I like N because he is a very complex person. When he opens his mouth, I never know what he is going to say. He’s always studying arcane, unpredictable subjects and develops the strangest hobbies. 

He has very Spartan tastes and still wears the clothes he had when we first met. He’s never had a smartphone and is using a 5-year-old cell he bought at Walmart for $20. And I can’t convince him to let go of a laptop that’s older than our marriage and get a new one because he says it’s still quite usable.

Yet today we went to pick out eyeglasses for him and he chose Salvatore Ferragamo frames. And it wasn’t by mistake. He knows the brand. I supported the choice because he looks sensational in them. 

Not only is trick or treating spread over two days, it also starts at noon and goes until 9 pm. I’m glad it’s not a late-night thing because Klara starts her bath time at 7:15 pm. But noon sounds a little lacking in the scariness department. 

“Busy brain = happy brain.” I recognize myself in this a lot. 

When I blogged back in 2014 that there were international conferences of neo-Nazis in Russia, nobody cared. And now everybody is suddenly noticing the results. I’m so tired of this idiotic provincialism.

A very good post on the Reformation and modernity from Steve. It’s lovely to see somebody who is a great erudite on this subject.

Japan, an experiment in unbridled neoliberalism that is a warning to all of us.

Twitter is horrible and we should all boycott it. Just the fact that it’s Trump’s favorite medium of communication should tell people something.

Total cuteness: the mid-century dining club. 

The New Yorker rehabilitates itself after the ridiculous yet famous piece by Ronan Farrow with a great article on “the family that built an empire of pain.” By the way, I hated the Farrow piece long before I knew he was the son of repugnant people.

Whatever else is wrong with Walmart, it has the most courteous, professional salespeople ever. They should be unionized.

I’m like a broken record, saying that everybody should be unionized but what can I do? I’m a bit obsessed.

Folks, I need your help. I’ll tell you a story and you’ll let me know if I’m completely deranged and need to get over myself, OK? I’ll be very happy to do so if there’s a popular consensus.

I’m on a committee that audits the work of one of the University’s academic departments. We talk to students and faculty, conduct surveys, visit the facilities, and in the end rank the department’s performance. If we rank it as unsatisfactory, it has to cease operations immediately because that means it’s not doing its job. This is called academic self-governance. The administration doesn’t do this. Only faculty revise each other’s work in complete anonymity. I happen to think it’s a very important principle, and I take this work very seriously.

Usually, we get together as a committee, decide the ranking, create a list of recommendations for the department and the administration, and write a report explaining our recommendations. That’s how it usually works. 

This time, though, everybody decided (without me) that we will write the report first, and then the recommendations will somehow come out of that. We will all be writing separate sections in Dropbox without meeting in person and agreeing on what we want to recommend and why. There was never any discussion of anything. 

So now I’m completely stumped. I don’t want to be difficult and complicate anybody’s life but I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be writing about the recommendations nobody has outlined. This is all supposed to be done over the weekend, so I have no chance to talk to anybody. This is the fifth time I’m doing this committee, and I never had a problem before. I simply fail to understand this method of collective writing in complete isolation.

Am I being rigid? Am I a contrarian bitch? Should I just write any vague bullshit and agree to sign my name to the recommendations I never approved?

Sorry for a long post.

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.