Everything here, except for the coffee*, is from the local farmer market. The cucumbers are very lightly marinated by me. The eggs didn’t come out very round because they are too fresh.

* Coffee is from Seattle and OMG. Totally lives up to the hype.

If I hear the word “crude” one more time in reference to Trump, I will renounce all political media forever. His manners are the very last problem facing us all, yet we hear about it like they are the one and only issue. I don’t know who first came up with this thing, but it was stupid back then and it’s even more ridiculous now.

I just read today’s NYTimes, in case anybody is wondering.

Wow, it turns out there was a whole huge scandal with Joy Reid, the only MSNBC newscaster I liked. The only moderately charming one turns out to be a jerk. I haven’t watched in a while so I missed it.

Is anybody keeping abreast of the recent feminist theory and can recommend a few titles? By recent I mean the last decade.

I need to write something for a feminist journal, and I need a smattering of theory to mask my profound disinterest in the subject.

Of all people, it’s got to be Bret Stephens who gets it:

Today’s social democracy falls apart on the contradiction between advocating nearly unlimited government largess and nearly unlimited immigration. “Abolish ICE” is a proper rallying cry for hard-core libertarians and Davos globalists, not democratic socialists or social democrats. A federal job guarantee is an intriguing idea — assuming the jobs are for some defined “us” that doesn’t include every immigrant, asylum-seeker or undocumented worker.

Without a defined “we”, also known as the nation-state, there’s no welfare. I dislike Stephens, to put it mildly, but why isn’t anybody else pointing out this centrally important fact?

We all laughed so hard at the “get the government out of my Medicare” folks but “I want open borders and a federal job guarantee” is the exact same thing. “I want the nation-state to go away but to keep giving.” It’s delusional, and what a shame that only an unsavory Bret Stephens has the brains to point out that there is no welfare without a defined “we.”

It seems that many people have forgotten this, but at first and for years Putin was very pro-American, pro-Western, pro-EU, pro-modernization, and pro-NATO expansion into former Soviet Republics. He was positively glowing with approval when the Baltics joined. I have quotes if people have forgotten.

I don’t believe Putin himself as an individual cares about Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, the EU, the Western values, or anything of the kind. I think he cares about palaces, luxury, whores, and exotic animals.

He must have noticed, though, that unless he invaded, his ratings plummeted and an opposition movement grew. The moment he invaded somebody, the ratings soared and everybody, including the opposition, began to adore him. So he does whatever he needs to keep his palaces, exotic animals, and whores. The whatever happens to be invasions, so that’s what he does.

The largest country on the planet is populated by 120 million people, 88% of whom aren’t happy unless somebody is getting invaded in their name. Putin is just a symptom.

I thought of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” this week when it was announced that Scarlett Johansson would be playing the part of a transgender man, Dante Gill, in a film called “Rub and Tug.” There has been a heartfelt cry of protest from the trans community.

I once watched a play set in 19th-century where a Russian slave-owner was played by a black actor. It was a completely realist rendering otherwise, and I’ve got to say, it felt bizarre given that the play was about the consequences of abolishing serfdom in tsarist Russia. But people explained that this was a convention in American theater. People get hired for roles irrespective of their identity as human beings.

Nobody is hiring the multitude of struggling Russian actors in the US – some of them incredibly talented – to play in renderings of Chekhov, for instance. And there’s no outcry and no weepy pieces in NYTIMES.

Shit, we, the Russian-speakers, can never sell ourselves as convincing victims. We are failures even at this nifty little cottage industry.

The grandpas I hired asked shyly if I could pay them in cash because the bank is closing and they won’t have time to cash the check until Monday.

“We live hand to mouth,” they said.

I remember the horrible feeling of hoping to get paid on Friday and the client saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. I’ll bring you the money on Monday.” And that was the money I was counting on to get something to eat. The client was a spoiled mistress of a rich foreigner. It was humiliating. But I was 20. I’m guessing it feels much worse to be in that situation at 65.

One of the grandpas is a disabled veteran. Shame on all of us for not arranging things in a way that doesn’t force retiree veterans to do yard work in 100 degree heat.

The grandpas said it’s hard to find work going door to door because people are suspicious and won’t open the door. They were really stunned by my friendliness, they said. I tell you, folks, I’m like the queen of sociability around here.

Of course, I paid the grandpas in cash and hired them for more projects next week. I actually got a quote on this job yesterday from a large company, and it was so ridiculously overpriced that I tabled the whole thing.

Independently of each other, two Russian people choked on salo and died. Salo is the most typical Ukrainian food in the world. The symbolism of invaders choking on the traditional staple of those they keep invading can’t fail to impress.