence, their sanity by casting doubt on often very trivial details of the victims’ daily lives. 

“You invented all this, this is all just your imagination” is the favorite phrase of such abusers. 

I have no interest in or knowledge of Ben Carson’s personal history (at the link), but what disturbs me is the idea that it is OK, all of a sudden, to dispute people’s stories of the self because of some stupid gossip one might have heard somewhere. There is no “objective truth” of anybody’s individual reality. The way people perceive themselves and the story of their life that they tell themselves constitute “the truth” for them. 

It’s perfectly fine (and absolutely crucial) to dispute the stories people tell of their relationship with you. But as for their relationship with themselves, leave it the hell alone. This especially true of childhood stories. Whenever you are possessed with the desire to correct somebody’s childhood story, even if you were present and believe you know “the truth,” just stop yourself and go ponder your weird need to edit and control the personal narratives of other people.

I can never figure out why people behave the way they do at social gatherings. For instance, I often find myself in the following situation.

“I completely disagree with what Jack Peters said about enrollment caps,” I venture at a social gathering.

In response, people act as if they have lived their entire lives until now eagerly awaiting an opportunity to badmouth Jack Peters.

“Oh, that Jack Peters!” they exclaim. “He’s so annoying! I heard that he once totally yelled at a colleague for no reason. And he’s such a gossip!  Everybody at his department detests him! Oh, I can’t stand this fellow.”

When I see what my remark about enrollment caps did to Jack’s reputation, I always try to repair the situation.

“Well, I disagree with Jack Peters’s position on enrollment caps,” I say, “But he’s a good person. Students love him, and he’s a great colleague.”

Then everybody begins to act as if they lived their entire lives waiting for a chance to say something nice about Jack.

“Yes, Jack Peters might come off a bit gruff but that’s only because he’s had a difficult life. He has a heart of gold, that fellow. Always so helpful and understanding.”

“Of course what he said about enrollment caps is something I simply can’t agree with,” I continue.

In response, people act like Jack Peters shot their favorite dog and buried it in his backyard. And so the merry-go-round can go on for quite a while.

And I’m left wondering whether people do this because

A. The social code requires people to agree with everything they hear at such gatherings.

B. People think I’m unstable and are afraid of antagonizing me with disagreement.

C. People are extremely torn on the subject of Jack Peters’s personality.

D. Something else.

Rachel Maddow is talented. She drew Bernie Sanders out in a way that makes him sound relatable, warm, non-dogmatic and non-grumpy. Bernie is doing fantastic at the forum.

O’Malley, on the other hand, came out as irascible and mean with his incessant attacks on Sanders. He’s angling for the spot as Hillary’s veep with desperation. I hope he doesn’t get it.

If you feel like seeing something beautiful, here is the amazing Chinese figure skater Jin Boyang performing the most complex jump (or, rather, a set of two jumps) ever. The record-setting jump comes at the very beginning of the performance:

The fellow is out of this world talented.

We all know that I find Carson to be pathetic and vomit – inducing but the following is just plain crazy:

Nine friends, classmates and neighbors who grew up with Carson told CNN they have no memory of the anger or violence the candidate has described. That person is unrecognizable to those whom CNN interviewed, who knew him during those formative years.

Yes, people have different facets to their personalities that might surprise even those who think they know them extremely well, let alone their neighbors or classmates. Trying to find out anything about me as teenager on the basis of what my neighbors have to say would be utterly futile. And I just died of boredom just writing all this.

And since I’m on the exasperating subject of Carson: pyramids, really? That’s the greatest objection we have to this fellow? He said something dumb about sodding pyramids?

This electoral cycle is so ADD that I’m getting dizzy. People don’t seem to be able to stay on point for longer than 2 seconds. Carson is a horrible candidate but not because his neighbors weren’t privy to everything he did as a teenager and not because his grasp of egyptology is poor.

There are so many stupid expressions that stupid people stupidly use. Work-life balance is my all-time favorite in terms of its sheer stupidity. But there are others.

Example: illegal war. All of the idiots who keep chirping about “Obama’s illegal war on ISIS” avoid referring to “Bush’s legal war on Iraq.” If there is illegal war, it stands to reason that there should be discussions of legal wars, but where are these discussions?

Also, it’s quite hypocritical to talk of “Obama’s illegal war in Syria” in which all of 50 US ground troops are involved while there was a flat-out refusal to refer to “Putin’s illegal war against Ukraine” when thousands of Russian ground troops were fighting on Ukrainian soil.

All of this idiotic twaddle about “Obama’s illegal wars” (because they are never anybody else’s but Obama’s for some reason) is inspired by nothing other than an infantile resentment that Obama hasn’t adopted Pat Buchanan’s deranged belief in the need for complete isolationism for the US.

I’m very happy today because I have managed to work a reference to Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity into the Introduction of my book. You’ll ask how Ukraine is relevant to a discussion of Spain’s literature of the crisis, but when there is a will, there is a way.

There is a generalized feeling that profound societal changes are occurring, and that feeling leads people to use the word “crisis” obsessively even in situations where it doesn’t really apply. I mean, how often did we hear about “the Ukraine crisis” when there was no crisis and, instead, there was a revolution and then a war?

And now it’s all about “the refugee crisis” which is a misleading term if there ever was one. A crisis is a short moment in time that has a definitive beginning and a specific ending. Is anybody envisioning an ending to the so-called refugee crisis? Obviously not. This isn’t a crisis, just like the “economic crisis of 2008-12” was not a crisis. These are transformations that are not going anywhere. It’s a new world that is in the process of getting born. And labor pains are not “a crisis.”