Clarissa's Blog

Since everybody loved my post about being Chair, here’s a question.

I’m due for a sabbatical soon. I could finish my 3-year term as Chair and take my sabbatical then.

However, I really want to run for second term. You can’t go on sabbatical while you are Chair. I don’t want to finish my term, hand things over to somebody else for 3 years, and then run again. The hardest part of this job is getting into the swing of things and, frankly, undoing the messes the previous Chair created. I want two consecutive terms. Or three, if I can argue exceptional circumstances.

But two consecutive terms mean losing one sabbatical out of the total number I can have in my career.

Should I sacrifice the sabbatical or the second term as Chair?

The purpose of a sabbatical is to let you dedicate all your time exclusively to research. However, there’s absolutely no chance I’ll do more research on sabbatical than I’m doing right now because it’s not humanly possible to do more. I’m a total animal on research this year. The kind of personality I have is that I work best when I have a million tasks to do, a bunch of deadlines, etc. As I said before, I thrive on interruption.

So what should I do? The reason I feel reluctant to sacrifice the sabbatical is because everybody will think I’m an idiot. What should I choose? Unconventional pleasure or social conformity?

Do you think I’m an idiot?

You know how whenever there’s cake at work, there are always at least two women in the group who will engage in a weird, masturbatory performance around the cake?

“Should I have a slice? No, I really shouldn’t. But I was so good at lunch today! And at breakfast! I had almost no breakfast! Do you think I can have some? I’ve had no dessert in a week!”

And all the time I want to yell, “You don’t have to ‘be good’ to have it. Eat the cake, don’t eat that cake, but quit the spectacle already.”

Totally reminds me of how the COVID crowd engages with reality. “If I’m really good, maybe I’ll be allowed to travel in 6 months.” You can already travel. And eat cake. And travel while eating cake. Or not. Just stop performing your neurosis in front of everybody.

OT: why are the words “cake” and “cookies” so ugly? They sound like something is stuck in one’s throat.

People are so gullible.

Biden called Putin a murderer! Putin challenged Biden to a debate! Such a great own!

What do you think matters to Putin more, this childish name-calling or that Biden is making gas prices skyrocket removed the ban on Russia and China selling weapons to Iran, and rolled over on Nordstream 2?

Yes, Putin is stupid but he isn’t as stupid as the folks who think words are magical and matter more than actions.

Biden is pro-Putin because his actions are. Nothing but actions matters.

A famous Spanish writer wants me to call her on WhatsApp. I’ve never used WhatsApp. Does anybody know how it works? Is it like a regular phone conversation? She sent me a phone number, so I guess it is. Or not?

I’m panicking right now.

I’m really eager to read this book:

I don’t know about the 1960s, but by the 1970s Soviet art went from featuring powerful feminist women to being overwhelmingly about embittered harpies dreaming of patriarchy and weak, pathetic men who couldn’t satisfy that need. It became an obsessive topic of Soviet literature and film throughout the 1980s and 1990s. I have my ideas about why that massive change happened but it’s interesting to see what actual scholars have to say.

So yes, there definitely was a massive masculinity and femininity crisis in the USSR. A massive and rapid disruption in gender roles isn’t a road to paradise. It’s a road to extreme psychological and social dysfunction. I became a feminist in response to witnessing this dysfunction first-hand, and this is why my feminism (and that of all of us from my part of the world) is different. Everything that Western feminists dream of, we already had that. And it wasn’t good.

I don’t know how this author manages to separate the Soviet masculinity crisis from the Soviet femininity crisis. They were absolutely part of the same phenomenon. It’s something that I find endlessly fascinating. Westerners would greatly benefit from learning something about other parts of the world. There are lessons that can be learned from our experience. There is no need to reinvent the wheel so painstakingly and dumbly.

People who couldn’t accept that Trump was doing anything right operate within the same mistaken philosophy of life as those who can’t accept that Biden could do anything right. They are guided not by their own interests but by a nebulous illusion of belonging. This illusion is a trick to make them betray themselves, time and again.

An important rule of life is: never get emotionally attached to people who don’t know you exist and don’t get invested in the first opinion you form about something.

Wow, folks, this is big. Biden said yesterday on ABC News that the immigration process for Central America will be changed – and that it will happen soon! – to let people apply in place. Meaning that they won’t have to drag themselves across three countries and sit in detention at the border. They will be able to apply from where they live. Like all other civilized countries are doing.

No, this won’t solve all immigration problems. This won’t even solve most. But this is a gigantic step in a good direction. I’ve been for this for I don’t know how long. This whole practice of applying for asylum at the border is outdated. It had been born before internet, and it needs to go. It’s inhumane and it helps cartels and gangs. It tortures people. It’s devastating Central America.

The plan Biden described is verbatim what I’ve been ranting about at every opportunity. I’m really really glad, and I hope it happens. Trump never tried this, by the way. Contrary to the lies spread by WashPo, he never tried anything much on immigration, and I’m resentful. Obviously, Obama or Bush before him did absolutely nothing about this either. If things finally start moving now, what a great thing that will be.

There’s talent that even an MFA and a PhD in Creative Writing can’t spoil. And Kate Elizabeth Russell is that rate person who resisted the nefarious influence of both. In a little postscript to the novel, Russell explains how the stupid MFA tried to force her to change her novel into something crappy and generic but, thankfully, she refused.

This is her first novel, and it reads like one but there’s a lot of potential in this author. First and foremost, the writing is good. But then the story is good, too. You’d think, who can possibly write anything worthwhile about a teacher sleeping with a 15-year-old student? Especially “in the age of #MeToo” (and how I hate this phrase. Only “in these trying times” is worse). But Russell did it. She mostly avoids truism – OK, maybe she avoids it about 70% of the time – but these days it’s already a lot.

The female narrator is not boring, and there’s even a slight hint at how #MeToo was driven by cynical, nasty, clickbaiting journalists. It takes courage not to slobber over #MeToo these days, so kudos to Russell.

I’m experiencing an appearance of some very tender and possibly imaginary seedlings of hope that literature in English can escape from its current bog of preachy inanity and go back, if not to greatness, but at least to being readable.

Klara bursts into the room and exclaims, “Mommy, my elbow really hurted but then I saw you and that made it all better because I love you so much, bye, have a nice life, love you!”