Day: November 25, 2011

Russians Are Hilarious

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

So the Russian leader Putin went to a boxing match and got booed. The Russian government immediately announced that it never happened and he hadn’t gotten booed. Reports from the event were edited so that the booing wouldn’t be there. However, many people recorded the event and placed videos of it online.

Then, the Russian government placed an announcement that it had been a positive booing rather than a negative one. Instantly, hundreds of bloggers and journalists published articles analyzing the pitch of the boo and stating that it was decidedly negative in tone. They also drew everybody’s attention to the very distinctive yells of “Putin, go away!” from the audience.

After millions of people had familiarized themselves with the video of the booing incident and it became impossible to deny that the booing was very negative, the Russian government suggested that the person who was getting booed wasn’t Putin but rather one of the boxers.

Immediately, crowds of people started sending messages to the boxer explaining that everybody loved him and he was not the one being booed.

Let’s see what the Russian government’s next move is going to be.

Here is the video so that you can decide for yourself whether Putin was booed positively or negatively.

How Much Does a Day Care Cost?

~ Clarissa ~ 26 Comments

The most frustrating websites on Earth are those of day cares. They give you tons of vague verbiage about everything under the sun but there is never any information on pricing. I mean, there is always a separate page titled “Pricing” but there isn’t a number in sight on it. I’ve killed over an hour trying to find out with absolutely no results.

Are they concealing the prices because the costs are that bad?

If anybody is at least somewhat aware of day care costs in the US, please feel free to share. But here is a fair warning: if anybody tries to start on the whole “why even have children if you don’t want to stay home with them” spiel, I’ll place such folks on the blacklist immediately and they will be off this blog for good. This is not an opportunity to share pro-housewifery propaganda. This is a simple request for information.

Yes, this stresses me out. And no, I’m not pregnant. I’m just trying to get informed.

Conservatives Wimp Out, Too

~ Clarissa ~ 10 Comments

What is it with people across the political spectrum not daring to express their opinions openly? If you hate the #Occupy movement, why not just come out and say, “I hate these snooty little bastards and find the idea of them getting pepper-sprayed to be highly enjoyable”? Why come out with this wimpy and ridiculous response that pepper spray is food?

Europe Is Moving to the Right

~ Clarissa ~ 44 Comments

Here are snapshots from an interactive map of the way Europe has been moving from one side of the political spectrum to another:

Here is March of 1976:

Here is November of 1998:

This is from October of 2008:

And, finally, we have arrived at today’s map:

The explanations for this phenomenon abound. The Left is not the real Left, which is why people don’t like it. (Like we haven’t been hearing this about the Left for decades.) The global economic crisis. (Like this tendency wasn’t obvious long before that).

All I wonder about is who will be the first person among the progressives to stop wimping out long enough to mention the main reason why the people of Europe are moving so massively towards the ultra-nationalist and near-fascist parties. We’ve tried discussing this issue on this blog a while ago but the discussion soon turned into a pandemonium. And we are not even in Europe.

You cannot address a problem without first mentioning it. But this is an issue that progressives seem to have no language for and, hence, choose to pretend it is not there. I’m not exempting myself from this charge, as you must surely understand.

What Have You Heard About the Holocaust?

~ Clarissa ~ 15 Comments

In this area where I live, the Jewish community is absent and in order to explain to my students who the Jews even are, I have to engage in the following kind of dialogue that annoys me beyond what I can express.

Me: Have you heard of the Holocaust?

Students: Yes.

Me: So what is it?

Students: When many people died?

(Note the “died.” Like they just got old and died, or didn’t take their vitamins and died.)

Me: What people?

Silence.

Me: Why did they die?

Silence.

Me: Who killed them?

Students: Bad guys?

Me: Yes, you could put it that way. Bad guys.