Lutheran Insulter

Hee hee.

Adventures in research...

I'm spending this morning/afternoon doing some research in 19th-century periodicals, including Godey's Ladies Book. I must be getting punchy, because this article title made me laugh out loud: "Pleasing the Parish; Or the Minister's Wife." Yikes. (The article itself isn't that exciting...)

Update: Here's another good one: "Children--What Are They?"

Okay, maybe one more: "How I Came to Detest Babies!" (Yes, that exclamation point is part of the title.)

Yeah, The Giving Tree sucks...

Over at the Dish, readers take on one of the most messed-up books for kids, with an assist from Sassy Gay Friend. I actually meant to post the Sassy Gay clip eons ago.

Tee hee...

News that matters. Check out what the folks of Fort Wayne want to name their new city county building. Major props to the reporter and to the anchors for getting through this story without laughing.

Funny because it's true...

For my fellow academic friends.

Here we go again...

Classes start on Monday, but meetings and stuff start this week. I actually have an 8:15 meeting on Tuesday, which seems mean to me. I've been in my office almost every day I've been in town these past couple of weeks, but being compelled to be here before 8:30 on one of our last days of "break" is a bit much. Oh well.

The good news is that I've got 3 of 4 syllabi ready to go. I am still working on my ENGL 372: Advanced Composition syllabus--and probably will be until Sunday. (Maybe I'll post more about that class later...)

For now, though, how about some good old-fashioned linking-posting as a way of taking a 20 minute break from syllabizing?

1) Just because the kid is so very very cute, I must link the "Baby in Tub Assures You that, No, He Does Not Like Anything You Suggest." I love that the kid is saying pretty awful things, but you can't help but smile--and that you kind of want to ask him/her more questions.

2) Lots of folks are talking about last night's How I Met Your Mother and its big surprise ending. I'll admit that it made me tear up. It's a pretty bold move for this kind of comedy to make, but I don't agree with people saying that it doesn't work because it came out of nowhere. Isn't that precisely the point? I also didn't really get the countdown thing happening, although as soon I heard people talking about it, I remembered certain numbers standing out.

3) This is one of the silliest columns I've ever read at Insidehighered.com. I don't have vast amount of experiences on hiring committees (I've been involved in 6, on the committees for 5, and chaired 3), but I can say that we really and truly never talked about what folks wore. I don't even think it was a "back of my mind"/subconscious consideration for us. Sigh. Fortunately, people are tearing the piece down in the comments. 

4) Women laughing alone with salad. Love it, love it, love it. And, as Homer and Bart remind us, you don't win friends with salad.



5) Well played, James Van Der Beek. And the website is real.

6) Finally, this one, because yeah, it's not exactly new, but it really makes me laugh.

Two quick thoughts...

1) I know I should probably think this product is a bad idea, but all I can think is that it would be lovely to have some for my hot cocoa. Especially if we have another winter like last one. (Seriously--I think I have post-traumatic stress disorder from last winter...)

2) At the risk of being political in this space, I can't stop myself here. Remember when John McCain seemed to have integrity? What happened to this guy? This is as good an excuse as any to link to one of the most brilliant things the Daily Show has done lately: the "It's Gets Worse" video they made for McCain. 

"My bad side is as bad as my pleasant side is pleasant."

This poor guy. Dude, I've been there.

Wow...

Check out this guy. I'd trust him with a county treasury. Totally.

Mood lifters...

So if, like me, you find yourself feeling frustrated or even slightly, to quote my nephew, "yucky" today, try one of these to lift your mood:

1) Rep. Mike Weinstein's awesome campaign ad. This catchy little tune was stuck in my head for a hour or so yesterday.

2) Six thing from history that everyone pictures incorrectly. My favorite line (about what Greek statues really looked like): "Ancient Greece looked more like someone crashed their LGBT pride parade into a Mardi Gras Festival."

Yeah, it's hot out there, but I want more summer...

I am already not looking forward to the (short!) walk to my sure-to-be-a-replication-of-what-hell-might-feel-like car, and am hanging out here in my nicely air-conditioned office just a bit longer. I want this "historic heat wave" to be OVER. Yet, I am also fighting off a bit of a freak-out about not getting nearly enough scholarship done (yet) this summer. Because--honestly--this darn summer is flying by and I feel like I've wasted some time. Ugh. Talk about yucky, conflicting emotions. With all that said, how about some mindlessly fun links before I get a bit more reading done and then head home?

1) From Gawker, "How to Survive the Heat Wave with No Air-Conditioning." Fortunately, I have AC at home, but I am such a mega-cheapskate that I use it pretty sparingly. Anyway, the tip about using a regular old electric fan made me laugh: "Park the fan nice and close to your face and it's double the pleasure. Pretend you're Tyra Banks at a photo shoot and your weave is just blowing in the wind." I also like their tips about losing your socks. That one is so absolutely true (right down to making sure your feet aren't all stinky!).

2) A fabulous new blog: Catalog Living, which imagines those perfect yet slightly "off" catalog photos from Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, etc through a couple named "Gary" and "Elaine." I will admit to doing some serious coveting while looking through these sorts of catalogs (or for that matter, houses in movies like It's Complicated), but then I always think, "Do people actually have houses like this?" No one I know. And when do we cross that line from "cool conversation piece/decorating element!" to "huh?" My sister Tara is actually pretty good at this. Her house is kind of amazing. I did once scratch my head at her purchase of a ball of twigs for her coffee table. "What will you do with that?" I asked. I don't think she ever answered.

3) Glenn Beck University. Just the title is funny...or horrifying. Whatever.

Random links...

These are really just a collection of things I've been meaning to post--they are completely unrelated to each other...

1) The Drunk History series from Funny or Die. The thing is, take out some of the drunken excesses, and she sounds a bit like me teaching Frederick Douglass to my class. Or the pretentious drunken (and hilarious) conversations at any party in graduate school.

2) Louis Black on Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's. Awesome.

3) A 1927 map by Paramount Studios of fake filming locations (places in California that sort of look like other places.)

4) Love love love this vending machine.

5) A rare video clip of one my personal heroes, Victor Frankl, talking about man's search for meaning. (Read the book!)

6) From Saudi Arabia, the most terrifying commercial ever. Seriously, it's nightmare material...

7) To wipe that previous clip from your mind, check out this one, of a baby hearing sound for the very first time.

Lit links...

1) Coming soon: Mark Twain's autobiography, which has been in a vault for the past 100 years. This is an interesting article, but I'm not sure I agree with the woman who says, "Most people think Mark Twain was a sort of genteel Victorian." Really?

2) Jane's amazing mom passed this link onto me yesterday: "Emily Dickinson's Poetry Blooms at New York Botanical Gardens Exhibit." Another incentive to try to get up to NY sometime soon!

3) To Kill a Mockingbird turns 50.

4) Sarah Palin's spoken word poetry.

A few links...

It's been a long week, but (finally!) I am making progress on two big projects--both due on Friday--and will reward myself with a bit o' bloggin'. (Yes, I still have all of that grading to do, but that's another story.)

First, I'm just going to come out and say it: Chuck and Sarah are my favorite TV couple right now--one of my favorite TV couples ever. As I've mentioned before, this show just makes me smile. Not to sound too cheesy, but after a long, rough, and stressful Monday, for that one hour, I was in a much better mood. It's the perfect combination of good storytelling, humor, drama, and fabulous acting. The music's pretty awesome, too. I love that the writers let Chuck and Sarah get together (take notes, "Bones" writers, this is how it can be done!) without diminishing any of the show's energy (so far.) Check out this bit of Chuck Love from the folks at gawker.tv.

Second, I think this guy was probably in one of my classes at some point. Give it a read and find yourself moving from laughter to tears and then back to laughter. My other teacher friends no doubt understand my point: "I emailed you, Dr. H. Did you get it? How come you didn't respond? It's been a whole 2 hours!"

Third, from this morning's insidehighered.com, a pretty cool tribute to Susan Gubar from a former student that also goes a step further, asking important questions about curricular requirements, specifically about seminars.

Okay, now onto those 70 ENGL 204 papers...

Even more links...

These are the non-academic variety.

1) On my last trip up the NJ Turnpike, Jane (my awesome road-trip buddy!) and I discussed at length the names of the rest-stops along the way. I still don't get, for instance, why they have a James Fenimore Cooper rest-stop in New Jersey. My favorite name? The Walt Whitman Service Area, of course. Anyway, Gawker takes on the idea of renaming the rest- stops, and it's all kinds of funny.

2) The headline reads, "Veronica Mars Movie Could Still Happen, Arrested Development Perhaps Not." What the heck is the difference between "could still happen" and "perhaps not"? Anyway, I've got a bit of a sad (possible) spoiler alert here: as sad as it is to admit, neither one of these is going to happen folks. We were lucky to get each of these two shows for three awesome seasons. The final stage of grieving is, after all, letting go. Now let's dry our tears as we enjoy our DVDs.

3) Every time someone in my family (usually my dad) sends out a ludicrous conspiracy email, I head to snopes.com, find the de-bunking article, and send it back to him and whoever else he sent that first email to. (Is that obnoxious? I can't help myself.) Anyway, here's a cool profile of the folks behind snopes.com.

4) And finally, cute boys with cats. Yes, please.

Links, links, and more links...

It's the calm before the storm here, so to speak. Post-wedding, pre-grading onslaught. Yes, there are still dozens of tasks to get through today, but I really want to share some links that have been collecting in my bookmarks for a couple of weeks now.

First, the academic links beginning with the serious and ending with the downright funny:

1) Another great column from Libby Gruner, someone I met and admired in my brief time at the University of Richmond, at insiderhighered.com. This one takes on rubrics, spreadsheets, and the changing nature of being an English professor.

2) A nice little piece about keeping a notebook from insidehighered.com.

3) "Five Ways the Google Books Settlement Will Change the Future of Reading." Google Books has already changed the way I do research, so this article was especially interesting to me. A brief example: back in 2004/2005, when I was working on my dissertation, there was an childrens' book by Mary Mann that would have liked to get my hands on. Yes, I could have requested it via ILL, but it would have come in microfilm and that point in my process, I just didn't want to have another "must read on a small screen in the library" book to get through, especially for what would probably translate into a mere paragraph or footnote in my dissertation. So, I didn't get it. A few months ago, though, I was able to view and print the whole darn thing, thanks to Google Books. For people like me, interested in 19th-century and earlier texts, Google Books is amazing. I've also used it to print out big chunks of periodicals, for instance, to illustrate for my Seminar students the contexts in which some of Poe's stories appeared.

4) The field of English studies has been saved by "Neuro Lit Crit." Thank goodness. Some doubts and reactions here.

5) So a professor in California runs a website with advice for picking up hookers in Thailand. I don't see a problem here. (Actually, it's kind of an interesting piece in terms of how you handle abhorrent personal behavior that doesn't technically affect someone's work on campus.)

6) [Veering towards the funny/irreverent here.] "20 Percent of Librarians Have Done It in the Stacks." Isn't that the entire reason for working in the library? This also makes me think about my librarian friends in new ways...

7) "A Princeton Professor Dissects Ke$ha's 'Tic Tok.'" Absurdly wonderful.

Thursday afternoon cuteness...

Love love love this. The expression on the girl in the middle is just bonus awesomeness.

Newswatch...

From the Onion...


Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

Andrew Sullivan also linked to the Onion clip--and the one below, too, that I didn't see the first time he posted it. It's pretty spot on, too.



This is, of course, why it is so depressing to watch the news these days.

Long, crazy days...

It's been another long day here at the office. And a random day, too. Among things I accomplished: sent out invitation letters for possible new members of Sigma Tau Delta, graded a bunch of stuff (what else is new?), read, read, read, and read some more, sent about 100 emails (okay, a slight exaggeration), met with students, went to a meeting, taught a class, and...

...sent out formal rejection letters for the two searches I chaired this year. Human Resources actually handles the bulk of these, but I had to send letters to anyone we actually interviewed. What a strange and depressing exercise. I know I've said before how weird it is to be on the other side of this process, but this part--sending these letters and having HR sent the other notices--has been one of the hardest.

One thing the job search makes very clear (from this side) is how very lucky I was to get my job. The thing is, if my school were to re-run the search for my job next year, and I was thrown in with a whole bunch of new candidates, would I still get it? (This assumes that my department could experience a mind-wipe and forget the how awesome I've been since they hired me. Ha ha.) The answer: Probably not. That's just strange to think about, isn't it?

One other Herculean task accomplished today: I got some shoes for Erin's wedding. Believe me, shoe shopping is NOT something I enjoy and I had to take to the internet to find what I was looking for. The only requirement from the bride (the least Bridezilla Bride out there, for which I am so grateful!) was that the shoes be gold. My requirements? Comfortable! So I went with these. What do you think?

To recap, my day started off with online shoe shopping and rejection letters. Not an ideal way to get going.

But a few bits of humor helped me make it through. First, the "Academy's" Awards. The last three are my favorites:

Best Supporting Actor, Faculty: Professor Who Manages to Act As If There Are No Dumb Questions

Best Supporting Actor, Student: Student who Manages to Laugh at Every Joke by Professor, No Matter How Awful

Costume Design: award retired in honor of the MLA convention

Second, on a related note, this year's batch of "Honest Movie Titles." The line at the bottom of the Precious poster made me laugh out loud ("Don't Bring a Date, Seriously"), which probably says something bad about me. I also loved the Up poster: "This shit comes to us in our sleep." Man, I really loved Up.

Okay--back to work I go! I've got some Poe to read before heading home. And yay! Lost is on tonight!!!

"Rhymes with The City of Salinas"

I took this post's title from Andrew Sullivan's post...couldn't think of a better one.

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