I haven’t watched the show, so I can’t yet say for certain if the gay hockey loon is geographically appropriate.

This video was like “fellas, if a girl says she reads a lot, it is all smut.” I wanted to be offended, but then I remembered…

Same resolution until I finally get it: learn to whistle the flute solo from John Prine’s Fish and Whistle.

Do you think my students will be understanding about my syllabi not being done if I show them the Edmund Fitzgerald I’ve been cross stitching?

The bookstore randomly added a kindle unlimited romance book about a border patrol agent to the book list for my Native Lit class. Surely AI is to blame for this.

The Melville Society's CFPs for @the-ala.bsky.social are here! We'll be sponsoring two panels: 1. Leisure, Laziness, Labor in Melville and His Contemporaries 2. Melville & Justice Submit abstracts by January 11th! www.melvillesociety.org/news/call-for-papers-melville-society-panels-at-ala-2026

I went here and they all knew you.

On this December 25th, which journey are you honoring? ▪️The Pequod leaves Nantucket ▪️The Fellowship leaves Rivendell

Have you ever seen a more gorgeous last minute holiday gift?! Huge thanks once again to @andyoler.bsky.social for letting me vent about August Derleth and the wildlife statues that have haunted my nightmares for years.

If you were wondering where all the sensitive eagles went, they’re here.

help

We are excited to announce the 2024 Hennig Cohen Prize winner: Geoffrey R. Kirsch, for his article “Piercing the Corporate Whale: Agents, Principals, and the Personified Impersonal in Moby-Dick,” published in Leviathan, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 55-68. www.melvillesociety.org/news/2024-he...

I’ve had a grudge against Steve Nass since my time in the UW system, but my god. www.wpr.org/news/gop-bil...

HELP, MY HEART

My TA is terrible at grading.

Ok. Times New Roman is out. What fonts best reflect your politics?

I miss the person I was when I could just casually watch The West Wing to unwind.

Quick poll for C19ers getting pumped for Cincinnati. When you see this, do you imagine A) the phantom of the opera as an industrial worker or B) the ghosts of Deb and Hugh Wolfe

The special issue I co-edited on "Melville's Queer Afterlives" is here and it's queer. This issue has EVERYTHING: gay pirates, dirty pictures, racist internet fanfic, Gilbert Gottfried, original poetry, and just so many French people. Available at your library, but LMK if you're paywalled...

One of these, but a walkable city.

When you look away, the plumbob drops directly on your sims’ heads, which is why they act like that.

I probably need to get a new car soon, but I know I will never be happy until I can drive the Busytown apple.

I’m feeling conflicted. While I’m excited to add another extremely rare example of headline questions that can be answered in the affirmative to the file, it’s annoying to once again see the Chronicle asking the wrong question entirely.

As a child, people assumed I was a Molly (the glasses), but I’m obviously a Kirsten (willing to risk it all to have a pet raccoon).

Britney was born on the day John Brown was executed?

i would like credit for suggesting they face the wall (but maybe i don't want credit for being mean like that)

Ah Bartleby! Ah finals week!

For Bartleby day, I had students copy 19th century legal documents by hand until they appropriately protested. They made it 7 minutes. So much longer than I expected!

Why won’t Silicon Valley invest millions in me? If I chug a ton of water, I can also write a mediocre essay and lie.

Annoying my family by pointing out every time a loon call in a movie is geographically inappropriate.

JOHN BROWN DAY! Told my students to do their vocal warmups before class. Foreshadowing.

Is it really my fault if the soft animal of my body loves to start shit?

Me in my office after no one at work recognized my Wisconsin culture on the 50th anniversary:

I feel like I am a professor in the same way that a dog is sometimes the mayor.

Finally, a student has taken me up on my longstanding extra credit offer and made an “Emerson’s Transparent Eyeball” costume.

Give me one good reason why “The Minister’s Black Veil” isn’t just the male loneliness epidemic.

Dashcon president

they’ve been doing this, as I reported years ago! www.thedailybeast.com/why-ai-is-de...

Sure, but if it was a ball PIT you’d all change your tunes pretty quick.

A student tried to explain Disney’s Descendants to me and every new piece of information made me more distressed. What do you mean the villains are trapped on a prison island? It’s a slum? And they raise their children there?! BECAUSE THE CHILDREN ARE ALL ASSUMED TO BE VILLAINS FROM BIRTH?!?!

Can Sarah Marshall of @yourewrongabout.bsky.social do the audiobook?

Some days when I read Emerson, I want to give him a swirlie. Some days, like today, I just feel like dudes rock 🤙 y’know?

Happy (not quite) birthday to Hannah Crafts, whose precise date of birth is unknown (circa 1830), but who still deserves to be celebrated! Read about Crafts with: - "Addition by Subtraction: Toward a Literary History of Racial Representation" by Gene Andrew Jarrett: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic... 1/2

Lots of options but let's go classic on this one and say that time we shitposted so hard they put it in a peer reviewed journal and then that issue won a prize 🐳

Anyone who knows the concussion protocol want to critique my form here? I tried my best.

The only history I’m interested in these days: today is Snoopy’s 75th bday.

Remember last year when I asked the chancellor what admin’s plan was when people started calling for professors to get fired and he lectured me about classroom management? You think it’s okay to circle back to that now that professor in the system are getting fired?

How much money do I need to become the most unhinged Real Housewife and would you donate to my GoFundMe?

This reminds us of our favorite Midwest tourist attraction and definitely does not make us think about OUR LEG.

A reading list for building durable organizations for both short term survival and long term social transformation.