My dedication to my profession is immense if I’m plowing through a book that uses words like “heteronormativity, whitenormativity (yes, it’s 1 word), and colonialnormativity (also 1 word)” in the same sentence. 

You might laugh but if good academics (me, for instance) don’t write good scholarship using meaningful language, that’s all we’ll have in lieu of scholarship. So I get to read this crap and produce an alternative. 

73 percent of voters want to see Democrats work with the president, against only 27 percent who said Democrats should resist Trump’s every move.

The resisters are a tiny minority. Everybody else is eager for the market-state. 

Turns out that all those stories about Trump’s low approval ratings are garbage. He has enormously low approval ratings among Democrats. With Republicans, on the other hand, his approval is a sky-high 87%. So in the eyes of the people he is supposed to try to please he’s doing fantastic. Even Putin has a lower approval rating, and that’s with a fully controlled media apparatus. 

Instead of the gleeful “Ha, Trump is so hated, that loser”, we should concentrate on why he is so enormously successful with his voters. 

For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.

Golf clubs, prawns at Jean Georges, and window covering options, whatever those are – this is what the ultra-rich are all about. Their only goal is to strip you bare so that they can increase the number of their window covering options from 17 to 47. And you can either say “yes, sir!” and drop trou, or finally wonder why their window coverings should be paid for by you. 

When you go to meet the Queen of England, you’ll be told that there is a single rule you must follow, a single thing you can’t do if the Queen decides to strike up a conversation with you. 

What is the single most important thing you shouldn’t do when you meet the Queen?

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.