Risotto with wild mushrooms and edible flowers. And some pico de gallo for me, as well. 

And I used to kind of like her for two minutes:

Dystopian fiction is hot right now, with countless books and movies featuring decadent oligarchs, brutal police states, ecological collapse, and ordinary citizens biting and clawing just to survive. For bestselling author Naomi Klein, all this gloom is a worrying sign. “I think what these films tell us is that we’re taking a future of environmental catastrophe for granted,” Klein says in Episode 129 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

Actually, the movies tell us nothing of the kind. Opulent, over-fed societies love titillating themselves with scary fantasies. Poor, starving societies invent Cinderella and worship Shirley Temple. The current dystopia craze shows that we are over the recession and are celebrating it in style, that’s all.

Guess who’s not reading Naomi Klein’s new book? 

 

Do you sometimes have those days when you feel ugly, stupid, useless, fat, and irrelevant?

I do. Today is such a day for some reason. And even posting the list of my 2014 accomplishments didn’t help.

I lost a button from my coat and now I feel like a total failure of a human being because I can’t figure out where to buy buttons.

So I go into a store (that obviously doesn’t sell buttons) and feel even more useless, fat, ugly, stupid, and irrelevant. And then a very elegant black lady looks at me and says, “Wow, you look so pretty!”

And I felt better.

So here is my Christmas advice: say nice things to people because, who knows, maybe on this day they really need to hear something kind.

P.S. I blame Putin. No, seriously, I stared at his ugly mug for 2 hours yesterday, and today I feel like shit. That’s hardly a coincidence.

OK, let’s see, what on Earth have I been doing this year?

1. Learned to drive.
2. Got a driver’s license.
3. Got a car.
4. Bought a house.
5. Moved.
6. Applied for tenure.
7. Saw my first book in print.
8. Finally reunited with a dear friend I hadn’t seen in 7 years.
9. Started writing my second book.
10. Submitted 2 articles for publication. One was rejected, one is awaiting decision.
11. Supervised renovations on the new house.
12. Applied for a sabbatical.
13. Applied for an RA grant and won.
14. Dealt with a scare of the “There is a shadow in your liver but it probably isn’t cancer” variety.
15. Cured myself of diabetes.
16. Hosted my very first party at my very first house.
17. Did my very first barbecue.
18. Learned to light a fireplace.
19. Did my very first DIY project (and it came out great!)
20. Applied and got accepted to a conference but then it got cancelled.
21. Applied for another grant and lost.
22. Taught 8 courses, 7 of them different from each other.
23. Got into birdwatching and weight-lifting.
24. There was only one international trip (which is unusual for me) but N has problems with his papers (again!) so we can’t go anywhere.
25. Taught the best course of my entire teaching career.
26. Participated in political protests.
27. Survived the first anniversary.

Well, the question of why I’ve been feeling so exhausted seems to have been answered.

P.S. And how could I forget? Discovered that the nation-state was about to collapse!

A Ukrainian journalist got up to ask Putin how he could explain waging a war against the mostly Russian-speaking population of Eastern Ukraine. He also asked Putin finally to say how many Russian soldiers had died in Russia’s war on Ukraine and when Putin was going to release the Ukrainian prisoners of war. [One of the prisoners of war is the famous Ukrainian fighter pilot Nadiya Savchenko.]

Putin responded that prisoners of war were not prisoners of war but terrorists. He also said that all of the Russian soldiers fighting in Russia were volunteers who had followed their hearts (sic) into Ukraine. He gave no indication as to when the hearts of these freaks were going to lead them back home.

Putin got angry, jerky, and in the end quite hysterical when talking about Ukraine. But in the end of his snot-slurping speech [he seems to have a cold] he said he was ready to hand the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions back to Ukraine. [Putin’s newly acquired neo-Nazi supporters have all suffered apoplectic fits.]

Then Putin declared that he is still extremely upset about the lack of respect his Olympic Games got from the West. These Olympics are somewhat of an obsession with Putinoids. In response to the question as to whether annexing the Crimea was really worth it, Putin went on and on about how much his feelings had been hurt by the lack of admiration Westerners had shown to his Olympics. He also said that Americans couldn’t blame him for annexing the Crimea after stealing Texas from Mexicans.

“It’s not about the Crimea,”” he kept repeating. 

At the very beginning of his press-conference, Putin assured his listeners that the current crisis in the Russian economy is temporary because the world economy will grow. If the world economy grows, there will be a growing need for Russian oil. Russia will come out of its current crisis in two years at most. [Putin seems to believe that the US fracking gains will be exhausted sooner than everybody predicts, which is 2020, according to everybody but Putin.]

In case there is anybody who still doesn’t know it, Putin is a hard-core Milton-Friedmanist. The main idea he expressed today (and has been expressing for the past 15 years) is that the market will correct all imbalances and regulate itself. His message at the press-conference was “keep spending, stop saving because spending is good for the economy.”

The so-called Russian journalists were stellar as always. “Now that we have seen you smile a few times, Mr. President, we all feel much better,” one of them said sycophantically.

The same journalist asked if Russia was ever going to “kick the oil habit” and Putin responded that the Russian government can’t do anything about it because that’s what the world economy is like. And then he was back to his favorite idea that markets will regulate themselves. Market forces, tax holidays, private property, business, investment, and anyway the markets need to be free to regulate themselves.

The Berlin Wall never really fell, Putin said. Americans decided after 1989 that they were a new empire, the winners, and they started to rebuild a virtual Berlin Wall.  Instead, Putin said, Americans should have worked to advance a system of economic freedom. [Because markets regulate themselves, in case you have forgotten.]

[To be continued. . .]

Russians believe that the rouble was sunk by Americans. Ukrainians also believe that the rouble was sunk by Americans. There are insistent rumors coming from Ukraine that this was promised to Ukrainians back in the spring.

Originally, I’m not inclined to believe this. Oil prices drop,  why should we look for a conspiracy behind this? Russians and Ukrainians alike have a need to believe that Americans are behind the rouble ‘ s travails and that is blinding them.

But then the reestablishment of the relations with Cuba happens. And it happens hours after the Russians have the scare of their lives as they see the rouble plummet to 80 per dollar (it went back to the still horrible 60 shortly thereafter). And two days after the Ukrainian bill passes Congress.

The rapprochement with Cuba has been in the works for months. Ever since. . .?

This is such a seductive possibility: this was all planned! The rouble, the Cuban thing, the bill, and who knows what else. All planned to coincide in time. Wouldn’t that be the best thing ever?

Oh, I want to believe. I want to believe there was a strategy all along. Is that too optimistic, though?

Interesting numbers on the changes in American incomes:

As you can see, everybody’s income dropped off a cliff in 2007 (except my personal one. Mine soared but I’m weird that way). I’ll be damned if I ever listen to the stupid pundits again with their “the very rich gained from the recession.”