I have to stop blogging because the Russian spirit world is telling me to.

It’s true that comedy writers usually need to be miserable to produce good content.  Unfortunately, I had a very excellent birthday weekend filled with friends, family, love, happiness, and those little tarts that have fruit on them, so I’m all out of ideas.

I could blog about my weekend. However, I can’t, because, according to my family, if you tell people good things that are happening to you, they are going to hate you and mess up your good luck through a Russian version of the evil eye.  I tried to figure out how this works according to, you know, real-world physics, but apparently they “can’t explain,” and they “just know if someone is jealous of you it sends bad energy your way.” For example, they are convinced that our house used to have radon because someone doesn’t like us and found out that we were buying a house. It’s like schadenfreude, but only more extreme. Everything is more extreme in Russian.  It was very hard to explain to the home inspector.

Which is why I’m not allowed to tell you that I’m not not starting a new job that I am very not  unexcited about soon, I can’t tell you that I didn’t not get an iPad, and I can’t tell you that I didn’t not have a great birthday weekend.

It’s a good thing Zuckerberg isn’t Russian because Facebook would never have taken off.

However, haters, you’re in luck!  Because tonight is the beginning of Tisha B’Av, one of the Jewish holidays I celebrate with any regularity, so I’ll be suffering from fasting. My goal is to become so skinny over the course of a single day that  the bad energy directed towards me misses me and lands somewhere else.

In fact, I already haven’t eaten since breakfast in preparation for tonight, and I’m feeling a little less Rubenesque.

Stay tuned as I try to out-Jew Russian pessimism tomorrow.  Should be a blast!