Am I getting confused or did Argo really win the Oscar for the best picture? I mean, it’s not a bad movie, but it’s like a billion other movies that get made every year. I liked it because it glorifies Canadians at the expense of Americans even though the intent is the exact opposite. But that’s about all I can say about the film.

Does anybody understand this?

I’m very glad I stopped watching the ceremony the year when Titanic won every award there was.

If an intellectual requires an audience in order to be an intellectual, then blogging has provided more people than ever with an opportunity to be intellectuals.

In this post, people came up with creative and fun scenarios where the phrase “I don’t need to touch your socks. I believe you” could have been pronounced. The readers of my blog are so creative and have such rich imaginations that I’m not sure the reality can live up to the products of their creativity. Still, here is what happened.

Latin American people have a weird relationship with snow. And when I say weird, I mean extremely bizarre. Back in grad school, I had a colleague from Chile who would wear flip-flops over bare feet to trudge in 16 inches of snow, all the while complaining loudly about the discomfort.

The Chair of my department is from Brazil. His winter footwear looks like this:

After the recent snowstorm, the Chair arrived at the department wearing his favorite footwear and telling us how it took him 40 minutes to dig his car from under the snow.

“What were you thinking?” the secretary exclaimed. “Your feet are sopping wet! You can’t spend all day like this, you’ll get sick.”

“Oh no,” the Chair said and lifted his foot to the secretary’s desk. “You can touch them, they are not wet.”

In the meanwhile, the professors who were present were weeping with laughter. The secretary’s horrified look made things even funnier.

Research demonstrates that the rates at which people consume anti-depressants and anti-psychotics do not depend on the actual incidence of these disorders. Rather, they have to do with the intensity of marketing efforts.

“I’ll take my quiet, wonderful life with time for what I want to do, not the one worrying about external expectations and my status or not as a star in some field or other that in reality few others care or know about.” Hear, hear!

A great article on disability and online dating by somebody we all know and love. Yes, I’m being mysterious on purpose because I want everybody to click on the article to promote it. (I’m not the author, in case you are wondering.)

The stupidest metaphor of all times. It has a personal significance to me because I once had to dump a person I was dating for advancing this metaphor in my presence. Read the post and you will agree that somebody who thinks this metaphor is valuable is not dateable.

What is it with this weird American tradition of pushing spouses, actors, and other completely unqualified people into political positions of great responsibility? More importantly, what possesses citizens to vote for such candidates? If the Kentucky Democrats can’t find an actual alternative even for somebody so horrible as Mitch McConnell and have to bring in some dime-a-dozen starlet for the job, I feel hopeless about the future of the US progressivism. And before you begin to argue that actors make great politicians, I have 2 words for you: Reagan and Schwarzenegger. And before you start telling what a great progressive icon Judd is, see here and here.

Solar energy will save Taj Mahal. And I’m sure one day it will save us all.

It is high-time that Christianity be reclaimed from the crazies who now call themselves Christians: “Jesus’ command to love others led me to feminism. Feminism is all about equality and justice for groups that have been oppressed. I seem to recall the bible supporting this idea too. So I am a feminist BECAUSE I am following Jesus. And I support marriage equality BECAUSE I am following Jesus.”

A really amazing post: “What is it about adulthood that suddenly grants the right of personhood, that children are lacking?  If anything, the very vulnerability of childhood should mean that children that society should be going to even greater lengths to protect them, rather than institutionalizing violence against them. The bottom line is the very vulnerability of children is what makes it acceptable to be physically violent towards them. Children cannot vote, they don’t work or earn their own money and are absolutely dependent upon the benevolence of adults to survive.  In every aspect that you can think of, children are understood to be second class citizens.”

This completely ridiculous post argues that men should deprive themselves of sex in order to become “human again.” Seriously, I’m not kidding, you can go see for yourself. The only question I have is how a blog written by a completely unhinged freakazoid got onto my blog roll.

And the post of the week which is absolutely, completely and totally brilliant is: Attachment parenting as a new form of feminine mystique. I’m a passionate fan of Betty Firedan and do not like seeing her name being taken in vain. But in this post, the use of Friedan’s work is brilliant and completely to the point. OK, I need to use the word brilliant again: this post is brilliant, people!

Yesterday at the department, somebody said the following phrase, “I don’t need to touch your socks. I believe you.”

The linguists among us immediately suggested that this could well be the first and only time such a statement has been made by humans anywhere.

So let’s play a game. Can you come up with scenarios where such a statement can be made?

I will, of course, eventually reveal who said the sentence and why.

 

Women obtaining an abortion-inducing drug would be required to undergo an ultrasound before and after taking the drug under a bill approved Wednesday by an Indiana Senate committee. . . The bill would require physicians to “schedule a follow-up appointment” two weeks after RU-486 is administered. But that’s not all. Under penalty of criminal and/or civil charges and fines, physicians must “make a reasonable effort to ensure that the pregnant woman returns for the follow-up appointment.” And what constitutes a “reasonable effort”? The bill doesn’t make that entirely clear, though it specifically mentions “recording in the pregnant woman’s medical records the date, and time of the follow-up appointment, a brief description of the efforts by the physician and the physician’s staff to ensure the woman’s return, and the name of the individual who performed the efforts.”

Libertarians, hello? Freedom-lovers of all stripes? Are you there? Are you protesting this blatant violation of the rights of medical patients and their doctors?

This is a governmental intrusion that is a little bit more severe than not being allowed to carry a bazooka in public*, so where are the protests, the freedom marches, the Libertarian outrage? Doctors are being forced by the government to conduct unnecessary medical procedures under the threat of criminal and civil charges. This is nanny state at its worst, so where are our worshipers of liberty?

No, as usual when there is an actual threat of an actual governmental intrusion, not a peep comes from the direction of US Libertarians.

* If you don’t agree, get a neighbor to stick an object of the size of the transvaginal ultrasound in you against the will of both of you. And then repeat the procedure. And now imagine that you can both be fined and / or arrested for choosing not to repeat this exercise.

Three year old Maxim Kuzmin, American name – Max Shatto, died on 21 January 2013. The US adoptive mother of Russian-born boy Laura Shatto told deputies that the two boys had been playing outside together before she left the house and found Max on the ground, according to Texas officials.

These adoptive parents paid a huge bribe in Russia to steal the boys from their mother and grandmother – against every existing law – and took the boys away. They fed Maxim, a little boy with a congenital heart defect, a dangerous psychotropic drug called Risperdal. I guess they wanted to have a convenient little toy for their money.

Now the kid is dead but these criminals keep his little brother, Kirill, whom they hate so much that they have changed his birth name to Kristopher. Please remember that the animal who murdered little Dima Yakovlev by leaving him to cook in a closed vehicle for 9 hours in a scorching heat had stolen his name too and had renamed him Chase Harrison. These people purchase kids, as if they were puppies, and think they can just kill them off whenever they feel bored with them.

Who wants to bet that these vicious creatures will not suffer any punishment for the murder and will get to keep the murdered child’s little brother?

Before you express an opinion, however, remember that the man who killed Dima Yakovlev was acquitted and is now free to buy more kids to kill.

I just discovered from a linguist that more than a quarter of people born and raised in bilingual families fail to become bilingual speakers.

Wow.

Since I read and bookmarked the post titled “The Care and Feeding of Your Depressive“, I have had this almost physical perception of it poisoning my computer. So I will write about this subject in hopes of getting over the trauma it causes me to witness public displays of such intense narcissism.

People who are discharged from mental care facilities have a higher chance of a steady improvement if they come home to an empty house than those who come back to a family. This happens because relationships that were built around a mental illness (alcoholism, drug addiction, any chronic illness) need this illness to be in place in order for the relationship to continue existing. This mutual need of an unhealthy condition is called co-dependency:

Co-dependency often affects a spouse, a parent, sibling, friend, or co-worker of a person afflicted with alcohol or drug dependence. Originally, co-dependent was a term used to describe partners in chemical dependency, persons living with, or in a relationship with an addicted person. Similar patterns have been seen in people in relationships with chronically or mentally ill individuals.

A co-dependent partner plays the role of a perennial savior of the afflicted individual:

Co-dependents often take on a martyr’s role and become “benefactors” to an individual in need. . . The problem is that these repeated rescue attempts allow the needy individual to continue on a destructive course and to become even more dependent on the unhealthy caretaking of the “benefactor.” As this reliance increases, the co-dependent develops a sense of reward and satisfaction from “being needed.”

As you can see, both participants derive benefits from the situation of co-dependency. Here is what the relationship between a co-dependent and a narcissist looks like:

Among the reciprocally locking interactions of the pair, are the way “the narcissist has an overpowering need to feel important and special, and the co-dependent has a strong need to help others feel that way. … The narcissist overdoes self-caring and demands it from others, while the co-dependent underdoes or may even do almost no self-caring.”

Now, let’s look at the article I linked to at the beginning of this post which, I believe, offers a perfect illustration of this type of relationship. The post is titled “The Care and Feeding of Your Depressive.” Of course, the title aims to be facetious but, as usual, this kind of humor is very easy to read through. The author believes that her depression entitles her to being cared for and fed by her partner. This feeding occurs when the partner provides the narcissist with a certain kind of emotions. These emotions constitute the food which nourishes the dysfunction of both partners.

This is how a narcissist draws the co-dependent into the trap:

1. The co-dependent is charged with reassuring and comforting the narcissist while being simultaneously told that all efforts in this direction are futile and set to fail from the get-go:

You can tell me that I’m beautiful, that you love me, that everything’s going to be okay, and the voice in the back of my head is always going to be telling me that it’s not true.  Sometimes I can make it shut up and believe you. Sometimes I can’t. But a lot of the time, that voice is also telling me that you fell in love with someone who was better, who wasn’t as depressed, who functioned properly, who was cheerful and fun to be around.  That voice is the voice that tells me that you would be better off with someone else who was right in the head.

The message of “you have to keep trying while knowing that you are doomed to keep failing” fosters feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem in the co-dependent. The co-dependent’s sense of guilt forces him to enter into an argument with the disembodied “voice”, trying to prove that the “voice” is mistaken. Since the narcissist has already relinquished all responsibility for the “voice”, the co-dependent is doomed never to win the argument.

2. A sense of helplessness is fostered in the co-dependent through an enumeration of symptoms that have no remedy:

I feel terrible on a ton of levels.  There’s the wet blanket of the depression.  There’s the heart-racing panic of an anxiety attack.  For me, migraines come right along with anxiety attacks.  Lots of people just experience general body aches and soreness from depression, actual physical symptoms that are no less real because they come from a mental source. I am tired all the time.  A lot of the times, I really don’t want to eat much.  

3. And then the narcissist makes the co-dependent feel guilty for not taking these symptoms completely in his stride:

And I know that makes you worried. But then that leads to. . .The Merry-Go-Round of Guilt.

I hate this.  I already feel guilty for not being everything I think I should be for you. 

4. As a result of these strategies, we have a classic co-dependent reaction:

Then you want to help so badly, all the time, and it is so clear that you feel guilt for not being able to help, for not feeling like you are enough.

Wanting “to help so badly, all the time” is the classic definition of a co-dependent. And so is feeling guilty for not being able to help.

5. In order to reinforce the unhealthy relationship structure, the narcissist punishes the co-dependent for any departure from the role of a completely submissive and unquestioning care-taker:

The depression makes me overly sensitive, and so I take every sigh, every tiny look of exasperation straight to heart. . . I don’t want to say I have uncontrollable anger, because my anger is very definitely controlled–otherwise, countless dishes and household appliances would have been smashed by now, and there would be any number of people nursing wounds inflicted by my tongue.  But it is always there lately.  The urge to throw something, to put hit something, to rip something to shreds is bubbling below the surface, and there’s little that would fill me with as much satisfaction as being set loose in a ceramic factory slated for destruction.

The message is clear: if you don’t behave exactly as I wish, I will throw objects at you and insult you verbally. And you will have to accept that and shut up because otherwise I will make you feel even more guilty.

Now, here is what I want to say to co-dependent people who happen to be reading this:

1. You cannot help anybody suffering from any illness unless you are their doctor.

2. If you want to get out of a relationship, you have the right to do that. Irrespective of how sick or healthy your partner is.

3. No medical condition is an excuse for fits of rage, manipulative behavior, or guilt-tripping.

4. You deserve to live in an environment of joy and happiness. If the environment you share with your partner is  not one of joy and happiness, you have the right to leave.

And the most important thing:

5. While an adult always chooses whether to stay in an unhealthy relationship or not, a child gets no choice. If for whatever reason your partner generates an environment of sadness, anxiety, uncertainty, aggression, fear, insecurity, it is your responsibility to make sure that the child is removed from that situation. Feel free to be as co-dependent as you want, but remember that a child is not to blame for any of this. Children have a right to be in a safe, happy environment where nobody is about to flow off the handle and nobody terrifies them by staring at the wall or lying prostrate all day long.

And finally:

6. You deserve to be happy. If you don’t feel intensely happy at least 80% of the time, then you have the right to do whatever you need to do to change this state of affairs.

Office phone rings.

Me: Yes, hello.

Voice: Can I speak with Professor. . . erm. . . Professor. . . I have no idea how to pronounce this. . . erm. . .

Me: Yes, that would be me.