AT&T is conducting a very aggressive marketing campaign trying to get people to switch from Charter as their Internet provider.

This means that young people show up at my doorstep with a disturbing regularity and repeating the same marketing speech word-for-word. I already have been through the spiel 4 times and know it by heart.

Believe me, I have every shade of compassion for these young people who are trying to make ends meet in this crappy job. But I spend all day long at work repeating the same thing to another bunch of young people. Do you know how many times I said, “And don’t forget the a personal” today? Many! I can’t be doing the same shit at home. Also, it feels quite bizarre to repeat the exact same LONG exchange of statements 4 times in a row. The last two times I suggested we skip to the end of the conversation but the salespeople refused. Apparently, they are obligated to go through the entire LONG pitch.

It got to the point where I freaked out the mailman who was trying to deliver a package by blurting out, “I’m not switching to AT&T!” when he knocked on the door.

“Me neither,” the mailman deadpanned. “Can you sign for the package?”

War Nerd is a very talented journalist who writes about war. I have enjoyed his articles for a while but now that I’m reading them as a book, I want to suggest this small volume as a great therapeutic practice.

We all have a dark, violent side to our personality. In order to exist in civilization, we suppress our violent urges. We say, “Excuse me, this was my seat” in apologetic voices instead of grabbing the usurper of our seat by the hair and smashing his head against a tree. (If you are from my part of tge world, yoh do but that’s another story.) We say, “I love your handbag!” instead of grabbing the bag with a growl and trying to run off with it.

This darker side doesn’t really go anywhere, though. It sits inside of us, hidden from view. For the most part, we manage to suppress it well enough. I mean, if we are violent criminals, we don’t suppress shit but I’m guessing there aren’t many of those reading my blog. The law-abiding among us go into professions that require a high degree of aggression (teacher, surgeon, career soldier, telemarketer) and turn our anger into a socially acceptable and productive force. We use our rage to rant against “vile freakazoids” (c) on our blogs. We create art and go in for sports.

However, this repressed and socially mitigated anger still erupts every once in a while. We catch glimpses of it in violent fantasies, dreams, thoughts. There is absolutely nothing wrong with those fantasies but we are socialized to think all violence is bad. So our immediate reaction to these feelings is that of guilt.

And do you know what the most destructive emotion you can experience is? Guilt. Want to see a psychoanalyst really freak out?  Say “I really blame myself for whatever,” and enjoy the spectacle of the poor analyst flipping out like World War 3 has just been announced.

The best way to relieve this sense of guilt is through dark humour. When we make jokes about violence or discuss war in a light-hearted manner, we temporarily place ourselves in a psychological space where the violence inside  us is neither scary nor shameful. And that is a great relief.

The War Nerd writes about war with such a great sense of humor that reading his book is like an intense session of psychotherapy at a fraction of the cost and with triple the fun.

By the way, reading, sharing or listening to dark humor is one of the most therapeutic things you can do.

So here is an interesting issue that came up at my committee. Remember the committee that assigns research funds? Usually,  researchers submit a CV with their grant proposals. A suggestion has been advanced that we follow the NIH model and change the CV format to include an autobiographical narrative where people will detail the things that have prevented them from doing research in the past or created gaps in their record of publication. These things might include family care responsibilities, illness,  psychological problems, etc.

As you can imagine, I was vehemently opposed to the idea.

“This will devolve into a competition of excuses,” I said at the committee meeting. “Everybody has hardship, everybody battles some personal issue or another. But ultimately, you either make a name for yourself in your discipline or you don’t. A grant application process shouldn’t be about who can come up with a more convincing sob story. And it shouldn’t penalize people who prefer not to bring their stories of personal woe into the professional arena.”

What I forgot to mention is that we hate it when our students regale us with tales of their pain and suffering to explain why they can’t hand in homework. Why should we hold ourselves to a lower standard?

I just imagined myself poring through these stories of extreme hardship as part of my research committee duties and trying to determine whom I’m most sorry for, and the prospect had no appeal.

With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep

South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.

Yes, it’s a total mystery why the Southern states are not flocking in droves to the party that puts forward this intensely welcoming message. I’ve never been to the Deep South and have zero emotional attachment to the region but even I found this offensive. It’s kind of becoming clear why the region isn’t voting Democrat any time in the foreseeable future.

I hope my readers are smart enough not to give me the “But they started it first!” routine.

Yes, people,  I will now drown you in cuteness. The happy snowcouple are just the beginning.

And if anybody else feels like emailing me to complain about “depressing posts”, I will start posting pictures of big, fat cupcakes shaped like fluffy kittens.

You will yet beg me to depress you some more.

Let the Russian – speakers stop complaining that I never do anything for them.

Моя новогодняя ёлочка

Как видите, под ёлочкой два весёлых снеговика. И неужели вам не передастся их хорошее настроение? И пусть радость не покидает вас в течение всего наступившего года, чтобы к его концу вы могли сказать, что 2015-й запомнился вам только хорошими событиями!

Получить свою ёлочку.

Am I the only American who doesn’t understand why we didn’t zap that North Korean ICBM designed to hit the United States on the launch pad back in 2007?Seems like everybody, liberals and right-wingers, agrees we don’t need to worry about Kim’s silly ol’ ICBMs. Kim’s just acting up, trying to get our attention.

Well, if Kim was trying to get my attention, it worked. I’m funny that way – every time somebody aims a nuke-capable ICBM at me, I overreact like you wouldn’t believe.

Ah, so there are two people on the continent who think this. I was starting to believe something was wrong with me, but War Nerd says exactly what I think:

The name of the town where North Korea tests its missiles says it all about our reaction: No-Dong. That’s what US presidents have been showing for almost forty years, every time North Korea slaps us in the face: no dong whatsoever.

Yes!

The point is, the North Korean military threat is serious. Saddam never posed a threat to the American homeland; Mu’ammar Gadhafi was a paper tiger from the get-go; but North Korea is crazy enough, and tough enough to press that nuclear trigger as soon as it’s operational.

YES!!! I mean, not “yes” to North Korea pressing the trigger, obviously, but “yes” to somebody finally being in agreement with me over this and not making me feel like a weird alarmist.

This book was the best gift ever. It also has an enormous therapeutic value that I will discuss in a later post.

So did you hear that Dr. Phil started an online medical service? I guess it makes sense: if the proles don’t deserve actual in-person education and have to content themselves with the online crap, why should they have access to real medical care? 

The next big thing is online dentistry.

Here is a hilarious collection of stories from one of my favorite bloggers :

Sometimes I really do wonder where the camera is concealed http://what-was-i-doing.blogspot.com/2014/12/sometimes-i-really-do-wonder-where.html

I don’t have time to comment on blogs, so this is my only way of telling bloggers I dig their writing.

Here is a really great post by a very talented blogger about the need to create a grand narrative for progressives. He gives some great suggestions as to what that narrative might be.

I also have a suggestion for an overarching progressive narrative: the nation-state is dying and a new liquid state is arising. We need to mobilize and make a supreme effort to ensure that up to 60% of the population isn’t kicked off this train and lumpenized.

Gay marriage, abortion rights, etc are great causes but in the new liquid world they won’t be a concern. It will all be about money and resources. For many people,  marriage us not going to be a concern at all. This is already true for a significant number of people. Let’s work to ensure that as many people as possible retain the capacity to worry about their marriage and contraception choices. Because we are going in the direction where a minority will have all of the choices in the world and the majority will have none whatsoever.

And please don’t come to me with the defeatism of how this is a foregone conclusion anyway. Let’s be active agents of our own existence. Let’s find a new narrative and start advancing it.