When I work on my research articles or books, I always plan what I will write in advance. My best writing, however, happens when I immerse myself in the process and let the text lead me wherever it will. This doesn’t mean the plan isn’t important. It is but it shouldn’t be so strict as to extinguish the ecstasy of an unhindered writing flow.

In Eduardo Iglesias’ novel The Chosen, the heavily pondered and the severely planned killed all that could be surprising and unexpected. Every word seems so purposeful and controlled that reading the novel feels like having sex while following detailed instructions in a sex technique manual.

Few things are more boring than the work of an author who knows exactly what he is going to say before beginning to write and who then goes and says it.

Hey, people, great news. Svetlana Alexievich, a writer from Belarus, was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Alexievich writes testimonial literature. This is a genre that has been flourishing in countries which have experienced totalitarianism. Argentina, Spain, Uruguay, for instance, have a very robust testimonial genre. (And that’s what I spoke about at my Oxford conference, by the way.)

The Russian-speaking  post-Soviet nations have chosen to pretend that their traumatic past never happened. This was an enormous mistake which is now causing all of the insanity that is taking place in these countries. There is no literature to speak of in these nations outside of boring commercial garbage.

Alexievich is pretty much the only writer who stands out in that entire enormous space. She is hugely respected for her powerful writing, political dissidence, and her capacity to create literature in a veritable desert of literary achievement. Things are so bad, literature-wise, in the region that if one wanted to give an award to a writer from Russia or Ukraine, one simply wouldn’t be able to find one.

After an incomprehensible decision to give the Nobel to an author whom nobody on the planet seems to know or care about, the Nobel committee finally made a good choice. Alexievich does extremely important work in a region that needs it like none other.

While Russians are falling all over themselves looking for a new country to bomb and devastate, the Chinese keep proving that an inventive and industrious nation will always kick the ass of a belicose, lazy one.

Behold this wonder of Chinese industry:

Yes! These are borscht-flavored chips for people who are not fortunate enough to have a Ukrainian person nearby.

Large companies keep records of former or prospective customers, assigning to them ratings that reflect how difficult a customer might be.

Many people think it’s creepy but I’ve had a positive experience with this rating system. When a chirpy gentleman called me from Charter to recruit me as a customer and had the gall to INTERRUPT me, I flew into a fit of rage and hissed at him in scary ways. (I never get interrupted and am not about to start).

Since then, I only get phone calls from Charter that feature very quiet, extremely obsequious telemarketers who never interrupt.

I still remember the time when one would take out the garbage and then bring the garbage pail back.

Do people in North America remember something like this or were there always disposable trash bags?

“Tomorrow is shaping up to be a beautiful sunny day,” a weather forecaster on Russian TV announces. “The weather will allow us to engage in many important activities, like, for instance, bomb Syria.”

The weather map behind the newscaster changes to show images of exploding bombs and blown up buildings.

“Lack of precipitation will give our fighter airplanes perfect visibility,” the newscaster continues calmly, outlining the prospects for a successful bombing of a country her compatriots know nothing about and have no reason to dislike.

This is a regular daily forecast in a country of 140 million who have all gone collectively mad. Just two weeks ago, they had no idea they were about to start hating Syria, but today they are passionately invested in this newfound hatred.

In the UK, an adult raped an 11 – year-old child. The punishment for the rape was a suspended sentence. The victim’s father insisted that the victim wanted to be raped, and the judge agreed.

Some schools are now hiring companies to provide recess consultants. These are people who descend on school playgrounds during recess and organize children’s play to make it more productive, effective, and creativity generating.

If children want to play something that the consultants don’t deem to be the most productive activity at the moment, children are not allowed to pursue the game of their choosing. Playtime needs to be maximized for developmental opportunities, and recess consultants employ strategies that empower the children to be contributing members of community.

Recess consultants employ “positive group management techniques to create safe, inclusive environment” in the playgrounds.

No, seriously.

Bernie Sanders loses to Carson 46%-40% in Florida, 48%-36% in Ohio, and 47%-37% in Pennsylvania.

Was anybody aware that we are surrounded by such an enormous number of dumbasses?

What this Carson fellow said about gunshot victims demonstrates that he’s a total sociopath. Any normal human being who heard him threw up and recoiled in horror from this creep.

But actually to support him over Bernie? Bernie, who is no Santa Claus, but who runs on a serious program and discusses serious issues?

This is the stratification we need to worry about. A great number of people is so dumb, so appallingly incapable of figuring out of what is going on around them that any crazy creepo can con them into anything.

Suppose that Sanders won, which is pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections. He would be alone: he doesn’t have congressional representatives, he doesn’t have governors, he doesn’t have support in the bureaucracy, he doesn’t have state legislators; and standing alone in this system, he couldn’t do very much.

None of this would matter if the people, the voters, the citizens felt like keeping the nation-state from collapse. The problem is, they don’t.

Among a million other signs that everybody  (except a few cantankerous creatures like me) is ready to let it go, this very comment demonstrates that nobody wants to fight for the nation-state. “Let an almighty wizard come and make things pretty for me” does not work as basis for the nation-state.

The lazy “I wonder if Bernie can make everything right” is light years away from a shared future – oriented project everybody is actively advancing that is a foundation of a nation-state.

No, Bernie won’t be able to make everything right. The fellow you are looking for isn’t called Bernie. His name is Santa Claus.

P.S. For people with short attention span: this post is not a criticism of Bernie.