When BARBIE© hit the market in 1959, she cost $3. But don’t be fooled by the low sticker price. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $29 in 2020.

Which reminds me.

The SDNY has been making some threatening noises about a certain other Barbie’s inflated invoices to her Daddy’s GREAT AMERICA SUPER-PAC for so-called ‘consulting fees.’ Mister Cyrus Vance seems to think that’s improper. Actually, it’s worse than improper. It’s a felony, although given the insane fuckery of the Trump years, I’m not so sure it’s even a misdemeanor anymore, or anything more serious than a parking ticket.

Now your conventional Barbie©…

I’ll admit to creep-stalking my Ex on Facebook.

When she came back into my head, I decided to use the memories as model for the protagonist in one of my novels-in-progress and, as characters often do, she literally wrote herself into the story. I always Google the names of potential characters beforehand, kind of like a title search before buying a home. You want to know who might hold a lien on the property before committing to the purchase, though it’s not like Natasha herself ever belonged to me, or to anyone.

The most worrisome thing is that there are…

“Gustavo, Inésa….Come up to the terraza, quickly! Something wonderful is happening in the city…”

“What is it Ráfaga? We’re busy here in the studio. Can’t it wait for later?”

“No. There’s smoke in the sky and people are rushing about in the streets. A building is on fire.”

“Is it our building?”

“No, Viejo! It’s not our building. Are you blind already? You must be deaf as well. Listen to those bells. All the church bells are sounding at once, even the Giralda. What a commotion! It’s so exciting!”

“All right, then. We’re coming up. Inésa, please put your clothes…

Please refer to my linked essay on the horrors of the Canadian Residential Schools:

A key issue — perhaps THE key issue — in the seemingly endless Indian Residential School scandal is the pope’s refusal to offer a formal apology for the Church’s role in what Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls “cultural genocide.” Many survivors of the Indian Residential School system are now adults pressing for some kind, indeed any kind, of acknowledgment of their suffering by the perpetrators of these crimes. Pope Francis flatly refuses to apologize.

There is a good reason for his refusal that has nothing…

Imagine for a moment that civil order breaks down in the USA. Yeah, I know. It’s not hard to imagine.

A multiplicity of ad hoc militias, neo-Nazis, the KKK, right-wing police agencies, and other white Christian MAGA forces square off against Black militias, police agencies loyal to the government, and a divided military. Both factions point to the Constitution as justification for their aggressions. America’s alternate-president sets up an alternate-capital in Florida.

One faction of a divided U.S. military makes a strategic decision to recruit high-profile prisoners it holds at Guantanamo Bay and other of its black sites to try…

“Gustavo, quick. Open the door!”

“Hello Flora. What’s all the fuss about? Here I am patiently applying a coat of varnish to this new painting Cernuda ordered for his Ráfaga collection and you burst in like a police raid on one of your Parcheesi parties. And my rheumatism is flaring up again too. I’m in no condition for socializing today.”

“Haven’t you seen what El Diaro is reporting this morning? I left the newspaper on the table for you before you left the house.”

“What is it now? Another scandal in the Ayuntamiento? Has Pius XI proclaimed a new Spanish…

Satire (but not really)

Here’s a really to-the-point article by Lisa Martens:

My daughter, her mom, and I were discussing this very topic over dinner last evening.

It started with my partner’s complaint that she’d been out shopping in the old city (Seville, Spain) when a guy started giving her the eye. I asked if she’d been wearing the coral horn on her chain necklace, her usual prophylaxis against the Evil Eye. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t that kind of eye.”