Yesterday N and I spent a while discussing who’ll use the shower first, he or Klara for
her bath. And then I finally remembered that we have 3 showers in the house.

Like all people who’ve known economic hardship, we tend to occupy one room in the house and use it exclusively.

For years, they clamor that everybody should be prevented from buying guns. Then, their elected representatives try to start going in this supposedly desired direction. Liberals begin to pout because taking guns away from people on terrorist watch lists is mean. And nothing gets done.

The reason why Democrats are so ineffective is that they are constrained by their voters. Every action you can imagine taking is mean to somebody. And if your driving goal is to avoid any shade of meanness, you end up being paralyzed. Whenever the desired goal comes nearer, Liberals are overcome by the fear of meanness and renounce all action.

As I said before, I’m entirely indifferent to the issue of guns. But I want a Democrat faction in Congress that is fired up and ready to get things done. Finally, I saw it active and enthusiastic yesterday only to discover today that their burst of activity is not supported by the eternally pouty base. The base has yet again found a way to argue itself out of all activity by imagining a potential victim to this legislation. The elected representatives will see that the base will be disaffected no matter what and will slump back into their habitual paralysis.

Well done, Liberals.

And now they are singing “We Shall Overcome.” I never expected to be so touched by anything happening in the Congress.

Hey, I missed something cool, it seems! Democrats are sitting in to defend something they believe in. A bunch of old, crusty and cynical folks decided not to be old and crusty for a moment. This is great!

I credit Bernie for rejuvenating the party and showing these people that it’s possible not to be an irrelevant old fart.

So I’m working on my research in my study, and the nanny is with Klara in the next room that doesn’t even have a door separating it from where I am. And still I feel like somebody is cutting me into pieces with a rusty chainsaw. “Work” mostly consists of staring at the screen and trying not to cry.

Daycare, yeah, right. It will take me at least another year to get ready for daycare. And I don’t think anything better than that can be expected from somebody with my history.

I wasn’t here when it happened, so the OJ documentary I’m watching is eye-opening. It becomes clear just how beaten down and disaffected people must be to imagine the freedom to slaughter human beings of a disgusting, rich creep who wouldn’t be caught dead in their company as a sort of a personal vindication. My heart breaks for those poor, poor people cheering in the streets for a filthy rich killer.

It’s also shocking how cold and cynical the two female jurors featured in the documentary are. It is even more shocking how rabidly they hate women or men they see as feminized (“weak.”) 

Whenever two poor folks are at each other’s throats, there is always some wealthy grifter laughing all the way to the bank on their backs.

I’m so tired of forced analogies. They give people a false feeling of understanding the situation while clarifying nothing at all.

“This is just like Hitler!”

“This is just like Mussolini!”

And today even a truly bizarre “Trump is just like Savonarola and this is just like the Renaissance!” in the NY TIMES.

Why not say “everything is just like everything else!” already and be done with it?

I should stop reading the review section of the NYTimes because it’s populated by crowds of whiny, dumb people I do everything to avoid in RL. Here is one more example:

I am an opinionated woman so I am often accused of being angry. This accusation is made. . .

I’m also an opinionated woman. I’m also as angry as the day is long. It would have never occurred to me to see the beautiful, healthy, productive quality of knowing how to externalize anger as “an accusation.”

People should try to analyze their own speech patterns and they will discover how much of what they see as universal or externally generated has an internal locus of control. All of this disapproval, judgment, accusations, criticisms that people believe otehrs direct at them comes solely from inside of their own selves. Everybody else is too busy accusing, judging and criticizing themselves that they have zero time to notice you even exist.

When Marissa Mayer, now chief executive of Yahoo, reported that when she was in Google’s employ, she slept under her desk, one disgusted feminist, Sarah Leonard, wrote, “If feminism means the right to sleep under my desk, then screw it.”

No, dumbass. It means the right to have a desk and to choose where you sleep. It also means the right not to be an uneducated, stupid airhead who is viciously jealous of other women’s lives, but you are free from exercising that right if you feel like it.

P.S. If you read the linked article, you will see that its main argument is that stable jobs and careers are obsolete and we should all have fluid successions of jobs that we can pop in and out of and leave aside for years until we feel like picking them back up. This is one more bit of evidence that people welcome fluidity and angrily clamor for it.

Over the years, I published several photos of the beautiful Gardens that our university maintains on campus. The Gardens are enjoyed by hikers, bikers (the sporty kind, not the creepy ones), picnickers, and, of course, professors of botanical sciences who conduct much or their teaching there.

Of course, the state of Illinois still refuses to honor its obligations to us. We have no money and won’t be able to maintain the beautiful, unique Gardens. If we are lucky, the town will agree to pay for the Gardens to be maintained. But if not, then they might just die.