It’s got to be COVID, what I have. I’m not eating and the only moments in my life when I don’t want to eat is when I have COVID or after I give birth. And I definitely didn’t give birth recently.

The worst part is that final grades are due on Monday at noon, and I’m responsible for the grades of all our 9 languages. And I’m starting to teach my winter course on Monday. And my brain doesn’t work. I have to make a gigantic effort to complete the simplest operations. Plus, I’m sure that not eating isn’t helping with concentration.

As I’m sick, I sleep all the time. And for some reason, in my dreams I’m reading newspaper headlines in Polish. Many words are just like in Ukrainian but some are completely unidentifiable. For example, why is “kobieta” a woman? In my dream, I only figured out what it means from the context.

While I’m sick and unable to say anything remotely interesting, here’s some great Bill Maher for you on Israel and Palestine:

All wars end with negotiation, but it's hard to negotiate when the other side's bargaining position is "you all die and disappear." pic.twitter.com/x72h9Zlqjy

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) December 16, 2023

You can say the same about negotiating with Russia. You can’t negotiate with the side that wants you to not exist. And that is incapable of respecting any agreement.

It’s a great video. I highly recommend.

I’m sick with a brutal cold, my friends. Can’t get out of bed, cooked a great dish and ate none of it. Not a spoonful! I need to be really ill to stop eating.

I have to record an urgent video for students but the way I look and sound, it’s best not to show my face in public.

https://twitter.com/ErmakovFeda/status/1735037672832332201?t=ugaFVPj1diJHeuDEzLxN3Q&s=19

The girl in red ended up bringing a rifle to school, killing the girl who is pummeling her in the video, shooting 5 other 13-year-olds, and committing suicide.

I could post a video a day like this. Kids pummeling each other or their teachers. The teachers pummeling the kids. Men beating women. Women brutalizing toddlers. Toddlers slicing house pets with knives.

The tapping is fine but the costumes, the styling and the glorification of Russia are hideous and tone-deaf. If they wanted something Eastern European, they could have invited Ukrainian performers in beautiful costumes to do the song I posted yesterday. They could have US singers of different races do half of it in English. That would be beautiful and Christmassy.

Why does everything have to be so ugly? This is torture to people with a live aesthetic sensibility.

Anonymous questions keep coming in, and here is one I like:

The posts I enjoy most of all are where you tell anecdotes from your daily life. Please share an endearing story or a happy memory. I could use reading it today!

The story that immediately comes to mind is when N and I were moving to our house back in 2014. N worked in St Louis back then and had a long commute, so I was supervising the process. On the day of the actual move, I wanted to surprise him and greet him with a completely ready new house, with no boxes, piles of stuff, or “projects”.

When he came to the new home in the evening, it looked completely lived in, and there was a small table in front of the open window, beautifully laid with a 3-course dinner. Of course, the dinner wasn’t home-cooked because there had been no time. But it was still a great surprise because N had missed the whole move. It was like magic.

Of course, it had taken almost a month to plan and effectuate this surprise little by little. But it was totally worth it.

The reason behind this endearing surprise is not exactly sunny. When N was a kid, his family moved to a larger apartment. The process was so fraught for his parents that they almost murdered each other. Literally. They used weapons and inflicted grave bodily damage. As a result, N was terrified of moving because he thought we’d end up chasing each other with cleavers, and I wanted to make it painless for him.

At work, I have friends on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the one side, I have pro-Muslim friends who condemn Israel for baselessly attacking peaceful Palestine. And on the other, I have Jewish friends who call on Israel to stop baselessly attacking peaceful Palestine.

Both groups have issued public statements and published open letters in support of their positions.

It’s great to see such spirited debate on campus!

No, there are no typos in my post.

True. The Right are the new pinko-commie America-hater. Always trailing in the footsteps of the Left. Always playing the sad wannabe game.

But it’s not one-directional. The Left has become pro-Big Pharma and pro-Wall Street. The people who wanted to Occupy Wall Street have been occupied by Wall Street.

After the Christmas concert, I’m in a festive mood and I want to share this famous Ukrainian Christmas carol where the singer imitates the tolling of the bells of an Orthodox cathedral:

The carol was adapted into English by another famous Ukrainian artist but the English version mostly moves the bells out of the singing and into the lyrics.

Yes, Anglos will talk anything to death.

It’s a joke.

Enjoy the Christmas season.