Newest thoughts →

June 2012

“@jonhickman @martin_eve LOOKS REFABLE. If you can get a laptop down there it'll count for your research environment” < my patio has IMPACT

Now I have a slide called "Critical Dystopia and the Necropolis", you'll all want to come to my talk at Brighton Uni on Monday on 2666.

I've got to say that the part I like least about writing conference papers is making the slides/presentations. Tedious compared to writing.

If society functions with only a proportion working, perhaps we need to accept that and either job-share or pay people who aren't working.

When there are no jobs and a gross top-loading of wages, we need *more* benefit entitlement. Everybody should be entitled to a decent life.

Does anybody else get spam from the "International Journal of Humanities and Social Science"? I'm getting their CFP call almost every day.

Oh god. I just saw the "Science: It's a Girl Thing" video. Truly appalling gender stereotyping. We definitely need some parodies.

The #tobyswisdom hashtag is great. Backstory: Toby Young put out an idiotic tweet to @OwenJones84. Now hundreds taking the piss in return!

Things I hate with #marking: when all the students answer the same question. Especially when it's the red herring "easy" one.

Wow. Just marked the most incredible first year essay on poetic metre and formal innovation in The Waste Land. Closed text exam, too.

“@mweller Reviewing about 30 papers for a Mock REF exercise. Just what is being mocked is not clear, I suspect it's me”

Lots of friendly familiar names listed for the Teaching Post-Millennial Lit conference. Looking forward to it!

She is right that there are lots of plus sides to working in academia, but the environment is becoming corrosive, fuelled by REF etc.

“@dkernohan @martin_eve I saw pictures of $tediouscelebrity in a daring low-cut license that left little to the imagination.” #mailoa

Are you kidding? "Why the young should welcome austerity". Niall Ferguson piece on BBC. Is the answer: "because my generation didn't"?

Hmm. 21st-C. fiction conference seems to have scheduled the only two papers on David Foster Wallace (me + another) at exactly the same time.

Great idea Osborne. Please help out those starving banks. Struggling so hard to pay their bonuses. Those wealth creators have it so hard.

If you think you should be thanked in my Ph.D. thesis and might have been forgotten, now would be a good time to speak...

Interesting how Gordon Brown is referred to as "Mr. Brown" & not "Dr. Brown" (he has a Ph.D. in history); avoiding image of academic?

Wonder what excuse Greater Anglia have for my train's cancellation and now delay on next. "It was raining a bit"?

I welcome measures proven to improve grammar and spelling. Gove's poetry by rote won't, though. If it's decent poetry, it will subvert this.

Doing final check of my bibliography. Remember, even if using Zotero: garbage in, garbage out. Only as gd as yr metadata #phdchat #phdadvice

(although I've now seriously irritated my spouse by doing most of the script, which I know by heart, on the journey home)

Although I think you have to go very badly wrong to screw up that Orton play, I highly recommend this production!

Off to see Orton's What the Butler Saw at the Vaudeville theatre now. Can't wait! "We might even get necrophilia too, as a sort of bonus!"

Can't remember who I was talking about this with, but CM9 Nightlies for SGS2 are now usable. In fact, they're great!

Decided to take a break from proofreading my thesis today to... finish proofreading Orbit's first issue.

Read "Negativity & Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism" book collection this morning. First 2/3rd great, the rest, so-so.

I have just had a really thorough read of our doctoral handbook to check my thesis compliance. This is what bank holidays are for.

“@situationniste “@badcoverversion Lesson for many academics: complex sentence structures do not necessarily indicate complex thought.””

I hate being pedantic and [sic]ing things where it's just extremely uncommon usage, but fear if I don't I'll be picked up on it. #phdchat

Fun #phdchat tweet of the day. To merely *cite* all the literature in my field of study (Thomas Pynchon) would take 90,000 words.

Why do parents allow their children to just scream? They're not scared in this instance, they're just having a screaming competition.