ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — Horacio Cartes, the tobacco magnate and front-runner for months in Paraguay’s presidential election on Sunday, has set off a fierce controversy here after publicly comparing gay people to “monkeys” and likening the support of same-sex marriage to believing in “the end of the world.”

In a radio interview this month, Mr. Cartes, 57, theatrically threatened to inflict harm on his own private parts if his 28-year-old son were to seek to marry another man.

“I would shoot myself in the testicles, because I do not agree,” he said.

I say, go ahead and fulfill your fantasy, Señor Cartes. Why make a joyous exercise of blowing up your testicles so dependent on another person’s choice of marriage partner?

Courtesy of my dear friend Ol., here are some really horrible baby shower cakes:

[Warning: some are vomit producing.]

Note that the last baby has two front teeth. It is probably chewing its way out of the vagina.

Believe me, folks, I love vulgar jokes. There was even a thread on this blog where we shared off-color jokes. However, if there is one thing that is sacred and that should never be ridiculed it is the miraculous, fulfilling, joyous process of eating. Food is not to be taken lightly.

If you enjoyed these photos, here is a lot more.

Kaur said she and her friends look forward to childbearing with fear.  The choice between curtailing other women’s lives (low wage nannies and housekeepers) in order to liberate their own and attempting to do everything at the cost of enjoying anything justifiably frightens.

Got it? Giving a woman a job equals “curtailing” her life. And can you guess where the quote is from? You think it is from “Creepy Religious Woman-Haters Monthly”? Oh no. The source of this pearl of wisdom is Inside Higher Ed.

This must be how the spoiled brats discussed in the earlier post begin to speak after they manage to fulfill their dream and “buy middle class.” It must be very comforting to imagine oneself with the power to decide whether to curtail a life or not.

75% of all teaching faculty members across the US are adjuncts. This sad state of affairs has been discussed form every angle, except one. There would be no excuse to hire so many adjuncts if there didn’t exist such an overwhelming need to provide remedial learning.

Students come from high school lacking the most basic skills needed to acquire a real university education. In this sense, the only difference between students from fancy Ivy League schools and students from non-fancy state schools is that the rich kids are a lot better at passing meaningless standardized tests. In everything else, they are all equally ignorant.

So we have to dedicate the first 2 years (at least) to teaching them the basics of history, geography, foreign language, calculus, academic reading and writing. Lecturers, instructors and adjuncts are hired to serve as high school teachers to people who already have high school diplomas that mean less and less every day.

And only after the basic skills get finally rammed into the students’ heads, can the real teaching of the kind that merits hiring a research scholar begin.

On the level of secondary education, too many students are still being educated as if we were still in the 1920s and needed an enormous number of factory workers, waitresses, and housewives. The world has changed and we are on the verge of a reality where even a Bachelor’s diploma will not be enough to qualify for a decent job. Still, high schools are not catching up and immature parents can’t conceive of putting in any effort on their own.

There is no adjunct problem that exists in isolation. This is part of a much larger issue: a society that can’t absorb changes fast enough.

I have finally figured out the purpose behind all these whiny posts about the imaginary horrors of life on the tenure track. It is to make people despise academics. I have to confess that the strategy has worked on me: after the most recent outpouring on the subject, I feel profound contempt for its author and everybody who is linking and tweeting this completely idiotic post written by a spoiled little brat as if it were a source of impossible wisdom.

Here are some choice quotes from it:

In your few spare moments, you will attempt adjust to a new city where you know nothing and no one, and must find everything from a dry cleaner to a neighborhood you can both afford and not hate.

Oh the horror, the horror! Our little baby was forced to look for a dry cleaner. Her suffering must be absolutely intolerable. This is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

. . . attend endless meetings to be in service to your university. . .

Yes, I have no doubt that this is exactly what the operational papers of this idiot’s department say: “In order to rank satisfactory in service, you must attend endless meetings.” And I’m also sure that the chair of her personnel committee answered the question of “How many committees on each of the university levels do I have to be on to receive a satisfactory ranking in service?” with the word “Endless.” This happens to us, academics, all the time.

You have to love university life enough that you don’t mind working 50%+ more hours for the same pay (or less) that you’d get in the corporate sector and having virtually no work-life balance.

What a condescending loser this person is, seriously. I hate this kind of jerks with a profound passion. People in the corporate sector in the US get 10 free days a year. Ten free fucking days. And this brainless prima donna has the gall to lie through her stinking teeth and pretend like she has any idea whatsoever what it means to sit in a cubicle 50 weeks a year without seeing the light of day from Monday morning to Friday night. And knowing that you can be fired and escorted off the premises at absolutely any moment for absolutely no reason.

Be prepared for “middle class” to cost more money than you make.

OK, this kind of vulgarity is just vomit producing. I had no idea there were still people pathetic enough to care so much about some completely imaginary trappings of the spurious “middle class.”

For example, you may make around $60,000 per year and a two-bedroom home in a good neighborhood may cost $500,000 or more.

Yes, not being able to buy a half a million house is a real tragedy. Let’s all weep for this freakazoid’s misfortune. I mean, here she was, hoping to buy middle class and have a dry cleaner’s come hunting her down, and such brilliant hopes have been dashed by cruel fate.

This means that many of my colleagues have delayed having children or opted to not have them, because they couldn’t afford a second bedroom.

Yes, people who can’t imagine life without half a million dollar houses will never contemplate sleeping in the living-room. Which, by the way, my parents did until I was 10. And now let’s see who is happier and better adjusted to life, me or the “I can’t live without a mansion” academic.

And then people ask me why I don’t identify with the academic community. How can I feel I have anything in common with these spoiled, nasty drama queens? I’m ashamed to be on the same planet with them, let alone in the same profession. Of course, there are other academics. Happy, normal people who are not superficial, whiny, or stupid and who discuss the real issues confronting the academia, not the idiotic “problem” of finding a dry cleaner’s. But there are so many of the other kind and their voices are too loud nowadays.