Clarissa's Blog

The Putin Café in Spain stayed in business for only two months. It went broke because nobody would come. The local residents explain on Facebook that they were too disgusted by the name to feel like dropping by.

OK, another riddle now. What is happening in this photo from a Russian high school? What are the school children witnessing?

Everybody is hell – bent on making the Baltimore riots about Freddie Gray and nothing else. This is a tidy and easy way of dismissing the whole thing with a feel-good ending. Just prosecute the cops, and Baltimore will magically become a happy place.

Pathetic and disgusting.

But as long as people can inscribe the story into the familiar framework of bad cowboys vs good cowboys, nobody will want to look any further. The discussion of Ferguson dissolved in the ridiculous narrative of traffic tickets. And now the story of Baltimore riots is being taken in the same direction.

As a new contribution to our Relationships series, let’s discuss the story of a woman who is going to meet her casual lover over the summer holidays (the woman in question requested input). The lover asked the woman if she was willing to be introduced to his children:

It wasn’t exactly a surprise when TA asked me if I’d like to meet [the children] while I was there this time. I’m going to be spending lengths of time in Home State this summer, as opposed to my previous brief weekends, so it would be somewhat odd not to meet them at some point, especially if TA and I want to spend extended time together. . . TA wants me to meet them, though. He adores his kids and they’re a big part of his life; he said it would be nice to have me meet them in some capacity while I’m there.

He did ask me what I thought about the idea and I said we could talk when I’m there. Because I’m not sure what I think. . .

Is it too soon? When do you meet someone’s kids? Do you need to be in some defined state before you introduce the girl and the kids? We don’t even claim to be dating – because we’re not, given the distance between us and the understanding that we’re free to be with other people if we wish.

I’m torn. On one hand, I’d like to, because they’re a facet of TA and it seems false not to see that side of him if we’re going to keep spending time together. On the other, it seems like a step and I’m not sure about taking that one.

This will not be of interest to everybody, so I’m putting my response under the fold. If you are not very happy about your personal life, I suggest you consider what you would do in this situation before seeing my comments.

(more…)

You know things get really hectic and overwhelming at work when I start to read in Russian. I almost never read anything in this language because there is simply nothing to read. Russian literature has been dead for decades and there are no signs of it coming back to life. Marinina, however, is a mystery writer I’ve been reading for exactly 20 years. She was huge back in the 1990s, and it’s kind of hard to let the characters go if you’ve followed their lives for two decades.

This book is Marinina’s most recent installment in her long-standing series about a slightly autistic, gauche yet brilliant detective Anastasia Kamenskaya. It’s extremely hard to write police procedurals in Russia where convincing the readers that there are police officers who not only take bribes but actually investigate is next to impossible. The very genre of a procedural implies the existence of a procedure that people at least try to follow. And Marinina has to work very hard to make her detectives with their sincere desire to solve crime believable.

In order to compensate for the too-honest-t0-be-true detectives, the writer sets the mystery in the world of figure skating which, as you probably know, is the most corrupt sport of all. I knew it was a very dishonest sport but after reading the book (based on very painstaking research, by the way) I will never watch another figure skating competition or performance in my life. The sport is inhuman, cruel, and involves a lot of really harsh abuse of the poor children who play it.

The mystery was fine but it’s missing the beauty of the author’s novels from the 1990s. It feels like the author was more at home back then and is not fully integrating herself into the twenty-first century. However, the omniscient narrator says “in Ukraine and Belarus” instead of “at Ukraine and Byelorussia”, which shows to me that she is a decent person and makes me enjoy the book more.

Author: Aleksandra Marinina
Title: Ангелы на льду не выживают 
Year of publication: 2014
My rating: 5 out of 10

. . . has been posted here.

Here is one of the videos Ukraine released to commemorate the victory in WWII. I know everybody hates videos but I cried when I watched it. OK, I’m a little high-strung these days but still.

By the way, Israelis helped Ukrainians to film the videos. The goal is to prevent the Russians from appropriating the victory as their own, even though Russia suffered enormously less in the war than Ukraine and Belarus.

“My boss had arranged a meeting for us to visit a location that could potentially host a conference we are having. This is a big deal and she has reached out to all the heavy hitters of our fantastic metropolis to make sure that it is a relevant and informative affair. She did this herself along with many of the countless other things she does.

So here we are arriving at our destination. She parks her car and I exit the passenger side. We walk into the building and are expected to be greeted but no one is there so we have to call our contact (let’s call her Julie) to announce our arrival.

I explicitly tell the receptionist that my boss is here for her appointment. Not me. My boss.

Julie comes down the stairs and greets me first. She then begins by giving us a tour of the facilities. The entire time she’s walking and talking about the building, she’s looking at me for approval. I need to repeat that at no point did I ever contact Julia prior to this meeting. I don’t understand why she is constantly seeking my approval.

It’s at that moment that it clicked with me. She thinks I am in charge because I’m a man. This is silly. I decide to make a clear statement about our dynamic and make a little joke about how “The boss lady is the one with the wallet hahaha”. Julie’s eyes turn her attention to my boss. The rest of the meeting was fine and uneventful.”

Read the rest here.

The reaction among responsible black and white law-abiding citizens to the black thugs rioting in Baltimore was captured by Toya Graham, the black mother who smacked her son around when she found him on the streets joining the attacks on police. Even liberals in the major media applauded her efforts.

Got it? They applauded the beating of a child and saw no connection between a violent, abusive mother and the kid’s need to participate in violent activities in the streets. Because it’s very easy and comforting to deny any link between parenting and the product of said parenting. 

Fucking idiots. This reaction is obviously not related to the events in Baltimore. The infantile fools are cheering for this violent criminal because this is a way for them to relieve the anxiety they experience when attempting to explain the way their own parents treated them.

P.S. And please don’t start telling me how this is a stupid source. Yes, it’s stupid but I heard the same cheering for the abusive freakazoid on MSNBC on the day of the riot. Immaturity knows no political allegiance.