This is a really great article demonstrating that emigration is SO not for everybody. Many people will end up deeply miserable as a result, just like the linked author. 

It takes great courage to realize you made a mistake and go back instead of seething with rage that the new country is not the Kingdom of God you wanted it to be  

So a fellow came over to check our roof for hail damage. I emerged from the house and stood next to the huge bush we have growing in front of the door. The fellow came up to me and literally jumped. 

“OMG, OMG,” he panted. “I didn’t see you there. You really blended in with those bushes in your green dress. God, I almost had a heart attack. Oh my! Let me catch my breath.”

The guy is in his twenties, so I’m sure he wasn’t about to have a real heart attack. 

Of course, I wanted to blend in here in Illinois but not in a way that makes people jump, you know?

Revenge of the perverted little tarts. 

I really, really want to read the book on the political history of literary criticism. I’m an ideological critic, and I stand by this kind of literary criticism proudly. 

I laugh at people who fret over “the liberal bias” of secondary education. I went to a Soviet school where there was nothing but hard-core Soviet propaganda. As far as I know, not a single person who graduated from it ended up being a Leninist. Everybody ends up making up their own mind, so let’s relax already. 

And the folks who are worried by what they see as the transformation in the vision of perfect masculinity should similarly unclench. If they weren’t as grievously uneducated, they’d know that world literature since ancient times is filled with female fantasies about gentle, sensitive, tender masculinity. If you tried pizza for the first time today, that doesn’t mean pizza didn’t exist last year. Things exist even if you don’t know about them. 

Naked Capitalism is still busily fellating Putin.

Another gay cake debacle? Seriously? Have you noticed how it’s only the entirely superfluous, whimsical consumer desires of the wealthy that get this kind of attention? It’s never about, say, a trans woman who has been fired from her job and needs to prostitute to buy food. 

[In Spanish] How well do you know Spain’s architectural landmarks? I’m ashamed to say, I only got 50% right, and 2 of the questions I missed, I should have really been able to get. 
Kenan Malik on cultural appropriation. Please make sure you read the two long quotes. They are fantastic. 

As I keep saying, Canada has a brilliant immigration policy that, for instance, brought you me. The US, the UK, Germany, etc would have never taken me. Or any of my very successful and brilliant family members who love Canada and contribute to its economy. If we are not an immigrant success story, I don’t know who is.

I really respect this person for getting bariatric surgery. I like people who are not in denial about their weight. Of course, there are also many people who need it but can’t get coverage under thrir sucky insurance. And that’s a crying shame. 

I was once finishing a conference talk on the night before the conference. And the moment after I wrote the last sentence, my hard drive crashed. Of course, I had to rewrite the whole thing in two hours, and it predictably bombed. The presentation was so bad that people stared. It was beyond embarrassing. 

Since then, I always write directly into Dropbox and then save to the hard drive and to the external hard drive. 

What do you, folks, do to avoid losing your stuff?

A really good Facebooker writes:

“If I were to stand up in a faculty meeting and say “The really good students are the ones who read Dickens [or the equivalent in whatever language you were educated in] for pleasure when they were young” I’d be called elitist. Maybe even racist.  American anti-intellectualism spans the spectrum from (literal) know-nothing conservatives to touchy-feely egalitarian leftists.”

Is that true? I need to know because I agree with the statement and am likely to say something like this. Are there crazy people who disagree and would get huffy?

Folks, I’m sorry for the flurry of posts but a lot is happening. 

Today, Illinois Democrats broke down the two-year-long stalemate and forced a budget down Rauner’s wrinkly throat. 

What I love about the whole thing is that there was no spinelessness, no whining, no dithering on the part of the state Democrats. They were principled, strong, and finally – FINALLY! – smart and strategic. That’s the Democrats I want to see and support. 

I know everybody is tired of my budget posts but believe me, I’m even more done with them than you are. I’m happy that we won.

I’m so tired of the hand-wringing over the Twitter reaction to the Declaration of Independence quotes. What, like everybody knows the entire text by heart? And nobody would have mistaken the quote for a neurotic dig on Obama had this happened in July of 2012? 

It’s good to feel superior but how justified is this feeling? 

So Trump offers a handshake to a woman instead of relegating her to the female ghetto of less significant characters, and this means he was humiliated? People are so deranged.  Maybe by mistake but he bypassed protocol and tried to treat a woman as a human being. That’s not a bad thing. 

The crucial budget vote has been delayed because Rauner claims some woman threw magic powder at him. No, seriously.

I want to get a T-shirt that says “I don’t care how many languages my daughter ends up speaking.” This will simplify many conversations. 

I’m so tired of hearing the popular wisdom on the importance of language learning in childhood. I’m usually the only actual language education professional in the conversation, and I know for a fact it’s all bunk. 

The only activity every child needs to do is play. That’s it, period. It doesn’t matter when they learn to walk, talk, eat with a spoon, speak foreign languages, read, write, or count. It. Doesn’t. Matter. And if they end up only speaking one language that’s. Perfectly. Fine.