Appropriated

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

The Duolingo chatbot keeps mocking me.

“I remember you told me you gave an unusual name to your cat,” it tells me. “What was it, again? I named my cat Misty. It is an easy to pronounce, beautiful name for a cat. What’s your cat named?”

“Misty!” I yell. “Misty is MY cat’s name!”

“Meestah?” the bot asks, sarcastically. “That is quite a strange name for a cat. You should have named it Misty, like I did.”

On the next day, the bot continues discussing cats.

“I have two cats,” it tells me. “They are called Misty and Meestah. My daughter Klara and I play with them every Sunday morning before church. Do you have any children? Or cats?”

Book Notes: Strange Pictures by Uketsu

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

Let’s take a break from American literature for a bit and talk about Japanese. Do you know any low-IQ people who need something to read? Strange Pictures, a mystery novel by a Japanese author who conceals his identity, is great for readers who suffer from medium to slight retardation. It’s written in very short sentences with many repetitions. There are little graphs explaining the most primitive concepts. Imagine explaining something veeeery slooowly to a very stupid person. And then doing it again. And again. That’s what this novel does.

It’s like that video of an African tribesman who is handed a bottle of Coke and has no idea what to do with it. He presses it to his ear, tries to blow into it. Uketsu is like that with a mystery novel v

It’s the last week of class, and my intellect is at a low ebb, so this novel wasn’t as annoying as it would normally be. Uketsu has millions of devoted fans which figures. Maybe everybody is always on their last week of class.

Q&A about RD

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

I was asked in the Q&A if I “had the misfortune” of speaking with an individual named RD. I won’t give his name because we don’t doxx people here but yes, I know RD. He has the fame of being difficult. But he’s always been mega nice to me, as people tend to be. 

I’m sorry if you had a bad experience. You are not alone. I’ve had people gather next to my office to complain about RD for years.

Israel and Russia

~ Clarissa ~ 17 Comments

If there was ever a country unable to repay kindness with kindness:

For absolutely no reason whatsoever and exceptionally tiny economic gain, Israel is assisting Russian genocide of Ukrainians.

I can’t even say that I’m disappointed because I didn’t expect anything better.

Surveillance Cars

~ Clarissa ~ 11 Comments

Hold on to your old cars for dear life:

Enough Republicans joined the Dems in voting for this that the measure passed. It’s very disappointing.

Any Regular Day

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

I’m a college professor, so yesterday. This is everybody at work and completely unironically.

The Great American Novel of Academia

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

We are truly spoiled for choice with the great novels of academia in American literature. There are many, and they’re all so good. In this post, however, I want to highlight a novel that I believe to be the absolute best of the genre because it explains so much about academia. The novel in question is not political. And that is fitting because, believe it or not, the main problems of academia are not in the least political. Or rather, academia gets into political trouble because it is incapable of solving its non-political problems.

Stoner by John Williams depicts a college professor who is extremely typical. He is a good person who genuinely loves reading and wants to live the life of the mind. But he has no executive function. He won’t move a millimeter to organize for himself the kind of life that he would enjoy. This is widespread in academia where people routinely refuse to do the very thing that would bring them joy. They end up blaming “society” or “structural injustice” or “capitalism” for what is, in reality, a weakness of character. The politicization of self-imposed weakness is absent from Stoner but is everywhere in our lives today.

Unlike many novels of academia, Stoner is not humorous. It’s sad. I don’t think that the author’s intention was to make his readers angry or frustrated with Stoner. A reader who is not an academia is likely to feel compassion for the character. I am an academic, however. I am surrounded by people who will complain endlessly about the world’s injustice but wouldn’t bother to organize a comfortable writing schedule for themselves or find out what it is the prevents them from getting published. I strongly believe that many academics would have a much more positive view of the society in which we live if, instead of feeling sorry for themselves, they started working on their productivity and fighting their own laziness instead of imaginary power imbalances.

Another Assassination Attempt

~ Clarissa ~ 14 Comments

Wait, what? Another assassination attempt on Trump?

Is the shooter another young man with no online presence, does anybody know?

Word Illness

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Remember how I kept saying that there’s no such thing as “mental illness”? Because the second you accept that there is, this begins to happen:

You can’t “screen for mental conditions.” You can’t diagnose them. There is no blood work you can run. No X-rays. No CT scans. It’s all words.

This is a terrible government overreach that will do untold harm. But try explaining it to normies. Or don’t because it’s a total waste of time. Many kids will be medicated needlessly. Others will be excluded from public education. All of this will happen because they’ll choose some words on some stupid questionnaire that has zero meaning.

This is worse than COVID, people. It’s an absolute disaster.

Protect your kids. Don’t let these “screenings” anywhere near them.