In North America, catastrophic thinking and extreme anxiety have soared in the past 20 years. This doesn’t correspond to any actual changes in the outside world, yet it’s a veritable sea change in terms of individual psychology. 

My pedicurist shared with me a sob story about tragically oppressed Catalonians that she got from social media. She is in no way related to the region or normally interested in it. 

For some incomprehensible reason, the story people who are not knowledgeable about the region are getting is completely pro-independentist. Does anybody understand this?

From a chirpy fool cheering Catalonia’s “independence”: 

“We’re finally free,” a woman next to me said, as she began to cry. “We are oppressed here. We’re fighting for our freedom.”

God, it must be so pleasant to think ‘freedom’ can be purchased like a discounted toaster. 

Freedom and choice, the favorite slogans of the neoliberal revolution.

We have a teaching track in our language program where students graduate with a BA and a teaching certificate. It works great for us, for the students, and for the local schools.

However, the School of Education has informed us that it’s canceling this teaching track. Instead, they will force students to do a Master’s degree on top of the BA to get the teaching certification.

To say that I hate this motherfucking assholery is to say too little. My hatred for it is comparable to my hatred of Rauner. This is not justified by ANY pedagogical or intellectual concerns. Do you know how many of our students pass edTPA and get certified on the first try? All of them. 100%. Because our program works. 

Forcing people to pay for an entirely needless Master’s degree is a scam. That’s all it is. Of course, we are fighting this, and the Dean seems to be on our side. But the School of Education is throwing a fit because they can’t attract students on their own merits, so they have come up with this brilliant idea. 

The owner of my super successful famous salon retired two months ago and gave the salon to her employees as collective ownership. And it is dying already. I arrived for my appointment today and nobody is here, nobody knows where anyone is, the place is a bloody mess. Everything looks like it’s aged decades. The workers are almost Soviet-like in terms of grumpiness. I feel like a regular Rip Van Winkle. The same decor, the same people, the same services, but it’s like it dropped off a cliff in matter of weeks. It’s clear the place will close down completely before the year is out. 

I’ve been using this place for 8 years, and it has existed for 27. It’s a local institution. Nothing but collective ownership could have run it into the ground this fast. 

My parents were here for the last two weeks and they left this morning. They couldn’t help me with Klara because she won’t stay with people she doesn’t know well even for a minute. But it was good to have them trailing after me wherever I went with Klara. Taking care of a small child is very isolating. 

I don’t use my phone when I’m around Klara (she’s a very active toddler, I need to have her in my field of vision all the time at this age), so I don’t get any adult conversation for hours. I now started trying to strike conversations with people on the playground for my sake and not for Klara’s, because even for a deeply unsociable person like me it gets too isolating. I have this new colleague who always comes to my office to chat. Before, I wouldn’t have liked it but now I’m extremely grateful for his existence because I now like small talk. 

So it was nice to have grandparents around to talk to. 

What I wonder is if N was the primary caretaker, would that make him need people to interact with? Right now, he doesn’t understand the point of interacting with any adult but me. I’d really love to see whether his sociability would be awakened. 

Tomorrow will be 26 degrees colder than today. Right before people will go trick or treating. Darn. 

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There is no escaping the darn Twitter anywhere.

“Before the war, the world was wide and attractive. During the war, however, it was cruel.” 

“The best way to let air into the house is to open the windows.” 

God, people, this novel almost killed my brain. It’s like an endless Facebook page of a very pompous person where inconsequential, boring stories alternate with Paulo Coelho-type wisdoms like the ones I quoted above. 

The novel is very popular, so I guess there are enough people who have the ADHD brains that like the narrative which goes something like this: “Once, I was in Sweden and a guy told me he had a neighbor who told him a story about flowers. Flowers are beautiful. Beauty is important. Knowledge is also important.  There is an article I once read about the importance of knowledge. I read it on a trip to Estonia where we discussed birds. I like birds. They remind me of sandwiches. There was a lot of hunger during the war and people didn’t have sandwiches. Or even bread. It’s sad when people are hungry. Once we went to the movies and ate pop corn. I like popcorn. Hunger, though, I don’t like.”

It was almost physically painful. 

By the way, those who are reading Hillary’s What Happened, how does she explain keeping around that perv Huma? Why was the campaign sacrificed to Huma’s diseased sexual preferences? This was the most mystifying part of the whole sorry mess.