I just used pneumatic mail for the first time ever, and it’s just as well because it’s about to be killed by apps. And what a pity because it’s so much fun.

I find all of the discussions about Jenna and Jill Duggar ‘ s “victimization” to be tasteless in the extreme. They spoke out in public, stating that they are fine with whatever happened and don’t consider themselves victimized. These are adult women, they freely expressed their vision of the situation,  what else is there to discuss?

It’s especially disgusting that the dismissal of these women’s narratives happens under the banner of “concern for the victims.”

A couple of good Russian jokes for your entertainment:

Prehistoric people had no Instagram, so they had to scratch out images of their food on stones and hurl them at other people.

The Russian Parliament issued a statement to the effect that, without Putin, G-7 has been castrated. This is a very elegant way of calling Putin a dick.

There is now also a scandal with an anti-gay bakery in Northern Ireland. I’m started to get scared of bakeries. Who knew that they were so politicized and opinionated? I always used to see bakeries as warm and fuzzy but it turns out there was a lot of anger and resentment brewing under the pink frosting surface.

“Being a woman is kind of like being a cyclist in a city where all the cars represent men. You’re supposed to be able to share the road equally with cars, but that’s not how it works. The roads are built for cars and you spend a great deal of physical and mental energy being defensive and trying not to get hurt. Some of the cars WANT you to get hurt. They think you don’t have any place on the road at all. And if you do get hurt by a car, everyone makes excuses that it’s your fault.” Of course, one could solve the psychological problems that produce this unhealthy worldview but then there would be no backlinks and rebloggings of one’s writing.

I knew a time would come when somebody would try to quantify their genitals. I just didn’t know it would come so soon.

A good definition of tenure: “The purpose of tenure is to provide faculty with the ability to fearlessly study, publish, promote and question ideas, topics and institutions that might not sit well with everyone else. It also allows professors, who are seen as the experts in their fields, to self-define what makes for worthwhile scholarly and professional endeavors.”

I hate, hate, hate this kind of idiot administrator: “In past discussions with my dean and provost about my salary and my appalling raises, both of them have said, as if in lockstep, “I’m not a person who is motivated by money.” This phrase, I think, has to be programmed into administrators. Its rhetorical effectiveness is almost perfect. “I’m not motivated by money” implies a moral judgment against a person who is motivated by money. If you are someone who is motivated by money, then you are not a person who is passionate about your job.”

This is all true about abusive families with only two children.

“Working 9-To-5 Becoming a Less Popular Way to Make a Living.”

And adding to my collection of freakdom: “Where the states of California, Nevada and Arizona. among others, are toast in the summer sun, their snow packs long gone, their lakes and streams withering away, their crops crisping in the merciless heat. How long will it be before lines of desperate people begin trudging along Interstate 5 into Oregon (nobody in their right mind is going to trudge south, or straight east).”

And just one more stupid freakazoid: “Women could use a little of the shameless confidence men take for granted.” It is heart-breaking what the discourse on gender has been reduced to.

Keep God off your LinkedIn profile!

American Red Cross really disappoints.

Mexican drug industry is turning away form marijuana and turns towards heroin.

Arizona fights for the right of being the freakiest state in the union with its fake reverse abortions.

How a professor can be productive during the summer.

A great cheat sheet on the presidential candidates.

Is fibromyalgia a fake illness?

Russia’s humiliation syndrome: “Russia today is a country trying to retain its great power status not by dint of success or dynamism or progress, but by cultivating a sense of grievance and resentment.”

“We send below-average intelligence people out into the K-12 classrooms because that’s who enters our ed program. These people graduate, barely, and go on to educate our students in K-12 public schools.”

Good news: “France is debating whether to extend the headscarf ban from grade schools to universities as well. Support is wide-reaching and includes former President Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and the current minister for women’s rights on the left.“

My blogroll has been going nuts for days over the Jenner Vanity Fair cover. It might seem weird that people would get so emotionally invested but there is a reason why this happens.

The fluid world has destroyed community. And when community is not there to provide guidelines for one’s conduct and enforce compliance, all that’s left to help people figure out how to live is identity.

When Jenner (or anybody else) demonstrates that identity is as easy to sweep away as community has been, panic sets in. Identity is the very last line of defense against the increasingly fluid world. Without it, there is nothing outside of oneself to grasp for support as one is being carried along and battered by the uncontrollable flows of an insecure world.

Identity will not survive fluidity. But many people don’t know this. All they see is that the very last certainty, the very last set of guidelines they had to orient them in this confusing world is being taken away. And that is too terrifying for them to accept.

My salon has undergone a major redesigning. One of the things that were changed were the mirrors.

Instead of these mirrors

the salon has installed these:

 

But the new mirrors are not to everyone’s liking. The salon’s owner was shocked when she started receiving complaints from customers who claimed that the new mirrors were making them anxious and depressed.

Can you guess why people hate the new mirrors and prefer the old ones?

And this is the gift N gave me for our 8th anniversary today. It was shipped from Ukraine, which made the gift even more valuable because I want money to be transferred to Ukraine.

My gift of chocolate hedgehogs  (thank you, reader Jones!) and a computer lap desk was also very successful.

P.S. It’s a necklace, by the way. Looks gorgeous on me.

The salon owner I’ve been telling you about says that she observes interesting differences in terms of work ethic among her American and Eastern European workers. Americans are, of course, more hard-working and driven (what else is new?) but she still prefers working with Eastern Europeans.

“Americans find it very hard to work within a hierarchy and accept that this is MY business, MY money, MY risk, and I’m the one who will have the final say,” she explains. “I’m tired of constantly battling them over every tiny little thing. We are a culture of people where everyone feels like a boss, and that’s tiresome.”

Eastern Europeans, on the other hand, don’t have this problem. They inscribe themselves well into hierarchies, which fully compensates for their more laid back approach to work.

I find these observations very interesting because I’m seeing the same thing at work. My American colleagues find it very hard to accept authority. This sometimes turns into a completely insane thing when a request – not even an order but a request – from an administrator about something of a very tiny import leads to a bloodbath with people getting fired, lawsuits being filed, heart attacks occurring.

Hey, Eastern Europeans, this is good news for us. We can still enjoy our relaxed approach to work yet beat the competition.

And please don’t say “midlife crisis.” No midlife crisis of mine will take place without a red sports car, a fox fur boa, and a big black felt hat. Plus, I’ve been to grad school, which delayed every major life stage for me. My midlife crisis is not happening until I hit 55. 

Plus, I need to populate my “Things I Changed My Mind About” list for this year.

I know everybody is sick and tired of the hair adventures, but I changed the color again and my sister needs to see it.

Now I have decided to go darker. The previous color got washed off very fast, so now I’m hoping this color will stick to the hair longer. It will start getting lighter every day. But I’ve never been this dark in my life, and it’s very exciting to be so different for a while.

The weird facial expression is due to the harsh sunlight and not the color.