By now everybody has heard of Cajun Navy, the army of volunteers in Baton Rouge who are rescuing people in the flood zone. While some of us admire these good folks, others immediately decided to slap nanny state regulations on them to ensure that they don’t dare help others without undergoing certification, paying fees, and complying with state requirements. 

Who is trying to do such an atrocity? A Republican state Representative, of course. The party of small government strikes again. 

I got confused as to how long the class lasts and tried to let students go 30 minutes earlier. They refused to leave. I love my students. 

Overall, I don’t get historical resentments over events that happened before the living memory. Being upset over World War II makes sense. But going nuts over the Napoleonic Wars? Well, that’s. . . clearly nuts. And getting overwrought over the battle of Thermopylae makes one certifiable. 

That the Russians tried outlawing the Ukrainian language in the 19th century was wrong. But if they had left immediately after that and minded their business since then, running after them and yelling, “But how could you do that to us?” in 2016 would be deranged. Because it’s not “them” or “us” by any stretch of imagination. 

Also, the Russians are clearly to blame that the Donetsk Airport is a smouldering ruin. But they are in no way to blame for the insane Ukrainian corruption. And the Soviet Union is not to blame. Everybody who takes and gives bribes is. 

What I find annoying is how actively many Latin Americans are clinging to their grudge against Spain. Gosh, Spaniards left 200 years ago. Since then, they haven’t tried invading, they haven’t set up referendums on the Yucatan Peninsula, they haven’t sent Basque terrorists into Mendoza, they haven’t hired Paul Manafort to get Aznar elected president of Peru, they haven’t invested millions into trashing Latin American culture, they haven’t imprisoned and tortured any Chilean or Ecuadoran filmmakers or journalists, they haven’t accused Nicaraguans of crucifying Spanish toddlers or raping epileptic Spanish retirees. 

They are a model former colonizer. I know a country that would kill for a colonizer like that. 

Happy Ukraine Independence Day!

Our university got a license to sell alcohol on campus. At the same time, the HR department adopted a resolution that obligates all university employees to undergo random drug testing for “substances.” The presence of “substances” in an employee’s bloodstream is cause for “permanent separation” (i.e. firing.)

Mind you, the directive doesn’t say “illegal, controlled, or narcotic substances.” It says “substances.” Do alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, prescription painkillers, medical marijuana, or over-the-counter meds count as “substances”? Nobody knows. Clearly, this is just a tool that can be used to get rid of people using the ridiculous excuse of “substances.” 

This is why when people say that tenure protects professors from being fired, I don’t even laugh. I simply spit in the direction of these dumbasses and go away. 

From the list of things not to say to the working mother of a 6-month-old infant who spent the day simultaneously working and taking care of said infant:

So have you had a good rest today?

Yes, between walks, naps, feedings, revising final proofs, making dinner, answering student emails, setting up a committee meeting, reading a promotion dossier, baby bath time, blogging, and introducing Klara to hand washing I feel completely well-rested. Let me go haul some manure because I need to expend all this accumulated energy. 

It’s a really great sign that Ukraine won so few medals at the Rio Olympics. For the longest time, the country was incapable of letting go of the idiotic Soviet legacy where poverty and corruption were somehow redeemed by hauling a truckload of medals from international sports competitions. 

Soviet champions were all mostly fake. They doped like crazy, cheated, bribed judges, etc. This is still going on with the Russian team where Secret Service agents actually smuggle in “good pee” to protect athletes from doping charges.

I’m so happy that Ukraine abandoned this Soviet-era travesty and stopped taking these stupid medals all that seriously. If the team wins, great. If it doesn’t, well, sucks for the fans but it means nothing whatsoever for the country at large. It is definitely a lot less important than feeding everybody and defeating corruption. And, of course, winning the war against the piss-peddling neighbors.

Ukraine’s win at the Olympics is truly great because other teams defeated their competitors while Ukraine battled Soviet mentality.

Hey, I just opened a packet of Kraft Mac and cheese and remembered that I did eat it before. It came in blue and yellow packaging and I had several boxes of it back in Ukraine in the 1990s. It came as part of humanitarian aid from the US. And no, I was never in the condition of needing humanitarian aid. Which is precisely how humanitarian aid worked back in the FSU: only those who didn’t need it ever got it.

In more extreme forms of the fake closeness relationships like I described in the previous post, the unseparated person plays simultaneously the role of a controlling, punishing parent and a needy, completely dependent child. 

This is a great mechanism of control like all double-bind situations where a person sends contradictory messages at the same time. 

People who never really separated – emotionally or psychologically- from their birth family will have great trouble forming families of their own. They won’t be able to achieve true closeness with their partner because that space in their lives will already be occupied. As a result, they will try to imitate closeness in bizarre ways that don’t lead to actual understanding or to profound relationships. 

Here are some methods of generating this fake closeness:

1. Stalking behaviors, going through the partner’s things, their phone, computer, etc. 

2. Positioning oneself in the role of the partner’s child, demanding constant care and attention. 

3. Trying to displace every other interest – career, friends, hobbies – from the partner’s life. 

And so on. 

None of these methods work. No closeness is achieved. And the efforts to fake closeness become more desperate and intense.