The weekend slipped by in a blur of Debate fundraising. I’m done actually debating, but I’m still locked into a bunch of the unfun club stuff. Meanwhile I missed Newspaper for the third consecutive time thanks to my last IB test, Russian HL. This was a reasonably enjoyable test. I had to write a 400-word story about a desert island. I considered for a few seconds actually writing a decent, interesting, original story, but then realized my grasp of the language was too tenuous for any kind of ambitious plan, and wrote a stupid story about a plane crash and the Bermuda Triangle. As it turns out, I do not know how to say “Bermuda Triangle” in Russian. I spelled it out phonetically, though, and waxed ominous about it.

Saturday night, I went with some familials to a Russian concert — a bass opera singer, Nikita Storojev, and a pianist. They did some excellent Tchaikovsky, but I liked the Russian folk songs best. “Ei Ukhnem” is totally impressive when executed by a bearlike man with a huge voice and a perfectly pressed suit. I have to say, Storojev can pull off a bowtie even better than Josh Lyman, and certainly much better than Tucker Carlson. At any rate I feel like slightly less of a philistine now. It seems that I can enjoy classical music when it is either a) Russian of b) Flight of the Bumblebee.

Yesterday I read Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs, which I would recommend to anyone who likes the extremely gory aspects of humanity. In all honesty, I have always rather liked Hannibal Lector. I mean, I know he would probably gut me and eat my spleen, should I ever encounter him, but I am a big fan of smart people. Even smart people that eat people. Whatever. Lector is an evil genius.