As happens every year, I get upset after leaving the accountant ‘ s office and start ranting about the unfairness of the effective tax rate of 26%.

“Remember, though, that part of this money will go to sending weapons to Ukraine,” N says.

And it really helps.

Of course, the money will help my people to kill N’s people but he repudiated Russia and I have assigned him the status of an honorary Ukrainian.

“I hate going to the accountant!” N exclaims. “I hate it when people rummage in my intimate stuff!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’ve been going to a gynecologist for the past 20 years. It’s hard for me to share the outrage.”

Here is an absolutely hilarious post from some brainless twat who is torn between the realization that one needs to be an educated, broad-minded individual to make any money today and the terror of education and broad-mindedness:

Your daughter loves literature, and wants to study it at the college level. You know that if she goes to an elite school, they’re going to turn her into a poststructuralist ideologue, and either rob her of her passion for truth and beauty, or corrupt it through ideological re-education. But you also know that if she goes to a “marginal” school, there will be a significant opportunity cost in terms of career advancement and status.

This fellow is a spiritual brother of Scott Walker whose impotent attempts to castrate higher education have made so many people laugh recently. Even the most dense folks realize that you can’t remain parochial, terrified of the world and stupid if you want to be financially successful. But the need to let go of parochialism and stupidity makes them wriggle in pain.

My Ukrainian friend and I got an email from a gentleman with a Ukrainian last name. The gentleman in question is a professor close by and he was happy to discover two more Russian-speakers in the area.

“Let’s meet and get to know each other!” the gentleman suggested. “You are the only two Russian-speakers I have discovered for miles around.”

We were also very happy to have been found by the Russian-speaking gentleman.

“Yes, that’s a great idea,” my friend responded in her email. “Let’s definitely get together.”

“OK, let me forward this conversation to my wife,” the Russian-speaking gentleman responded, “she manages our social life and she will set something up.”

And at that point, both I and my Ukrainian friend immediately lost all interest in the gentleman.

“He could have turned out to be a Putinoid, so it’s better that way,” the Ukrainian friend said.

Nothing is more hopeless than trying to create a Russian-speaking immigrant community. Everybody is beyond nuts.

Université Laval, Canada’s oldest educational institution, is phasing out Spanish. The French-speaking university has a very good and prestigious program in Hispanic Studies but it’s being destroyed.

I don’t know what excuse is being used to do this. There is no economic crisis in Quebec. Quebec is about to explode because of the insane amounts of money in the province. Economically, the province couldn’t be doing better.  

Of course, there is a possibility of the McGill University scenario repeating itself here: the department might have just imploded because of internal dramas. Canadian Hispanism is notoriously fractious and mafia-like.

The vice-president of Russia is asked in an interview, “Are there any structural changes our government could undertake to deal with the current economic crisis?”

“The most reasonable thing to do,” says Putin ‘ s right-hand man, “would be to close down all schools*. That would be most effective. But our people are not ready for that yet. They are just not ready.”

This is not a joke. This is from an actual interview. Tell your favorite Leftie friend about the beautiful regime he’s supporting**.

* “Schools” doesn’t mean colleges in Russia. This word refers solely to primary and secondary education.

** For some mysterious reason, I haven’t encountered any Liberal women who are Putinoids. Only Leftist men worship him. It’s a weird psychosexual mystery.

It is a mystery why completely humorless people insist on working as comedians:

Comedians are always supposed to punch up

; i.e., if you’re going to make fun of people, don’t make fun of people who have less privilege than you do. It’s why LGBTQ comedians can make fun of straight people, why single people can make fun of married people, why women can make fun of men.

People who use the expression “to have less privilege” should not attempt to do comedy because that’s like somebody who weighs 500 pounds doing ballet.

I’m being told that Redditors are fainting in shock over the cussing I unleashed yesterday at a Russian patriot.

Gosh, maybe I should start issuing trigger warnings so that the tender sensibilities of the gentle wallflowers on Reddit don’t get too scandalized.

It’s an important milestone for a scholar when she actually starts getting invitations to publish articles in edited volumes (by people who are not her friends, acquaintances, or former grad school buddies I mean.)

I received such an invitation today from two important scholars in my field. They seem to have been impressed by my recent publications.

I feel important.

Crowds of brilliant people, including on this blog, tried to explain evolution to me. But it was useless. I remained utterly unconvinced.

And then I put up a bird feeder and within a month realized that evolution is very real.

The squirrels are evolving like crazy in their battle to get access to the seeds in the feeder. They are battling two PhDs and the Home Depot chain but they are winning every time. It takes them about two days to unravel each new contraption we invent to keep them out of the feeder. I will not be surprised if I see them develop opposable thumbs and start a “Clarissa Is Primitive” blog.

So yeah, evolution is totally a thing.