First of all, here is the most beautiful Christmas tree known to humanity:

We will have two trees this year. This is a live one, and the artificial one will go into the bedroom.

And now I need some help. I never lived in a house before this one, and many things about it are mystifying. Here are the questions I’ve got:

1. See the firewood next to the tree? We placed it close to the fireplace on a mat. That is obviously not a good idea because it’s messy and just weird. What do people normally do? Are there special boxes or receptacles for firewood? Where are they sold?

2. We moved in on July 1 and never had any problems with insects. However, since we turned on the heating,  we’ve seen an insane number of angry, sleepy black flies. They buzz around angrily, then drop down and fall asleep. I get rid of them but on the next day more flies appear. Does anybody know where they come from? What should one do to avoid this issue in the future?

3. We put up Christmas lights outside, and they are beautiful. But then one of the bunches stopped working. I investigated and discovered that one of the cords was broken. It looked as if it had been cut. I suspected am animal but an animal would chew through something,  right? This cord looked cut with a ver uh sharp knife. The cut was very clean. There is nothing in the vicinity of the cord that could have produced this cut. Does anybody have any ideas what it could have been?

4. Is it a good idea to use firestarters? I mean, the ones you place into the fireplace in the wrappers?

5. Why is all firewood sold in the area so wet? It is so wet that white pus comes out of it after you light it.

As you have probably guessed, I’m administering a final exam and browsing through my blog roll. Here is another fascinating link:

Many readers were duly aghast when I highlighted this “call for applications” (we won’t call it a “job ad”), for a “non-stipendiary residency” at a feminist research center. I was upset about what is apparently a call this center makes (presumably with success) on an annual basis, for one very simple reason: It is advertising for scholars to come and work at this center in exchange for “networking,” “collaboration” and “prestige” instead of money.

Got it? A FEMINIST research center – wait, stay with it for a moment,  a feminist center. Remember feminism? – is inviting women to work for free. Women – to work for free. A feminist research center. Makes total sense, that. ‘Cause feminism is all about getting women to do more uncompensated work.

What’s next, uncompensated teaching positions at the Department of African -American Studies? Or below-minimum-wage professorships at the Department of Hispanic Studies? Or the Department of Slavic Studies where professors provide sexual services to fund their research?

And Time’s person of the year is the Ebola fighter with Vladimir Putin as a runner up.

I understand that nobody has the balls to stop Putin in his world expansion. But could people at least try not to hand him these potent weapons of propaganda? Why is he the person of the year and not,  say, the heroes who are defending the Donetsk Airport? If there was a feeling that somebody from the region should be declared person of the year, why should the evildoer be assigned the title and not the people who are fighting him?

I’m starting to suspect that if Ebola were a person, Ebola fighters wouldn’t stand a chance.

This is the best, folks:

It appears that law students at Columbia, Georgetown, and Harvard are claiming to have been so distressed by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner that they are insufficiently compos mentis for their exams.

Sure, if the professors are rolling out a litany of excuses, why shouldn’t their students do the same?

As you know, I always let students submit late or reschedule without asking for explanations. But in the case described above, even I would reach the limit of my enormous in-class tolerance. You just don’t use a stranger’s death to your own benefit.

So it seems like Rolling Stone is planing to rewrite its UVA story. What a shameless, nasty tabloid. They will squeeze every dollar out of the prurience of the readers.

Maybe this will turn into their monthly feature: a graphic description of rape meant to titillate the audience.

And then some naive folks are wondering why the editors of the article haven’t been fired. Fired? They are getting a Christmas bonus that is bigger than your early salary, you simpleton.

AT&T is conducting a very aggressive marketing campaign trying to get people to switch from Charter as their Internet provider.

This means that young people show up at my doorstep with a disturbing regularity and repeating the same marketing speech word-for-word. I already have been through the spiel 4 times and know it by heart.

Believe me, I have every shade of compassion for these young people who are trying to make ends meet in this crappy job. But I spend all day long at work repeating the same thing to another bunch of young people. Do you know how many times I said, “And don’t forget the a personal” today? Many! I can’t be doing the same shit at home. Also, it feels quite bizarre to repeat the exact same LONG exchange of statements 4 times in a row. The last two times I suggested we skip to the end of the conversation but the salespeople refused. Apparently, they are obligated to go through the entire LONG pitch.

It got to the point where I freaked out the mailman who was trying to deliver a package by blurting out, “I’m not switching to AT&T!” when he knocked on the door.

“Me neither,” the mailman deadpanned. “Can you sign for the package?”

War Nerd is a very talented journalist who writes about war. I have enjoyed his articles for a while but now that I’m reading them as a book, I want to suggest this small volume as a great therapeutic practice.

We all have a dark, violent side to our personality. In order to exist in civilization, we suppress our violent urges. We say, “Excuse me, this was my seat” in apologetic voices instead of grabbing the usurper of our seat by the hair and smashing his head against a tree. (If you are from my part of tge world, yoh do but that’s another story.) We say, “I love your handbag!” instead of grabbing the bag with a growl and trying to run off with it.

This darker side doesn’t really go anywhere, though. It sits inside of us, hidden from view. For the most part, we manage to suppress it well enough. I mean, if we are violent criminals, we don’t suppress shit but I’m guessing there aren’t many of those reading my blog. The law-abiding among us go into professions that require a high degree of aggression (teacher, surgeon, career soldier, telemarketer) and turn our anger into a socially acceptable and productive force. We use our rage to rant against “vile freakazoids” (c) on our blogs. We create art and go in for sports.

However, this repressed and socially mitigated anger still erupts every once in a while. We catch glimpses of it in violent fantasies, dreams, thoughts. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those fantasies but we are socialized to think all violence is bad. So our immediate reaction to these feelings is that of guilt.

And do you know what the most destructive emotion you can experience is? Guilt. Want to see a psychoanalyst really freak out?  Say “I really blame myself for whatever,” and enjoy the spectacle of the poor analyst flipping out like World War 3 has just been announced.

The best way to relieve this sense of guilt is through dark humour. When we make jokes about violence or discuss war in a light-hearted manner, we temporarily place ourselves in a psychological space where the violence inside  us is neither scary nor shameful. And that is a great relief.

The War Nerd writes about war with such a great sense of humor that reading his book is like an intense session of psychotherapy at a fraction of the cost and with triple the fun.

By the way, reading, sharing or listening to dark humor is one of the most therapeutic things you can do.

So here is an interesting issue that came up at my committee. Remember the committee that assigns research funds? Usually,  researchers submit a CV with their grant proposals. A suggestion has been advanced that we follow the NIH model and change the CV format to include an autobiographical narrative where people will detail the things that have prevented them from doing research in the past or created gaps in their record of publication. These things might include family care responsibilities, illness,  psychological problems, etc.

As you can imagine, I was vehemently opposed to the idea.

“This will devolve into a competition of excuses,” I said at the committee meeting. “Everybody has hardship, everybody battles some personal issue or another. But ultimately, you either make a name for yourself in your discipline or you don’t. A grant application process shouldn’t be about who can come up with a more convincing sob story. And it shouldn’t penalize people who prefer not to bring their stories of personal woe into the professional arena.”

What I forgot to mention is that we hate it when our students regale us with tales of their pain and suffering to explain why they can’t hand in homework. Why should we hold ourselves to a lower standard?

I just imagined myself poring through these stories of extreme hardship as part of my research committee duties and trying to determine whom I’m most sorry for, and the prospect had no appeal.

With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep

South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.

Yes, it’s a total mystery why the Southern states are not flocking in droves to the party that puts forward this intensely welcoming message. I’ve never been to the Deep South and have zero emotional attachment to the region but even I found this offensive. It’s kind of becoming clear why the region isn’t voting Democrat any time in the foreseeable future.

I hope my readers are smart enough not to give me the “But they started it first!” routine.