Clarissa's Blog

Southern, shmouthern. Many of these are Soviet food. Congealed salad, rabbit stew, liver mush, chicken livers, fried bologna, deviled eggs. We had all those AND jam made of watermelon rinds. Plus, candied orange peel. Delicious!

Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott should totally run on the same ticket. Scott has great public speaking skills. DeSantis is a great executive but not much for speaking. His interview with Tucker cured my addiction to melatonin gummies by reliably putting me to sleep in 5 minutes.

On the last day of my course on Latin American dictatorships, a student raised his hand.

“Professor,” he asked. “You say that the age of dictatorships in Latin America seems to be over, and with only a couple of exceptions, Latin American countries have embraced democracy. But what is the value of that if governments everywhere are either powerless or unwilling to do anything to exercise any control over the global oligarchy that’s becoming more and more dictatorial?”

The student is from Eastern Europe, obviously.

I decided to watch the movie because everybody is down on Hollywood and the Oscars and I now feel kind of bad for both. Plus, a fussy Spanish novelist started posting on social media how the characters in the movie are too happy and too white. So I had to watch.

Folks, it’s a masterpiece. Everything about this movie is great. I bought it because I will be rewatching it often. Like Nobody, Nomadland is an ode, a love letter to America. And once again, the director is an immigrant. It’s as if immigrants were begging Americans to remember who they are, shake off their current stupor, and reach for greatness that belongs to them. It takes a Russian Jew and a Chinese woman to do it because they know how bad things can be.

Of course, it’s a completely different aesthetics from Nobody, but the organizing idea is the same. You can overcome, you can rise, you are American. It’s really good.

The photography is breathtaking. The lead actress is talented. The choice to use normal people in the rest of the roles instead of trying to make Hollywood’s plastic androids look human is brilliant.

God, I’m so into this movie. I wish I had seen it on a big screen. I warn you, though. This is a movie that’s heavily in the European tradition. It’s very unhurried. There’s no plot. No action. But there’s a philosophy, a depth of thought, and an endless supply of beauty.

The Oscars aren’t completely hopeless if they finally recognized a talented film.

Today I worked on an article about Castellanos Moya, taught a class on Castellanos Moya, graded a quiz on Castellanos Moya, and am now reading Castellanos Moya for fun.

This is what I call a perfect day.

There’s a very small number of people with an iron will and no interest in material joys who beat reward credit cards at their game and wrangle good money out of them. I stand in awe of them because I’d never be able to resist the lure of overspending “just a little bit” (which is why I haven’t used a credit card in a decade).

But watching them take revenge on credit card companies in the name of all of us poor addicts is very gratifying. There are too few of such people for the companies to feel the sting, of course, but that’s our fault for being slaves to our appetites.

We are being told that we must adopt the following principles in educating secondary school teachers:

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There’s no discussion. This is a mandate that we have to follow like trained poodles. This is what we call “critical thinking.” Listen quietly and obey.

It’s a really weird experience to see the naked faces of the people I only saw in masks. The brain works in mysterious ways and imagines the part of the face it can’t see in a manner that has little to do with reality.

The janitor and I have become friendly but we’d never seen each other’s face. Today, we met outside and both went, “Oh. Good to meet you, finally.”

Another issue is that I don’t recognize even good friends in masks. My brain needs the entire picture to match it to a name. So I constantly end up in situations when I fail to notice or greet somebody I know and people get upset. I even got a text message from a colleague asking me if I’m upset with her because I keep ignoring her on campus.

By the way, speaking about masks. Why is there a sudden flare-up in discussions of outdoors mask wearing? Tucker did a whole segment on it yesterday.

Does anybody wear masks outside? I spent yesterday’s afternoon at a large playground that has a soccer field and a tennis court attached to it. It’s actually three playgrounds in one huge space. Crowds of people. Kids, athletes, parents, grandparents. I didn’t see a single mask. Aside from the chain-smoking retiree at the park, I can’t think of the moment when I recently saw outdoors masking outside of campus. But that’s professors. We all know they are drones. Normal people don’t do it any more.

So why all the hullabaloo? I’d love to follow Tucker’s advice and snort at outdoor maskers but do they exist?