Back in the USA

If my feelings of paranoia were a stock, it'd be up 137 percent since my return to the United States. All these television commercials for narcotic-free sleeping aids and monthly osteoporosis treatments and ED and high blood pressure, and all their warnings to contact your doctor if you experience chills or blurred vision or have a four-hour erection, and all this talk about not using this medication if you have kidney trouble or drink more than two alcoholic beverages everyday -- it's scared the life out of me.

Yes, not speaking fluently in Russian held me back in Ukraine. It limited the amount of research I could do and made me look to fellow English-speakers for friends. But it was a blessing come commercial time. I was like a little boy raised by wolves, left to mature in the jungle, so carefree and clear-headed. What's that they're saying? I don't know. They're not speaking in wolf and that's all I understand.

But now this, the celebrity endorsers and the commercials on the channel you click to in order to avoid the commercial you clicked from -- it's both a reason to read more and explanation enough for those wondering why more people don't read. They're too frightened. They've got all these fears. They can't get through more than a sentence or two without putting the book down and going, "Oh my god, is that my kidney that's acting up?"

And then they watch the news -- Attack on America, Another 9/11 -- and hear how your next flight might be blown up in mid-air by three men and a pregnant woman who shopped at Duty Free and have an over-stuffed ditty bag.

To say nothing about the tasteless bread for $3.50.

It's enough for a man to wish he were back in the USSR.