Clarissa's Blog

My Ukrainian instructor is in Chicago right now. I really talked up the place. “You should go! There’s always something going on!”

I feel kind of stupid now.

Took them hours to organize and walk out. There are many such videos from different countries.

This is a response to the people who keep claiming that the “anti-war Russians” overseas couldn’t have possibly organized to protest the war. They didn’t protest because they support the war. People who want to walk out always find a way.

Seeing the strategy and tactics of Hamas’s attack on Israel yesterday, I wondered for the first time whether Prigozhin was actually alive.

There’s a conspiracy theory going around that his plane crash was staged to conceal the fact that Prigozhin was being sent to a crucial overseas mission. I thought it was complete bunkum. I still mostly think that, but, you know.

I spent the past 18 months staring at the footage of military operations that follow a certain scenario. Day after day, day after day. And then I see the exact same thing but people look a little different and speak another language. One can’t avoid wondering what just happened to transform Hamas in such a way.

I want to reiterate that I don’t believe that the attack on Israel is about Ukraine. Not everything is about everything else. “Distracting attention from Ukraine” is an unserious interpretation, so I’d rather not talk about it at all.

But I do wonder whether Hamas has a new owner.

Oh, and as a post-scriptum, it was fascinating to observe how the entire far-left yesterday stanned for Hamas using the same words as when the far-right stans for the Russians. Both groups are trained monkeys and both detest their own civilization, siding with its enemies.

My ideal sleep conditions involve the kind of room temperature that allows for an icicle to form on my nose. This is an unachievable dream but since Thursday we’ve had really nice, cool weather. If I leave the windows wide open and turn on the ceiling fan, I can finally get passable sleep. I conk out without any melatonin and have the most beautiful dreams about oceans glimmering in the sunshine and tropical vacations at luxurious resorts.

Unfortunately, N doesn’t share my love of subarctic temperatures. He thinks that 68°F is perishing cold and starts turning on the heating the moment we get the weather that can be qualified as anything different from bloody sweltering heat.

And the prize for the most stilted, grudging and insincere expression of compassion goes to…

This is how the Russian city of Grozny celebrated Putin’s birthday today:

Yes, it’s kind of pathetic. They should learn from Hamas how to really please the dear leader.

I’m not a fan of Ozempic but might the sky-rocketing food prices have something to do with this?

Do you know why the West is wealthy and has a great standard of living?

Because it robbed and oppressed the rest of the world for centuries.

Yes, this is stupid, woke blabber. Delivered yesterday in a speech by a dude called Vladimir Putin.

Once again, the Nobel Prize winner in literature is a writer whose name I never heard.

I honestly don’t believe it’s possible to have a life that revolves more around literature than mine. It’s not a brag, it’s a fact. I decided at the age of 5 that my job was going to be that of a reader and I followed through on that.

You’d think that with all the time I spend reading books, browsing books, searching for good authors, talking about books with others, there’d be a moment I’d at least hear somebody mention one of these authors. If they are, indeed, important authors, wouldn’t one of them have some impact on the authors I do read?

Who are all these writers?

They should have awarded it to Rushdie. He’s a really important world-famous author who has has an enormous impact. The committee clearly wants to give awards only to postmodernists. OK, Rushdie is a postmodernist. But at least everybody knows him. He’s taught at every college in existence.

But Rushdie doesn’t navel gaze, which these recent picks have all been about.

N is really into the GameStop story, so we watch every movie and documentary about it. As a result, for our romantic day, we went to watch the new feature Dumb Money. I didn’t expect to enjoy it because there’s only that many times a lady can discuss a short squeeze versus a Delta squeeze without withering but it was a very enjoyable movie.

As usual, N and I sided with the different adversary in the conflict. We met in 2007, right before the Lehman Brothers news hit, and have spent our entire relationship arguing about hedge funds versus the people. It’s become a favorite family pastime.

“You have a class hatred of hedge fund managers!” he exclaims every time with fresh surprise.

It’s a good movie, plus Vincent D’Onofrio makes a couple of short appearances. Of course, the story was massaged into a weird happy ending but that’s American movies.