There is a new playlist on my YouTube channel, and it's a fun playlist. It includes short stories about narcissists and psychopaths, movie reviews, and my poetry. See if you, if you haven't had enough of Sanbaknin, head straight into the short fiction playlist on this channel. The first story I posted is about the state of mind of a swindler, a con artist, during the con. And this second story is based on true events that have happened here, I mean in Israel a few decades ago. It is about the way a narcissist, in this case, moi, when a narcissist reacts when he finds out about his wife's infidelity. Stay tuned. You have a privileged observer position into my private life now. The story is called harmony on the phone, harsh voices, in our bedroom, late afternoon. Noa declines an offer to meet with her lover. I stand in the corridor, book in hand, listening intently, refusing to believe. Her side of the conversation consists of a half-hearted demoral, balanced by a lot of hopeful incredulity. How do you know the key would be under the rug? She questions her interlocutor, and how can you be sure that they won't be at home? And this is how this phone conversation proceeds, and Noa can see a penumbral sum, penumbral me projected by the hallway lighting, and then she can see me entering the room and looking at her, dumbfounded. She casts a glance my way and then ignores me. She continues the exchange as though nothing and has entered her field of vision. I tell her, disconnect Noa now, but she goes on talking. And my voice turns harsher and echoes through this vacuous, cavernous room. I approach her and I extend an infuriated hand towards the phone's cradle. Now, Noa apologizes hastily and hangs up, ricocheting verbal shrapnel, sentences, unuttered tension. We look away. She, at the phone, I, at my tiptoed feet, Noa suddenly grins, but it is sheer embarrassment. We can't believe that this is happening to us, to our togetherness. Her smirk ignites my rage, as was to be expected, and perhaps that's what she wants. Maybe this is her way of making certain that she got punished of guaranteeing attention long denied her, even if only to be chastised as evil and corrupt. Anything would do. Anything is better, but this months-long absence. I and my book strolled on the leather couch, turning a barbed nape and taciturn back to her. So here it comes. Attention, rage, jealousy, and she's almost content. It is evident in the way that she lowers her lashes, slumped on our marital twin bed, with no intention to sit up as though inviting me to her, making love to him and me simultaneously, today with me here and tomorrow with him on the phone or somewhere else. And vice versa. I'm curiously unfazed now. I'm cold-blooded, matter of fact. I weigh, I analyze, I survey all the options as they invitingly spread their dilemma hordes. I inspect the possibilities within difference of a veteran client in an overpriced brothel. I'm acquainted with the merchandise, no novelty here. It's all the same old nudity. The perforated lampshade swings pendulently, set in motion by a now forgotten hand gesture of mine. It rations light, once upon myself and once on her. Our faces, yellow flickered strainers. At last, Noah rises and I tell her to follow me into the living room. She obeys me speechlessly. When she passes me in the narrow corridor, I don't give way and I rub against her agitated softness.   The glass slab mirrors us, distorted. Our reflections melt into each other. And now I cross-examine her, I want the details all of them in full. Frontal nakedness? Did he penetrate her? Did she give him head? His hands on both her breasts, only one. How did he taste? She's patient, not mutinous or rebellious. She says that she had hoped that I would find out. She thought she could have both the lover and myself. Yes, permanently, as a way of life. But evidently it didn't work out. And all this time I'm panicking, all this time, God, this is real, this is Noah, this is me in an evening and we are at our home and this has happened so unpredictable and there's no way out, like premortem trepidation. Now what shall we do? What shall we do, us, Noah? And the question hangs mid-air. We peruse every aspect of this query. It is crystalline and it glitters. You cannot mistake its polish. It is untouchable, unreachable, immutable, like a heavy stone on a distant star from which there's no return, it's too far away. I listen to my voice, it's icy, and I'm stunned, because it's decisive and my self-control impresses me. I say to her, let's separate for a year and then we'll see. You rent a small apartment, do as you please, and in 12 months, let's see if you still want me, and if I still want you, and if we're still emotionally available to each other. Noah wails vociferously. She makes no attempt to hide her convulsive tears. She sits up, a veritable Alice in horror land. Golden curls adorn her round shoulders. Her face is disproportionately large. She has the hands and feet of children. That's the way I see her. That's the way I always want to see her. And her lamentation startles me. I realize that she's crying for me too, perhaps mostly on my behalf, and I cannot join her. So I soothe her. I comfort her. I say, look, no single side here, no single party is guilty. I have neglected you in our relationship. I let it all fester, and this is the result. This situation is of both our making. And she seems to be relieved. She glances at me with gratitude, and I ask her if she would like some red wine. And she affirms enthusiastically as though we've just found the solution. And there it is, chilling in our refrigerator, and we didn't know or appreciate it. And so I walk slowly. I extract the bottle that I place there in another universe. I uncork it, and I pour into pot-bellied glasses. The lacy foam subsides into the inky liquid. I bring this hue to Noah to consume. I click my tongue, delighted at the taste. My nostrils flare with the aroma as Noah discusses the details. What kind of apartment? Where? How would she pay for it? And she gets carried away, describing the interior decoration. I sip the wine strictly and not a word, but I cannot look away from her exuberant eyes, intermittently, flaring and decaying. She grows silent. She swirls the fluid gently in her glass. She gazes into it as though trying to decipher the gory sediments left by the frothy drink. And then she suddenly sobs again. She melts. She tells me that she loves me. She doesn't know what to do. She can't believe that she has found herself in these circumstances. She no longer recognizes herself. What to do? What to do?  I am not her father after all. I feel as aghast, as awkward as she dies. I stand up and I stretch my bones. This is the kind of silence that breeds decisions, not tense. Just a break for data processing, like the dead moments when a floppy disk wears and a hard disk answers. Noah observes me and then changes her posture. I contemplate her body and I wonder what this body knew than not with me. A foot flashes. She bends in a swathe of milky breast, a nipple, his hand between her thighs. I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even pain, not fury, but I sense the distant echoes of a remote battle behind the fortified hilltops of myself. It will arrive this ruinous war. It will exact the price. Like everything else in life, it is only a matter of time. And so I repeat to Noah her choice. She can remain here and we will try together, or she can depart and we will separate one year alone. Maybe it's better this way. Maybe I am her undoing and I keep reiterating silently within myself. Noah, please ignore these monstrous alternatives offered to you by an alien, a stranger, not by me, because I love you. I love you, Noah. And throughout, I want to hug her and to make my love in her. But I just sit there, flinty faced, stony, a scientist sifting through the formulas for a particularly complex experiment in an undefined land. Now Noah is quiet. She is still rocked from time to time by mournful tremors, her fingers flutter and combine, her legs swings across the white-brimmed, tattered arm of the sofa, but she regards me tenderly. I pour more wine, to me, to her, the halogen lights of blinding. We are so close, Noah and I, up there on the large screen of our television, but really we are divided by glass and marble. Noah takes a wine and toys with it.  I can't leave you. I can't leave you.  I love you so.  I'm hypnotized. I'm staying here with you. Oh, please, let's try again. I let her words sink in. A rainbow ricochets from the glasses to the table. The light is piercing and in it I witness Noah making love, like an unwanted child. This deed that she had done is with us, like an accident. Only this accident left me quadriplegic, breathless for all eternity, long after Noah is gone, and she will be gone. I now know that, too, I know that this tool is only a matter of time.


I swear to God I tried to avoid talking about the Kanye West presidential run story because I don't think that he's serious. I think this is a publicity stunt and I don't want to inadvertently feed into that, right? I think he's doing this to promote his new EP or album or whatever he's doing. But I don't think he's serious. He hasn't given us any indication that he's serious about this. He hasn't found any paperwork. And on top of that, he's missed the deadline in a number of states. You can't run in New York. You can't make it on the ballot in Illinois. And if you want to qualify to be on the ballot in California, then he has less than 30 days to get 200,000 signatures. And if you don't have a political campaign or apparatus of any kind, you're not going to make that happen. I don't care how famous you are. So I don't think he's serious. However, he's now veering into the realm of politics. And even if he doesn't run for president, he could still have a negative impact on the broader political discourse based on what he's saying. So let's start from the beginning. On July 4th, he announced he'd be running for president tweeting, we must now realize the promise of America by trusting God. No, thank you. Unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States. Hashtag 2020 vision.  Because of course, that's what Elon Musk would tweet out. Now my question to Kanye is, why would you run for president if you don't care about politics and you don't know anything about politics? Do you even know the difference between Democrats and Republicans? Do you know how many branches of government there are? And I'm not saying that to be condescending. I'm saying Kanye West, based on what we have learned from him in a new Forbes interview, he is deeply naive and his views range from social progressivism when it comes to issues like criminal justice, but outright theocratic totalitarianism when it comes to issues like prayer in school. But it's scary. So if you don't know about politics, why are you getting involved? So I mean, the reason why I'm talking about this in spite of my reluctance is because even if he doesn't run for president, it seems like he won't be able to run in 2020. If you are talking about things like this, which we're about to see where you're spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories that are deeply dangerous at a time when there's this anti science anti mask fervor in America, we have to call you out. We have to. So there's a couple of things that the article or the interview points out here. And the first thing that is clear is that he doesn't really have any allegiance to one political party. He says that he would run as a Republican if Trump weren't in the office. But since Trump is in office, he doesn't want to be a Republican. So he's choosing to run under the banner of the birthday party, literally. Because if he's elected, then every day will be like a birthday for Americans. Now additionally, he claims that he's no longer a supporter of Donald Trump, but he still very clearly has an affinity for Donald Trump. And he also has already preemptively selected Elon Musk as his running mate. Because why wouldn't he? Of course. And he wants to make Elon Musk the head of America's space program. I don't think he'd be interested in that because he's interested in profit. But nonetheless, the first thing that I want to get to is whether or not he can run at all because he still thinks that he can run for president in 2020 because according to Forbes, he believes an argument could be made to get onto any ballots he's missed citing coronavirus issues. I'm speaking with experts. I'm going to speak with Jared Kushner, the White House, with Biden, says West. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. Why would Donald Trump and Joe Biden help you get on the ballot if you're running against them? That makes no sense. Why would they help you? I mean, ask the Green Party or the Libertarian Party how welcoming Democrats and Republicans are to third-party candidates. Why would you think they're going to help you? Because you're Kanye West? I mean, the level of entitlement here and delusion, it's just, it's stunning to me. It really is. Now, some other things here that he points out, he never voted in his life, which I mean, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You could blame that as a failure on our institutions and politicians. But he also says that he had COVID-19 in February. This is kind of a side point. He says that if he were to ever be in control of the White House, he would structure it the way that the government of Wakanda is structured. For those of you who don't know, Wakanda is a fictional government and a fictional movie about superheroes with superpowers. But that's what he'd model his White House after. Jesus Christ, this is going to be a long video, so buckle up. Let's get to the policies because this is where things take a turn for the downright terrifying and totalitarian, quite frankly. When asked what his plan to deal with COVID-19 is, well, simply put, it's prayer. We pray. We pray for the freedom. It's all about God. We need to stop doing things that make God mad. Your response to a pandemic is prayer?  Can't you just use your influence now to pray away COVID-19? Why do you have to be president to encourage prayer? Aren't people already doing that? I mean, it doesn't make sense. Believe it or not, it gets worse because on the subject of vaccines, he says it's so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed. So when they say the way we're going to fix COVID is with a vaccine, I'm extremely cautious. That's the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us. They want to do all kinds of things to make it where we can't cross the gates of heaven. I'm sorry. When I say they, the humans that have the devil inside them and the sad thing is that the saddest thing is that we all won't make it into heaven, that there will be some of us that do not make it. Next question, let's just pause for a moment and try to take all of that in. So we're dealing with a pandemic, maybe the one thing that will save us since we're not accepting social distancing or the economy to be shut down for a prolonged period of time since we're refusing to wear masks. I mean, the one thing that could save us a vaccine, he's saying, no, I don't like that because it's the mark of the beast. Yeah, no, no, not OK. There's enough people in America who are anti science, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers and conspiratorial. We don't need more of that in American politics. We need less of it. We need more people who are not delusional, who are pro science. But he just thinks that, you know, the answer to everything is prayer and people who are promoting vaccines, they have the devil and they're not going to make it to heaven. If you're president, you shouldn't be worrying about people's eternal salvation. You should be focusing on policy. But it gets worse when it comes to foreign policy. He hasn't developed one yet. Quote, I haven't developed it yet. I'm focused on protecting America first with our great military. Let's focus on ourselves first. On the issue of abortion. I am pro life because I'm following the word of the Bible. OK, if your response to foreign policy is, I don't know, don't run for president and hopefully he'll take that pro life position that he has with regard to abortion and apply it to foreign policy. That's a good starting place. But I mean, the things that are going on in the world are so complex that we can't have someone again like Donald Trump's start at having zero knowledge, like we need someone to come in with knowledge about the complex situations going on in the world, the Israel Palestine situation. Morocco's occupation of the Western Sahara, the conflict between India and China. I mean, there's so much going on that we can't afford to have another dipshit be in power. But he goes on. He's asked about prayer in schools and he is he's for it. He says reinstate in God's state in God's country, the fear and love of God in all schools and organizations, and you chill the fear and love of everything else. So that was a plan by the devil to have our kids committing suicide at an all time high by removing God to have murders in Chicago at an all time high because the human beings working for the devil removed God and prayer from the schools. That means more drugs, more murders, more suicide on tax policy. I haven't done enough research on that yet. I will research that with the strongest experts that serve God and come back with the best solution, and that will be my answer for everything that I haven't researched. I have the earplug in and I'm going to use that earplug. OK, I don't know what that means, but if you are explicitly looking for people who will serve God, you're going to find the evangelicals and they're most likely going to encourage you to come up with a tax plan that will lead to you getting a cut in your taxes. And on top of that, to say that the reason why there's all these children committing suicide and all of this murder is because God has been taken out of the schools, this is exactly what evangelicals say. They would like go for this. They would love this. They'd be enthusiastic about this platform. Like this is theocracy. He wants to make America like the Christian equivalent of Saudi Arabia. And this is this is just disgusting. Now, when it comes to George Floyd, he does seem to initially offer prayer as the main solution in lieu of criminal justice reform. But he does eventually land on amending the Constitution saying, well, God has already started the healing slash this conversation alone is healing and revealing slash we all need to start praying and kneeling another bar after that. But when a rhyme comes together, I'm going to complete it, not inside the lines created by organizations that we know as our reality. The schools, the infrastructure was made for us to not truly be all we can be, but to be just good enough to work for the corporations that design the school systems. That's not never mind. We're tearing that up. What we'll do is we're not going to tear up the Constitution. What we will do is amend. So unless we're talking about charter schools, corporations did not design the school systems. I don't know what he's trying to get at here. But what he's saying doesn't really make any sense. And he's kind of just rambling and he doesn't seem he doesn't seem well on top of that. When it comes to other policy priorities, he does say that he's against the death penalty because the Bible says that I shall not kill. So there's that. And when it comes to other priorities, he wants to, quote, clean up the chemicals in our deodorant and our toothpaste. There are chemicals that affect our ability to be of service to God. I don't really know what that means. Maybe it means more regulations. But, you know, if you're appealing to Republicans with this evangelical rhetoric, then they're going to be a little bit peeved if you're proposing more regulations. So he's kind of all over the place ideologically, because he has no like coherent political ideology. It's just it's randomness. It's it's bizarre. It's weird. Now, he isn't 100 percent sure that he's still going to run in 2020. He wants to run. He's saying he's going to run. But it's possible that maybe he waits until 2024. But at the end of the day, it's not going to be up to states. And whether or not, you know, he makes their deadline. It's going to be up to God, because he says, let's see if the appointing is at 2020 or if it's 2024, because God appoints the president. If I win in 2020, then it was God's appointment. If I win in 2024, then that was God's appointment. So in his mind, he's so narcissistic that he believes that it's already a foregone conclusion, God is going to appoint him to the office of the presidency. It's just a matter of when maybe it won't be in 2024. Maybe it won't be in 2020. But if not, then maybe it'll be in 2024. It's just a matter of when God says, hey, Kanye, get in the White House. It's your time, bud. Yeah. So this is the guy that Elon Musk, the science guy, decided to endorse immediately after he announced that he'd be running for president. But when someone shared an article with him detailing how Kanye is a huge anti-vaxxer and anti-abortion, Elon responded, saying, we may have more differences of opinion than I anticipated.  So I mean, I read this, I see the policies that Kanye West is putting out there. And this is something that actually would be persuasive to a large contingent of the population, because I mean, think about this. After Donald Trump, a reality television star became president, do you honestly think that this wouldn't appeal to someone in America, especially the conspiracy theories? So I mean, it's dangerous, even if it's laughably incoherent, it still is going to appeal to a certain crowd, right? Conspiracy people, evangelicals, there is, I think, a demand for this type of weird politics, right? And maybe there'll be a cult of personality like Donald Trump that forms around him. So if he chooses to run for president and is serious, could he actually have a shot? I mean, it's possible. I'm not going to say yes, but it is possible. But I will say that, like, even though it's funny to like poke fun at his weird political ideas, it's deeply saddening because this is a man who's not well. And rather than encouraging this, people who are the closest to him, like his wife, his loved ones, they should be stepping in and saying, Kanye, let's stop doing this. He's not well. He is not well. He has delusions of grandeur and the people around him who are letting this continue on, who know better, they're at fault here. I don't even necessarily blame Kanye West because this is someone who mentally, he needs help, he needs people to help put him in check, right? Keep him grounded in reality, but we're not we're not getting that. And, you know, until that happens, we still have to call this out. We can't allow him to propagate these types of conspiracy theories and spread misinformation about vaccines, say that the solution to COVID-19 is just prayer. This is absolutely nuts. It's unacceptable. And I say this as a fan of Kanye West, a former fan, I should say, I grew up on his music, like I was listening to him since the college dropout by every single album.  You just can't. So he's not well. You know, if you're laughing at him instinctively, I understand because what he's saying is nonsensical. But at the end of the day, you know, this is problematic for a number of reasons, not just that I think it's because he's unwell, but because Americans would actually fall for something like this. After Donald Trump, maybe this is the next cult of personality that Republicans and evangelicals flock to. So I don't know. But I do know that I don't like what I see from Kanye West with regard to what little policies we know thus far. It's deeply, deeply troubling to say the least.