I think everybody is being very unfair to Trump over his abortion comments. Because he was absolutely right. If you believe that abortion is murder, then the only logical thing for you to do is to want aborting women to go to jail on, at the very least, accessory to murder charge. And if you say abortion is murder but oppose jailing women who make this crime take place, then you are a hypocrite.

And I’m glad that Trump drew attention to this glaring contradiction at the heart of the “abortion is murder but I oppose bringing the murderers up on murder charges.” That woman in Georgia got death penalty for telling her boyfriend to kill her husband and helping him gain access to the husband. So it only makes sense that if abortion is murder, then all women who ever aborted should get death penalty. If it is murder.

Now let’s see people who say they believe it’s murder campaign on the slogan, “Death penalty to women who abort!” That would be honest and courageous.

Bill Mea, acting president of the Cooper Union, informed his campus via email that soon all the college’s bathrooms will be gender neutral. Anyone will be allowed to use any bathroom, and the signs designating bathrooms for either men or women will be replaced with signs that say either “Restroom With Urinals and Stalls,” “Restroom With Only Stalls” or “Restroom Single Occupancy.”

Who are these freaks and what is their malfunction?

The administrators of Cooper Union, the college, where this idiocy is unfolding are saying it’s OK for them to go nuts because there hasn’t been a negative response on social media. So I decided to do my part and give them some negative response.

Cooper Union, you are freaks, and your college is a joke. You give us all a bad name at a time when we can least afford it. Take your heads out of the urinals and try concentrating on learning for a change. Because it’s a shame to be this stupid.

Wow be unto us! The MLA has released the eighth edition of the handbook with an overhaul of the citation rules that bring the MLA style closer to Chicago Manual. This is what the differences between the previous and the new editions are:

Seventh edition: Copeland, Edward. “Money.” The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Ed. Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 131-48. Print.

Eighth Edition: Copeland, Edward. “Money.” The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, edited by Copeland and Juliet McMaster, Cambridge UP, 1997, pp. 131-48.

Unbe-fucking-lievable. Now one has to memorize this entire abomination, and for what? For what, I ask you???

Having to learn this new citation style is very disruptive. We were all fine with the regular style. What’s the point of futzing with it and making our lives harder?

I’m feeling murderous impulses right now.

A zealot’s fanatical attachment to his Cause is nothing but a desperate expression of his uncertainty and doubt, of his lack of trust in the Cause. – Slavoj Zizek.

We, Hillary’s supporters, are not lacking in enthusiasm. We are so certain we are right that we don’t need the clamor of zealotry to drown out the whisper of doubt in our ears.

It’s raining today, the sky is overcast, and there is no sun. I can’t tell you, people, how happy this kind of weather makes me. I’m not only more energetic and happy but literally smarter.

Klara perceives my mood and sleeps more calmly than she ever has.

I’m wondering if my hatred of the sun might have a medical cause. Is it possible I have some sort of a vitamin E allergy? Or is it vitamin D? I don’t know anybody else who dislikes the sun as much as I do.

I heard 4 different reporters on two different channels say, “This was a serious assault” and in the same breath “A simple apology when it happened would have sufficed.” 

This is, of course, completely ridiculous because you can’t have it both ways. If it was an assault, saying “I’m sorry” right after assaulting a person would have sounded like mockery and would have resolved nothing. If, on the other hand, the situation can be erased from everybody’s memory with “I’m sorry,” it was anything but an assault. 

I’m convinced that reporters are pushing these ridiculous, contradictory narratives on purpose. They want a chance to obsess on yet another entirely trivial, manufactured Trump drama because it’s so easy to take up hours of air time with that instead of doing the work of actual reporting.

There are many reasons why almost nobody has the same reaction to the memory of Nazism as to that of the genocidal Soviet regime. Here is a good discussion of some of them. One crucial reason is never mentioned, though, and that’s the contribution of the victims to fashioning the discourse on their abusers.

Victims of the Holocaust made very sure that no human being with any shred of decency would feel that flirting with Nazism is cute. They spoke, wrote, created art, researched, recorded the memories of the survivors, and will continue doing so through their physical, intellectual and spiritual heirs for a long time to come.

Victims of the Soviet terror, on the other hand, are not interested, en masse, in remembering their dead or keeping their stories alive. Nobody ever talks about the relatives killed by the regime, the fear they experienced, the persecution they witnessed. The Soviet times are prettified and commercialized in a way that has managed to convince the younger generation that Stalinism was super cool and it’s a pity that great era had to end. 

For as long as victims continue to praise their victimizers and refuse to do the hard work of remembering and grieving, nobody else will take their suffering seriously. Remember that woman whose athlete boyfriend beat her up on camera and who then decided it would be a great idea to marry the creep? It’s not like one is going to chase after her, telling her she’s been victimized. If the woman likes to be dragged around like a sack of potatoes, that’s all there is to it. The post-Soviet people are like that woman. They are so dedicated to making the Soviet era look cute that you can’t blame the rest of the world for taking them at their word.

Our office of professional development sent out a survey asking if we want to attend seminars dedicated to dealing with helicoptering parents and to avoiding microaggressions. I’m wondering if the folks who work in that office ever emerge from it and meet our students, many of whom are parents themselves and who inhabit an entirely different reality than the spoiled brats who fuss about microaggressions as their rich parents hover above them.

I’m planning to remain professionally undeveloped and avoid such seminars.

Klara is so smart, folks, it’s unbelievable. Today she wasn’t in the mood for the bottle, so she hit it with her fist, crawled across my chest until she arrived in the vicinity of the nipple, and started licking my blouse over it. She’s good at these complex, multi-phased operations that require planning.

The really unexpected thing is that I already had to retire a portion of Klara’s wardrobe. She grew out of some of her outfits and is now too long for them. (I can’t say she’s too tall, can I?) I somehow didn’t expect such rapid growth.

In this entire time, N and I only bought 2 outfits for the baby. There simply has been no need because she has an enormous wardrobe as it is. First of all, Klara has an older cousin Klubnikis, a very fashionable young lady who sent all her baby clothes our way. Then, all of our friends are ecstatic about the opportunity to buy baby clothes. Everybody loves buying baby clothes, and we can’t begrudge people this joy.

I’m discovering that this baby is saving us a tidy sum of money because I’m housebound and can’t go to the stores. And if I don’t shop, money doesn’t get spent. Neither do I go out to eat or visit the bookstore or the salon. I swear to God, I had no idea I was a big spender until I got locked up at home and did the accounts.

Also, I’m discovering that either I’m very lousy at baby care or infants take up a lot of time. I feel like I don’t manage to do anything at all even though I barely ever rest during the day. Is this really supposed to be so time consuming or am I doing something wrong?