June 2010
3 posts
Good one, NBC
It’s like if the cameras had followed a guy on a fake handoff but OH SHIT THE OTHER GUY IS STANDING IN THE ENDZONE WITH THE SUPER BOWL WINNING TOUCHDOWN WAIT WHAT HAPPENED IS IT A TOUCHDOWN oh yes game over then.
I'm going to die
Charlie went out of town yesterday. Since then, I’ve
missed trash day
killed a giant Texas bug with a flyswatter. It broke in half, but then the top half continued to crawl across the kitchen floor
failed to remove the lid from a jar of wheat germ
cried some.
"A Dog’s Life" Shalom Auslander →
Every morning, as the sun pours through my bedroom windows and spills across my bed, I awake, the promise of a new day stretching before me like a stupid thing that leads to some goddamn whatever.
Ugh, I think.
My head aches. My neck is stiff. My knees creak. But every morning, I make my way downstairs, and, rain or shine, cold or warm, I step outside, throw a leg over my bicycle, and head...
May 2010
4 posts
it stays forever
When I was a kid, I bit my tongue and made a big fuss about it while eating a tuna sandwich. My mum cackled and went, “Not enough meat in your sandwich?”
I still really like tuna, but this morning when I bit my tongue while eating oatmeal, I heard the cackle and felt as though someone was accusing me of trying to eat my own tongue.
rational concerns
I’ve received a series of really bizarre evaluations from one professor this semester, and today I finished my final project for him. I fell asleep earlier and dreamt that when I got it back, the only comments were
Lol, that was weird — 80.
Chad VanGaalen - Chronograph #1
We were rapping,...
April 2010
2 posts
Need a bathing suit
Maybe don’t make me drop everything to go to Louisiana for a conference two weeks before the end of the semester if you’re going to get huffy every time I refer to it as “the all-inclusive vacation package that I won.”
Give a student coffee on tax day and they have coffee on tax day. Teach a student how to claim their tuition properly and they can buy their own goddamn coffee.
November 2009
3 posts
My colleague, who has a mohawk,
came up to me while I was standing outside and said, “Have you seen Yes Men?”
“You mean that Jim Carrey movie?”
“No, I mean the WTO protest piece.”
And then he died alone.
Jesus, the voices
I’ve looked at this from every possible angle, and the only way to get back at Charlie for watching “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” while I’m trying to grade papers is to puncture his eardrums with these knitting needles.
Why titles should mean stuff
I tried to watch “V” but it was about aliens.
October 2009
8 posts
There are some pretty cute ideas out there, but I think a good cereal company slogan would be, “We have thoughtfully designed our bags to prevent them from splitting down the side when you open them!”
Wait a minute!
If filling up the gas tank while the car is turned on really makes it blow up, why don’t I hear about more cars exploding?
I’m 25.
Most of my epiphanies can be traced back to some lie my mum told me.
Ok, you got me
It’s time to pack it in and try again tomorrow when the student loan representative finally frustrates me into saying “irregardless.”
Pogo - Go Out and Love Someone
Peter Gabriel - Here Comes the Flood
September 2009
10 posts
To pass boring office hours, respond to every...
Dr. (redacted) has expressed interest in teaching a course on manuscript studies in the Spring of 2010. The course would consist of equal parts of paleography and textual editing. This promises to be a rare and valuable opportunity to take a course not regularly offered from an accomplished textual scholar and medievalist. If you are interested in taking this course, please let me know as soon as...
Happy Easter!
Every time I see a Halloween candy display I have a confused moment where I’m like, “Shit! We don’t have Halloween candy yet!” Do people start getting ready for Halloween really early? It’s September. There are Christmas decorations set up at the back of Target.
I like big books and I cannot lie
We just got home from an English department party at the new department chair’s house. I was expecting drunks in bad sweaters but instead I got chandeliers and cocktail dresses and Bach playing softly in the background. I have never seen fewer lamp shades on people’s heads.
It’s awkward when freshman comp students come to the writing center with personal essays about how their Mom never really loved them or their best friend got hit by a bus or they just had their golden retriever put down.
“I’m really sorry. …This is a run-on sentence.”
One of my least favorite guys ever is Watchdog Devil’s Advocate Guy, who sneaks up behind you when you are complaining and waits for the perfect opportunity to jump in and assume the responsibility of providing a worthless counter to every perfectly harmless point you make.
Passive Aggression for Dummies
I sent an e-mail to the English department secretary earlier today because I am cancelling a class on Monday. I have a really uncomfortable and tense relationship with her that I find endlessly baffling.
Instead of responding to me she sent out a cold mass e-mail to the entire department that began, “Effective immediately the new policy on cancelling a class is as follows…”
I...
it's nowhere near that creepy
“Flipping someone off is as crass as saying ‘fuck’ in public.”
“It’s more like whispering it to just one person.”
August 2009
15 posts
And you wonder why the little mom n' pop stores...
Barnes & Noble is really only handy when you need the book right this second and you can’t wait for Amazon. And then it’s only handy when you don’t have to drive 40 minutes to get there. And then it’s only handy when they actually have the item that their website says they have, which is in this case a 7th edition MLA Handbook, and no the 6th edition will not suffice...
Film Adaptation Of 'The Brothers Karamazov' Ends... →
LOS ANGELES—Executives at Paramount Pictures announced Monday that production had finally wrapped on The Brothers Karamazov, a new film adaptation that concludes at the precise moment most readers give up on the classic Russian novel.
The 83-minute film, which is based on the first 142 or so pages of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s acclaimed work, has already garnered attention for its stunning...
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BRB
We are going to get into Lake Travis and stay there for a few days. I like to prepare myself for fun by doing really productive things, in this case reading obsessively about leeches. Who has two thumbs and a sound understanding of how to relax and have a good time?
Love, O love, let the birds happen to me. Let the wild, sweet voices remember me.
- Kay Smith, “Again with Music”
5 tags
Know when to fold 'em
Traditionally, in terms of graduate school, how long do you wait between the application deadline and the phone call to the department chair where you’re like, “What the fuck is your problem”?
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The Rascalz - Northern Touch
No matter how hard I...
EYES TO THE SKY AUGUST 12TH.
mostlydonuts:
The great Perseids Meteor shower is just 7 days away so polish your telescopes and get your late night beverages ready. This shower is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) meteor shower around so it would be foolish to miss it. The show starts on the 12th around midnight but the show stopper will be at 4am when the earth passes through a field of comet dust left by Comet...
6 tags
"Local Man Dies of Everything his Mother Ever... →
[…]
Apparently, the victim was playing with a box of matches at his residence in Williston late last night, when he accidentally burned himself and reacted suddenly by flailing his arms, causing a nylon windbreaker to fall from a couch onto a heating element. While the victim was soaking his finger in a mudbath and drinking several bottles of beer, the windbreaker became intensely hot,...
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The Five Worst Shark Encounters by James Norton →
#4: Corpus Christi, Texas — February 21, 1964
A tiger shark is spotted swimming away from a seaside accounting practice. Several months later, more than 250 tax returns from the firm are audited and found to be grossly fraudulent. The shark cannot be located or held accountable.
5 tags
Bookninja and the Worst Children's Books Ever →
You know how I feel about Love You Forever, right? Creepiest fucking book ever written. It’s like Stephen King’s Misery, but for toddlers. In fact, it’s not even for toddlers. It’s an enabling work for possessive parents with abandonment issues. I always imagine the title being whispered in a sinister, possessed voice over windchimes tinkling in a minor key. “Love You… FOREVER….” That mother is...
5 tags
Sidecar - I Have Known Love (Silver Apples cover)
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The Future This song does a lot to solidify my...
3 tags
In regards to Sunday afternoon cable movie options
I probably would have watched the third installment of the “Bring It On” series if they had titled it “Bring It On Again Again.”
6 tags
love them
Marilyn and Elliott are my in-laws. I stayed with them for a week while Charlie was in Oklahoma for work. Elliott needed some screens for his pipe and decided it would be an interesting cultural thing to take me to a head shop. He broached the topic over dinner. “They have sex toys in there,” Marilyn said. Elliott dropped his fork. “Marilyn. I’m not going to the head shop...
July 2009
32 posts
3 tags
7:56!
Brace yourself! If 24 taught me anything, it’s that the most devastating events occur at the top of the hour.
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Trust No One
When I was a kid we spent a year living on an island off the coast of eastern Canada. On that island there is a tree. One day I grabbed hold of a loose branch that was located somewhere near the top of this tree. Down I went, face first through the air. I landed directly on my head, on a teeter-totter. Then I was in the hospital, wearing a neck brace. I spent at least one night and I had the...
8 tags
My fondness for all-things espionage is most...
7 tags
Subtle clues indicate that your husband would like...
This morning I overheard Charlie talking to the dog in the kitchen. “Cody, would you like to put your feet on my rug?”