I have fulfilled a long-standing dream of mine and decorated the house for Halloween:

Now, whenever I step outside, I get completely spooked by my own scarecrow, ghosts, and skeletons. I’m always very deep in thought, so when I notice them out of the corner of my eye, I freak out.

I guess the decorations are serving their purpose.

Philosophy is a booming field, so philosophers don’t need to worry about the job market. As a result, they are entertaining themselves with public unravelings. The most recent scandal in philosophy has to do with a professor who posted a statement of principles on her blog and a colleague who took her post personally. He wrote an email to her that she made public.

I’m used to academics behaving in weird ways in public and not caring about the consequences because, hey, they’ve got tenure, their field is doing great, so who cares what the consequences are for everybody else? But I find it beyond strange that philosophers would be so oblivious to the concept of ethics that they would publish personal emails online. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they also snoop through their children’s pockets, spouses’ email accounts, and colleagues’ briefcases.

At this time in my life, I’ve pretty much had it with academics who get upset over nothing and start freaking out publicly and obnoxiously without any care as to whom and what they damage. 

Who’s going to see the Gone Girl movie on Friday?

I’m definitely going because the book it is based on represents an extremely important pop culture phenomenon that nobody (but me) is noticing.

You probably don’t know this (because you are an intellectual and way above such things) but Gone Girl is a megabestseller. It’s poorly written, it’s badly plotted, it’s clumsy in every single way.

Still. After decades of Bridget Jones, Sex and the City, Friends, Gilmore Girls, etc, the enormous commercial success of this book demonstrates that women have finally had it with reading about and watching these crowds of pathetic women who fixate on a pair of pants and worship at its altar.

Gone Girl offers a tiny little rebellion – and it is even successful to some minuscule degree – against this life scenario. This is a book of female rage, and that alone makes it an interesting phenomenon.

I’m also very curious how Hollywood will deal with the book’s lack of happy ending.