Clarissa's Blog

There was a single in-person event at work that I missed because I was out of state. My single opportunity to get with people at work, and I missed it. But now we are back to extreme paranoia, and everything that was going to be in-person is back on Zoom. And this is before the seasonal wave hits Illinois in November. I can only imagine the extent of the freakout when the seasonal wave comes.

Apparently, my keyboard thinks I’m either a good guy or a little girl.

My main shock from Obama’s birthday party is that these are all immensely rich people but the outfits are hideous. Were they pretending to be slumming, or something?

After spending a month in Florida, my sister – a great admirer of the Obamas and Oprah – is now a huge fan of Ron DeSantis. “This is true leadership,” she says, completely unprompted by me.

There’s no better argument than one’s own experience. At least, for people who are still capable of processing what they are seeing and drawing conclusions.

OK, so what should we do? Fill these committees with white people and be accused of racism? What’s the solution here? It’s all purely academic, of course, because there are no new faculty of any color.

I was on the committee that evaluated position requests this year, and every department had to present an argument on how the new hire would advance diversity goals. It was painful to read people’s arguments on how hiring a professor of geometry or organic chemistry would increase diversity because “organic chemistry is an important part of human existence and there’s no true diversity without a profound understanding of this branch of science.” In the end, nobody got any positions because there’s no money. Instead, the administration bought us all a bunch of books about diversity.

Only a few years ago, I had very positive feelings about diversity. Now I know that it only means austerity, austerity, and more austerity. And the saddest part is that we are all playing along.

My completely apolitical husband somehow came across Tucker Carlson’s interview of Viktor Orban before I even knew it existed. It must truly be everywhere.

I’m a little out of the news cycle, and it looks like everybody is far ahead of me. My goal currently is to make sure that my article on the Spanish writer Ana Iris Simón is the first scholarly piece on her. She’s already being accused of being a fascist because she’s not a standard, boring leftie. Somebody needs to write something intelligent about her, and that somebody has to be me. Then, anybody who writes about Simón after me will have to respond to my argument and not to fantasies about fascism ringing in their ears.

Also, I’m reading a hilarious new Spanish novel where a wokester moves to the countryside and tries to convince farmers that milking cows is a form of sexual abuse. He holds workshops on how to abandon heteronormativity, and the villagers treat him like a slightly daft but mostly endearing eccentric.

Only to think how much this woke rot has infected places all the way around the world, and people now have to dig their way from under this insanity.

If you want to read about regular people, about real life, about struggle and hardship, about poverty and difficulty, you have to read fictionalized accounts in non-fiction books like Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment or Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland. The books sell copies and movie rights. They even win Oscars. So why can’t anybody write a novel about the infinitely interesting people who appear in these books? Why are novels filled with mental masturbation of spoiled rich people? Even in the ghost sex novel I read the other day, the 22-year-old main character is living off an inheritance. An inheritance! Have you ever met any people who don’t have to work because they have an inheritance? Me neither.

Where is a novel about a 22-year-old who works at a grocery store and goes to a laundromat? He’s a million times more interesting than some bored rich fuck with an inheritance. Where is a novel about a 26-year-old with six kids by two different fathers? She appears in MacGillis’s book about Amazon. Screw Amazon! This is a life worth immortalizing in a novel.

I subscribe to several lists of fresh releases of fiction. It’s between spoiled rich people and World War I with scary regularity. Where are the writers who can write about anything else? In the non-fiction section, apparently.

What a great series, friends! An anti-globalist manifesto with a brilliant cast. Kate Winslet is superb. The aesthetic is very Northern Ireland but still works great. Watch it keeping in mind anti-globalism and you’ll enjoy it even more.

Highly, highly recommended. I’m in the process of writing an article about a novel that has the same idea as this show at its core, so it all makes sense.

One question I have, though, is what should we watch now that won’t be too much of a comedown?

In a fight against excessive rigidity, I decided to read a book not even my worst enemy would suspect me of liking: a ghost romance novel. Sex with ghosts! Soppy, vulgar, and aimed at somebody 20 years younger than me.

And hey, for what it is, the novel isn’t half bad. There is an inner logic to its madness. I quite enjoyed it even though I’m way too old to be reading the romance genre because it locates love in silly little things – the first look, the first joke – that are very cute but at my age feel soporific. Love is what happens after the first surgery, the first serious illness, the first job loss, the first miscarriage, the first funeral. And the second, the third, the tenth. That’s the love I care about. “What’s the first song we listened to together?” Oh, get over yourselves, you idiot children.

Of course, there’s also greater tolerance that comes with age. I would have detested this novel 20 years ago but now I even enjoyed it. At least, I now know all I ever needed about sex with ghosts.

Defund the police = pay out of pocket for policing:

https://twitter.com/eculliford/status/1422544942040236047?s=19

And those who can’t pay are superfluous anyway.