So we had a tornado in the morning, and now the electricity in my building on campus is dead. This is extremely obnoxious because I have to work on an urgent translation but my office is completely dark.

Colleagues said I look exactly like Yulia Tymoshenko today, and that makes sense because I’m translating a huge text about her, so I’ve obviously started channeling her in my life.
What’s funny is that faucets in the campus bathrooms stopped working because they are dependent on electricity. This is the price we pay for progress: no electricity now means no water either.

Of course, I still taught my class because I’m from Ukraine and if in Ukraine we stop living our lives whenever there’s no light and heat, we will spend most of our time waiting for our lives to resume.

I was the only person on the floor still teaching, and at first students grumbled.

But then one student exclaimed, “Guys, just think, this means we are getting taught for free!” Then eevrybody was happy.

And this is why I like Americans.

This is a billboard in Lisichansk (the Eastern part of Ukraine.) Dad, show this to Mom!

The billboard says, “We defeated Hitler and we will defeat Putin. No to Russian occupation.”

I could have never imagined that plagiarism would make me happy. When I discovered, however, that Zygmunt Bauman plagiarized his most recent book Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?, I was overjoyed. As one can expect from a book whose title question has such an obvious answer, Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? was a great disappointment. Bauman states the most self-evident, boring things in it, without the slightest attempt to consider who might constitute his intended audience.

Now it turns out that Bauman didn’t come up with this exercise in superficiality on his own. The great philosopher lifted parts of the book from Wikipedia and other online sources. As much as I hate plagiarism, I’m happy to find out that Bauman is only partially responsible for the collection of trivialities he published in this book.

“Dios, this whole situation between Russia and Ukraine must be hard on your marriage,” an Argentinean colleague says. “I know exactly what it’s like! My husband is Brazilian, and I don’t know how we will survive this summer.”

I strain my brain, trying to remember any recent territorial disputes between Argentina and Brazil.

“It’s the World Cup!” the colleague explains.

“Yes,” I recognize. “That is really hard-core.”

So guess who translated 10,000 words today of the clumsiest, most poorly written text ever?

Yes, that was me.

And I have 2,500 more to do tomorrow between classes.

I work quite a bit in translation (for extra income) and, as bad luck might have it, I’m never asked to translate things I agree with. Today, for instance, I spent all day working on an urgent order that, intellectually and ideologically, offends every fiber of my being. (It’s about Ukraine, in case you are wondering.)

The central guiding principle of a translator’s work is that you can never bring yourself to the translation (and good teaching requires the same effort). I have a lot of self, and this is not an easy thing to  do.

OK, back to my translation order.

After our discussion of Dan Savage’s column a while ago, I added it to my blogroll just to see what the whole thing was about. Soon I discovered that I can’t read Savage’s responses at all because he sounds over-the-top fake and  his strained efforts at humor make me feel sorry for him.

What I find very weird, though, are the questions people send in to this advice column. The absolute majority of the questions can be subdivided into two categories:

1. “I don’t want to have sex with this person, please give me permission.”

2. “I want to have sex with this person, please give me permission.”

See, for instance, today’s column for examples.

It is beyond strange that adult people would think they require anybody’s permission to make these decisions.

Do you believe that Dan Savage’s staff invents these queries? I want to believe that this problem is limited to a small group of individuals who all work at the same office and isn’t wide-spread in the general population.

My Ukrainian colleague told me this story yesterday.

A tumor was discovered in her aunt’s kidney. She had an operation to remove it but when the doctor examined her, the X-rays showed there is another tumor.

The woman started to cry.

“Don’t cry,” said the doctor, trying to console her. “We will remove the second tumor, and you will be fine.”

“Oh, I’m not crying because of that,” the woman said.

“What then?” asked the doctor.

“I’m sad about what happened with the Crimea,” the patient sobbed.

On the Russian news a man says, “A man has to know how to drive a stick shift. And for a woman, it’s OK just to drive automatic.”

This burning piece of ultra-important information was delivered at the most highly watched official news program.

I’m so glad I emigrated because Russian-speaking countries are still very uncivilized.

Three times today I read in different places that Obama was to the right of all Dem candidates in 2008. Where is this coming from? How is Hillary Clinton more of a Leftist than Obama?

I was for Hillary back in 2008 but I never noticed any particular Leftism in her as compared to Obama.