In order to support the sorority I curate, I will be a judge at a male beauty contest.

This makes me feel ancient. 

Klara was cranky all day today. Maybe it’s teeth again, I don’t know. When she’s cranky, she wants me to carry her in my arms. I don’t remember if I shared this, but I actually trained for this at the gym before I had her. But even with the training, I can do 40 minutes max of carrying her around at her current weight of 24 lbs.

So I took her to the bookstore, and that distracted her for about an hour. Then I remembered that a student had invited me to a restaurant where his jazz band was going to perform. And what do you think? Klara loved the jazz. She was dancing to it and was totally into it.

I’m happy she loves music because N and I live as if music were never invented. We are more likely to drop acid than to turn on music for our own enjoyment. And if you know me at all, then you realize that there’s no chance I’d drop acid. N and I were both the “Prepare for your music lesson first, then you can play” kids, and this is the result. 

We had a day of creative assignments with students today. First, I asked them to write a short story in the style of the postwar Spanish writers who had to mask their political message and social criticism because of censorship. One group came up with a story about an obnoxious orange monkey who had a bunch of obnoxious children and wanted to rule everybody. It was lots of fun. 

Then I asked students to write the sentence “It’s Thursday” in the style of an Enlightened essayist, a Romantic poet, a realist novelist, and a modernist. Students are very creative. They came up with really good sentences. And this is a much better review activity than “Let’s make a list of the characteristics of modernist art.”

A president’s approval ratings two months after inauguration do not matter because there is no election they can impact. Nobody will remember these ratings in 4 days, let alone 4 years. 

The endless triumphalist discussions of the ratings play the same role as the inane pussy marches. They create a sense that something big is on the verge of happening and prevent people from actually doing anything. 

Russian dissidents have existed for the past 15 years in the mode of “we are about to win.” In their narrative, Putin is about to flee the country in terror of the dissidents. In the meanwhile, Putin is as strong as ever. 

The triumphalist feelings of “we are about to get them! Something big is about to happen!” is one of the mechanisms by which consumer society keeps people docile. It substitutes the boring slog of grinding daily work that can bring change with the festive feeling of instant gratification that’s just around the corner.