Our university got a license to sell alcohol on campus. At the same time, the HR department adopted a resolution that obligates all university employees to undergo random drug testing for “substances.” The presence of “substances” in an employee’s bloodstream is cause for “permanent separation” (i.e. firing.)

Mind you, the directive doesn’t say “illegal, controlled, or narcotic substances.” It says “substances.” Do alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, prescription painkillers, medical marijuana, or over-the-counter meds count as “substances”? Nobody knows. Clearly, this is just a tool that can be used to get rid of people using the ridiculous excuse of “substances.” 

This is why when people say that tenure protects professors from being fired, I don’t even laugh. I simply spit in the direction of these dumbasses and go away. 

From the list of things not to say to the working mother of a 6-month-old infant who spent the day simultaneously working and taking care of said infant:

So have you had a good rest today?

Yes, between walks, naps, feedings, revising final proofs, making dinner, answering student emails, setting up a committee meeting, reading a promotion dossier, baby bath time, blogging, and introducing Klara to hand washing I feel completely well-rested. Let me go haul some manure because I need to expend all this accumulated energy. 

It’s a really great sign that Ukraine won so few medals at the Rio Olympics. For the longest time, the country was incapable of letting go of the idiotic Soviet legacy where poverty and corruption were somehow redeemed by hauling a truckload of medals from international sports competitions. 

Soviet champions were all mostly fake. They doped like crazy, cheated, bribed judges, etc. This is still going on with the Russian team where Secret Service agents actually smuggle in “good pee” to protect athletes from doping charges.

I’m so happy that Ukraine abandoned this Soviet-era travesty and stopped taking these stupid medals all that seriously. If the team wins, great. If it doesn’t, well, sucks for the fans but it means nothing whatsoever for the country at large. It is definitely a lot less important than feeding everybody and defeating corruption. And, of course, winning the war against the piss-peddling neighbors.

Ukraine’s win at the Olympics is truly great because other teams defeated their competitors while Ukraine battled Soviet mentality.

Hey, I just opened a packet of Kraft Mac and cheese and remembered that I did eat it before. It came in blue and yellow packaging and I had several boxes of it back in Ukraine in the 1990s. It came as part of humanitarian aid from the US. And no, I was never in the condition of needing humanitarian aid. Which is precisely how humanitarian aid worked back in the FSU: only those who didn’t need it ever got it.

In more extreme forms of the fake closeness relationships like I described in the previous post, the unseparated person plays simultaneously the role of a controlling, punishing parent and a needy, completely dependent child. 

This is a great mechanism of control like all double-bind situations where a person sends contradictory messages at the same time. 

People who never really separated – emotionally or psychologically- from their birth family will have great trouble forming families of their own. They won’t be able to achieve true closeness with their partner because that space in their lives will already be occupied. As a result, they will try to imitate closeness in bizarre ways that don’t lead to actual understanding or to profound relationships. 

Here are some methods of generating this fake closeness:

1. Stalking behaviors, going through the partner’s things, their phone, computer, etc. 

2. Positioning oneself in the role of the partner’s child, demanding constant care and attention. 

3. Trying to displace every other interest – career, friends, hobbies – from the partner’s life. 

And so on. 

None of these methods work. No closeness is achieved. And the efforts to fake closeness become more desperate and intense. 

Pokémon Go’s popularity is fading. Inertia is winning. All gaming is about making psychological problems more tolerable. But the games where you sit and poke a screen or a mouse only create an illusion of solving these problems. A game where you’d go out and actually move held a possibility of a real solution or at least a partial alleviation of the psychological burden. 

Everybody at work asks me why I’m dressed so beautifully every day. I’ve been at home either pregnant or covered in spit up for 16 months. How surprising is it that I welcome the chance to look nice?

Oh, yes, Trump totally became more presidential. Such gravitas, such self-respect. 

By the way, I stopped watching Morning Joe because I couldn’t take that much pro-Trumpian propaganda so early in the morning. And this is the gratitude the stupid shills get from their icon.