OK, so I’ve now had time to look at the MLA Job List on detail and here are the results. I only looked at tenure-track positions and didn’t count double appointments like “French and Spanish.” There is such a plethora of positions that nobody really needs these weird suckers. I skipped the joint positions between foreign languages and Women’s Studies or other fields. I also didn’t count the jobs in Canada because there are so many I got tired.

So here are the TT positions offered. I might have missed a few because there are so many but I only chose the ones that specifically offered tenure-track positions and didn’t leave any room for doubt.

Spanish leads, of course, with 160 job offerings.

French comes second with a whopping 105 TT jobs.

German is doing well with 33 positions and Russian follows with 32 tenure-track openings.

Italian is the smallest field with 19.

I don’t know what everybody is whining about with such a robust number of positions.

Just one small thing, though. This is the MLA job list published in the Fall of 1989. I chose it completely at random not knowing what the results would be. And now I kind of wish I kept not knowing.

If anybody wants to see the numbers for 2014, please go here.

P.S. The numbers for 2014:

German – 9
Russian – 9
Italian – 3
French – 15
Spanish – 57
Chinese – 5
Arabic – 5

An American woman at Global Foods has put her Ukrainian boyfriend on loudspeaker and he is guiding her search for food.

“Are you in the aisle that says ‘Ukraine’? No, it’s not the same aisle as Russia. It’s barely the same planet as Russia but whatever. Do you see the Ukrainian flag? OK, now get two boxes of Korean carrots. No, don’t go to the Korean section. The best place for Korean carrots is Ukraine. We also need matzo balls because I was going to make our traditional Ukrainian soup. And if you could grab some halva, that would be great. Israel? Why do you need to go to the Israeli section when all this stuff is right there, under the Ukrainian flag? OK, now you can head over to the Mexican aisle because I’m thinking of making borscht next week and they have the best tomato paste.”

This sculpture called “China China” is now decorating our local airport. My reading of the sculpture is that all Chinese people are the same. And that’s disturbing.

This is still possible but not for long:

King says on a date — unless a woman says otherwise — the gentleman opens the door, offers to pay, suggests good options on the dinner menu, asks his date what she’d like and places her order. She’s been getting more requests from young people eager to bring back that kind of old-fashioned civility. “I am so excited; I don’t think there’s a better time in history to model being a lady and a gentleman,” she says.

Suggests good options and places her order? Because there are so many illiterate women running around, or what?

Freaks.

 

I was on the job market 6 and 5 years ago (twice) and since then I haven’t seen the job list. This year I decided to take a look in search of blogging material.

As I scrolled through the list of tenure- track positions, I realized that not only had I seen a huge percentage of these positions but I had actually applied to them.

There are two possibilities here and both are disturbing. Either these schools haven’t been able (or have chosen not to) hire anybody (which means these are, for all effects and purposes, fake searches) or people were hired 5 and 6 years ago and have not been given tenure. So now that tenure cycle is over and the new one begins.

I’m not talking about 2 or 3 jobs here. I’m talking about a really large percentage.

I’m following the blogs of many Russian bloggers. And obviously they are all for Ukraine and against Putin, they want their country to abandon its feudal route towards barbarity and embrace Western values, they are all well-read and brilliant, etc.

And then we all hear the news that the Russian parliament is trying to pass a bill against sexual harassment. I read one of the blogs by these brilliant, ultra-progressive Russians and discover that the bill is a disaster because if sexual harassment in the workplace is penalized, this would cause a demographic catastrophe in Russia because how will people ever procreate?

Obviously, I immediately unfollow the blog and go to the next one. It tells me that the bill is bad because the blogger heard on good authority that there is no such thing as rape. Rape accusations are all made by spiteful women who want to attract attention. Of course, I immediately unfollow the blog and go to the next one. And then the next one. And they all say something like this or worse.

These are the best among Russians, mind you. Now imagine the worst.

I had a very similar experience recently when I read what the super-progressive, pro-Western Ukrainians had to say about the LGBT movement.

God, people are stupid:

As a colleague recently put it, academia is ruthless in that good intention and effort count for next to nothing; output is where it’s at.

Yes, and life in general is very cruel to brown-eyed red-heads with freckles and a love for ice-cream and opera music: they always end up dying. Everybody else, on the other hand, goes on living forever.

My sister is visiting, and that means I’m having a day of shopping and visiting beauty salons. Here are the magazines I bought to feed my magazine addiction:

So did you hear that Pistorius was found not guilty of murder?

Apparently, society’s approval of unhinged hysterics who claim to freak out over completely imaginary threats and slaughter innocent people is not an exclusively American thing.

I’m very intrigued by the magic powers of this “I felt threatened for absolutely no reason so I murdered people” defense. It seems to leave folks world over weak in the knees. Fear – no matter how ridiculous and irrational – justifies everything, even murder. Burly armed fellows kill kids, pregnant women, unarmed teenagers, then claim they were scared and everybody exclaims, “Oh well, in that case, the freak totally deserves this!”

Societies that would never even consider conceding everybody the right to laziness, weakness, incapacity to make money and a whole host of other pretty normal things easily grant the right to murder because of a psychological problem that is not in any way different. It’s beyond bizarre that while nobody would take seriously the defense of “I was lazy and bored so I killed an unarmed person in the toilet”, the defense of “I chose to be irrationally scared and committed murder” is constantly given so much weight.