In contrast to the whiny, self-pitying Barbie speech, I have a life-affirming story about human agency, dignity and civilizational drive.

As you all know, on June 7 Russians blew up the Kahovka dam, creating an environmental catastrophe of enormous proportions. Ukrainians could sit there and feel sorry for themselves but that is not our way. In the humid soil at the bottom of the former reservoir, they have planted vegetable gardens.

It’s still a catastrophe but you can either drown in self-pity or plant some vegetables and guarantee a nice dinner for yourself in the Fall.

When I first went to Cuba, I was stunned to see groups of people sitting at entrances to buildings all day long, drinking rum and smoking. They sat in the most abject filth and it never occured to them to get up and clean their own space. That’s the lack of agency fostered by an authoritarian regime, and it’s sad to see. One of the things that makes us human is the capacity and the need to change our environment and to make it beautiful. Another is our individual agency. Once that’s gone, we turn into a sad shell where a human being used to live.

So everybody has heard about the “iconic” It’s impossible to be a woman l speech in the new Barbie movie, right? I cringed in embarrassment when I read it. The pouty infantilism of this text delivered by a middle-aged woman would be funny if so many women in their forties and fifties didn’t post it on their social media in complete seriousness. Of course, it’s filled with the passive-voice whiny complaints about how “you are supposed”, “you are accused” and “is rigged” that allows the posters to weasel out of who’s doing all this supposing and accusing.

Nothing mentioned in the speech exists in reality. The list of complaints is pure wish-fulfillment. The narcissistically wounded recipients of the speech want to have their every move observed but nobody has time or interest to pay attention. The speech validates their fantasy that the whole world is in thrall to their weight, appearance, behavior, etc.

Yes, Barbie is entertainment that nobody is supposed to take seriously. This is why it’s disturbing that so many women took it seriously.

The full text of the speech is below. I can’t even re-read it, it’s so embarrassing.

It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas.

You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behaviour, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.

You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.

You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

Today I watched the first episode of Buffy for old time’s sake, and it took me back to 1997 when I first saw it. It was back in Ukraine and the show was introduced with a 15-minute warning that we have to be understanding and tolerant of other cultures. The subtext was “these crazy Americans are very crazy but what can we do, we got to show it.”

The whole thing gave me a bit of a panic attack because I did not enjoy being young and don’t want to be back even momentarily.

It’s an excellent show, though.

Please observe the length of Putin’s pants in that famous conversation the other day when it was announced that Wagner wants to invade Poland:

The old fool was so embarrassed that now Russian newscasts cut the picture at the height of the knee. Mind you, he’s embarrassed about the pants not the hints regarding an invasion of Poland.

I agree they will desist but the idea of being sex-attracted before puberty is lunacy. This is a case where the counterargument fails because it adopts the same bizarre ideas that undergird the original delusion. People who “knew at 9 years of age” that they were gay (or straight) are as deluded as people who “knew” at that age that they were trans. This “knowledge” is a backwards projection from their adult sexuality. Before puberty, I was “attracted” to Vivien Leigh. If I grew up and became a lesbian, I could use that as “proof that I knew”. But since I didn’t, the confirmation bias doesn’t kick in.

Let’s stop sexualizing kids. It’s perfectly fine to be gay (or straight) without “knowing” anything about it in infancy.

The next logical step for Russia is to send an incursion of the Wagner troops from Belarus into Lithuania, a NATO state. Russia can repeat the 2014 trick and pretend that these are rogue troops it doesn’t control. The NATO will eagerly pretend to believe this.

This will be the first time when a NATO country will be hit with complete impunity.

Then Poland will be attacked. Again, complete impunity.

The culminating moment of this process will be a Russian hit on a target in the US that will not receive a response. An explosion, something. And America swallowing it and inventing some self-blaming conspiracy theory like “the CIA did it” or “we brought this on ourselves by being evil”.

The Transfiguration Cathedral is the most important Orthodox cathedral in Odessa. It existed since 1794 but during the Stalin era it was razed, like so many churches. It was rebuilt when Ukraine gained independence. It was crucial for the revival of Orthodoxy in post-Soviet Odessa.

Tonight Russians destroyed it.

https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1682896561506844679?t=t8QLkazxXXeTdJIyJw_ROg&s=19

A neoliberal government doesn’t seek legitimacy in the eyes of the voters by improving their standard of living. Instead, it offers to protect them from unseen, diffuse, deathly and global threats.

Terrorism, pandemics, global warming, disinformation. The funny thing is that this is precisely the kind of threat that a national government can do absolutely nothing about. They exist beyond national borders and cross them easily.

We are supposed to be so grateful for the promise of protection from these unseen dangers that we’d happily agree to the drop in our standard of living. It’s a bad bargain but we agree to it because we are scared.

Here’s a great exercise to learn important stuff about yourself. Many people try to wrestle themselves into activities or lifestyles that aren’t for them but they have convinced themselves they need to be following this erroneous path. It helps to track one’s natural inclinations to figure out what the correct direction is.

The exercise: give yourself 6 hours of solitary, guilt-free do-nothingness at home. Set aside those 6 hours as the time when you’ll do whatever you fancy at that moment. No work, no chores, no to-do list. Only the pleasing, enjoyable stuff.

Caveat: If all you want to do is scroll social media on your phone, lock the phone in a time-release jar. If you find yourself unable to do that, it means you are living in a way that your brain finds intolerable, which is why you use the phone as a coping mechanism.

The result: Usually, the real you starts to emerge by the end of the second hour. People often say, “if only I had time, I’d go back to the violin” or “I’d learn to cook” or “I’d read all day”. But they are wrong. What they actually want to be doing is something completely different.

Important: Pay particular attention to which part of the body you engage in this activity. Is it the hands? The ears? The legs? The eyes? Which of the elements are you trying to gorge on? Air? Water? Earth? This is what you are getting in insufficient quantities and need to integrate into your daily life. On some level, we all know what we need but we turn away from that because we pile on received opinions that hide reality from us.

The new hire asked me where she can see the descriptions of the courses she will teach. I strained my brain to the maximum capacity and realized they must be listed in the catalogue.

It never occured to me to read the descriptions of the courses I’ve been teaching. I teach what I feel like and don’t bother not only with descriptions but with the titles. The first semester in this job I was assigned a course titled “Learning a Second Language.” I taught it as “History of Ideas in Spain”. Students were mildly confused at first but it’s a great subject, so why not? I had brilliant reviews in that course.

This coming semester we’ll be teaching that poor old “Learning a Second Language” course as “Ukraine: Language and Culture”. Again, so what? I feel like doing it, so I’m going straight ahead.

For people who don’t know: it takes years and 13 levels of bureaucratic review (literally, 13 levels) to create a new course. And then you have to promise to teach it forever. I don’t want to teach anything forever. I get bored. So I teach what I want and pay no heed to what anybody expects.

People should be freer in what they do.