My sister and I have been extremely close for 29 years. So I thought I knew everything there was to know about her. But you never fully know anybody, it seems.

In the time I’ve been away from Montreal, she learned to drive. And I discovered that she is one of those drivers who keep making loud comments addressed to other drivers who obviously can’t hear what is being said.

The first time I was in the car with her, I almost fell out of the car because I laughed so hard when she made a passionate diatribe telling the driver that passed us by everything she thought about his personality, appearance, and poor prospects in life.

Now I wonder what kind of driver I would be if I were ever to learn. Maybe I’d discover new things about myself, too.

Are you a talkative or a silent driver?

I’m at the best bookstore for Spanish-language literature in North America. The store is called Las Americas and is located in Montreal. I come here at least once a year and blow an outrageous amount of money on books. This year I wanted to be virtuous and buy one small book, at most.

However, I’m thinking of embarking on a new research project and I just spotted two books that fit in with it perfectly. One costs $22.95 and another one is a hardcover and costs $41.50. They are very recent and are not available anywhere else on this continent yet (that I’m aware of). I’m dying to have them but the guilt is torturing me.

Please, dear readers, help me alleviate the guilt. Should I buy them? Or just one of them? Or try to control myself? But if I do, won’t I kick myself for my stinginess once I’m back in Illinois?

To buy or not to buy, that is the question. I’m holding them in my lap right now and feeling incapable of letting them go. In case you haven’t realized, I’m obsessed with books.

And in Wisconsin, the recall of Republicans pretty much failed. Two were recalled but one wasn’t, which means that the Republican majority there is intact. If after everything that happened in Wisconsin it is still so hard to organize a recall, then what can we hope for in states where the situation is less dire?

In the meantime, people in Spain are showing the world that they cannot be lied to and abused with impunity. I wonder if they have some balls we could borrow for a little while.

For centuries, the British looked down on the Spaniards as uncivilized and barbaric. I remember traveling in Spain with a group of British tourists who wouldn’t shut up about heir outrage over the bullfighting, the low-cultured folks in the streets and the dirty restaurants and cafes.

Compare, however, the peaceful political protests of the Spanish indignados who go out into the streets to denounce the faulty political system and the crazed mobs in the UK. The Spanish protesters want to repair what’s broken in their society. The British mobs just want to destroy some more.

Of course, most people in Britain are as horrified wih the rioters as I am. However, something tels me that there is a huge overlap among the groups that burn and loot in Britain and denounce the barbarity of the Spanish when they get a rest from those noble activities.

Now who is a barbarian?

My Twitter feed has been inundating me with gushing comments as to the political promise implicit in oh so progressive London riots. (This tells you a lot about the quality of my Twitter feed, of course). For me, “progressive” and “riots” are not words that should appear in the same sentence. Most of us have heard stories of out-of-control British tourists and football fans*. Is there a chance the rioters are the same hoodlums who go crazy when their team loses and not people with a progressive political agenda? I asked myself.

So I spent the morning reading every account I could find about the riots online. My suspicions were confirmed: this has nothing to do with politics. Looting stores, burning cars, beating up passers-by, and assaulting diners at a restaurant are criminal acts that are not motivated by any interest in social change or political activism. I am shocked at the irresponsible bloggers and twitterers who enjoy glamorizing these acts of violence from their comfortable arm-chairs tucked safely away across the Atlantic. There is no doubt in my mind that every single one of them would be horribly outraged if somebody tried stealing their computer or burning their car.

If you ever feel the desire to see something redeeming in the actions of these rioters, imagine them chasing you down the street or breaking into your house. If you don’t think you’d like that a whole lot, then stop blabbering about the rising of the people and the dawn of a new, fairer society. Raging crowds have no interest in your political agenda. They just want to rob a store and have fun beating up people.

There is this trend among pseudo-Liberals that glamorizes poverty. A low-income person is seen by these affluent progressives as somebody who has a mysterious communion with higher truths and authentic values. As a result, the poor can do no evil in their eyes. Unfamiliar with the brutalizing, stupefying effects of poverty, they refuse to understand that their lofty ideals are simply absent among the rioters.

What has been happening in Great Britain has nothing to do with anybody’s political agenda. It is just an angry eruption of a mob that uses this opportunity to loot, steal, and assault people. You have to be a real jerk to see this as something positive.

* For me, that is football, everyody,and I am too old to learn otherwise.

People from Germany or those who have been to Germany recently:

How easy it is to get by in Germany for a person whose German is, sadly, dead? Do people understand English? Does that vary from one big city to the next? Which are the best cities to visit for an English-speaking tourist? Is March a good time to travel?

I have the same question for readers from and travelers to Amsterdam.

Also, I know that Germany is amazing in terms of food. Is Holland also worth it in the culinary sense?

I’m considering visiting these countries, so any suggestions will be welcome.

I’d also love to go to Prague,  but I will have to choose between that and the Netherlands.

This semester I will be teaching a freshman seminar in English. It is designed to help new students adapt to life in college and learn the basics of succeeding at this new stage of their lives. I plan to spend a lot of time teaching students to write well in English. I often get criticized for being such a stickler for the correct usage of language.

“What you don’t understand is that language is all about experimentation. You have to allow students to be creative with it,” people often tell me. I have heard hints that I care so much about good grammar and rich vocabulary because I am an immigrant and English is not my first language. This supposedly makes true linguistic creativity of a native speaker incomprehensible to me. It has even been hinted that I’m a racist if I don’t think that double and triple negatives are appropriate in an academic paper. As if we would do any favors to our students by preventing them from developing a correct and beautiful writing style.

I passionately believe in the importance of being creative with one’s language. However, you can only proceed to work on your own unique style of writing after you have mastered the rules of correct usage. Starting each sentence with an “actually” or a “basically” is not creativity. It is nothing but intellectual laziness. And “I would have did” is simply wrong. If it makes me a hopeless old frump to insist that nouns and verbs should agree in number, then so be it. If I have learned not to write “he say” in a language that is not my own, it is not too much to expect from my monolingual students.

I keep having this feeling that everybody here in Montreal is staring at me, and it wasn’t that way before. There are two possible reasons for this. Either I have become hopelessly provincial and am imagining this. Or my spectacular beauty has grown so spectacular that people can’t help staring.

I kind of like my second explanation more.

So I just finished reading Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the Charlie Manson trials. (If you are surprised by my reading choices during a vacation, remember that I have high blood pressure which I’m always trying to keep in check).

I have always been completely opposed to the death penalty for the obvious reasons. However, reading this kind of book is enough to make one wonder. At the time the book was updated several years ago, Charlie Manson – who hadn’t even been present when the crimes were committed – was incarcerated at a maximum security facility. The women who committed the brutal murders, however, were living in two-person cottages, kept getting married and spent their days making quilts, composing songs, and playing guitars. They never had to work for a day for their living. The taxpayers were the ones who had to work to keep these murderers in food, guitars, and wedding arrangements. They are all eligible for parole, too.

I didn’t suddenly become a death penalty supporter after reading the book. It did, however, disturb me. There is something deeply wrong here that needs to be repaired.

Blog from an iPad. I just flagged my own blog as mature. This is a compliment if addressed to a human being but a very negative thing when you qualify a blog this way.

I have very small fingers, too. Imagine what people with bigger fingers go through if they try to harness iPads for their blogging needs.

At least, I hope everybody appreciates my unwavering dedication to blogging in view of this hardship.