Somebody I know has been an illegal immigrant in the U.S. for close on 15 years. There is a new procedure introduced in May of this year to normalize your immigration status. One thing you need to provide is affidavits from people who know you. These are the instructions on writing these affidavits:
Am I the only person who thinks that the questions are weird?
The friend in question used ChatGPT to help her write the email asking me for a letter of support. I don’t mean the text above. That came from the actual immigration process. I mean, the email where she asked for help. This is the first time I’m receiving an AI-generated email from somebody in my personal life.
Everybody in palliative care is extremely nice, maybe even too much so. I’ve had a procession of very sweet social workers talk to me at length, trying to find out if I’m experiencing suicidal ideation. I’m tired and have no ideation of any kind at this point. I’m also not prone to depressive episodes, but if anything is likely to plunge me into one, it’s forced sociability.
By the way, and I know people are curious, nobody offered us any hints at euthanasia. Since early September, I’ve been with my mother on three different wards in different parts of this hospital. She was moved around as her state deteriorated. Palliative care is by far the best, with more attentive and numerous personnel, better facilities, more comfortable rooms, and a lot more engagement from the doctors and nurses. The most professional nurses work on this ward. They’re all male and excellent at what they do.
I’m sure everybody understands why you need male nurses in palliative care. Most of the patients are no longer mobile, and you need a lot of physical strength to move them around.
I received a bouquet from my husband, bought a package of mini saucissons secs and 500g of unsalted peanuts, and I’m ready for the second night at the hospital.
What I didn’t do is the dishes because there’s a limit to human endurance.
Thank you for asking this question. You’re a kind person. Thinking about books makes me feel like myself again. It’s not an easy question to answer because these three are among my favorite works of literature. It makes perfect sense to put them together because they are all exquisitely modernist works. I can see from this short list that you really understand literature.
Kafka’s The Metamorphosis wins on the content. The book is a sort of a prophecy of what the 20th century was going to be. Reading it today entails wanting to tear your hair out with screams of, “How did the bastard know all of this so far ahead of time?”
Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo doesn’t do much story-wise. But on the formal level, it is a work of absolute genius. There is not a word out of place in the text. The novel shows what an artist can do with words to deliver a devastating punch without needing to come up with a story. It also happens to be the very first book I read in Spanish. I read it 3 months after saying my first words in Spanish, and, as you can imagine, understood nothing. Then I read it again, and on the third reading, started figuring out that something insanely beautiful was happening.
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is not about the content or the form. It’s about turning the reader into an artist. Conrad hands the text over to the readers and transforms them into the source of emotion, interpretation, and meaning of his own text. Every introduction to English literature seminar debates afresh what the novel means because, in it, the author shows the extraordinary daring of controlling the readers by giving them the entirety of control.
The funny thing is that I don’t like modernist art. I like gritty realism. Or something extremely postmodern, like Rafael Chirbes. Everything that lies in between 19th-century realists and the postmodernists of the 1990s tends to bore me. But the three novels that you listed are so good that I would not be able to choose which one is best. This is a contest between content, form, and emotion. And it’s hard to pick the winner.
It was really funny at the conference because a dear friend of mine brought his two young children to my talk. I hadn’t warned him that the novel I was going to discuss was titled A la puta calle.
Of course, I had to omit the title of the book from my talk and refer to it as “this novel” or “the novel I’m talking about.”
A somewhat deaf older professor in the front row kept grumbling, “But what is the novel? Will somebody finally say the title?”
Everybody in the audience struggled not to laugh. Everything I do tends to turn into a comedy skit.
Single-use plastic cutlery has been replaced with the wooden variety in many places in Canada. These wooden spoons and forks make food taste disgusting. On the positive side, this works as a weight loss measure because, after a couple of spoonfuls, you get such an unpleasant taste in your mouth that you no longer want to eat at all.
GBNEWS/status/… The Bank of #England has decided to remove historical figures like Churchill, Jane Austen, and Alan Turing from future banknotes and replace them with images of #British wildlife. #UKNEWS 🇬🇧
Among other things, a nation-state requires a cast of Great People who represent the spirit of the nation and are venerated by the citizenry. These should be great leaders, artists and scientists who embody the best qualities that the nation identifies with.
I’m going to be at this hospital for at least 24 hours straight, and my aunts are bringing me food.
I took it to the family room of the palliative care department and started eating. One patient in a wheelchair was there. She was poking listlessly at a slice of sad-looking pizza.
“You have chicken,” she said wistfully, looking into my plate.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“It looks nice,” said the patient. “Probably homemade?”
“Yes,” I said, almost choking with embarrassment.
“I’m so happy for you,” said the terminal patient morosely.
Given that women initiate 70% of divorces, according to this logic, all of these women could be accused of rape because they went back on the promise of a lifelong commitment.
It’s really weird that people who come up with these suggestions don’t think through even the most obvious consequences.
Vance: “I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.”
It’s really sad that almost nobody, either on the left or on the right, has the slightest idea of what socialism is. With the extraordinary amount of damage done by socialism, one would think that people would bother at least to find out the basic definition.
Using the word socialism to mean either “things I vaguely like” or “things I vaguely don’t like” is dumb and unproductive.
What socialism really means is that the government owns the means of production.
Whatever the Western civilization owed Bengal has been repaid a million times over, so I’m not sure why we need…
Everything you said about the Bengal famine is a shameless lie, but you know that and clearly don’t care. It’s…
Actually as my Mom passed there were continued efforts to persuade her to eat some of her favourite meals, plus…
damn, I miss the ability to edit ;-D
Enough nonsense, Nazi concentration camps began in 1933, as dpon as they achieved the power to establish them. At first…
Unless you had fish, dishes can take care of themselves for a day or two. Wishing you strength and endurance…
“nobody offered us any hints at euthanasia” Your mother is clearly almost gone anyway and the goal of the program…
“Three of my four grandparents were from Ireland” Okay, that explains it. At a personal level most Irish are lovely…
” did so as a result of allied bombing” Those dastardly allies! All Hitler wanted was to feed the people he…
Absolute horror. Unfortunately, many people aren’t intelligent enough to understand simultaneously that, yes, this is absolute, inexcusable horror, and also…
Those who starved in the camps did so as a result of allied bombing which destroyed the infrastructure and made…
Well, as a Canuck teenager, I read a great many of Churchill’s writings. The man was hardly perfect, but he…
This is very similar to the story of my grandfather who also fought and was devastated by the results.
Yes, they are very, very patient. My father fought in the Second World War, he never recovered from it. His…
This is undeniably true. However, the interesting thing is that nationalism did not turn into a dirty word in 1945.…
We have, but you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are. And you can’t know…
What was the Second World war but the defeat of Nationalism by Globalist forces. Don’t underestimate the demoralization of generations…
Wow, we do have a lot in common.
As you read, think of it in the context of the ongoing mass migration from precisely the heart of darkness.
Read Metamorphosis many years ago and the teacher was an Ayn Rand Objectivist so the discussion was mostly about rationality…
I disliked Heart of Darkness when I read it in high school. I might have to give it another go!
Pedro Paramo all the way. Strangely enough, that was also the first book I read on Spanish. I didn’t get…
All of this nitpicking is enormously less important than preserving the nation state today. What you’re doing is exactly the…
I specialize in very contemporary literature, and in my field, we don’t do the test-of-time approach. Thank you for the…
Hmmm, I believe we have had this dance before ;-D
Glad the fish turned out. My Mom simply decided she was going to the “Big House” because all her old…
Winston Churchill was the great betrayer of the British empire. Both Churchill and Hitler knew that the Empire could not…
I don’t think I’ve read enough of her to make an informed judgment, but I always see these things as…
The fish is for me. My mother isn’t eating anymore. It turned out well.
Wow, phenomenal news! I had no idea, thank you for the update.
It’s the hangtime beforehand that’s weird: we all know what’s coming, but right now… we wait.
LOL, modern British politicians have to remember that those of the past have a habit of telling unfortunate truths. Although…
Kid, glad you have family to provide decent food. Modern hospital food is usually horrible. Did your Mom get the…
Clouds were spectacular, remind me of prairie storm formations at sun set/rise. Be careful.
OT: In a bit of hopefully good news, the head of Rybar was detained in Montenegro… https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/2108475701280010482
Exactly. I asked this question because I saw the poems of hers that The New Yorker has put out as…
It’s a unique cloud formation. We’ll be fine– this one’s not looking catastrophic. It’ll make a big mess and take…
” the poetry of the Canadian writer who was awarded the Nobel” I’m not a poetry person in general and have…
On a different subject, have you read the poetry of the Canadian writer who was awarded the Nobel yesterday? My…
Asked and answered. It’s true, that like Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes, but there’s no contradiction in this case.
