Author: Rafael Chirbes

Title: Los viejos amigos

Language: Spanish

Year: 2004

My rating: 7 out of 10 (because I read his other novels and they are even stronger)

When, oh when, oh when will this brilliant writer finally start getting translated into English*? There is nobody who writes better than he in Spain today, a country where talented writers abound.

“People were so afraid that we’d achieve our Communist revolution and end up taking away their property,” chuckles one of the protagonists. “And then it turned out that they are not even that good at making money within their beloved capitalist system. We, the former revolutionaries, are so much better at amassing fortunes.”

The encounter among a group of old friends who used to dream of the revolution in the Spain of Franco get together thirty years later for an exquisite dinner and swap memories of what it meant to be young and idealistic. Their trajectory is that of the writer himself. Chirbes is both a Marxist and a connoisseur of expensive wines and food. The writer can’t fail observe the irony of his great financial success within the same capitalist system that leaves so many of its staunchest supporters to live in poverty.

* Actually it seems like his most recent novel will appear in English in 2016. It’s a novel of the crisis, and it is absolutely fucking devastating. Until the very last word, it just doesn’t relent. I warn you, though, this is art, not some Girl on the Train kind of trash. This is a novel that requires you to be intellectually awake and present for every single word. It’s complex, it’s infused with history and ideology, but I’m here to guide you through the reading. This is an encounter with art in its purest form, so I highly recommend.

So our university’s chancellor has finally been kicked out. This is the same person who was shocked to discover that “in China they, like, totally speak their own language and many of them don’t even speak English!”

For 3 years, we have been writing endless essay-type evaluations of this chancellor. My evaluations of her actually had bibliographies attached. And it wasn’t all in vain! The Board of Trustees heard us and kicked her out.

We can change things if we put our minds to the task. This is a victory for the good people.

The governor of Illinois, a.k.a. Big Government Rauner, decided to throw a childish tantrum and let the state start a new fiscal year on July 1 without any budget at all.

If anybody deserves to get flak for his incapacity for bipartisan cooperation it’s Rauner. He just won’t negotiate with the state’s House of Representatives at all. Rauner is acting in an extremely tyrannical way, he is disregarding the democratic process, and is refusing to take any action at all to resolve the issue. 

The state’s Supreme Court rejected Rauner’s pension reform. The House demonstrated why his budget is untenable and impractical. So Rauner got all pouty and decided to throw a tantrum and just not disburse any money to any state institutions in Illinois. 

I swear, I’m yet to see a lazier, more disorganized, more overemotional politician with a shorter attention span. Rauner seems to have thought that a state could be run like a business: you give and order and everybody jumps to attention. But that’s simply not how democracy works. There are elected representatives, the courts, the voters, and you can’t just lord it over everybody all the time. Just a few months after getting elected, Rauner has run the state into a ditch and is doing nothing but throwing fits over the whole sorry mess. 

If there are people around here who voted for Rauner (which I don’t believe because they’d have to be functionally illiterate), can you tell me what you were thinking when you saddled us with this corrupt, unstable freak?

How Putin purchases Western celebrities and gets them to pleasure him for a modest price. Among the especially diligent of Putin’s whores are: Sharon Stone, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner, Chris Noth, Sophia Loren, Steven Seagal, Andrea Bocelli, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, and others.

Rolling Stone’s new campaign consists of militating for a wife abuser. What a stupid worthless rag.

New research challenges the idea that willpower – a.k.a masochism – is a “limited resource.”  It’s a mystery why anybody could have thought that masochism was in short supply.

Wouldn’t you agree that people who seriously use the expression “dead white men” in 2015 are total dunces?

“When participating in a seminar presented by the National Endowment for the Humanities on the Philosophy of Math (an area of study that I admit, was new to me), one of my fellow participants presented the question of “what is the middle number?” After some discussion, it was decided that the middle number was zero, as any negative number was offset exactly by a positive number equally far from zero.” I wonder how old people at the seminar were. Because I was taught this by grade 3, and my schools were the worst on the planet.

The dictionary of obscure sorrows.

Dear Black People: Stop Being So Forgiving.

And for those who want the update in the saga of a clingy woman and a divorced jerk, here it is.

The first flight of abortion drone.

Putin’s plot to get Texas to secede.

“People who have an unresolved relationship with a parent often think: there must have been some moment of connection, some moment where we had it, and if I comb through my past I’m going to find that moment of connection, where he really saw who I am. And sometimes there is none.” Yes. It’s best to give up hope as soon as possible.

I have no idea why these crowds of idiots first force themselves into a profession they do not love and then persecute everybody with their moaning about how they can’t get themselves employed.

And in a similar vein, doctoral dissertation in the form of a graphic novel. I actually know somebody who did something similar. He’s obviously unemployed right now.

People living in tiny rooms in Tokyo.

Sexorship at Northwestern?

“I also used to belong to marginalized communities and they did everything they damn could to convince people they couldn’t leave. Being told or heavily implied at “You are broken in this way and you can never fit in/change” (in regards to disability) was common once one got past all of the empowerment rtherotic. Or constant hyping of how scary and terrifying other communities are, which has the lovely side effect of making people essentially oppress themselves. Reading things from my supposed “in-group” almost always seems to upset me or make me feel more oppressed than I am.”

“Only one in four students who place into noncredit remedial courses will earn a degree within eight years of enrolling. Last year, Florida’s legislature came up with the solution: allow students to skip remedial classes if they want to. A year later, the astonishing results are in: Enrollment in remedial courses is down, and failure rates are up.”

  “One of the many reasons that it is hard to take anything McCain says on Ukraine seriously is that he has been a reliable advocate for launching aggressive wars against other states when he thinks it appropriate.” It’s hard if you are three. If you are older than that, distinguishing between different situations is not such a huge burden.

Russians crack down on . . . yoga. The pseudo – religious paranoia continues.

The horrifying suffering of Rohingya people.