Clarissa's Blog

I have no idea who this Louis fellow is but the set that is causing so much inexplicable turmoil is mildly funny and very little else. I have no idea why people are freaking about it so much.

Here is the set:

Sometimes, the world just disappoints. First, some blethering fool writes the following bit of smug idiocy:

Middle- and upper-class women who work don’t have time to tidy (housekeeping), rear their children (child care) or cook (food industry), and they have to look professional (beauty care and garment industry). These services are provided by an underclass of largely people of color often living in precarious financial situations with little opportunity for upward mobility.

And then I see one facile loser after another happily reblogging said idiocy, highlighting especially stupid bits with the self-satisfied drool of happy idiots.

Why are people stupid? Why are they not trying to become less stupid? Why do they chirp so much and read or learn so little, if at all?

Yesterday we finished watching The Wire. I believe it was a great idea to turn the last season into a parody of the entire show. Taking the comedic route allowed the creators of the show to lower the tensions of the previous seasons and close the show in a beautiful way.

The greatest problem with the show was that it had almost no women. And the only two or three women among the enormous cast of characters were not really women. The makers of the show were obviously aware of this problem and took it as far as possible in the character of the assassin who is supposed to be a girl but is supremely unconvincing as one.

But nobody can be perfect at everything. The show is brilliant even in spite of the absence of women.

The most recent poll shows that 50% of Russians think Putin should start a nuclear war with the US.

Russia continues its fight against the degenerate Western values. This 17 – year-old girl in Russia was sold in marriage to this much older fellow. The fellow is already married, so the girl will be wife number something.

But the degenerate Westerners need to be resisted as much as possible because all they want is to bring pedophilia to Russia.

P.S. There are no Westerners in the photo, obviously.

The Board of Trustees of my university has not managed to communicate to us the decisions it made on Thursday but N and I are celebrating just in case.

Don’t you ever get the feeling that the smallest unit of monetary measurement these days is $100? Everything costs $100.

Renewing the car registration? $100.

Buying medication? $100.

Hiring a handyman to put up lighting fixtures? $100.

The lighting fixtures themselves? $100.

And don’t even hope to set a foot in the grocery store without being prepared to part with $100.

Every day I wake up and wonder which new development will require me to say good-bye to yet another $100 on this day.

If you are traveling to the UK, make sure that the staff at you hotel can’t see your reading matter. Or this is the way your room might be made up.

(I’m placing the photo under the fold. Proceed with caution if you are sensitive to x-rated towels).

(more…)

Author: Antonio Gamoneda
Title: Erroneous Song
Language: Spanish
Year: 2012

I’m generally not good with Spanish poetry but there are poets I somehow just get in spite of my lack of sophistication in this area.

Antonio Gamoneda is one such poet. Erroneous Song is his first collection of poetry since he got the Cervantes Prize back in 2006. This is very dark poetry. The 84-year-old poet is facing his own approaching death and trying to find meaning in existence. In every poem, his conclusion is the same: there is no meaning.

This is very dark, very complex poetry that cannot be fully understood without an immersion into the author’s poetic imagery that he’s been creating throughout his life.