I’m never prepared to what students might throw at me. Many of them chose Emilia Pardo Bazán’s short story “Red Stockings” for their final essay. I’m now grading the essays, and I think I should have prohibited them to write about it.

In the story, a father brutalizes his daughter, knocking her eye out and disfiguring her.

I was not prepared for every essay on this story to concentrate on excusing the father’s behavior along the lines of, “The father may have hit her too badly, but he wanted the best for her, his intentions were good, and anyway, everybody was like that at the time.” At least, nobody has wondered if the poor guy hurt his fist while beating the daughter. Yet.

We discussed the story in class, talked about the patriarchal family, analyzed the text. But the result is what it is.

I obviously suck at teaching literature.

Well, at least, I get published.

You can read the story in English here, if you want: Pardo Bazán, Las medias rojas. It’s very short.

I thought I’d never laugh this hard ever again but then I saw this phenomenal Russian poster in my blogroll and almost collapsed with laughter. I was on the bus, and other passengers thought I needed medical help because I was making choking noises and tears were streaming down my face. I immediately sent the link to my husband and sister, as the only Russian-speakers I know who might appreciate this. They both hate profanity, so I’m preparing for a lecture on my strange sense of humor later today.

In the meanwhile, I translated the poster for those of you who don’t speak Russian. It’s much funnier in Russian, though. Still, I tried. I hope there is somebody on this blog who shares my sense of humor. Press CTRL and + together to make the poster larger, if needed.

Russian neo-Nazis traveled to Odessa and played the role of pro-Russian Ukrainians AND JEWS in a pro-Russian protest. These days, however, it’s hard to pretend you are somebody else because people will recognize you from your social media. This is precisely what started happening. People recognized a Russian neo-Nazi in one of the supposedly Ukrainian and Jewish protesters. (The link is here but it’s in Russian.)

Here is my translation of one of the news items about the events in Odessa:

“3 to 4 thousand pro-Russian activists gathered on March 23 at Kulikovo Field in Odessa, where they held a rally against “political repression.”
The participants chanted “Russia” and “Freedom to Anton Davidchenko.” Jewish symbols were used at the meeting. On behalf of a non-existent organization “Jewish rebel army ” provocateurs used Israeli flags with the words “Russia, protect us.” According to JewishNet in Odessa, when an activist who belongs to the Jewish community of Odessa addressed the provocateurs in Hebrew, the only answer he got was : “Dirty kike.”

Something similar was reported on the Russian news yesterday.

“Ukrainian ultra-nationalists are assaulting Russian-speakers in Kharkov,” the newscaster announced.

The footage showed a group of masked  burly men beating a pedestrian in the street. Unexpectedly, these Ukrainian ultra-nationalists were yelling in Russian with a heavy Moscow accent.

But you know how sly and crafty these Ukrainians and Jews are. They can easily pass themselves as Russian neo-Nazis passing as Ukrainians and Jews and invade an honest pro-Russian event to make peaceful pro-Russians look bad.

Ukrainians celebrate Europe at a fish market in Odessa:

Because that’s how Ukrainians roll.

Today’s resolution that the UN made about supporting Ukraine is being celebrated as “a big moral victory” (direct quote from Russia’s official representative at the UN). A victory for Russia, in case you didn’t get it.

You see? That’s positive thinking at work. I mean, if everybody unanimously voted against Russia, that would be one thing, but with a few supporters and a bunch of abstentions, Russia can snatch victory from the jaws of progressive humanity and exclaim triumphantly, “You guys can’t even reach an agreement if it’s OK for us to invade people. So we win!”

And they are right, too.

I have finally figured out why I always get “Greatly Exceeded Expectations in Service” in all my yearly reviews. People think they saw me at meetings and committees when, in reality, I was at home, doing my research.

Cool!

Dear Associate Dean,

the minutes from the weekly meeting of Departmental Chairs state that I attended the meeting. I did not because I’m not a Chair.

Or maybe I should start listening to my phone messages in case I have been appointed and didn’t notice.

P.S. The Associate Dean writes back:

But you were there!

I was close to considering the possibility that I’m insane, but at the time of the meeting I was teaching my class and have 17 witnesses to that effect.

P.P.S. I’m now wondering if I can list being at the meeting as part of my service efforts.

So do you have any explanation for why Communist regimes in very different areas of the world are so obsessed with hair?

. . . and literature DO NOT WORK.

I created a great online course in Spanish literature, but at this point in the semester, I have to conclude that the course has been an absolute and complete failure. Students obviously need to be inside an actual classroom with actual classmates and work in the physical presence of an actual professor for foreign language and literature courses to work.

I’m not sorry I conducted this experiment because negative experience is as valuable as positive experience. From now on, if the administration tries to push us towards offering more online courses, I have data demonstrating why this is a horrible idea. I’ve been teaching a very successful online course in English, so we know that my way of conducting online courses is not the problem here. If anybody needs my data for their own fight against digitalization of our field, I’m willing to provide it.

Everybody is piling on Nate Silver for stating the painfully obvious, which is that Republicans will win the Senate in 2014. Of course, they will. Obama’s response to the revival of the Cold War is not making the voters happy. If the economy were booming and Obamacare were an overwhelming success, voters wouldn’t care about Ukraine and Russia. Since the administration’s performance in these (and pretty much all other) areas has been kinda OK, we’ll all see the results at the polls in November.

A blogger says in response to the above-linked poll, “So of course Obama’s getting bad grades. Everyone “knows” he’s screwing up — even if no one can explain precisely how.” I can explain precisely how he is screwing up:

BY NOT GETTING RESULTS.

Voters don’t know what should be done to solve the problem of Russia’s expansionism because it’s not their job to know. As I always tell my students, it doesn’t matter how hard they tried or if they tried at all. The universe doesn’t care about your effort, I say. All that matters is results. This is how life is for a student, professor, chef, truck driver, or president.

As you all know, I passionately supported Obama in both of his campaigns. But I’m really tired of hearing the endless excuses about why the Democrats never manage to get anything done.