Clarissa's Blog

The FB feed is filled with emotional pleas from people who are asking others not to give any spoilers from a movie that just came out and that seems to matter a lot. The possibility of staying off FB until they see the movie and avoiding spoilers in this way doesn’t seem to occur to anybody.

A propos of movies, has anybody seen the new “Orient Express”? I’m not sure I understand the point of the movie if everybody knows how it ends in advance. Agatha Christie’s novels are 100% about the the denouement. She didn’t create memorable characters, interesting dialogue, or anything but the famous final twists. Once you know the twist, why watch? 

Soviet people were convinced that paradise existed “overseas.” Every misfortune, every contretemps was narrated with the obligatory addendum of how nothing this untoward could have happened overseas where problems did not exist, period. (The hatred Russians feel for “the West” today originated in the discovery that life there was not fully paradisiacal. It’s that sense of betrayal when you discover that Santa isn’t real and there is no magic in the world.)

What’s really curious, though, is that there is a large class of Americans who are like that, too. They also think there’s a paradise and they bring it up with maniacal dedication. Like their Soviet counterparts, they believe that paradise is located overseas. Their Garden of Eden is a vaguely defined Northern Europe, and one ends up having the most tiresomely repetitive discussions with them. 

“I can’t have any dessert because I’m pre-diabetic.”

“Ugh! Here in the US half of the population is diabetic. We are so third-world! This doesn’t happen in other countries.”

“It’s hereditary. My grandfather died of diabetes.”

“You see! If this was in Western Europe, he’d live to be 80!”

“He did, actually.”

“And his healthcare would have been free! And it would have been of a much better quality!”

“He died in Ukraine.”

“Good for him! At least it wasn’t in this horrible country!”

At which point I begin to contemplate gorging on massive quantities of dessert with the goal of going into a hyperglycemic shock and escaping from this insane conversation.

An ad for a new local place:

Hey everyone come check out our delicious cupcakes and treat your dog to some pupcakes while you’re at it! Baked fresh along with all the other cupcakes.

It’s not part of the ad, either. It’s the entire thing.

Are they trying on purpose to keep people away? Who’s going to want cupcakes made right next to dog food? 

I never saw any people with dogs at the mall where this place is set up. But I saw crowds of people with kids. What kind of an idiot advertises for a demographic that doesn’t even exist in this region (we are a long way away from the kind of folks who want to take their dogs out for cupcakes while doing intermittent fasting on a way to pitching their startup) and repels the demographic that is there? 

People need to let go of their gifts once they present them to intended recepients. 

“Does Klara like the sweater I gave her? Can you send me a picture? Can you send me another picture where she’s wearing a skirt with it or a dress? I remember she had this really cute green dress with horse appliques. That one would go great with my sweater. I need the photo for my knitting club. Oh, the green dress is too small? Can you put it in her just for a sec while you snap the photo? Can I come over and take the photo myself because the light should be right?”

I’m having heart palpitations whenever this person says, “I have a gift for you!” I know that this gift will be too much work for me.

My new hobby is to sell things on the local FB page. The way it’s done in this area is very typical and never fails to freak out newcomers to the region. The way it’s set up is so that human contact is avoided as much as possible. You are supposed to leave whatever you are selling on the porch. Buyers will pick it up and leave money under the mat.

If you see people approach and come out to say hi, they get very spooked and react like you’ve committed a huge social faux pas. Sellers prefer to risk never getting any money (because nothing is to prevent buyers from not leaving money under the mat) if it lets them avoid exchanging a few words with human beings. 

Of course, I like finding cash under the mat every once in a while but it’s still creepy how scared people are of human contact. I mean, for me to find it excessive, it’s really got to be something quite notable.

Every day I look for excuses to keep Klara at home with me. And I usually manage to find them. 

Today’s excuse is, “don’t I deserve it after carrying out the heroic feat of grading all the finals yesterday?” I’m very persuasive.

N was forced to start an FB page, and his new feed informed the world that he married me yesterday. When we finally have the wedding (maybe this summer), people will be utterly confused and will think we have an unstable relationship if we keep getting married all the time.

One of Trump’s nominees for a federal judge position, couldn’t answer the most basic questions about the US justice system. He wasn’t even familiar with the term “motion in limine”, known to anybody who has watched Law & Order. 

Before anybody rants against Trump, though, I want to remind them that Trump didn’t start the trend where possession of the “correct” ideology is being preferred to professionalism and competence. He’s just surfing the wave created by others. It’s easy to exorcise the guilt by blaming its cause on the shadow. 

Forget about the rich and famous folks. I couldn’t care less about their careers. Think more in the direction of the increasing scarcity of good white-collar jobs. The blue-collar workers have already experienced the evisceration of their professions by liquid capital. Now it’s time for white-collar/professional/creative classes to experience this.

Do we need any evidence that real jobs in the white-collar world are becoming scarce? Unpaid internships that you need to pay to get, the collapse of the academic job market that gets worse as the economy gets better, etc. 

Working classes internalize harm. They respond to hurt and pain that liquid capital inflicts on them by, first and foremost, self-harming. It’s easier for them to believe the neoliberal narrative that they fail because something is wrong with them. So they self-punish and self-destruct. 

Creative and professional classes have better defenses against this. They externalize the harm. It’s not “I failed because I’m inferior” but “he failed / needs to fail / because he’s inferior, evil and horrible.” 

Conclusion: prepare for epic battles as professional classes fight for survival on the rapidly shrinking professional arena. 

I went on a forum where job seekers discuss the academic job market in languages. And the mechanism is always the same. The moment somebody is rumored to have gotten a job, there’s a flare-up of the most outlandish accusations against that person. 

Neoliberalism has mechanisms in place that obscure what it really does in order to preserve the consensus that neoliberalism is good and has to remain in existence. This is one of them. 

I’m in academia, so I know how easy it is to destroy people based on absolutely nothing whatsoever, and this kind of thing sounds very familiar.