Have you noticed how the Conservatives (the very people who keep insisting that they are against granting the government too much power over our lives) are precisely the ones who keep lobbying for a greater governmental intrusion into every aspect of our existence? Why am I even asking? Of course, you have.

There must be some curious psychological defect that makes certain people believe that the economy is the only area of their lives where they can make their own choices. In every single other area of their lives, the Conservatives remind me of 4-year-olds who start bawling, “Mommy, Mommy Johnny showed me his willie!”  whenever the world begins to look threatening and complex. The degree to which a regular Conservative needs to be protected from life by the big, all-powerfull government is really scary.

Among many recent examples of the Conservative desire to get the government to regulate every aspect of the citizens’ existence is this hilarious bill they are trying to promote in Arizona. Well, where else?

Arizona House Bill 2549 passed both legislative houses last Thursday and is now awaiting approval from Arizona’s governor Brewer. The statute states that:

“It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use a ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.”

The bill was obviously proposed by people who are so completely helpless without the government defending and protecting them at every step of the way, that they even need it to regulate their online interactions.

You’ve got to be all kinds of a wimpy, pathetic little thing to need the government to protect you from people making annoying comments and using “bad words” online. If somebody says something annoying to you on the Internet, surely, you can  just suck it up, grab those long-suffering bootstraps and do whatever it is you always do with them. If other people can get over themselves and live without health insurance, then why can’t you be a grown-up and deal with a couple of “lewd and lascivious” terms on the Internet? Of course, if being among adults is so traumatic for you, then maybe you can avoid going online altogether.

There is this blogger who keeps verbalizing things I always want to say and never dare to. The walls in my office are papered with printouts of her posts. Here is one from this week: “I love the atmosphere of a public R-1 and I wish I worked for one that had Ph.D programs in my precise interdisciplinary disciplines, but what I have to say to faculty at such places right now is FUCK YOU LAZY-ASS FUCKS!“

“While the confidence levels of other groups in science have been relatively stable, the conservative drop now means that group is the least likely to have confidence in science. . . Less-educated conservatives didn’t change their attitudes about science in recent decades. It is better-educated conservatives who have done so.“

A blogger responds to an idiot who hopes that autistics get “cured” from our “condition” but the idiot is too stupid to understand the response. I hope that she finds a cure for her condition of congenital stupidity.

Why bilinguals are smarter.

Why it is extremely stupid to assume that men are somehow more promiscuous than women. Great post but it’s kind of sad that such obvious things still need to be pointed out to people.

Baby turtles keep brightening up my world with their incredible cuteness. I also love hedgehogs, so if anybody comes across a blog about baby hedgehogs, make sure you tell me.

An anti-Semite and a racist at CalState.

The intolerable hypocrisy of murderous pro-lifers.

It’s good to know that there are people in Arizona who are protesting against the barbarity that has overtaken the state.

How ads aimed at men are constructed. A very insightful post.

Whenever an American university conducts a healthy initiative aimed at educating students about human sexuality, you need to expect some horrifying, idiotic, insulting propaganda coming from unhinged religious freakazoids to get unleashed on that university.  Read the post of the week to see an example.

I’m so sick that the impossible happened: I gave my entire plate of really great Indian food at the India Night to N. Of course, using the word “great” to refer to Indian food is a tautology because Indian food is always great. It is extremely rare that I even get to see it in this area, so just imagine how lousy I must be feeling to give up my entire plate.

After the India Night, we went to the grocery store to buy food for next week. It was a good idea to go tonight because when we got to the store, we saw the announcement that because of the Easter Sunday, the store will be closed tomorrow. I’m the kind of Christian who only becomes aware of Easter after seeing a grocery store announcement.

I’m very weird about food. I can go with very little sleep for days and not mind. However, if anybody or anything messes with my mealtimes, I become rabid. I might not even want to eat, like today, but I need to know that the food is there and I can access it immediately.
If that seems weird, then remember where I come from and Google the word Holodomor. A Ukrainian cannot bear the idea that food might become inaccessible. When I feel stressed out over anything, I go into the pantry (yes, I have a pantry) and stare at food because it calms me down.

And since I’m rambling in a state of a moderately high fever anyways, I wanted to mention that a real coffee-shop is going to open right next to my house. This is civilization, people. And it isn’t a Starbucks or anything of the kind. Just a coffee-shop where I can get by walking. We are slowly getting civilized.

For the purposes of my research, I am now reading a lot of this extremely obnoxious feminist theory of the 1980s and 1990s. I’m sick as it is, and this endless blabber about how logic, reason and language are male, while knitting, sewing, lack of reason, illogical behavior, silence and intuition are all female and let’s celebrate that because feminism is about pointing out, time and again, how men are women are irrevocably and hopelessly different, is not helping.

I remember how the first time I read Hélène Cixous with her “feminine writing”, the special language of women, and “write with your vagina” crapola, I almost vomited. It became immediately clear to me why the most pathetic, mumbling, insecure, will-debase-myself-to-get-some-guy’s-approval women could be located precisely among these pseudo-feminist organizers of knitting bees and authors of “let’s celebrate female difference” theory.

I have a cold and I’m forced to read these stupid texts, which is why I’m irritable. The good news is that I’m going to an India Night at my university later today, and that is bound to cure me of both physical and mental suffering I’m experiencing.

I’m reading a Victorian novel right now (I’ll post a review when I’m done because it’s one of the novels on my Classics list) and there is something very surprising that I found in it: one character really loves another character.

The reason why this is so surprising is that it made me realize that I can’t really remember any other fictional description of love. I have read thousands of novels, but this is pretty much the first convincing rendering of love.

When I say “love”, I don’t mean, of course, the following famous plots that have been sold to us by writers in lieu of depictions of love:

• I’ve seen you at a distance and have realized that it would be super cool to use you to bug my parents as part of my teenage rebellion. Better yet, why not kill myself altogether? That will stick it to the old folks.
• I’ve always considered him to be rude and obnoxious but then I saw his huge house and realized he is extremely rich. Now I totally love him.
• Every single aspect of his personality and every moment of his past annoy me. But if I could have him mutilated, helpless and completely at my mercy, then I’d totally enjoy living with him.
• I find you provincial, facile, and boring. But after you marry a rich guy and get some fashionable clothes, I realize that now I’m totally into you.

Cervantes ridiculed the way love is usually depicted in novels by showing how Don Quixote denies everything that constitutes the personality of the real Aldonza Lorenzo. He creates an imaginary creature called Dulcinea and adores her. Unlike a real person, Dulcinea is perfect, so it’s easy to worship her. And when she stinks of garlic, it can always be attributed to the spell created by mean magicians.

More often than not, we see characters in fiction loving not so much an actual person, but a concept, an image that might or might not have anything to  do with any real human being. This is why I was so surprised to find a fictional character who seems to be capable of actually feeling love.

Am I mistaken about the paucity of depictions of love in literature? Can you think of characters in love whose feelings rang true to you?

Sorry, people, just one more table from the same source as the previous one:

The facile creature has not even been able to notice that a single government has NOT been in charge of anything for 42, 47 or 77 years. We’ve had different governments with very disparate agendas succeeding each other at regular intervals this entire time. It seems like this guy has been asleep since the first day of first grade.

Also, please notice how the poor are “a growing segment of the population that continually seeks more.” I’ve had students whose command of the English language was miserable but it’s rare that one gets to see anything of this caliber. What is it that the poor, whose numbers grow, “continually seek”? More poverty? Because according to this weird guy’s own statement, that’s the only things those “continually seeking” poor are getting.

As we say in my culture, and these are the people who want to offer me lessons on how to pick my nose!

As I’m struggling not to succumb to the yearly “end-of-academic-year” bout of sickness, I want to share the following hilarious table with you.

And here is my own list of instructions on how to defeat one’s own political cause as a Conservative:

Somebody placed a “Grievance Board” in the student center.

“What bothers you?” appears in the upper part of the board. The board filled up very fast. One of students decided to answer the question with “My penis is too big.” This provoked the following impassioned response from another student that I had to record for posterity:

I especially like the part about coming to college to become a worker bee and nothing else.

I was reading a very good and powerful post about the tragedy of a Ukrainian woman who was brutally raped and then set on fire by the rapists. I can’t write about this situation myself because it traumatizes me too much, so make sure you read the post here.

One thing, however, that I need to address is the following statement:

It is understandable that average Ukrainians have felt almost helpless in changing the prevalence of corruption in their own country but this incident proves that a horrific situation has the power to embolden the media and everyday citizens to demand change.

This sounds as if the people of Ukraine had a group of aliens from another galaxy spreading this corruption in the country. I also find it hard to  comprehend who this change-granting authority is supposed to be from which Ukrainians will demand lesser corruption.

The people of Ukraine (and Russia) are very corrupt. As a Ukrainian, I find this very shameful. But that’s the truth. On every single occasion when I mentioned to people from my country that one could live one’s life without giving or soliciting bribes, the reaction was that of outrage and fury. Of course, people get annoyed when corruption works to their detriment. This does not, however, prevent them from using it for their own benefit as often as they can.

Until the idea that people who pay taxes honestly, don’t cheat on exams, don’t bribe officials, don’t solicit bribes, don’t lie and cheat are not idiots but simply good, honest citizens becomes widely accepted among my fellow Ukrainians, corruption in Ukraine will remain as wide-spread as ever. Ukrainians complain about corruption a lot but it never occurs to them that eradicating corruption should start with one’s own efforts to live one’s life honestly.

My Statcounter shows me that yet another idiot has been entering

clarissa hispanic studies mcgill illinois yale

into a search engine, trying to figure out who I am. Some people are so devoid of anything that can even remotely pass for a life that it’s scary.

There is a blogger whose blog I read all the time and love a whole lot. This is somebody who works in my field. It would have been very easy for me to find out this person’s real name. But it would never occur to me to waste energy on doing that. If she wants to communicate her name to me, she will do so. If not, I’m more than content with not knowing it.

This is why I simply don’t get why people would waste their lives on investigating anonymous bloggers they have no chance of meeting. Do they see their time as so completely lacking in value?

I especially love it when these weirdos send me triumphant messages informing me of what my name is. Yes, I know what it is, losers. You just wasted time letting me know something of which I’m well aware.

Some people urgently need to get a life.