Wow, what a weird day. One of our candidates – a fellow who has lost his tenure case once and has been adjuncting all over the country since then – also got a tenure-track offer at a school that I won’t name but I’ll say that it’s a famous R-1 in a fantastic area. I’ve seen this guy once at an interview but I feel like it’s Christmas because I’m so happy for him.

When people say that somebody who has “an old PhD” and has been adjuncting for almost a decade at anonymous community colleges in remote rural areas will never get a tenure-track position at an amazing school, they are talking out of their ass. I know somebody who beat enormous competition and today got an offer from a sensationally good place. And no, she has no connections. What she has is a difficult, gruff personality and a complicated personal life.

I love this kind of stories.

N listens to books in his car. This week he finished Moby Dick and started a novel by Virginia Woolf. I’m very envious because I can’t do it. Whenever I hear anything that is not the sound of my own voice, I tune out completely and nothing reaches me. 

Turns out that Amazon digitized all of the music I have ever bought from them, including an Eminem CD from back in 2003, including the records, everything. I lost the Eminem CD a decade ago but it turns out I can still listen to it on Amazon. This is insane. I have no idea they were doing this. The list is like a trip through all the stages of my music-listening life. 

They need to publicize this shit more widely because people are unaware. Or maybe only I was unaware. 

On Saturdays, Klara spends time with N while I go to lunch alone and then to the salon, or shopping, or to the café. When people find out, they react as if I just confessed to something terrible. It’s like one can’t both love their family and enjoy spending time alone once a week. 

Klara is very unlike the way both N and I were as kids. At the music lesson, parents and kids sit in a circle. Klara always crawls right into the middle of the circle and starts rotating 360° to make sure that everybody sees and admires her. 

When I was little, nobody could have gotten me to stay at the center of a circle no matter what they did. 

The nasty Wiley Agency is so greedy and disgusting that they want me to pay them  $200 for quoting one of their authors in my not-for-profit book of literary criticism. 

Shame on you, Wiley. You stink. 

N told me to write this post and suggested the title because he doesn’t support my actions. He says I’m about to turn this country into an autocracy. Me! A quiet, modest literature scholar. I have sown the seeds of corruption that will destroy the republic, he says. 

What caused all this outrage is that I bribed the teachers at Klara’s school. They kept saying that their birthdays were this week, so I gave them gift cards. They hadn’t seemed to be super into Klara before the gifts. I had sensed some resentment over having somebody so young in a group where everybody else walks and talks. But now they rush towards me, knocking the rest of the kids off their feet, the second I appear and look super psyched about Klara. 

N condemns me, though, because he’s anti-corruption.

There’s no need to ask about the relationship between Putin and any Russian oligarchs. They are all members of the same criminal gang. And I mean it in the most literal sense. 

The anti-refugee boulders in Paris are a mini wall a la Trump. Just like Marine LePen is a mini-Trump.

A Gmail plug in that might help the especially gruff among us. 

The horrible things people do to babies. 

Does anybody understand why the Obamas need to make this weird public spectacle of their private lives? Or anybody, for that matter. Why not communicate these feelings privately, instead? 

With everything that’s going on, this idiot is still fixated on Halloween costumes? Unbelievable. 

Crammers. Sad but true. 

School vouchers help desegregate schools. 

How to learn a language. Great suggestions. 

Idiotic righteousness has infected movie reviews. 

Karen K has gone completely nuts: “So many readers and clients are wondering how to keep going under the turmpocalypse.  It’s hard.  Between protesting, writing emails, signing petitions, attending town halls, and sobbing in our beds, it’s quite difficult to get anything else done. Who has time to think, let alone publish?”

A mother ship from Russia has approached Connecticut in search of its lost child Micheal Flynn. Let’s hope it takes Trump back home, as well.