…So I told him, I hate side hugs! Next time, let’s just acknowledge each other with a nod, you side-hugging freak.
Author’s Note: Often, my journal entries blend humour, history, culture, current events, and critique. Posts may include satire, irony, political commentary, and references to real-world harm. I may adopt exaggerated or absurd positions to make a point. Satire and humour are tools for examination, not endorsement. Read with context.
I’m always afraid people aren’t going to get me or get it! (heavy sigh) When I write my journal, the content unfolds in real time. It’s reflective, exploratory and unscripted. While I edit my posts for clarity, I do not engineer them for neutrality. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
I’m upset; I lost my posts. It was ready to go, and I don’t know what happened to it. WordPress! You said you auto-save, but you lied! BOOHOO. I’ve been writing consistently for six years, and I still can’t keep track of my stuff. I wonder how many things I’ve lost that I can’t remember losing. Well, let’s start again.
I wasn’t going to share this with you because I wondered whether now is a bad time to sample this region’s cuisine. Enough said.
The other day, I was watching a movie, and someone mentioned salted lard. He was sitting at the table, eating it with bread and trying to force-feed it to the person he just kidnapped. Immediately intrigued, I paused the show, Salted lard. Do I add salt to lard and eat it? After about thirty minutes of searching, I found it. Salo!
Salo is a traditional Eastern European cured pork fat, most closely associated with Ukraine but also popular in Russia, Poland, and other neighbouring countries. It’s made from salted pork back fat, sometimes seasoned with garlic, pepper, or paprika. Salo is typically sliced thin and eaten raw (cured, not cooked), often served with rye bread, pickles, mustard, or horseradish.
It’s considered both a comfort food and a cultural staple cause it’s simple, rustic, and deeply tied to regional identity and rural tradition. All that info is from Google; I haven’t spoken to any of my many Eastern European friends to know how accurate it is.
Officially, I’ve passed the Asian cuisine baton to the boys. It’s all about Eastern European food for now.
After getting all that history, I looked for a recipe, but I figured it’d be best to try it first, THEN make it; otherwise, I’d have nothing to compare it to. My next hunt was for an Eastern European grocery store. Eventually, I found Angela’s Deli. My first purchase was their salo spread with garlic and a loaf of Estonian borodinskiy on January 3. Hopefully, all their spelling is correct cause I’m looking at the receipt.
Since then, I’ve tried the cabbage, vitaminka, vinegret, and nameko mushroom salads. I also enjoyed the lightly salted salmon, a cottage cheese pancake, and the salmon brushky – the texture of that one I didn’t like so much; my solution was to put it in the air fryer for a few minutes, and that worked. I had it with ~50 grams of rice and vegetables. I plan to try everything in the store. EVERYTHING!!! Do you hear me, Angela?
I’ll keep you posted! 😍
I can’t let the first quarter of 2026 pass without an episode of…
Name That Tyrant – No. 11
- Wow! Number 11. I don’t remember where I got the idea from. I’ve been doing this since 2022. Stalin was the first. So far, I’ve covered:
- Idi Amin Dada
- Pol Pot
- Benito Mussolini
- Nicolae Ceaușescu
- Muammar gaddafi
- Jeffrey Lundgren (first cult leader)
- Ilse Koch (first woman)
- Jorge Rafael Videla
- Hirohito AKA Emperor Shōwa
BTW: Did I tell you I’m gonna open a war crimes gift shop? Still working on the name, but this one feels alt-right…
War Crimes for All Times
It’s not gonna be some underground shit either. I’m not gonna shame you for wanting to buy Nazi collectibles. I’ll simply stamp the receipt with “Historical Artifact,” thereby removing all embarrassment, because nothing says “never again” like curated, climate-controlled archival items.
It’ll be a high-end souvenir shop in Yorkdale, right next to Holt Renfrew, with floor-to-ceiling statues at the entrance—Stalin on the left and Idi Amin on the right. My store is gonna be welcoming; you can sit down, read replicas, and take your time browsing.
I’ll play ragtime, but slow it down so it sounds like Muzak. The store will smell a mix of used bookstore, cigar bar, and dirt from mass graves. You’re welcome to lick the walls to get a taste of blood. We’ll have Open Mic nights and workshops all in support of future dictators:
- Elite Cohesion & Loyalty Architecture
- Electoral Systems Optimization & Outcome Assurance
- Managing Dissidents: Opposition Containment & Narrative Realignment
Tyrant Time
Born in 1892 in a coastal naval town to a seafaring family. I believe he was the youngest of five. His mother was from an upper-class Catholic family. Dad was a naval officer who preferred women and local bars over spending time with his family. Eventually, he abandoned them, and Mom wore black the whole time as if he were dead.
A small boy, who was closest to his mother, whose siblings took over tormenting him after Dad left. He was supposed to be a naval officer like his dad, but ended up in the army at 14. There, he was also mocked for his size and high-pitched voice.
Classmates and early colleagues would describe him as:
- Emotionally guarded
- Reserved
- Extremely self-controlled
- Not given to drinking or womanizing (unlike many officers)
- Devoutly Catholic
- Highly ambitious
He ruled from 1939 to 1975 and is said to be responsible for killing ~ 500,000 people. His country has one of the highest numbers of mass graves, which is usually an indicator of civil war, genocide and a totalitarian regime. (hint hint).
And your final clue, around 2018-2019, the decision to exhume and relocate his body sparked controversy, with supporters protesting and expressing anger at the removal and relocation of his remains.
Get your entries in ASAP! I will share prize info when I reveal his name cause this post is already long and I have more to say.
About How I’m Feeling
Sometimes I wonder why I’m attracted to these systems, and I feel like something might be wrong with me, but I’m ok. Still good. 😊 For whatever reason, I’ve always been drawn to understanding the dark side of human nature and how harm happens (I’m not including your subtle everyday harm here): how language sanitizes it, how systems enable it, how we normalize it.
Did I ever tell you, I feel I'm more susceptible to joining a cult than falling for a romance scam? Looking for love in all the wrong places. Anyhow, back to what I was saying.
That’s probably why I’m drawn to true crime, too. Hannah Arendt’s quote, “The banality of evil,” from her Eichmann book just came to mind. Crime is: How did one person cross the line? Authoritarian systems are: How did millions normalize crossing the line? Things don’t happen overnight; the line gets moved ever so slowly.
I might have told you this before, at some point I wanted to be an FBI profiler around the time I had my daughter and a priest talked me out of it. He made a similar statement to the quote on monsters and the abyss. In university, I wanted to work for the UN in a human rights capacity. (reminder – I still need to get to the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg.)
“To build a shield, you must first understand the sword.” I can’t remember who said that. To defend rights, I must understand how they get violated. And the satire is just an aside. I’ve always used jokes to help me cope with shit. 😩
As always, it was a pleasure chatting with you. Enjoy the rest of your week! Find time to play with your wild things and always look both ways before crossing them lines!
Fri Feb 27
Photo by Kyle Loftus on Unsplash
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