229 Spanish poets got together and created this collection of poetry to express how they feel about the crisis. I only need a couple of poems out of this collection for my research but you know me, when did I ever stop at just a few?

Of course, I read all the poems (which took several months because you can’t just gulp down poetry in one sitting) and I researched every single one of these 229 poets. I now know something about every one of them. Yes, I thought I was going to go nuts for a while because this is a lot of information to process but it was still quite enjoyable.

Even in the age of the Internet, it takes quite a bit of effort to find information about poets. You’d think a poet, especially a young and a yet unknown one, would understand how crucial it is to make oneself easy to find online. But you know poets and their otherworldliness. If their poetry is good, they tend to suck at self-promotion. So you can just imagine what it’s like to try to find a poet with a name like “Pedro López” among the bizillion and one other Pedro Lópeces who might or might not also have written some poems.

The oldest poet who contributed to the collection was born in 1925. The youngest was born in 1992. There is a poet from Bulgaria who now lives in Spain, several immigrants from Argentina, one from Peru. There is a young poet who left Spain for Quebec. There is a poet who killed himself in the year since the collection was published.

Some of the poems in the collection are quite bad. Several are amazing. Many are good. I’m finding it extremely hard to select the few I need for my research because there are too many poems I like in this collection.

Title: En legítima defensa: Poetas en tiempos de crisis
Year: 2014
My rating: 8.9

We have a beautiful campus.

Everybody is making fun of Potemkin companies in Europe but they are a great idea. Long-term unemployed need serious rehabilitation if they are to be integrated into the workplace. The need for rehabilitation begins after 6 months of unemployment and increases if the jobless stretch is extended.

So have you folks heard the story of Patrick Bronte, the father of the Bronte sisters?

He was one of 10 children in a poor Irish family. Nobody in this family – or in any of the families of poor Irish people for miles and miles around – wanted anything better than working on a farm or, if one was very lucky, owning an ale house.

Patrick, however, did want a different life. He managed to get into Cambridge – and just imagine how much time and effort it took an Irish country boy to prepare for Cambridge – and graduated as one of the best students in his class.

He didn’t do anything special with his own life because these kinds of things need to accumulate for at least a generation in most cases. But Patrick’s brilliant daughters will be remembered for centuries. And their work was only possible because Patrick had decided to leave the farm and go study Ancient Greek and Euclid’s geometry all of a sudden.

This is the great mystery of life. Some people make a choice to smash life into pieces and then rearrange it according to their own liking. And others just keep talking about themselves in the passive voice while life smashes and rearranges them. Why and how these choices are made nobody knows. The great mystery of life.

The organizers of the Oxford conference stuck me in the same session as the talk on Croatia. Croatia – a country I know nothing about – follows me everywhere I go. For some reason, people seem to think that Ukraine and Croatia are extremely similar. Even when a person from Ukraine is delivering a talk on Spain, she is still to be grouped with Croatia. I would think it might make more sense to schedule me to present with Latin America and put Croatia next to Romania but that’s not what happened.

But since presenters on South Africa are squished in with Northern Ireland (and not, say, with Central Africa), I can hardly complain.

“Whenever I look at Richard, I’m filled with hatred,” my friend Jenna told me.

“But why?” I asked. “He’s a great guy, everybody loves him.”

“I can’t look at him without remembering that he sullied my beautiful daughter’s body! With sex! He had sex with her!”

“Jenna, your daughter is 36,” I said.

“Yeah, so what?”

“She is married to Richard.”

“And? What are you getting at?”

“They have a daughter.”

“OK, I’m seriously not getting your point here,” Jenna retorted irritably. “Whose side are you on?”

P.S. This is a family of highly educated cosmopolitan atheists from LA, in case anybody is getting ready to make comments about the Bible Belt.

One thing that bugs me about Damages is Glenn Close’s wardrobe. Why do they dress her so ugly? These clothes might look great on a different woman but on Glenn Close they look hideous. If you get the only talented actress in Hollywood to star in your show, could you at least find a good stylist?

The clothes in the show are used to send a message but in a very inelegant, “let me pound you over your head and then pound some more” way. Glenn Close is dressed to look like a man, Rose Byrne is dressed like a nun, the Katie character looks all hippy-dippy in the extreme. A little bit of subtlety would go a long way to make the show more watchable.

Did you hear that Amazon will be offering free one-day delivery to the Prime members?

Impulse shoppers everywhere are tingling in happy anticipation.

Russians are in fits over the FIFA arrests. Putin is issuing official statements, condemning Americans for persecuting the poor innocent FIFA on political grounds, everybody is experiencing extreme outrage over the arrests.

What’s funny is that nobody has accused Russia of anything in connection with FIFA just yet. But this intense emotional involvement is giving away the secret of how Russia was chosen to host the 2018 World Cup.

So. Several of the nasty stinky FIFA officials have been arrested. Finally.

I’m boycotting the next World Cup thanks to these corrupt vicious creatures, so I say, let them rot.