Who’s with me in my belief that Obama’s chase after Snowden disgraces both the presidency and the country?

He should just stop chasing after the guy and quit making a fool of himself. The whole world is laughing; this is an embarrassment. Even Putin, that vile cockroach of a person, is having a hoot at Obama’s expense.

Do you remember that time in 2008 when people from many countries cheered and danced in the streets when they heard Obama was elected president? Now they are all jeering in scorn.

Courtesy of David Gendron, here is an article about a bunch of losers who are too chicken to fight against large companies that are mistreating their employees and using sweatshop labor. Instead, these idiots bully a small business that tries to stay afloat. Bleh, disgusting.

Montreal activism does tend to be very childish and obnoxious, I have to say.

It is beyond silly to buy some shoes to support Wendy Davis’s heroic fight against barbarity. If you support her cause, what is the point of lining the pockets of some anti-choice miscreant?

If your idea of activism is buying stuff, there is something definitely wrong going on. All you do is purchase an image of yourself as politically active. And that’s all kinds of stupid. What’s next? A Che Guevara T-shirt? Oh, wait. . .

 

Where the hell do people find this kind of crap?

According to popular culture, jealousy is an emotion generally felt (or should be felt) by women, about sex, getting a man, and having an inadequate breast size — small breasts of course makes it more difficult to attract men and furthermore following it up with some sex. Most articles I viewed were aimed toward women and working through that jealousy, all the while reinforcing the concept that most women *should* feel jealous about certain things. Mostly male attention.

One has to be really blind to reality to miss the pervasive nature in the Western civilization of the narrative about male jealousy. From Shakespeare to Calderon, from Maugham to One Tree Hill, what is it that men are supposed to be jealous about? Yes, that would be female attention. Also having the biggest brawn that would help attract female attention.

Presenting this as some sort of a gender issue is both stupid and dishonest.

So I have downloaded one of those apps that let you track everything you do and used it for two weeks. I thought I knew myself pretty well but the app revealed unexpected things about me.

First of all, it turns out that I’m a lot more hardworking than I tend to believe. I work about 30 hours a week, and that’s in summer when I don’t teach and have no service obligations. This discovery made me very proud of myself. I will try to get to 40 hours this week.

A less heartening discovery was that, contrary to what I always tell myself, I’m quite a gamer. Since I never sit down and play for an hour or two, like “real” gamers do, I never noticed that gaming was a part of my life. But all of those little gaming sessions that last 5-10 minutes and that are spread around during the day do tend to add up.

These apps are a fascinating tool of self-knowledge.