One of every 50 murders is a parricide according to a US study, usually a son killing his mother, pops sometimes gets it at the same time too. Daughters never kill their parents.

After staying up all night reading Anthony Trollope’s The American Senator, I have really got to wonder why they don’t. Trollope’s novel is a reminder of how tragic the life of daughters in a patriarchal family is. While sons get some measure of independence (not a huge one, but still, that’s better than nothing), daughters are perennially victimized by their patriarchal families. In Trollope’s novel, there is one heart-wrenching scene after another where a mother practically grinds her miserable daughter into the ground to take vengeance for her own stunted existence.

I watched this documentary once that kept harping on how Lizzy Borden’s case was such a huge mystery. Idiots. The real mystery is why more of those downtrodden, pushed around, persecuted daughters did (do) not explode.

And it isn’t just a XIXth century phenomenon either. I know several women of different ages who are being eaten alive by their families. These are adult women, not kids. All of them are highly educated and financially independent, too. But they are constantly sacrificing their lives to the needs of their harpies of mothers. (I don’t personally know any woman downtrodden by a father, although I know they exist.)

Of course, the ones who realize that they are being victimized at least have some hope. The saddest cases are the poor victims who say, “Oh, my mother is amazing. She is my best friend! It is not her fault that I have no personal life and have been on anti-depressants for a decade!”

Who could have known that Trollope wrote such feminist texts? I always considered him a hopeless Victorian fogey.

So do you want to know why I had to get up at 7 am today?

There is this one student in my online course who never got in touch, accessed the course website, submitted any of the assignments, or answered any of my emails. He hasn’t dropped out either. I have written to him several times, telling him to get in touch but nothing happened. This is an intensive summer course that will end in two weeks, so you can imagine how behind this student is.

The day before yesterday, he finally emailed me to say that he wanted to see me in person to explain the hugely important reasons that had prevented him from doing any work in the course.

I responded that I would gladly see him in my office but, irrespective of what his reasons for not doing this work were, I would not be able to give him a grade unless he did the work. I told him to start accessing the website and submitting assignments immediately.

Of course, the student never submitted a single assignment or accessed the website. Neither did he show up for the appointment. I did show up because it is my professional duty. Got a lot of work done, too, so I’m not sorry. But I have to ask, what is it with such people? We don’t have ultra-rich students here. The money this student paid to take this course and cover the summer registration fees is probably borrowed or, in the best-case scenario, earned by a family member’s hard work. And he just fritters it in this way? That’s insane.

I do not get such people at all. I also don’t get people who miss an appointment they asked for and never inform one that they will not be showing up.

This sounds like it might be good news:

Goldman Sachs laid off about 50 people last week, according to people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak on the record. The cutbacks have rattled some people in the firm, in part because a number of the employees were managing directors and on the higher end of Goldman’s pay scale. Managing directors make a base of $500,000 and receive an annual bonus that can climb into the millions of dollars.

Last week’s layoffs are seen as a sign that Goldman is looking further up the food chain for additional cuts after already slashing 8.5 percent of its work force, or 3,000 people, in the last year. In addition it has cut more than $1.4 billion in noncompensation expenses from its operations over the last year or so.

I will dance in the streets if this vile excuse for a company that only exists thanks to its capacity to squeeze money out of the Treasury goes out of existence.

My old posts about Lloyd Blankfein (here, here and here), the company’s CEO, had quite a few readers from within Goldman Sachs (I operated on the Blogger platform then and could see where exactly each visitor came from). I was a new blogger back then, so I was almost as excited to get those visits as the ones from the FBI and the US House of Representatives. Now I blog with WordPress, so I have no idea where some of my more unusual visitors come from.

Is the following part of the attempt to smear Quebecois student protesters?

QUEBEC CITY (UPI) — Queen Elizabeth was booed by student hecklers Saturday as she began her controversial two-day visit to this bastion of French Canada. The booing was heard at least twice as the royal motorcade pulled up in front of the Provincial Legislature. It was the first real incident of the royal visit.

Some 50 policemen — part of the most extensive security force in Canadian history — moved in swiftly to disperse the hecklers. Some minor scuffling took place, but police succeeded in herding the demonstrators away from the main entrance to the Legislature. Four or five of the hecklers, including Reggie Chartrand, a former Montreal boxer and well-known separatist leader, were taken into custody by members of the special riot squad.

It’s the “student hecklers” part that bothers me. Will now every jerkwad in Quebec be referred to as a “student”? Surely, no student in Quebec is silly enough to think that the Queen is causing any of the province’s problems.

The only day of the week when I have to get up at 7 am, I had horrible insomnia. The reason for it was that I decided to read a few pages from Anthony Trollope’s novel The American Senator and then couldn’t tear myself away from the book until birds started making those nasty cheerful chirrupy sounds that every insomniac knows and dreads. There is a female character I identified with in a really painful traumatic way in this novel.

Imagine how talented one has to be to write a novel so potent that it can keep readers awake at night 130 years after the author died.

The review of the novel will appear on the blog shortly. How am I at creating suspense, eh?

P.S. I’ll make the post sticky for a while. Scroll down for new posts.

I am gradually improving my knowledge of the American history. Still, there is a number of important events and personalities of which I have a very limited understanding. It’s hard to choose which of the subjects to research first. This is why I’m asking my readers to help in making that choice. Please vote in the poll:

Finally, one of my favorite novels has been translated into English! I love Espido Freire’s Irlanda and it has always annoyed me that it isn’t more widely known. At least, now people can read it in English. Yay!

This is a fairly short novel that reads very easily. The apparent simplicity of the writing style, however, conceals a lot of mysteries and hidden revelations. The novel is narrated in the first person by Natalia, a 15-year-old girl who is a powerful but an extremely unreliable narrator. You need to be a very careful reader to keep track of the information she is trying to conceal and to avoid letting Natalia manipulate you.

Natalia’s greatest goal in life is to remain an obedient little child for as long as possible. In order to achieve this goal, she engages in a variety of hugely transgressive acts. Natalia is one of many recent female characters who use their considerable intelligence, strength and resilience in order to defend their right never to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives.

This is a female Bildungsroman (a novel of female development.) I read dozens of Bildungsromane for my research but there are few I enjoyed as much as this one. A literary critic likes novels that offer a lot of material to analyze, and Freire’s Irlanda definitely does that.

If you have read this novel, let’s discuss it! I’ve been dying to meet somebody I could discuss it with.

Reader el says:

What should US government do about obesity crisis? F.e. in a new Feminist post Jill says: “I’m glad that NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg has banned the sale of extra-large sugary drinks from some establishments”. Others disagree.

I have to say that I find this Bloomberg measure to be quite laughable. What is to prevent a person from buying 3 or 333 smaller drinks and gulping them down happily if that’s what s/he wants? What’s the point of trying to control the buying decisions of consumers?

The causes of overeating and poor eating culture cannot be addressed by governments. Overeating is caused by emotional problems (e.g. people who eat whenever they are stressed out, bored, upset, etc.), the legacy of on-demand breastfeeding that results in poor impulse control and the incapacity to stop eating between mealtimes, the need to self-medicate with food, etc. An eating culture is what we learn at home, with our families, as we grow up. If we see our parents practice unhealthy eating habits (eating on the run or standing up, eating massive amounts of junk food, frying everything and never eating fresh produce, etc.), there is no chance any governmental measures will break than pattern.

Maybe in terms of a very broad ideology, if the government showed self-restraint and stopped borrowing money like there is no tomorrow and invading other countries every fifteen seconds, that would help to create an environment where people know how to be happy without consuming all the time. As for actual legislation to force people to eat well, I find the idea to be bizarre.

The measures like the one Bloomberg has adopted in NYC are an example of the attitude that fosters overeating. Bloomberg sees the residents of his city as wayward children in need of his constant tutelage. Such helpless creatures cannot possibly come to see themselves as responsible adults who have to manage their own diets and take care of their own bodies.

As for the feminists who support Bloomberg’s measure, I want to remind them that if they support the government’s right to control what they put inside their bodies, so they should support its right to control what they remove from their bodies. There is absolutely no way one could simultaneously approve of Bloomberg’s measures and defend abortion rights.

The Morehouse School of Medicine announced last week that it has raised $2 million to endow a chair that will focus on sexuality and religion, the Associated Press reported. The chair will focus on ways to train physicians and theologians on sexual health issues that include contraception, rape prevention, unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. A spokeswoman for the Association of American Medical Colleges said she did not know of a similar endowed chair at any other medical school.

Yeah, because there is a limit on a number of ridiculous programs of pseudo study that the American academia can deal with. Physicians and theologians? Why not athletes and brick layers? Or computer programmers and janitors? If we are going to be random why not go all the way?

And how are physicians and theologians going to prevent rape? The only effective way of rape prevention I can imagine is for rapists to stop raping. Is there a reason why physicians and theologians are singled out for the task of rape prevention?

I’m not even asking why theologians should have anything to do with STDs. Are they going to cure them with prayer or theological disputes?

This Morehouse School of Medicine should have raised salaries for its adjuncts and postdocs instead of wasting money on this kind of idiocies.

A summer meme is here! I got it from feMOMhist’s blog which you’ll have to visit to see where she got it.

1. What is your favorite part of summer?

That my time belongs only to me and I can manage it in any way I choose.

2. What’s your favorite quintessentially summer food? Least favorite?

My favorite is watermelons and peaches. And least favorite is everything grilled. That isn’t because I dislike grilled food but because we are the only people in our street who don’t have a grill. For some reason, the idea of getting one scares N. He associates the process with the need to prove one’s traditional masculinity, and as everybody here has probably guessed, he is not into that at all.

3. Best beverage to beat the summer heat?

San Pellegrino mineral water.

4. Least favorite/most annoying thing related to summer?

Heat and the incredibly annoying sun that just wouldn’t go away.

5. Pick one: the lake /the beach.

The beach, of course. Hopefully, in a tropical location. That’s the only place where I see the point of heat and sun.

6. Most amusing summer vacation trip you’ve ever taken?

When I was 15, my mother, sister, aunts and cousins took a vacation where ten of them slept in one tiny and horribly stuffy room. I didn’t go. Instead, I went to a pioneer camp in one of the Black Sea resorts. It was very amusing to imagine the rest of the family on their weird overpopulated vacation. I still laugh whenever I think about it.

7. Most ridiculous/cringe-inducing/blush-provoking summer outfit you have seen?

Once, I went to Cuba with my sister and her boyfriend. The boyfriend is the nicest, most polite guy in the universe. He is also completely faithful and never notices any women other than his girlfriend. Next to us on the beach, there was a Russian family. A husband who would get slobbering drunk by 10 am (yes, in the morning), two constantly bickering children, a perennially vicious mother-in-law, and a very beautiful but extremely downtrodden wife who spent the vacation in the state of extreme desperation.

Every morning, the woman would give her completely disconnected drunk of a husband a nasty stare and turn to my sister’s boyfriend. Her face would acquire the expression of an extreme concentration on the task in hand. As her eyes bore into my sister’s boyfriend, she would start to undress. The poor guy isn’t the kind to stare at any women other than my sister, so he wouldn’t notice her until the desperate lady would remove every piece of clothing except an almost invisible G-string and start moving slowly in his direction. Then he’d look terrorized and escape to the sea. The woman would go into the water and start circling him like a shark. In the meanwhile, my sister and I would keel over with laughter on the beach.

8. Your absolute dream summer afternoon would be. . .

I’m an extremely boring person, so lying on the beach with a novel is my answer. And I will get to my dream beach resort in exactly one month and 11 days.