. . . that even the serial killer and rapist Karla Homolka found a guy willing to marry her fifteen seconds after being released from jail.

Why she was released from jail after serving only 12 years in extremely comfortable conditions when any male serial killer who committed the same crimes would rot in prison forever is a different question.

My sister just made sure that my bout of insomnia will continue tonight, too, by telling me about the most recent serial killer from Montreal who has recently been captured. I have no idea how I managed to miss this horrifying story.

The only positive thing about this tragedy is that, nowadays, it is much easier to catch such serial killers. Just a 100 years ago, he’d kill a multitude people and would probably only be stopped by old age or death. And in our times, the entire world starts to collaborate at apprehending the killer.

I’m now completely traumatized by this story.

My blogroll is inundated by posts discussing the story of a woman who considers not having a college education as a deal-breaker in her romantic relationships. Simply put, she doesn’t want a serious relationship with a man who doesn’t have a college degree and doesn’t share her intellectual interests. Some bloggers say she is classist and seem to suggest that being aware that social classes exist is a huge sin. Others point out how anti-feminist and obnoxious is this discourse of picky women who need to lower their expectations and settle because otherwise they might fail to fulfill the only goal a woman has in life and snag a husband.

Since everybody is interested in this story, I wanted to share my approach when I was dating. This isn’t in any way a suggestion that anybody should see life in the exact same way. The post is not prescriptive. I’m just sharing.

I developed a very detailed description of the only kind of man that I would consider living with. The list of qualities I needed to see in him was from here to the Moon. I believe that knowing exactly what I wanted in a relationship allowed me to find one that is absolutely perfect for me, so I’m really happy I had my list.

One of the top requirements on that list was that my potential partner’s education (I’m only talking about a partner for a very serious relationship that involves living together, not casual partners.) Not only would I not even attempt anything serious with a man with no college degree, I would not go lower than a Master’s degree and even that, I felt, would be far from perfect. I knew I needed a partner with a PhD. I needed somebody who could understand my research and discuss it with me, as well as share his own. Somebody who doesn’t require an explanation why I absolutely need to take 6 heavy volumes plus two kindles on a beach vacation because he is carrying his own, as well. Somebody who wants to stay up all night debating nationalism and ideology. Somebody who has his own reading of great works of literature. Somebody who’d rather die than use a calculator to figure out the tip at a restaurant.

It wasn’t just the level of education that mattered to me. I knew that I could only live in the same house with a person from my own social class, somebody who is a member of intelligentsia, whether he knows it or not. For an autistic, the choice of a person who will share your living space is absolutely huge. If it isn’t a person who shares my sensibilities, who can communicate and address conflicts non-verbally, who cringes at any tactlessness and is traumatized by unpleasant realities of live, I know I will suffer.

There is also the issue of children. Children of families where parents belong to different social classes can’t belong to both. So they choose one of the classes. As a result, the parent whose social class is not chosen feels left out. The children are saddled with perennial guilt. Just imagine adult sons and their mother talking for hours about post-modernism and the father sitting there all bored and confused. Or imagine sharing your life with somebody who grew up in a rich family and never had to worry about debt, unemployment, bills, etc. How do you explain to them your fears, motivations, experiences? How do you feel when your own children start to mimic the rich parent’s attitudes?

Been there, done that, hated it. A perfect example of such a family is portrayed in The American Senator by Anthony Trollope. The father and his eldest daughter are from one social class while his second wife and younger daughters belong to another. Read the novel and you’ll see how tragic the reality of such a family is.

There are brave people who choose to ignore the class divide and don’t worry that their partner is from a different social class. I admire such people and wish them the best. However, I see nothing wrong in confessing that I would not have chosen to fight this battle. I only have one life and it belongs to me. It is my right to organize my personal life according to any principles that make me happy. I refuse to be apologetic for this extremely crucial and intimate choice.

And the title of the craziest statement of the week goes to:

To put it even more bluntly, men have killed far more women by ejaculating inside of them than they have by any other method. Semen has killed more people than any other body fluid.” (Emphasis isn’t mine.)

And according to this logic, women have killed more men with their uteri than by any other method. I mean, when you give birth to any person, you know they will die eventually. So by giving birth, all those horrid women have condemned every member of humanity to death!

I say we outlaw both penises and uteri as horrible weapons of mass destruction. Is it even normal that people are allowed to carry them (and concealed, too!) all over the place?

Jokes aside, the tragedy is that there are many unintelligent people who will excuse their hatred of gender equality by deciding that this is what feminism is all about and condemning all feminists as unhinged weird people.

Student: It would be great if humanity NEVER came up with the idea of taxation!!!

Me: But in that case our state university would not exist and you wouldn’t have an opportunity to take this informative and fascinating course.

Student: What does our university have to do with taxes?

Believe it or not, this particular student gets federal financial aid to enroll in college.