Mondrianyone

But really, is there any higher calling? This idiot stranger salutes you.

No, but my mouse bytes.

Alina might have been in the US for a year a decade ago, but presumably she didn't fall into some kind of cultural coma immediately on going home to Russia. We can see that she was pretty active on social media. Access to US sites and conversations only increased in the time she was back in the USSR (sorry, I know it's wrong, but I had to say it). Black Lives Matter became very prominent while she was posting away--you had to be dead not to be aware of all the racial turmoil in the US if you were on the WWW. She's appropriating black musical styles, and there've been endless conversations about how it's wrong for hiphop songs to perpetuate the use of violent, sexist imagery and language--she's not fooling anyone with this dumb-innocence act. Jeez, I could've been in a cave in Kurdistan, and if my pussy had Wi-Fi, I'd have picked up on all this stuff she claims not to know. She thinks she's cute enough to get away with shit, but she's not remotely that cute.

The only problem with that defense is that she lived in America for a year and had ample opportunity to learn about some of the more egregious nuances of the language, especially considering that she's trying to be a rap artist. So she knows enough English to put together a lyric like "my pussy's got Wi-Fi" (and what the hell does that even mean?) but she never picked up that the N-word isn't something you say as a white person? I'm not buying her wide-eyed naiveté. As usual, she's just pissed that she got caught. This is from ScreenRant: According to Alina’s Christmas Eve Instagram Story, the last time she was in America was “wonderful.” She mentioned being an exchange student and getting an iPod for Christmas back then. In a new series of Instagram Stories, Alina wrote that she was getting questions in her DMs about her "'trip' to the U.S.” Alina revealed she was “an exchange student in 2010-11 for a year.” Alina lived in Indiana with a host family and attended school, which she now remembers as an “amazing opportunity.” She is proud that she got the scholarship that allowed her to go abroad for such a long time and “have a life-changing experience.”

Re Alina the racist Rumpelstiltskin: Sometimes it's also the little things (pun probably intended). How hard is it to pronounce someone's name correctly? She's "known" him for 13 years, and she still says Cah-leb instead of Cay-leb. From ah to ay is just a tiny tweak of Russian vowel sounds, but still she persists in getting it wrong on purpose. It's amazing (amahzing?) to me that she feels so entitled in so many ways. Including toward people of color, especially since she's basically ripping off black American music--or trying to.

You're welcome! I took a photo of one from the last batch I ordered. Some of them I wear with the ear loops threaded through those thin slots on the wings. On others I cut off the wings and attached the frame to the inside of a mask with double-sided tape. I've found that customization seems to be the key to making them work. Hope you find some that suit you. They can be bought on Amazon and eBay by the 10- and 20-pack. But I see by looking around today that you can get them in tons of places!

He looks like a dancing Lipizzaner stallion in the first shot! What a beautiful boy.

Have you tried any of the silicone rubber frames/brackets that keep the mask away from your skin? I have a couple of different styles, and I like them a lot. I don't use them to protect my makeup--I just don't enjoy the way cloth masks can get sucked into your mouth with every breath, and the frames prevent that. You may have to try more than one style to find one you like, and the way they attach depends on the kind of mask you wear. Some have slots that you can thread the ear loops through, for instance. I found a really heavy-duty double-faced tape that I've been using to hold my frames in place. Here's a page of images. They look like something Hannibal Lecter would wear, but they're invisible inside your mask.

I think maybe next weekend. Now that I have fresh bugless flour again!

Somebody should say those look beautiful, so I will! Great job, @MargeGunderson! I was actually checking out that KA recipe a few days ago, and you've inspired me. Now if I could just reach through the screen . . .

I didn't say anyone over 100, I said nobody under 100. 😇

Nobody under 100 will get this joke. But I did.

Well, so much for scooping up this delicate little butterfly in our arms and rescuing her from that monster Caleb.

Thanks! Fortunately, it's not serum or something really important. There was a famous pilot in the 1930s named Wrong-Way Corrigan. I wonder if he was flying the UPS plane today.

Oh, that's awful. I hope it was a long time ago and that he's all better now. I swear no one will get a broken back from my little package. It can't weigh more than a pound. Well, I knew that if I waited long enough, I'd find something to be peeved about today. I just decided to make some pizza dough, so I took the flour canister out of the pantry. When I opened it up, I first thought it looked like whole-wheat flour. There were these tiny speckles all over the surface. But I knew it was the all-purpose canister. Looking closer, I saw that the teeny whole-wheat specks were moving. Bugs! I Googled, and they're flour mites. They can come into the house already in the bag of flour. Lovely. So now I'll be freezing every bag of flour I buy to kill them before they can gross me out. And there goes the pizza.

I'm pretty sure a thousand miles back in the wrong direction when the package was already an hour or two from my house isn't a variable. It's just nuts.

I'm not really peeved at this, just totally confused. An order from Amazon, placed on Thursday. I checked tracking a while ago, and I was surprised to see it was marked "Out for Delivery," which would be super fast--plus, we never get UPS deliveries here on Saturday. So here's the tracking progress: Saturday, January 15 8:28 AM Package is out for delivery. Louisville, KY US 6:59 AM Package arrived at a carrier facility. Londonderry, NH US 6:45 AM Package arrived at a carrier facility. Manchester, NH US 4:51 AM Package left the carrier facility. Louisville, KY US Friday, January 14 11:36 PM Package arrived at a carrier facility. Louisville, KY US 8:53 PM Package arrived at a carrier facility. Louisville, KY US 9:16 AM Package left the carrier facility. Garner, NC US Carrier picked up the package. It went from NC on Fri morning to KY by Fri night. Then it went to NH early this morning (great! right next door!), and then it's marked "Out for Delivery" an hour and a half later--back in KY! What the . . . ??? Does UPS serve booze on the coffee cart? The package got all the way to New Hampshire and then zipped back to Kentucky? This would be weird but not noteworthy if it happened just once. But it happens really often. I don't even begin to get how this is a thing.

I found myself wondering what telenovela role Jasmine was auditioning for--dominatrix with a heart of brass, recently released mental patient, crazy current (as opposed to ex-) girlfriend, cackling D-list Batman villainess (GataWoman?), dehydrated tearless weeper. Because all of that was so fake it made me laugh. And the harder she "cried," the harder I laughed.

That's too bad. I'm so sorry you have to put up with that. Have you had a direct (tactful or not) talk with the bigmouth about keeping it down?

Ed deserves a whole lot worse.

That title's already been used for Ed and Rose.

Didn't somebody say that one of the cosmetic improvements he'd paid for her to have was new teeth? So maybe he just sees the toothbrush as a way of protecting his investment. Viewed in that light, it almost makes sense. Almost.

If I were a man (which I'm not) and married to Loren or someone like her (which thank God I'm not), I might start tuning her out, too. She seems like a bottomless pit of neediness and making everything about herself (see her comments on Pillow Talk). I don't think there's enough attention in the world to satisfy her. I guess he's mostly okay with their situation, though, since he went along with having another baby so soon. People decide to tolerate all sorts of stuff for their own reasons.

Noise-canceling headphones?

Imagine how mad Jasmine would get if Gino tipped a cow? (The mad cow reference is your free bonus humor.)