A friend writes:

You will be glad to know that (one of?) your article(s?) on the female Bildungsroman was discussed and analyzed at length in a graduate seminar in Monterrey Mexico last week. You are a renowned international hispanist!

I now feel very important.

We all know I lack a sense of humor, so I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a joke:

A bill calling for science fiction to be made compulsory reading in schools has been proposed by a politician in West Virginia in order to “stimulate interest in the fields of math and science”. Ray Canterbury, a Republican delegate, is appealing to the West Virginia board of education to include science fiction novels on the middle school and high school curriculums.

If it isn’t a joke, then I have a question: who votes for these clowns?

What is it about the subject of gun control that makes everybody instantly reach for the dumbest analogies ever?

Children are not allowed to run around with assault weapons as it is, so it makes little sense to let them choke on tiny parts Kinder contains to make some ridiculous point.

The idea of gun control – which I support completely – loses a lot of its potency when its proponents begin to act as immaturely as its opponents. Waging a stupid Facebook war of memes trivializes an issue and robs it of any meaning. What happened to having a serious discussion, with actual arguments expressed in words, sentences, and even paragraphs?

Canadians prevented a terrorist attack on Montreal-Toronto yesterday. It’s good to see Canadians finally not snooze through things.

Of course, not even this will force Canada to revise its weird immigration / border control policies.

What do you think about the practice of privileging immigrants who claim to be persecuted for religious reasons (like Tsarnaevs, for example)? To me it seems weird that self-declared religious fanatics would be admitted much more readily than normal, rational people.

And of course it is impossible to know whether there is any truth to these claims if religious persecution. I remember how some former relatives of mine ridiculed the “stooopid Americans” for believing their stories of being persecuted for religious reasons in the Ukraine of the 1990s.

And the idiots begin to blabber:

The older brother who was killed and suspected in the Boston bombings was deep into hip hop, and it appears he belonged to a fan website that touted that genre of music. Tamerlan Tsarnaev has an email associated with the website, “Real-hiphop.com.” The site provides information about hip hop artists and upcoming DVD releases. What’s interesting … hip hop lyrics are notoriously violent and often degrading to women.

Given that I’m older than Tsarnaev, I have had more time to listen to hip hop of which I’m a great fan. It is a wonder that I am yet to blow anybody up.

Let’s see how soon video games will be made part of the discussion.

Jeez, tabloids are so predictable.

Once upon a time you could smoke everywhere. Hell, high schools had smoking lounges. Everybody smoked. I actually remain a bit puzzled about why people start smoking these days. I’m not being judgmental, I’m just genuinely curious. When being a smoker involves always having to find a moment to duck out of wherever you are to light up outside, it just doesn’t seem that fun anymore.

People who are genuinely curious first conduct an online search or two before publishing stupid and meaningless posts. There are addictions that are a lot more inconvenient than smoking, yet people still practice them. Sometimes, inconvenience is precisely what makes an addiction attractive.

The reasons why people get addicted to smoking (and as we all know, out of those who start, many never become addicted. There are people who smoke for years and are not addicted and there are people who smoke once and acquire a strong addiction immediately) are as follows:

– oral stage traumas (which also make for generally addictive personalities);

– a need for identity formation (“a cigarette is a small white axis around which I gather the pieces of my identity every time I smoke,” one smoker told me);

– a compensatory mechanism.

Of course, when all three come together, you get an addiction that is very hard to break.

Last December the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released an official position paper concluding that the time had come for birth-control pills to be sold over the counter. It was the first time the group had endorsed such sales, concluding that scientific evidence suggested that the practice was safe and calling it “a potential way to improve contraceptive access and use, and possibly decrease the unintended pregnancy rate.”

Finally! This is really great news. The ridiculous and completely barbaric practice of forcing women into needless and costly OB-GYN visits whenever we need contraceptive pills has got to go and now even the retrograde American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists agrees.

When oral contraceptives begin to be sold freely, women will finally be able to have backup packs of pills for when one gets lost (or one pill gets lost which makes the entire packet useless.) And we will be able to travel without offering long, humiliating explanations at the pharmacy for why we need our pills 2 days earlier than the pharmacists thinks we do.

Now, of course, we will get even more proof of whether the fetus defenders really care about saving fetuses (as some very intelligent people still insist on believing):

The goal of the proposal, of course, is to make birth-control pills more readily available. “The biggest barrier to adherence is the logistics of a prescription — you run out on a Saturday night, you lose your pills, you go on vacation, you can’t get a doctor’s appointment,” said Daniel Grossman, a gynecologist who is a vice president at Ibis Reproductive Health, a nonprofit research organization.

In his group’s studies, about one-third of the women who were using no birth control or a less effective method said they would use the pill if it were available without a prescription. “This is what women want,” Dr. Grossman added.

Do you think anti-choicers will rally to make oral contraceptives more easily available to prevent abortions? Yeah, right. We all know they will be howling against this abortion-preventing measure like a pack of rabid stinky dogs.

So if you know this mythical “really nice person who genuinely cares about fetuses and opposes abortion rights not because s/he hates women but because s/he is such a bleeding heart”, do ask yourself why this “nice” freakazoid is not supporting this measure. And then ask yourself what drives your need to believe that anti-choicers are not woman-haters.

Here are some of the most curious searches that brought people to this blog in the past 30 days:

“where bad children come from?” – From bad parents, of course.

“is it rape if you don’t mean for it to be rape” – Since there is absolutely no way for anybody to access your intentions, then they don’t matter.

“why attachment parenting is disastrous for children” – Because it precludes them from developing individual identities that are separate from their parents in a timely and healthy manner.

“site:clarissasblog.com/ corporal punishment” – Beating people is a crime. What else is there to search for?

“questionnaire to repair sexual resentment” – You don’t need a questionnaire, you need a sexologist. Why people resist hiring specialists to help them deal with their issues is a mystery.

“blogs that are better than shakesville” – www.clarissasblog.com. Massively better, I promise.

“100 reason not to go to grad school clarissa” – There is just one reason you need not to go to grad school: “I don’t wanna.” Why would anybody need 100? Don’t want to go, then don’t go.

“feminists oral sex” – These terms are related in the same degree as “feminists pumpkins.” Some feminists like pumpkins, some don’t. Stop wasting your time, buddy.

“are feminists opposed to oral sex” – Jesus, give it a rest already. Some feminists like oral sex, some don’t. Move on.

“how to download english version of telenovelas” – Most telenovelas have not been translated into English. If you like them, why not learn Spanish? This will probably boost your career prospects, too. Think about it. Just don’t pay for scams like Rosetta Stone and other such crap. Find a native speaker to teach you.

“why it is wrong to give birth” – Don’t want to give birth, then simply don’t do it. What is the point of making all these dumb searches?

“is elective c section less traumatic than emergency” – Of course. Please buy a dictionary and start looking up meanings of simple words.

“dear god please make me a playboy bunny” – I’m not sure I’m a god, but if I am then OK, your wish is granted.

“in what ways do women surport patriarchy” – Bad spelling notwithstanding, this is a good question. Answer: in the exact same ways as men do. Make a list and you will see that it works for men and women equally well.

“social status professor” – Depends on where. In the US and Canada it is exceptionally high. The only other profession which  has as high a status that I have been able to find is that of a doctor.

“women forcing themselves on men sex” – It isn’t sex, it’s rape, you idiot.

“how to say househusband on cv” – Don’t say it at all. Nobody cares about your family life. Just put actual employment on the CV.

“why do job interviewers bully” – People who bully do it for one reason: they are sick sadists.

“why are russians so different” – From what, you bizarre person?

“do men think women/girls are less important then themselves” – Every psychologically healthy person thinks other people are less important. That’s life, buddy. But not to fear, there are crowds of manipulative masochists who will gladly put your needs ahead of theirs and then guilt-trip you for that for the rest of your life.

“madrid vs london moving to” – I’d definitely choose Madrid. It’s a lot less expensive, the real estate is actually accessible to normal people, the city is cleaner, the food is better, the air smells nicer, the public transportation is much cheaper.

“dona beija completa” – The best telenovela in the world!!! It’s Brazilian, so there are many naked people.

“what was so bad about the soviet union” – Everything.

OK, I’m also unhappy that the background check proposal tanked in the Senate but the following is simply stupid:

 

According to this logic, nobody should ever be brought to trial for crimes committed suing a gun because the people responsible are these Senators.

For the first time in 15 years, I watched a Ukrainian TV show and discovered something interesting. The show consists of not-very-famous singers, actors and performers being given a name of a very famous singer (e.g. Michael Jackson, Beyonce, George Michael, Montserrat Caballé, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Edith Piaf, etc.) and then having to imitate this singer as closely as possible.

Here are the show’s ingredients:

1. A performer presses a big button and is randomly assigned the name of a famous singer to imitate.

2. The performer spends a week preparing to imitate the star whose name s/he has been assigned.

3. A very talented skinny young acting coach with wild hair and in a ratty T-shirt assists the performer.

4. A singing coach with a baby grand piano assists the performer.

5. A team of make-up artists transforms the performer’s appearance.

6. Before the transformation, the performer is interviewed by a beautiful show hostess with very black hair.

7. The performer gets into a magical elevator that takes him or her to be transformed.

8. All the performers sing live, making sure their voices sound as close to those of the starts they imitate as possible.

9. The performance is judged by 4 judges, one of whom is an opera singer and one is a famous older stand-up comedian.

10. The performances are judged based on the Eurovision system.

11. The winner of each segment gets a money prize that is donated to his or her favorite charity.

12. The winner has to perform the winning song once again.

13. Each of the performers is randomly assigned a singer to imitate for the next segment of the show.

Now, the question: the Russians saw the astounding success of this show in Ukraine and stole the whole idea. They imitated everything to a T, even the lighting and the scene decorations. There was a single thing among the 13 points that I listed here, however, that the  Russians did not steal. Which of these 13 ingredients of the popular Ukrainian show did the Russians have no use for?