People are afraid of saying the wrong thing and hurting my feelings. They really don’t need to worry, though. There is no wrong thing to say. Even if they make an awkward comment, it will be OK because the pain I’m experiencing lies very far from what words can access.

I don’t want people to begin to feel a holy terror of causing hurt and shroud me in silence as a result.

My personal festival of the best Spanish movies continued today with LOS PECES ROJOS (“Red Fishies”), a 1955 film by director Jose Antonio Nieves Conde.

This is a good movie that turned out to be a really bad choice for me at this point in time. The movie’s protagonist Hugo invented a son in order to get his rich aunt to give him money to raise this non-existent boy. For 19 years he maintained the fiction of having a son. The imaginary son had his own room, his own clothes, books and belongings that changed as he aged. The father impersonated the son when needed but then discovered that the 19-year-old Carlos was getting out of his control to the point where the son almost stole the affections of the father’s fiancée.

The only jarring aspect of this movie is the obnoxious 1950s tradition of sticking a few annoying musical numbers into the story.

It’s like there is a a daily quota of suffering and crying that I have to fill. After I fill it, the rest of the time is not that horrible. The problem for now is that the quota is growing. I know it will start getting shorter eventually. Just not yet.

I’m a crappy blogger these days with little of interest to say. So I will share links to the articles of people who do have things to say. As always, feel free to leave your own links. And I promise I will have something of interest to say eventually.

Jews without Israel. Why are the North American Jews losing their emotional attachment to Israel?

If you are planning on entering the academic job market, read this post and learn how to figure out what the job listings really say.

The Charter of Quebec’s Values makes a few steps in the direction of showing religious fanatics their place but then stops short of making it completely clear that a secular society will not tolerate fanaticism spilling over into the public spaces. This is a good start but it needs to become a lot more than that.

One of the more disturbing revelations about the NSA: “NSA director modeled top secret war room to look like the bridge of Star Trek’s Enterprise.” This is just plain scary.

A great post on doing a PhD while suffering from a chronic illness. I wrote my dissertation while in the grips of a severe depression, so I know what this blogger is talking about.

What hides behind the bland language of NSA’s denials.

A brilliant post on the reasons behind the anti-intellectualism of some intellectuals.

My grandfather on my mother’s side used to get angry when letters home started with “Dear Mother and Father.” He insisted that they start with “Dear Father and Mother” instead.

My grandfather on my father’s side used to get angry when letters home started with “Dear Father and Mother.” He insisted that they start with “Dear Mother and Father.”

Grandpa #1 died when I was 5 but Grandpa #2 lived until I was 30.

Another touch of weirdness is that I obsessively started making enormous quantities of iced tea. I maybe made it twice in my entire life but now I’m making it every day. And it comes out looking quite orange, too.

It’s not nearly as easy as all of these humorous posts I’m publishing are making it sound. I feel like I’ve become a different person, a person I don’t really know. Today, for instance, I discovered that I’m irresistibly drawn to orange things. Why orange things? It’s a mystery. I never liked the color before but today I bought this orange nightgown:

 

And then I also bought an orange notebook and. . . prepare for the real weirdness now. . . I bought an issue of New Republic because it had huge orange letters on the cover:

 

I’m going to read the orange magazine while wearing my orange nightgown and eating oranges from a big bag.

I don’t think it makes sense to expend energy on resisting the weirdness right now so I will embrace it. I’m going to color my hair soon, and if the orange obsession doesn’t abate by that time, you know what to prepare for.

At the hospital, N was washing me in the shower because I was pretty helpless after the operation. As you can imagine, my body doesn’t look its best at this moment. The pregnancy, the surgery, the old PUPPPS scars, the new PUPPPS eruptions that look only slightly better than Bubonic plague (I checked), the feet and hands that are swollen to twice their natural size, the face that is puffed up like a pillow from crying, the hair that has been absolutely crazy – in short, I have to brace myself before undressing to avoid traumatizing myself with the ugliness.

So as N was washing my ravaged, battered, miserable body, I turned around and caught him staring at it with such overwhelming adoration that I don’t think many movie stars and top models get from people who look at their perfect bodies.

You’ll say I’m reading too much into this but this is the only statue among the dozens at the local store that has a booklet attached to it. I don’t think the booklet was placed where it was by accident. There were no other nudes at the store.

People keep trying to cheer me up, and those who know me are well aware that anything in the “At least you don’t have to be back at Yale” category is likely to work.

Here is a link that illustrates my alma mater‘s heroic attempts to figure out how sex works. I’d say Yale has a long road to travel on this subject.

Thank you, my dear friend Ol., for the link.