The Cuban artist is coming to my class today, so I dressed to the nines. The fellow who sells me coffee at the gas station every day dropped his beverage when he saw me. The students look confused. But at least it’s not raining, so my very pink outfit won’t be splattered with mud. My meal choices are severely limited by the attire because I’m prone to spilling and dropping but it’s such a rare thing that we have an exciting speaker. We haven’t had one since Jonathan Mayhew offered to come to speak to us, and that was years ago.

Another long yet very relevant quote from Trollope:

To the Duke’s thinking the maintenance of the aristocracy of the country was second only in importance to the maintenance of the Crown. . . That the wealth of the aristocracy should be recruited from time to time by the wealth of the trade was well enough, – nay, was in the utmost degree desirable; but they among them who were alive to their duty would take care that nothing should be robbed from them by those who were without.

Such were the opinions with regard to his own order of one who was as truly Liberal in his ideas as any man in England, and who had argued out these ideas to their consequences. As by the spread of education and increase of the general well-being every proletaire was brought nearer to a Duke, so by such action would the Duke be brought nearer to a proletaire. Such drawing-nearer of the classes was the object to which all this man’s political action tended. And yet it was a dreadful thing to him.

Think about the ultra-progressive enforcers of diversity and inclusion whose only real goal is to protect their elite status by, among other things, imposing outlandishly complex verbal and behavioral codes. How is this any different from the passionately liberal (in his own description) Duke who polices the boundaries of his social class in the exact same way?

The theyby folks are as freaked out about fluidity as any regular Trump voter. And they are as desperate to stave off the terror with empty sloganeering and magical thinking. But they consider themselves to be very superior to folks who are just as scared and lost. But since they are a lot better educated and have a lot more cultural capital, they are more to blame for having zero insight into their own motivations.

And then I read an article on “theibies” in New York magazine and realize that I don’t want to move because innocent discussions about dinosaurs by a bunch of old ladies at the gym are nowhere as aggravating as this cheerful search for sophisticated forms of child abuse. I can find ways productively to engage with the dinosaur folks but not with the theyby bunch.

This great quote is from Anthony Trollope’s novel I’m reading. The character described here reminds me of somebody – wink, wink – so so much:

He had no idea as to the necessity or non-necessity of any measure whatever in reference to the well-being of the country. It may, indeed, be said that all such ideas were to him absurd, and the fact that they should be held by his friends and supporters was an inconvenience. . . To him Parliament was a debating place, by having a majority in which, and by no other means, he,–or another,–might become the great man of the day. By no other than parliamentary means could such a one as he come to be the chief man. And this use of Parliament, either on his own behalf or on behalf of others, had been for so many years present to his mind, that there seemed to be nothing absurd in an institution supported for such a purpose. Parliament was a club so eligible in its nature that all Englishmen wished to belong to it. They who succeeded were acknowledged to be the cream of the land. They who dominated in it were the cream of the cream.

Toxic veganist femininity shot up the YouTube HQ yesterday. The victims survived so it’s not insensitive to joke.

In pursuit of my challenge, I’m at the gym. An incredibly loud personal trainer next to me is brainstorming with clients how to explain to her 5-year-old grandson that “dinosaurs are not real and it’s those archeologist people who invented them to undermine our religious faith.” A client gently objects that no, dinosaurs are real but they all “died in the flood of Noah.”

After this matter is put to rest, the trainer and the clients discuss how much they hate the university because “it takes too much space.”

Wow, Naked Capitalism is still shilling aggressively on behalf of its Russian owners. Even on a case as blatant as the recent poisoning they still can’t help themselves.

If you are one of the folks who ever took these buggers seriously, I hope you have reconsidered now that it’s obvious how much this is costing the country.

I was contemplating how a female protagonist in a mystery/thriller of necessity has to work differently than a male protagonist. Too often if a man is writing a female protagonist, she’s either written drop dead Hollywood gorgeous as an idealized sex toy, not as a real person, most of whom aren’t drop dead gorgeous and most of whom aren’t tall and thin. Or if he believes himself to be a particularly enlightened writer, she’s depicted basically as a man with boobs.

That’s exactly how female authors fashion these characters, too. And I mostly read female authors in this genre because they are more hardcore and their work tends to be a lot darker. The reason why I’m tired of Gerritsen, Gardner, Lippmann, and Co is precisely because their female protagonist are “men with boobs.” And pretty obnoxious imitations of men, too.

Yet most depictions of female protagonists by men have their female protagonist either be basically virginal and asexual with no discernable sex drive, or have her slinking up to villains to use sex as a weapon.

And female writers do it exactly the same. For instance, Elizabeth George’s Barbara Havers is type 1, Lisa Gardner’s new character is type 2. The list is endless.

I understand not liking the genre and knowing nothing about it. But what’s the reasoning behind writing at length about a genre that you never bothered to read?