OK, I’m vaguely aware of David French’s wife, but who the hell is he? All I know of him is that he’s got serious psychological issues and is terrified Nancy will cheat on him through Facebook. How could it occur to anybody to get him to run for president? It would make more sense to get Nancy (the wife) to do it. At least, you can easily explain who she is.

Juan Marsé is one of the world’s greatest living writers, and Esa puta tan distinguida is the most recent novel of the 83-year-old writer. Marsé is not capable of mediocrity. His novels are either out of this world amazing or so bad that I can’t get through more than 10 pages no matter how much I try. 

Esa puta tan distinguida is one of the out of this world amazing ones. In this novel, Marsé makes pretty vicious fun of himself and the entirety of his literary output. People tend to take themselves way too seriously these days, and it is humbling to see the ease with which an elderly writer who knows that this might turn out to be his last novel laughs at his life’s work. This is not sarcastic, angry laughter. Marsé doesn’t want the readers’ pity. He demonstrates that no matter how old he is, he still asks crucial questions and is unafraid to recognize that he doesn’t know all the answers.

The only problem with this novel is that I don’t think it should be the first novel by this writer one reads. It will be confusing for those who haven’t followed Marsé since his earliest work and don’t understand his frame of reference. Sadly, there is no English translation yet for Marsé’s best novels but if you are firtunate enough to be a Spanish speaker, do read this old novel of his from 1966. It is as if the writer were mocking today’s spoiled brats at Oberlin who whine about inauthentic sushi. This is what timeless literature is really like!

God, I love Spanish literature.

Hey, folks, did you hear that there’s been a shooting at the UCLA campus?

This is truly horrible.

The breast milk has disappeared. It was here the day before yesterday, then disappeared yesterday for no discernible reason, and hasn’t come back today.

It was never too abundant, of course. I was supplementing heavily from the start. Or rather, I was supplementing formula with breast milk. And then it just ran out altogether. Weirdness.

I’m extremely happy that I’m not neurotic on the subject and have no feelings about it.

So how about standardized testing for college?

In Spanish, we already have standardized testing, and it works great. Of course, in our discipline it’s quite easy to administer such testing because the learning outcomes are so extremely easy to measure. You either speak Spanish or you don’t, and it takes about 2 minutes of talking to a person to figure out if they speak the language.

The way our standardized testing works is that a professor calls the testing organization* on the stationary phone** from her office, connects the student with the person who will do the testing, and leaves the office. The student and the tester*** talk for 30-40 minutes in Spanish, and the student is rated on his proficiency.

And that’s it! I have no idea, though, how or whether this procedure can be adapted to the specifics of other disciplines. Also, this testing is so effective because it is based on a lot of one-to-one contact: the professor talks to the student, the professor talks to the tester, the student talks to the tester. There is no multiple choice (only the most washed out teachers use multiple choice in language courses on a regular basis.) This form of testing is quite expensive because it an’t be automated.

It’s like online teaching: in order to be effective, it has to be a lot more expensive and time-consuming than traditional teaching. With all of the massive funding cuts that higher education is experiencing, will anybody truly be able to invest huge sums of money to get all students – not just the 10 Spanish majors each year – tested in an effective way?

*It has to be the professor to preclude cheating.

** This is one of reasons that the constant attempts of people in the governor’s mansion who try to take away our phones are very annoying. They don’t know the specifics of how we work and should stop micromanaging. I’m so fed up with the governmental overreach of Republicans!

*** This word sounds bizarre but I got very little sleep and can’t think of a better one.

There is an academic who tried to write a review of my book for a scholarly journal without having read it.

No, seriously.

This individual sent me an email telling me they read the introduction and the first chapter and wanted me to send them synopses of the rest of the chapters so that they could complete the review.

I didn’t respond because I don’t use the word “freakazoid” in academic contexts, and no other words came to mind.

An actual scholar of literature did this. It was as if this person thought it was the most natural thing to do.

Saw Ralph Nader on TV for the first time in my life. Feel shocked that this weird goofball is the reason the horror of Bush was inflicted on the world. Feel even more shocked by the possibility that some people are trying to carry out a repeat of that fiasco.

There is this old joke I remembered a propos today’s discussion.

“This Luciano Pavarotti fellow can’t sing worth a damn! His voice is horrible and he can’t hit a single note. I don’t get why he’s so famous.”

“Really? Did you hear him live or in a recording?”

“Oh, neither. My friend Rabinowitz sang one of Pavarotti’s arias for me. It was horrid!”

You know what I hate? Fake, self-righteous outrage.

“Bernie Sanders fell asleep while fallen soldiers were being honored! He despises the dead heroes! They died for his freedom and he doesn’t even care! I won’t vote for him now!”

Oh, go eat an Advil and stop making a spectacle out of yourself. How great must it be to live in a world where every problem has been solved and all that remains to be outraged about is Bernie’s nap or lack thereof. Of course, the reason why he closed his eyes at a ceremony is so much more important than any of the issues he has been trying to get people to discuss.

I’m sure the same people who made a scandal out of this trivial event go around all outraged over the vulgarization of our political space.

Not only are some people egregiously dumb, they are proud to announce their dumbness to the world. Here is an example I found in an anti-TPP post. Before I proceed, I need to mention that this is not about “Bleh, TPP” or “Yay, TPP.” Both approaches are as dumb as the article I’m quoting, and I want neither of them to pollute my line of vision. Complex issues deserve of complex approaches. Having said that, here is the offending quote:

Public Citizen also has concerns.  These include, among others, that the TPP would. . . tacitly permit human rights violations in partner countries (the agreement does not mention “human rights”).

The US has a long and painfully history of trying to introduce the language of “human rights” into trade agreements and making such agreements contingent on partner countries respecting those rights. Every single one of these attempts failed pathetically. Every single time, it led to extreme resentment and souring of international relations with zero gains. This happened all through the 1990s. It happened with China, it happened with Russia, it happened with many other countries. Russians, for instance, are still livid that Americans, of all people, tried to lecture them about human rights. Chinese are deeply resentful, too. Both countries stepped up human rights abuses to show Americans that they should stop butting into their internal affairs.

Since then, the language of human rights has been dropped from trade agreements because it leads nowhere but to fostering anger. This issue has been studied and discussed at length, and it’s unbelievable that “a fresh fool that has come in from the cold” would brightly chirp about the issue before reading anything about it. Dumbass.

By all means, be against TPP is you’ve managed to read the entire text of the agreement. I haven’t, so I have no right to an opinion. But don’t be against it or in favor of it for idiotic reasons.