Everything around us is set up to prevent us from accumulating wealth. More and more people rent because they can’t buy a house. Families increasingly need two or even three cars. The practice of fixing appliances or shoes is gone, pushing people to buy new ones all the time.

In the midst of all that, there are incredible suckers who facilitate their own despoliation by foregoing the biggest financial benefit of being in a relationship. Not having to pay two sets of rent and utilities is one of the few remaining ways we have to shore up our financial situation. But it’s easier to profit off us if we are unattached and alone. We are exhorted to remain unattached and alone (under the guise of freedom and choice, as always) because this makes us easier to fleece. And as absolute dummies, we agree. 

Also, these people do not love each other because sharing the day-to-day life is one of the most enjoyable parts of being in love.

I’m sick as a dog, people. Some nasty kid coughed in my face, and now I’m down for the count.

I still have to grade and respond to students and colleagues, which takes the form of me staring at each word I write veeeeeery carefully to avoid basic spelling errors. I misspelled my own first name twice in a row, so that you know what I’m talking about.

On a positive side, I received some nice anonymous questions and I’ll answer them later today.

I took Tanya and the boys to ride the train in Japan

What do you notice?

https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1870975093607940580?t=h_rkYvLWDYpba0s4hGnfQw&s=19

I notice that nobody except a rude American is sticking a camera into people’s faces. Of course, it’s too much to ask that a person Google the country he’s visiting to find out what behaviors are acceptable.

What can diabetic tourists have for breakfast in Mediterranean countries? Does anybody have any suggestions?

Yeah, hmm, what a mystery. How can this possibly be? It’s not like a psychosis-inducing substance has been legalized and made a staple of young people’s lives.

And for the fiftieth time, it’s not the same marijuana you consumed on 1973. It’s many, many times more potent. Also, if you used this drug in the past 3 months, your opinion on it is not valuable.

At this point I have to ask, are they trying to be funny on purpose? Because there isn’t a single word of this headline that isn’t uproariously funny.

That poor little dude, why did he agree to be used for this piece? Why did he need to be humiliated in such a way?,

People around here are very happy to see me in my Ukrainian fur coat. Passersby light up when they see it. I get endless compliments.

What I don’t get is, why don’t people wear them if they like them so much? And please don’t tell me they can’t afford. Every woman in Ukraine can afford a fur coat, and Americans can’t? We afforded them even in the USSR. I thought maybe people are opposed on ideological grounds around here but judging by the reaction, they aren’t.

It’s so warm in a fur coat, if you never tried, you have no idea. Warm, light, roomy. We are having the coldest winter since I moved to the area, and I can’t believe it’s actually cold enough for the fur.

This is a true crime book by a Canadian journalist and it details a 1997 murder of a teenage girl Reena in Vancouver by her classmates.

There was absolutely no reason for Kelly and Warren to murder their school mate Reena. In fact, it seems that they never had contact with her before the murder. The absolute horror and the senselessness of a 14-year-old child being murdered by the only somewhat older Warren and Kelly shocked everybody in Canada. Rebecca Godfrey researched the story for years and wrote this book about it in 2006. She is a gifted author, and Under the Bridge is beautifully written. The real mystery in it, however, is not why Warren and Kelly murdered Reena. It is, rather, why Godfrey writes about Warren like she’s in love with him.

The entire point of the book seems to be to vilify Kelly and whitewash Warren. The descriptions of the teenaged Warren that Godfrey provides seem to have been written by a besotted groupie and not an adult journalist. Even the collection of photos at the end of the book starts with a picture of Warren and ends with another picture of Warren posing next to Godfrey. The victim is an afterthought. For Godfrey, the suffering, wounded hero of the story is the murderous Warren.

In spite of Godfrey’s efforts to make him sound angelic, Warren seems to be a right sociopath who played the Canadian justice system like a violin. Understanding the Canadian obsession with the natives, he invented an indigenous heritage for himself and got early release as a result.

This is a beautiful book but you’ve got to read it as a fictional account because Godfrey got so emotionally involved with the participants that the actual story is almost entirely lost.

I’ll tell you honestly, I don’t feel poetry in English like I do in Russian and, to a lesser extent, in Spanish. The meter is so different that I don’t process it as poetry. The only English-language poet that I feel is Seamus Heaney.

A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.

Other than Heaney, I just don’t read English-language poetry for enjoyment. Walt Whitman I definitely could never understand, even though I love several Russian and Hispanic poets who were inspired by him.

This is not, of course, a criticism of Whitman but, rather, of my own limitations.

A gossip article somehow floated across my newsfeed. I don’t know anything about these people but I was shocked to discover that the dude left the cute woman in the middle for the bald skeleton on the right and not vice versa.

The Jewish fellow must be rich for women to compete over him like that. The skeleton is unlikely to have functioning hormonal processes, so I can’t imagine her actually feeling attracted.