“But why, why are they selling these cancer sticks? Don’t they know smoking kills?” protested a customer as he bought 3 blocks of Camel Lights.

“Exactly! And why do they sell alcohol? Don’t they know it’s bad for you?” exclaimed another one while paying for a crate of Grey Goose.

The quiet Midwest. 

I just saw some clueless rich lady say on the news, “When women across the country hear the stories about Weinstein and the rest of them, they can relate.”

I’m feeling very unwell but still I almost choked with laughter.

The rich are so clueless.

It seems like in entertainment, politics and journalism men behave like they are in the USSR or post-Soviet space. Meaning, like total pigs. 

I’m sincerely glad this is not the case in academia. As a result of childhood trauma, I can’t tolerate anything that could even remotely resemble sexual harassment. So I’m happy I never felt it, saw it, heard about it, or smelled it in my profession. 

Of course, these reports are deepening the gulf between the elites and the regular folks who think “you people are all animals, I don’t know anybody who behaves like that.” 

Today I designed the syllabus for my new course. It will be on Latin America, which is not my area, so I had to remember everything I was taught in graduate school. I’d received a great training in Colonial literature, so that helped. The textbook is entirely new to me and not amazing.

So I designed the syllabus.

Found all the readings I will assign. 

Selected the excerpts from the readings to use both in class and as homework for every day of class. [Thanks to grad school comps I can take a 4-volume text from the 16th century and find the 3 pages I need within minutes].

Prepared discussion questions based on the readings.

Created 20 quizzes.

Found all the readings I will offer as options for the final essay. 

By the end of the process, I had 29 windows open in my MS Word because I need to see the course as a totality. It’s an important course. We don’t let students graduate without it, and I need it to be good. 

I did all this before noon. After that, I couldn’t do any more work for private reasons. And I spent the rest of the day beating myself up for being lazy and unproductive.

But writing this post helped. So thank you for listening.

Charles Manson, a brave Russian Patriot, was executed by evil Ukrainian Nazis. You can laugh but Russian patriots lapped up the story and reported it as true. People will believe anything if you use some key words they program themselves to respond to. 

The MLA job list continues to suck:

The association’s Job Information List — a proxy for the tenure-track (or otherwise full-time) job market in English and foreign languages — included 851 jobs last year in English, 11 percent (102 jobs) fewer than the year before. The foreign language edition list included 808 jobs, or 12 percent (110 jobs) fewer than the year before.
The declines of the past five years bring the number of total jobs advertised to another new low, according to MLA, below the dip seen between 2007-08 and 2009-10.

The only good strategy for people considering going to grad school in these fields and hoping for a professorial position is 

A. Only go if you get accepted by an Ivy.

B. Remember it’s a gamble and decide in advance when you will get up from the table. I knew I would stop playing the moment I didn’t get a position that had words “Assistant Professor” in it. I wouldn’t be able to gamble away even a year of my life. Other people are in a better situation and can afford one or two years. But you have to be prepared to stop gambling and know in advance when that will be.

The last two weeks of the semester before the finals are my favorite time. All the major teaching, prep, and grading work is done. Now we have entered what I call “the cozy time of year.” 

It’s a priceless moment, from the pedagogical point of view, because I can come together with the students in the relaxed atmosphere of knowing each other well and being able to learn without as much stress and pressure as usual. If it weren’t +20°C here, it’d feel downright Christmas-like. 

Do any of you, folks, have the so-called Alexa? Do you find it useful? Other than telling you the weather forecast, what does it do?