The blog roll keeps on entertaining:

Take, for example, the sexual phenomenon of “wife-sharing” that occupies a small province of polyamory: so many of those men who get off on being cuckolded locate their desire, consciously or unconsciously, in the fact that they are trading women as commodities.  Or take the BDSM community and then try to imagine how such desire would ever be produced (if social consciousness follows social being) in a mode of production where oppression and exploitation are unknown.  Take the sexual fetish community as a whole and investigate the class origin of the values they espouse…

This is priceless, folks. The class origin of the values espoused by fetishists is hard-core humor. And then people say Canadians are not funny.

Now the part that is a little less hilarious is that this guy teaches somewhere in Toronto.

Spain’s right-wing party attempted to ban abortion and ended up re-energizing the country’s feminist movement. The party has been eviscerated in every public space and has had to start moving away from this proposal. Spanish leading newspaper El País began publishing articles of the “Males Are Weapons of Mas Destruction” variety.

I have no idea how these clowns have gotten onto my blog roll but you’ve got to read this, folks. This is priceless:

So how can Republicans attack the birth-control mandate without being declared at war with women? How about just looking at the economics of it, which are very simple? Birth control isn’t expensive, I’m told, (about $25 a month). So why should it be covered by insurance at all? Insurance is meant to protect people from unpredictable and catastrophic expenses that they can’t budget for. That’s why automobile insurance covers collision and liability, not oil changes and tire rotations.

We’ve been weeping with laughter here for the past ten minutes. It’s incredible that there is a loser who is equally ignorant about birth control, economics, insurance, and even cars. I’ve only been driving for about two minutes but even I know that the idea of monthly oil changes and tire rotations is kind of bizarre. And how about the “health insurance exists only to protect people from the catastrophic” part?

It’s not good to laugh at the developmentally challenged, so I should stop.

A blogger says women who prance around the shared locker room naked bother her and adds:

I know my uncomfortableness might sound like I have body issues but I am very comfortable with my body (most days) but I still think my private parts should not be expose anywhere, even in women’s only locker room.

No, dear blogger, you don’t have body issues. What you have is a high degree of respect for your personal boundaries and any attempt to violate them disturbs you. And that is very normal and healthy.

Nobody has the right to inflict their nakedness on us without our explicit consent. Wanting to work out at a gym does not equal consent. Nothing equals consent. Somehow it’s supposed to be less intrusive when people of the same gender with us wave their body parts around us than people of another gender. I honestly don’t see much difference, though.

Now that I go to the gym, I have also noticed that, in spite of the many opportunities my gym provides to get changed behind a curtain, some people still choose to turn their nakedness into a public spectacle. I find that rude and obnoxious.

The need to strip in front of strangers who have not asked you to do so is not extremely healthy, by the way.

I saw this documentary about Mitt Romney advertised on Netflix yesterday and wondered who values their time little enough to watch something so outdated and irrelevant. Apparently, such people do exist.

It would have never occurred to me to sit through two hours of footage about John Kerry (whom I supported) and his boring memories about his father a year after he lost the presidential election. The guy had to serve a purpose, failed to fulfill it, so let’s move on.

Kerry and Romney are alike in that they both are very uncharismatic, both move like they have swallowed a baseball bat, both tried to run against a charismatic and widely supported incumbent, both lost.

It is very bizarre to me how people attach to politicians and develop an emotional fixation on them. A politician is like a plumber or a car mechanic: a professional who us supposed to perform a service. If that service is not performed we don’t rhapsodize the professional who failed to do the job for years to come.

Coca Cola’s profits are threatened so now the company believes in global warming.

This is good news because our politicians have no interest in what scientists say but are in thrall to potential campaign donors.

Yes, the term “psychic energy” sounds a little kooky, but it’s just a term, call it “a green giraffe covered in pink butterflies” if that helps.

One great way to replenish psychic energy is to fall in love. Many people (and I’m not pointing any fingers here because I don’t think I need to) begin to solve their psychological problems precisely after they fall in love.

Of course, even the most amazing romantic partner in the universe cannot solve your psychological problems. But s/he can replenish your psychological energy. Love and joy you get from your partner will serve as a sort of fuel that will get you out of the ditch and move you in the direction of solving your issues. The rest will have to be done by yourself.

So if you are lonely, now is the time to place a profile on a dating site. Or use any other method you like to meet people.

And a small story: I was so drained from carrying the weight of my depression and anxiety that I almost decided not to go to that first date with N. I was about to move to another country, there was a lot of packing to do, etc. So I almost became the biggest fool in the world who wouldn’t have even known the extent of her idiocy.

Think about it.

Wall Street Journal has outdone itself:

Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its “one percent,” namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”

Don’t people realize that the moment they say that something is like Kristallnacht / the Holocaust / slavery / rape, etc., nobody in their right mind wants to follow their argument about anything ever again?

And it’s easy to dismiss this particular letter as written by an ultra-conservative weirdo. But how many Liberals do exactly the same thing?

This love for melodramatic and offensive comparisons is a truly bipartisan affair.

I only went to the kindergarten about 5 times altogether. Other than these isolated occasions, I was kept at home until the age of 7. Even these few visits, however, have offered me crucial insights. Here is an example. (Long-time readers will recognize the story and will be glad to see the solution).

This will be impossible to believe, but until adolescence I hated food. Just being in the vicinity of food made me want to vomit. There was, however, this variety of sprats canned in tomato sauce which were pretty much the only food I loved.

Kindergarten was torture to me because people there tried making me eat. Once, however, I looked at the plate of food we were offered for lunch and realized I was in luck: among other things, there were my favorite canned sprats.

So I are everything on the plate except the sprats. This uncharacteristic amount of food made me throw up. My grandfather came to take me home.

“This is very strange,” he said. “I bought these sprats and brought them to the kindergarten because I know you like them. Why did you eat everything but them?”

There was, of course, a reason for my strange behavior. As a child, I didn’t feel in control of my life. I especially didn’t feel in control of my enjoyments. Children have to wait for others to sanction and organize their moments of joy. So when I saw these sprats on a plate in front of me, I found a rare opportunity to decide when and how the enjoyment would happen. Eating the sprats would kill that opportunity finally to experience control.

I remembered this story when I was trying to figure out why I kept delaying my work on my research, an activity I enjoy like none other. I would wake up in the morning, anticipating a joyous day filled with research. But first, of course, I had to answer emails, grade homework, plan classes, then answer the emails I received while I planned classes, then resolve the urgent issue a student brought to my attention, then pay bills, have lunch, answer emails, etc.

In the meanwhile, the research was right there and I was just about to start working on it.

And then the day would end.

This went on for years. I was always just about to start this enormously enjoyable activity, which was research, but somehow never really got to start it.

Until I realized: research is sprats! I’m doing the same thing I did at five: delaying enjoyment as a way of ensuring I’m in control of my life. And the real paradox was that I kept robbing myself of control by these efforts.

I complained about this “research as sprats” phenomenon in April of 2011 here on the blog. At that time, I still had no idea how to handle this problem. It is only recently that I finally stopped looking for control in these self-defeating ways.

Asking what is the point of doing research is like asking what is the point of having sex. The activity itself is the point. If you need extra motivation to engage in it, something is wrong.

For research scholars, doing research is the goal and everything else they do is subservient to it. They teach and carry out service obligations because these activities allow them to do research. They don’t carve out time every day to do research. Instead, they carve out time from research to do other things.

I only recently became a real research scholar of the kind I’m describing here, and the feeling is amazing.