Christmas special

November 7, 2020 To my dear parents, Victory. Uttering the word feels strange after four long years of battle. But we persisted. After our devastating ‘loss’ in 2016, I ordered my pink-knit pussy hat from Etsy and answered the call to arms. I remember learning of the atrocities suffered under other dictators whose statues we’ve toppled, such as Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. But after the horrors I’ve witnessed online, I would trade places with them in an instant. It’s hard to describe daily life when you’re living in a war. For four years I’ve woken up in my Brooklyn apartment, heart heavy with the knowledge that I am living under the tyrannical rule of a madman. Is this how Anne Frank felt?

Toward the end of my latest YouTube livestream, I casually invited my subscribers to email me for a free life-enrichment consultation, subject to a moderate monthly donation to my PayPal account. Subsequently, my inbox has been literally inundated with more than several emails beseeching my guidance on every progressive topic under the sun. I’ve therefore decided it is my duty to reply to these poor souls, and simultaneously share my seemingly endless bounty of knowledge and wisdom with the readership of this publication. So without further ado, dear reader, let us delve into your humble Woke Life correspondent’s mailbox to discover who is fortuitous enough to receive my progressive instruction. From Devastated of ClevelandQ.

Laramie, Wyoming Nearly all the famous artistic controversies in the aesthetic history of the western world — the Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns in France and the contest between the rococo and neoclassical schools across Europe in the middle of the 18th century; the subsequent rivalry between the Classicists and the Romantics and the contretemps in the late-19th century between the Realists and the Impressionists — are as dead, irrelevant and forgotten today as the wars between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

Single at the holidays: an infamous drag, and this year worse than others. Singles got especially hosed during the COVID pandemic. Sure, uncoupled millennials are generally not grappling with remote learning, limited childcare or the actual virus, but dating is no walk in the park — except, I guess, when walking in the park is the only permissible date. Take me. I’ve just crossed that Rubicon where well-meaning friends and family have changed their tune about my romantic prospects. It used to be that no one was good enough for me; now, the refrain is ‘No one’s perfect!’ And no one is. After my ’rona- related evacuation from New York, I decided to explore the options near my parents’ home in Pennsylvania.