Clarissa's Blog

The stylist says she needs to mix as much color for my hair as she normally does for SIX people.

I’m going for a dramatic change in color for my birthday this week.

A colleague who is a part-time instructor of French tells me that he us not being given any courses to teach next academic year. We have raised our enrollment caps, stuffing language classes so full of students that the quality of instruction will plummet. And the colleague  (who is adored by the students) is out of a job.

But we have saved a whopping $500 a month that the instructor was getting paid. Yippee.

It feels like “Basia and Me” is turning into a regular series on the blog.

Today we met the students who are studying to be journalists to discuss Ukraine. Basia prepared a PowerPoint presentation of great sophistication and intellectual insight. I prepared some funny stories about idiot journalists.

I started my talk by giving some examples of low-quality coverage of Ukraine but the contact with the audience that I usually enjoy simply wasn’t there.

“So what is it that you know about what is happening in Ukraine?” it finally occurred to me to ask.

“Nothing!” the students responded cheerfully.

“Do you know that something is happening?” I persisted.

“No!” the students responded with an even greater cheer.

Obviously, a person who glanced at a news website, held a newspaper or walked by a TV screen in the past year wouldn’t have missed the word “Ukraine” in the headlines. Journalism is a harsh, low-paying, extremely competitive career. It is an absolute mystery to me why people who have zero interest in journalism would want to study to become journalists.

Of course, after all this, Basia had to can her prepared talk and start all over again with the usual “Ukraine is a country. It’s a big country. Russia is also a country.”

 In 2006, Putin abolished forest fire protection services and put all of the forest rangers in the street. I hope that we are all educated people here and can figure out how much of Russia’s enormous territory is covered by forests, right?

So, obviously, the absence of forest fire protection services was a disaster waiting to happen. Today, fires are ravaging the forests to the East of the Urals, destroying villages, killing people, and moving towards the border with China. 

In the photo, you can see one of such villages that burned to the ground yesterday. The enormously rich Russia, however, has no money to help the victims or stop the fires. All of the resources are going into fighting the war in Ukraine. 

They are also unoriginal as hell. You know how the Mexican government keeps announcing it has won the war on drugs every fifteen seconds? In a similar way, Putin’s media keep announcing that Ukrainian troops have been defeated and completely destroyed.

The Azov Battalion has already been “defeated and completely destroyed” 7 times. The Donbass Battalion is a bit less successful, having been “defeated and completely destroyed” only 5 times. These battalions manage to be “defeated and completely destroyed” on the front lines even when they find themselves undergoing training back at the base. Obviously, the soldiers of these battalions only find out about their complete destruction from the Russian media.

Kremlinbots seem to have a very boring fantasy life that is based on endless repetitions.

The party went on for several more hours. Before Basia and I managed to head towards the door, we were exposed to:

– a lady from Belarus who demonstrated the famed resilience of the Belarus guerrillas in her sustained refusal to respond to Basia’s attempts to engage her in a political debate; 

– the Russian husband of an English-speaking woman who was insistently trying to discuss “that girl I picked up, oh, and that other girl I picked up” while his uncomprehending wife smiled placidly by his side;

– a fiftyish Jewish gentleman who managed to mention his Momma five times in the very first sentence he addressed to the group;

– a disgruntled professor of physics from St. Louis who had read Basia’s article on Ukraine and wanted to argue with her about it but was thwarted by the host’s piercing scream, “No, discuss anything but politics!!!”

– a boisterous Russian fellow who kept addressing me with, “What kind of [offensive word for Ukrainian] are you if you don’t even eat salo!”

– a colleague from my university who exclaimed, “Oh God, I am so very, very sorry” when I told her the name of the department where I work. It seems like being an object of unexpected and, frankly, unwarranted compassion was my role at that party.

After Basia and I finally emerged into the street, one of the guests caught up with us.

“You are Jewish, right?” she exclaimed triumphantly, pointing at me.

“What gave me away?” I asked. “The hair?”

“No, not just the hair. Everything about you screams Jewish!”

I wanted to explore the subject further but Basia chimed in with an aggrieved, “And what about me? I’m Jewish, too!”

“What, am I not enough of a Ukrainian patriot to be recognized as Jewish?” Basia asked as we walked to my car. “Everybody knows that all the fiercest Ukrainians are Jews!”

Reader Cliff Arroyo asks à propos Jodi Arias’s case:

“I can go overboard in my fascination with unsolved murder cases but this seems pretty open and shut. She did it and kept lying and whenever confronted with a lie changed the story shopping up for something that would make her look good.Is there any evidence that there’s more going on here?”

The reason why I’m fascinated with the case is its potential to answer a host of interesting and crucial questions.

Why has feminism reached such a total dead end? Because the measure of personal success within one’s peer group among women is still a single thing: marriage*. This is a much easier way of reaching success and recognition than the one which male identity imposes. Who needs to invest the effort into a lifelong process of achieving and then retaining success when you can just do this single act and be done with pursuing success in your peer group forever**? 

Jodi was thwarted by her victim in achieving personhood, fulfillment, recognition as a human being who is good at the art of life***. And there is absolutely no other form of fulfillment that her peer group would accept. 

Another reason why I’m interested in the case is its relationship to my research.

Jodi Arias is absolutely, scarily, outrageously similar to the characters of these female novels of development that I’ve been studying for years. Reader Pen, you’ve read Irlanda. Tell me the protagonist is not totally Jodi. She engages in horrifying crime simply because she needs to preserve her right never to grow up.

Well, now Jodi has achieved her state of bliss. She will not have to grow or work on achieving success. She wanted to end up in jail, which is why she did all she could to get caught. 

* And before you say “motherhood”, think: how much societal respect and veneration do single mothers get? I rest my case.

** Please remember that I’m not talking about you, an intellectual with several degrees and a complex, nuanced persona. I’m sure your vision of personal success is as complex as you are.

*** Do I need to keep repeating that this does not excuse the murder or can we just accept it once and for all?

Is anybody here as fascinated with the Jodi Arias trial as I am? I’m looking for a kindred soul to gossip about this.

That Trevor fellow was a total piece of work. Not that he deserved having his head cut off.

North Carolina is attempting a wholesale destruction of its research universities.

It is mystifying to me why Americans would just choose to destroy their higher education and turn the country into a backwards little place with zero capacity to compete on the world arena.

The word “lemmings” comes to mind when I hear of these self-defeating efforts.