I started driving to the Immigration and within the first 3 minutes almost crashed the car twice. Totally my fault both times. 

Yes, I’ve only been driving for 3 years, but this shit doesn’t happen to me, folks. I’ve been a very careful driver, drove to St Louis and back when I was pregnant many times and never had any trouble other than the time when a student brushed against me in the parking lot (and I was found to be blameless in that case.) But today it’s like I’m possessed by the spirit of a lousy driver. 

The first time, I got into a wrong lane in a narrow residential road and when a fellow in a pickup truck appeared, I accelerated into him and only managed to brake a hair’s breadth before crashing into him. The fellow was super nice (I tend to have that effect on fellows.) He got out of the truck and was all, “Are you OK? Can I help you? Is there anything I can do? Are you sure you’ll be fine?” 

After he left, I parked, got out of the car, took a breather, calmed down, got back in the car and. . . almost crashed into a van. The fellow driving it was also super nice but I realized I shouldn’t be driving if I don’t want to arrive at Immigration in a body bag. 

So I called Uber and now yet another super nice fellow is taking me there. 

N got Klara up and took her to daycare today to let me sleep, so I’m supposed to be well-rested. But clearly, I’m not. 

It seems there were only 4 casualties in the US attack on Syria, and they are all military. This means that the attack was meant to be purely symbolic. The only thing that a symbolic attack can achieve is signal that this administration wants to continue the policy of the previous one, which can be resumed as “We’ll participate just enough to ensure that the conflict simmers forever.” 

What Obama did was maintain several foci of conflicts around the world that were simmering yet never boiling towards a conclusion. There is a whole philosophy around this centered on the idea that a large-scale military conflict can be avoided if global steam is released through the smallish conflicts in places that nobody of any import cares about. This has very clearly been the philosophy that guided the US foreign policy under Obama. Now we are seeing that Trump hasn’t come with a new philosophy, not that anybody expected him to find advisers brilliant enough to do that. 

As we discussed on this blog many times, the global capitalist economy is undergoing a profound change that is introducing a new form of statehood. Historically, such transformations are accompanied by a massive, long and painful war that devastates the participants. The “letting off steam” approach is an attempt to obviate this prospect that was designed back in the 1990s by White House experts and hasn’t been replaced by anything else since then. 

I don’t understand the brouhaha over the Pepsi ad. Yes, it’s cheesy but it’s an ad, not a philosophical treatise. The idea of breaking through isolation and getting together with people, even if delivered a bit naively, is a good one. 

But most importantly, if you have the time to write a long screed about the lack of social value in a Pepsi ad, your time would be better spent figuring out why you are such a superficial, silly person. 

Oh, wow, I did peek at the news and it looks like Mr. Isolationist just started a new war? Or, rather, ramped up an old one?

Back to Facebook; it’s more unpredictable over there. 

I actually just spent 90 seconds internally debating whether to like a photo on Facebook. A self-imposed exile from news is turning me into a total ditz.

And the title of the funniest headline in forever goes to:

Harvard Grad Students Launch ‘Resistance School’ to Oppose Trump

Uncharacteristically, I’m not going to read the article because I’m afraid it might not be a joke. And we all know how I feel about spoiled rich brats playing at politics. 

What’s with the obnoxious fad of putting a “What I’m Thankful For” section in all planners? It makes me want to hurl the planner at the wall. 

I have so much to do – it’s the last month of the academic year – but I’ve run out of energy, so instead of hauling my ass to the office, I’m lying prostrate on the couch, staring dumbly at a Shark Tank rerun.

I’ll get up eventually because I’m teaching in an hour but the plan was to be at the office since 9. But I’d had a really bad night of sleep because I was dreaming of cleaning nasty public toilets. Serves me right for reading colleagues’ emails about finances late at night. They write shit, and I end up cleaning toilets in my sleep.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to present myself at noon tomorrow at their office to have my fingerprints taken. They will check the fingerprints against the FBI database.

This is weird because I already underwent this exact process at the exact same office when I applied for the green card 5 years ago. My criminal record could have changed, yes, but fingerprints remain the same, so why not just use the previous batch?

The notice I got informs me that if I try to reschedule, the immigration case will be set back by months. It is as if they wanted only the kind of immigrants who don’t have jobs to be able to apply.

Whenever anybody on campus starts saying that our freeze on salary raises is daylight robbery, somebody immediately pipes up with the dumb, toothless narrative of “we are not in it for the money.”

I detest this kind of sorry crap. I’m absolutely in it for the money. It’s deranged to show up for work for any reason but that you are getting paid for it. Instead of fighting for political change and organizing to get rid of stinky Rauner, people hide behind pathetic narratives of teaching being a higher calling that stands above puny monetary concerns. 

Well, I’m not in the least above these concerns. I work hard and deserve a decent wage. And people who pretend not to care are cowards.