Category Archives: story of my life

happy halloween!

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Last night we went to the first honest-to-goodness Halloween party we’ve attended in well over a decade and did not get home until about 2:30. Alcohol was consumed. Dance moves were executed. Cats hid under beds. Is it just me, or are the costumes available for purchase or rental much, much better than they used to be? I can remember, as a child, being disappointed that most of the available costumes were simply a crinkly polyester jumpsuit with a picture on the chest of who you were supposed to be. Even then, I knew that made no sense.

There were many inspired costumes last night, including…

  • Guinivere
  • Cookie Monster
  • Jackie Onassis Kennedy with a bloody skirt
  • Yasser Arafat
  • A wolf
  • A black lab
  • Beck
  • Various gothic princesses/sorceresses
  • A bloke in a kilt
  • A billionaire for Bush
  • A pirate
  • Fonzie-modo

I have pix, but I’m saving them for blackmail purposes.

I’ll give you three hints as to my costume:

  • I did not have a hit in the ’80s with “White Wedding.”
  • I used to write really bad poetry.
  • My girlfriend is a high school student who likes to carry a wooden stake.
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thursday

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Out of order, chaos. Out of chaos, order. This is my life. It’s your life, too.

The cat’s gone blind. It happened quickly. He still gets around just fine. That’s what whiskers and tails are for.

I seem to be going deaf in my right ear. It’s happening quickly. I don’t know if it’s only temporary.

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if this whole academic thing doesn’t work out…

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…I want to be Paul Westerberg.

Paul Westerberg with Telecaster thinline, sitting on small amp.


Meet me anyplace or anywhere or anytime
Now, I don’t care, meet me tonight
If you will dare, I will dare

That is all. Carry on.

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me and my big mouth

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So given that I seem to have pissed off some people on C18-L, now what do I do? I was not as polite as I could have been in pointing out the well-established ALL CAPS IS SHOUTING convention. However, the response to what I said is way out of proportion. I will wait before I respond at all. As the comments to my previous entry indicate, graduate students and younger scholars are put off by the kind of animosity often displayed on listservs. I know I was when I was a grad student.

I think I will apologize for the nature of my original post but clarify that the all caps convention applies to Internet communication (and has for a long time), not to all forms of writing. One of the C18-L correspondents seems to be confused about the convention, citing eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope’s use of all caps as a defense. I am also toying with the idea of joking like this: “To avoid confusion, all future ad hominem attacks upon me will please use the phrase ‘ethical onanist.’ This is what is printed on my business cards, and my chair says the department can’t pay to have new cards printed up with the perversely brilliant phrase ‘moral masturbator’ on them.”

I’m open to suggestions. Please advise.

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sunday: the busy day for academics

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I know I should jump in here, and I probably will at some point after I get a bunch of stuff done:

  • Grading.
  • Writing.
  • Emailing.
  • Some class prep.
  • Groceries.
  • Vacuuming.

Tonight, I reward myself for a busy day of work with a show featuring:

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