. . . is highly recommended. For the first time in this country I’m eating meal after meal that is not oversalted. The scrambled eggs we were served for breakfast today had no salt at all. None.

And we already had two soups here (potato / asparagus / crabmeat and lobster bisque) that were not oversalted. Of course, I would have wished for even less salt but I recognize that one has got to be miserable.

Most of the people on our floor at the hotel are French-speakers from Quebec. At the beach, people to the right of us are from Spain and people to the left are Italians. The young man who gives out beach umbrellas is Dutch. The waitress is from Western Ukraine.

This feels like I never even left my multi-lingual department.

Florida is a civilized state. Over a year ago, I discovered in Montreal Perrier water with pink grapefruit flavor. I scoured the stores in IL /MO but couldn’t find it. The first 7/11 in Florida, however, carried the water. That’s civilization.

If you want a completely vegetative holiday in a place where there is nothing to do but eat, sleep, and lie on the beach, I recommend Marco Island, Florida. The hotels are small, the beaches are quite deserted, the nightlife is non-existent, the noise level is low. There are fewer cars than anywhere else I’ve visited in the country, so the air is quite clear, too. This is the perfect vacation spot for the exhausted or the pregnant. And especially for those exhausted by pregnancy.

“As parents, we need to ask ourselves whether we’re posting photos for our children or for ourselves. And if you’re posting it for yourself, wait a little bit before pressing the “share” button so you can really think about if it’s in your child’s best interest.”

18% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans believe that an armed revolution might soon be necessary to protect the “liberties” in this country. I suspect that “armed revolution” is a reference to some video game or a brand of ice-cream, so I’m not worried.

A new contribution to a collection of rants from unhinged Sanctimommies. Why don’t these freaks just go get a life, seriously?

The world where dates and tamarind chutney exist is a beautiful world.

“Yes. Yes. Children should learn about sexuality the same way they learn about nutrition and hygiene and families and being kind. But they don’t, and the reason they don’t is because the grownups are mired in a dangerous combination of lack of knowledge and abject fear. How can we teach our children what we don’t understand ourselves? The answer is that we ARE teaching our children, every day we are transferring to them our ignorance and fear – and the fear keeps us ignorant, and the ignorance keeps us afraid.” Hear, hear!

A post I agree with makes fun of Obama’s outrage about rape in the army: “Obama can hardly be astonished that a couple of half-assed sensitivity training courses have failed to eradicate the military epidemic of moral turpitude; “this stuff” is necessarily endemic to the armed forces. That’s because a high moral purpose is absolutely antithetical to the systematic perpetration of deadly force, which perpetration is, after all, the whole raison d’être of the whole flippin military.”

A phenomenally stupid article from David Brooks about immigration. If he is being facetious and I’m failing to get it yet again, please, please tell me. I don’t want to believe it is possible to write something this egregiously stupid about immigration.

“If you are a cheating-enabler sort of professor — if you give take-home exams and shit like that, shit that guarantees cheating — own it. Be that thing. Get defensive when people call you on it and say it’s no one’s fucking business how you run your classes. Don’t get all schizodemento and hurl yourself from one extreme to another and hypocritically protest to the class how shocked and hurt you are.” Exactly. Let’s all stop discussing our feelings in the classroom and take them to therapy sessions instead.

I hate, hate, hate the so-called academics who do the dirty work of administrators and betray their colleagues. See an article by a vicious freak who wants the administrators to force his colleagues to be present on campus even when they don’t need to be there. People are supposed to be where they don’t want or need to be because this jerk wants an identity, a community, and compliments from his stupid wife we all are supposed to care about.

When I read posts like this one, I feel very happy that I didn’t get a job in California (I interviewed at the blogger’s college, and what a mistake that was). If their classes are of this stupid, touchy-feely sort and are dedicated to discussing the students’ “fears, desires, and uncertainties”, I don’t want to be there. And I really don’t want to be around faculty members who are so sex-deprived that they see the excruciatingly prissy society where they live as “permeated by the pornographic.” California is dead, people.

My favorite dumb parrot invents the wheel: “Feminists do not appear to welcome non-feminist male voices.” What a mystery! Feminists don’t want to hear jerkwads who don’t think women are human. How completely incomprehensible. Yes, freak, feminists don’t want to hear stupid crap coming from completely worthless insects. Why would a human being welcome the ugly and stupid voice of somebody who doesn’t deserve to be spat on, let alone listened to? If there are any questions about why African Americans do not “welcome the voices” of racists and why normal people do not “welcome the voices” of Nazis, feel free to ask.

And the post of the week is from this great blog I recently discovered and that has the beautiful slogan of “I don’t care about anything, especially your fetus.” The blogger is writing about the reasons why trying to maintain a friendship with your ex is a silly idea, and I agree completely: “Dumper or Dumpee, neither of you should try to be friends, it’s incredibly fruitless, all relationships require work but that one has run it’s contractual obligation.  The moment I tried to be friends with one of my exes I tarnished the memory of what we had. . . Being friends with your ex is like the hour after eating Taco Bell, you know it tasted good going down but. . .“