Back in 2008, a certain large university rejected my application for an Assistant Professor position.

Today that same university tried to headhunt me for the job of the Dean of its College of Arts and Sciences. It’s the opposite of a job of my dreams, so I’m not interested but I do feel vindicated.

From Stephen King’s new COVID novel Holly:

The reception area feels like a held breath. Holly starts the coffee maker. The visitor’s delivery is staccato and she keeps touching her mask to be sure it’s in place. “I can take this off, you know. I’m double-vaxxed and Covid negative. I took the home test just last night.” “Why don’t we wear them out here? We’ll take them off in my office and have some coffee.”

The mask needs to be on in the empty reception area but comes off in the office where the exact same two people are present. This is offered in complete seriousness as the only rational, science-based behavior.

Stephen King is truly the master of the horror genre.

I decided to be adventurous and ordered a newly invented pumpkin pizza at the local pizza place. It has pumpkin-infused cheese, Italian sausage and pumpkin seeds. Unusual but not bad.

The owner of the place / the inventor of the pumpkin pizza came out to observe my reaction. “How does it taste?” he asked. “Isn’t it true it ended up tasting exactly like Thanksgiving turkey stuffing?”

That was when I realized I never had the Thanksgiving turkey stuffing because I stuff with buckwheat and mushrooms.

The work of assimilation is never complete.

Folks, please, somebody, what’s the name of this grass?

It emits an absolutely amazing smell, like of fresh oxygen. I want it, I need it. Please help.

I’m not watching the Republican primary debate but I heard Chris Christie referred to one of the opponents as “the guy who sounds like ChatGPT”. Does anybody know whom he meant? It had to be DeSantis, right?

Identity, as we shall see, is something peculiar to liberalism; it is the mutilated corpse of civilization. What distinguishes a civilization state is its ability to provide an overarching framework for social and political life and therefore a viable or plausible alternative to the liberalism of the West.

https://www.noemamag.com/the-return-of-civilizations/

A very good article.

Sometimes it’s better to admit defeat.

I’ve been working on a book project for years, and it’s a dud. I should have known it’s a dud because I wrote two other books while keeping it on the back burner. This should have told me that I’m not excited about it. It’s a drag.

The reason the book didn’t work out is because I mishandled it from the start. For a reason I can’t fully explain, I decided to chuck everything I know about working on long-term projects and do the exact opposite.

What works for me is to have a book plan, with chapter names, tiles of books I’ll analyze in each and the main idea of each chapter. Then I write one chapter, finish it, revise the main idea based on what I found. Write another chapter, finish, and revise the first chapter and the main idea. And so on. That works.

But for the poor, innocent dud, I abandoned the policy of targeted strikes and went with the carpet-bombing technique, writing several chapters at once, not knowing how many there will be, being unable to define the scope, and getting hopelessly bogged down.

The result is a confusing, directionless, repetitive mess.

Sometimes, concession is whatevs, whatevs, so I’m officially conceding defeat and starting a completely new project titled Neoliberal Love. I already did the complete book plan today.

The failure of the poor dud is due 100% to my hubris and disorganization. I thought I was too cool for school and could just wing it without the humility and the discipline that a large project requires. With the Ukrainian book, I felt humbled by my language difficulties, followed the rules, and everything worked.

“Daddy’s most favorite thing to do in life,” says Klara pensively, “is play with me. His second favorite thing to do is feed me.”

The funny thing is that she’s not at all wrong.

OK, that’s unexpected:

Does anybody have any idea why? I read the whole thread and I still don’t get it. What else are they doing at this age?

N would tell me severely that he was concentrating on his studies but he’s a) unusual and b) terrified of being dragged into the Russian army if he weren’t in college. What’s everybody else’s excuse?

So.

The new Cormoran Strike has dropped. And it’s about a woke religious cult.

I mean.

This is going to be good.