Update on Flight MH17

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

So the UN passed a resolution to create an international tribunal that would investigate the tragic crash of flight MH17. Russia vetoed the resolution and expressed condolences to the families of the victims.

“Fuck you, families of victims. By the way, so sorry for your loss.”

Russians will squeeze every single drop of collective enjoyment out of this tragedy. The crash of flight MH17 is now a favorite subject of stand up comedians in Russia. Everybody is having so much fun with the situation.

You have no reason to care, and that’s perfectly fine, but I speak Russian as my first language, my husband is from Russia. It horrifies me to see the depths of bestiality and nastiness the people of Russia have reached.

P.S.

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

And as a P.S. to the previous post, one reason to respect Hillary is that she hasn’t been selling any easy, attractive, simplistic recipes. At least for now she’s taking the hard road of abstaining from facile, cheery populism. And she’s losing ground as a result. I’ve got to admire this costly refusal to engage in cheap sloganeering to soothe the voters’ anxieties.

An Easier World

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

I think Obama just said that the biggest threat that we have on the planet today is climate change, and a lot of people are saying, did he really say that? We have people chopping off heads and he’s talking about climate change. I call it weather. I call it weather. You know, the weather changes.

This is coming from Donald Trump, of course. And it’s a profoundly dumb statement. But can’t you see why it’s seductive? A complex, confusing, scary reality is reduced to the simplicity of the eminently comprehensible slogan “The weather changes!” People like Trump because he makes the world sound less confusing.

And come to think of it, isn’t this why Bernie Sanders is so attractive? The complex, scary reality is reduced to the extraordinarily simple trope of evil Wall Street banksters who don’t let good people have good things. Trying to understand the workings of the economy will defeat most of us, but reduce the economy to the cowboy movie struggle between good and evil and people will support you out of sheer gratitude for making their world more comprehensible.

Rolling

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

Back at the Oxford conference, an academic from Finland listened to 3 American scholars discuss their universities and exclaimed, “This is unbelievable! If I tell people back home that Americans also have problems with funding, nobody will believe me. Aren’t American universities supposed to be rolling in money?”

The Legacy of Losership

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

Few things in life are as damaging as the burden of having such a mean, uncaring, vindictive loser of a father:

“As I’ve explained to her, there’s a good possibility by the time she’s 40 and she has a full-time job, they’re going to lay her off and hire somebody much younger for a lot lower salary,” said Clark, a white man in his 50s who has had that experience himself several times. “I’m trying to prepare [her] for a very—the very difficult world that she’s going to live in. Too few jobs and too many people. I see it coming. I think it’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”

And of course,  if anybody were to ask him why his miserable daughter has to pay for his dysfunction, he’d say he’s doing it out of love. This is the favorite excuse of abusers, after all.

Not even the best school, the most caring teachers, the most supportive friends and partners can erase this kind of parental conditioning. The girl gets the message that Daddy will only accept her if she’s a life-long victim and a loser, and even after he’s long dead, she will dedicate every ounce of her energy to living up to his expectations. Or in this case, living down.

I’m a Hermit

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

And this is why I never go to my office and refuse all offers of socialization in the summer.

Yes, one does become all weird and hermit – like as a result but I already submitted two articles and have made enormous progress on the book this summer. Coming anywhere near campus or colleagues would suck me in and mess with my work routine in crazy ways.

Book Notes: Rafael Chirbes’s Mimoun

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

Mimoun, the first novel of the great Spanish writer Chirbes, has been, in  my opinion, completely misunderstood by critics. In the novel, a depressive Spanish novelist moves to Morocco and dedicates himself to getting drunk, drugged and having sex with every Muslim man and woman, as well as every colleague, neighbor, and crossing sweeper he meets there. He gets drunk and has sex with them individually, collectively, inside, outside, in a car, in a brothel, and everywhere else he can think of. The novel is short because the endless cycle of alcohol, drugs, sex, depression doesn’t make for a very rich plot.

The whole thing is completely hilarious, and I’m convinced it’s a parody on the novels by the ultra-famous Juan Goytisolo. Everybody seems to have taken Chirbes’s first novel very much in earnest when it’s an obvious parody. The problem is that parody has been done so well in Spanish literature by Chirbes’s precursors that it’s best not to venture into this genre unless you can do something entirely amazing. And I’m not even talking about Cervantes’s attempt at parody that gave the world Don Quijote. In the XXth century, Spanish writer Juan Marse produced his brilliant parody The Girl in the Golden Panties. If you can’t top that, it’s better not even to try. And that’s why I’m not that impressed by Mimoun.

Author: Rafael Chirbes

Title: Mimoun

Year: 1988

Language: Spanish

My rating: 2,5 out of 10

Where Trump Is Already in Power

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

So imagine a situation where people who support Trump constitute 86% of Americans.

And they manage to get him elected president because such a majority can easily elect a cat if it so chooses.

And now Trump is president and works hard to enrich himself and other billionaires.

And the proles who are getting poorer every day remain ecstatic because he entertains them with making nasty jokes about his opponents.

And the second the voters begin to wonder whether it makes sense to keep him in the White House, he starts a war with Mexico and annexes Tamaulipas. And again, the public rejoices and adores him.

All of this is already happening in Russia.  Putin is Russia’s Trump and Ukrainians are Russians’ Mexicans.

DVR

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

You know what’s great? The DVR. Now that I have it, I can watch nothing but Law & Order reruns for the rest of my life.

You’ll say it gets old only to watch Law & Order. But there are people reading this blog right now who know that I can watch the show for decades and never get bored.

Of course, I don’t really watch it. I have it in the background while I work.

Candidates

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

Turns out that Trump’s statement that Mexicans are rapists was a clear case of projection. Trump is a rapist himself. We’ve got ourselves some interesting candidates. A rapist, a kindergarten jihadi, and a flabby sibling rival.