Clarissa's Blog

The seminar gave me the kind of insight that feels like I’ve come into the outer space. It’s a very intense thing. But it’s also completely exhausting. I’m too tired even to read, so I’m listening to an old Cormoran Strike Audible.

By the end of the third hour, Arestovich noticed the hapless he/him and asked why he was making an idiot out of himself. The miserable he/him muttered that he’s in California and has to do it for work.

Congratulations, California. You are a global joke now.

I’m in a live seminar with Arestovich, and one of the several hundred attendees is a he/him. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what a he/him can possibly want from a seminar where we are in the second hour of discussing the majesty of God.

P.S. We are now drawing a visual representation of the human yearning for God, and the he/him came up with a mix between something vaguely Satanic and a watermelon.

There’s literally nowhere to hide from the he/hims and their Satanic watermelons.

Being a Russian oligarch is a dangerous job in the best of times, but especially so these days:

I’m sure this is all completely accidental.

As if we didn’t have enough trouble with the Republican party trying to do its darndest to avoid a red wave in November that looked inevitable only a few months ago, now Ron DeSantis is working hard to not be elected president with his Martha’s Vineyard stunt.

The guiding principle for a politician is “how does this action help me attract the voters who wouldn’t have voted for me otherwise?” It’s not “how do I troll the opponent in a way that pleases a few hardcore supporters and repels everybody undecided or middle-of-the-road?”

The churches in Martha’s Vineyard threw themselves into helping the migrants. The migrants themselves look like sweet, normal people with kids. In the meantime, neither the cartels and the gangsters who shipped them nor the rich bastards vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard have been punished in any way. And DeSantis has portrayed himself as somebody who’s impotent against the cartels so he uses a 7-year-old kid clutching her stuffy to make a point that nobody fully understands.

The only winning strategy here would be to demonstrate that Democrats treat migrants like human refuse. It shouldn’t be hard because that’s exactly what they do. Trying to outdo them at this game by treating the migrants in the same manner is pointless. Showing kindness and Christian charity – like those churches in Martha’s Vineyard are doing – while denouncing the policies that make the migrants’ countries of origin uninhabitable is the winning strategy. Trolling for the sake of trolling is loserish tactic with no long-term strategy behind it.

“Now these rich bastards will see!” No, they won’t. They’ll outsource the problem as they always do, and you’ll look like a dick for no gain.

I took Klara to a local Lego club at the public library. Of course, we immediately found a piece looking like the Ukrainian flag in the box, so Klara made an installation called “Ukrainian astronauts on the Moon.”

This is the early stage of the installation:

The best pizza toppings are fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, and garlic. Everything in life is made better by tomatoes and fresh basil, and pizza especially.

In Beginner Spanish today we were learning how to ask somebody’s age and I had students guess mine. It was very funny. They all think I’m much younger than I really am. And if you try to tell me they are saying it to suck up, you haven’t met any teenagers recently.

I’m actually really glad I’m not younger because it’s now fashionable among young men to paint their fingernails. I find that… not conducive to the awakening of my hormonal processes, so it’s just as well I’m too old to care. I don’t know how I would have found a boyfriend if I were young today. Nail polish kills it for me on sight.

I signed up for a live Zoom class in Arestovich’s school of philosophy. From the first class yesterday, I got such stunning insight that I’m still reeling. It’s incredible that in the midst of a war he manages to teach his classes so brilliantly and seemingly effortlessly. This is a guy who has to teach between visits to the frontlines. Really puts to shame everybody who was too traumatized by COVID (or Trump or some other excuse) to fulfill their responsibilities.

There were 621 people in the class but it felt cozy and personal as if there were only ten. As a young man, Arestovich was painfully shy and terrified of speaking in public. I was like that, too, and I know what it takes to overcome it.

The next class is tomorrow and I have a bunch of homework.