Right now, for instance, do you know what I do every Monday and Wednesday from 3 to 4:15 pm? I teach Spanish 101 to 9 students, 3 or 4 of whom are always absent. 

Can anybody honestly claim that it’s not completely wasteful to have a tenured professor teach 5 students the names of days of the week and colors? When you can hire somebody with a BA at $15 per hour to do it? And while I do something more valuable with my time? We are in a state that is collapsing economically and we are clinging onto this model? What kind of dumb strategy is this?

It’s not just Rauner either. People can’t get out of the rut and accept that this is not an isolated crisis that has a clear end but a symptom of an unavoidable transformation. 

At my department, for instance, we keep coming up with new language courses. Right now, it’s a new course that will teach native speakers of Spanish how to use accents correctly. Because you can totally justify the existence of Full Professors who are paid $80,000 per year to teach native speakers about accents. 

And the only argument people give to defend this sort of thing is, “This is how things have always been.” 

Headdesk.

The thing is being eroded from every direction. 

Many of the doctors in Illinois and Missouri who are tired of waiting to be paid for their services send the unpaid bills to collection. And the state employees -who keep paying their premiums and are doing nothing wrong- see their credit ratings drop off a cliff and are hounded by collectors. 

And so guess what? I open my work email right now and discover yet another “both sides are equally to blame” missive from a colleague. Rauner will never be recalled or reelected. People are sheep.

Of course, we won’t be able to place Klara on N’s insurance because my state insurance won’t give me a letter stating that we lost coverage. We are considered covered by the state even though we are not in any sense that matters. 

The HR person I talked to started getting aggressive with me and saying things like, “Rauner is YOUR governor, so you’ve got to live with it.” I don’t know in what sense he is my governor if I’m not a citizen and never voted. Plus, I’m the only person I know who’s been speaking out against Rauner publicly and consistently for years. The HR person can’t know that but I resent the assumption that I’m somehow to blame for any of this. 

It was dumb of me to place Klara on my insurance back in February. Super dumb. Enormously dumb. Monica sucks but not as much as Clarissa. 

People, a super hilarious NY TIMES article for your reading pleasure. A Republican says that the GOP will have to change to recover from Trump. And in describing the direction in which it should change. . . he lists a bunch of things the party always maintained and Trump agrees with. 

Let’s change by embracing immanence. Totally makes sense. 

It’s beginning to seem that everybody is secretly grateful to Trump for giving them a reason to say the word “pussy” all day and every day for a week. 

“There was an 11-year-old girl who told our staff, and she said this completely unsolicited, she was talking about Donald Trump’s words in campaign commercials,” [a television anchor interviewing Mike Pence] said, according to a transcript obtained by NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard. “She said this: ‘When I hear [Trump’s words about pussy] and look in the mirror, they make me feel bad about myself.’ And again, she said that totally unsolicited. What would you say to that little girl?”

I’d say to her that Mommy and Daddy are doing a piss-poor job if TV has more influence on her self-image than her parents. 

Nobody feels bad about themselves because of TV. It’s simply not how this works. And no, children don’t say this kind of thing unless they know it will please adults. 

Enough already with the pussy-mongering. This is getting totally out of hand. Where the f were all these self-righteous folks during all of the shit statements Trump’s been making for years? 

I called every pediatrician in town and nobody accepts my state insurance. Moreover, they don’t accept cash payments either. 

Now I will try to get Klara off my insurance and into N’s or we’ll end up with an unvaccinated baby. I wonder what people who don’t have a spouse on a private insurance plan are supposed to do. 

I’m getting increasingly worried about Michelle Obama’s speechifying. The election is pretty much decided. Why is she amping up the speeches now, when they are no longer needed?

I’m afraid she does have hopes for a political future, and that’s bad. We don’t need yet another woman sleeping her way into politics. All of her feminist speeches are worthless if her central message is that the best starter position for an aspiring female politician is still on her back. 

Klara’s pediatrician dumped us because they no longer accept state insurance.