Stratofanatic's Emporium

It sure would make sense to do these productivity reports for a calendar year, but the August-August timeline -- basically the academic year -- works just fine too, I suppose. In my previous yearly productivity report , I managed 63,000 words of writing, most of it publishable, and I expressed hopes that my upcoming year on a Writing Fellowship would see that output rise. I didn't quite make that, primarily because of job applications and the massive revisions my dissertation underwent during February and March, which meant that I couldn't accomplish any new work. But even if I wasn't quite convinced about the necessity of those revisions, at least the beast is done, and life's going good. So, the output: Essay on narrative theory and world construction in The Hobbit (under review) -- 6,000 words Essay on J.R.R. Tolkien and why he nominated E.M. Forster for the 1954 Nobel Prize (forthcoming) -- 9,000 words Essay on Glen Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night se...

Well, more like "The Travails of Moving," but then that wouldn't alliterate, would it? :) So, I've done several big moves in my life, and while it's always stressful, I'm generally someone who travels light. No furniture, no big ticket items, just a couple (dozen) boxes of books which I usually sent via USPS and that's it. Marriage, though, has a way of helping you accumulate a whole lotta stuff, so our upcoming move to Arizona is proving trickier than any of my other previous ones.** The challenge now is that, just yesterday, we nearly almost hired a scam moving company called Region Relocations. Thankfully, my ever diligent wife  Martina, the faithful checker of on-line reviews, checked out them out and saw loads of awful ratings. When I asked their customer rep about them, he hemmed and hawed and finally said, "Well, trust protectyourmove.gov more than Yelp." So I said, "Okay, I'll check that out and call you back." Lo and b...

Okay.  So, last Friday was a day of major ups and downs for me. I'll start off with the good news. I've been waiting until I got my official contract before I announced it, but . . . .  I GOT A JOB!!!!!  It's a full-time lecturer position at . . . get this . . . the University of friggin' Arizona . I couldn't be more stoked to be joining a state flagship research institution. It's the ideal place for someone like me to land, and the wife and I have been googling the area, the city of Tucson, and the university like crazy since we got confirmation. My initial schedule is also awesome -- four classes, all MWF, and from 12 noon to 4 pm.  What makes this job even sweeter is that, a month ago, I believed that I had completely struck out on this year's job market -- a whopping 0-90. UA put their job ad up on June 20th (cuz they hadn't had their budget finalized yet, as I later found out), and my interview a few weeks later went really well. The rigorous GTA...

So, yeah, the Wall Street Journal is crazy, but this article caught my eye. The gist is that not all "radical leftists" (aka, college professors) are "crazy." The reference is to center-left criticisms of a Duke professor touting a conspiracy theory about a Nobel-prize winning economist James Buchanan. At least the article writer makes it sound like a conspiracy theory -- this could simply be a normal academic discussion about a particular work, which strikes me as much more likely than a so-called conspiracy theory. Anyway, what's especially interesting about this is James Buchanan. I've heard the name, but only because he's one of my graduate university's most favored sons -- he got his undergrad from Middle Tennessee State, and we have a nifty plaque of him on-campus. (It's about 1/50th the size of the status of the football coach for our completely unknown football program, though!)

So, I recently signed up to do an academic review of a  Okja (2017), a film directed by South Korean director Joon-ho Bong, for Science Fiction Film & Television .  You know -- just as one of those things to be productive. Anyway, film's not exactly my wheelhouse, and I've never really seen academic reviews of films before, so I printed off some sample reviews from SFF&T .  In the half dozen I sampled, I discovered two things: A) unlike a blog or website review for a film, I'm going to have to try hard to be smart here. Which is to say, some of the reviews were damn good, so I'll have to stay on my toes to achieve that level of quality. B) two of the sample reviews, however, waded into the area of "cringe-worthy." Well-written, but slanted to the point of unbelievability. The first was of the film Ex Machina , which I loved.  **SPOILER WARNING** Anyway, Ex Machina . The guy did a feminist review of the film, and his major contention is that...

The tropes of hard-boiled detective, and particularly hard-boiled prose, have been so relentlessly parodied that it comes as a shock to see them in non-ironic contexts. I had a few Mickey Spillane books lying around and, although I almost never read detective fiction, I've been meaning to try him out because: (A)  He was massively popular in his day, and I like to keep  my snobbishness at bay, and (B) Ayn Rand, of all people, absolutely loved him. Anyway, I'm only three chapters into a very short book, and it's already a struggle. The detective's name is Mike Hammer ( HAMMER , for crying out loud) and he's so bitter, cynical, and sneering that I absolutely detest him already. But the prose, the prose! If you believe in gems of atrociousness, then I submit to you the following: "Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off some...

Originally, I had wanted to title this entry "'Bums aloft!" (and other reasons not to read Angela Carter)," but, unfortunately, I'm afraid I'll have to eat goat on this one. The culprit is The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography by Edmund Gordon, a book for which I'm currently doing a review. Alas and alack, greater knowledge of Carter has led to a greater personal appreciation for her, forcing me to revise my earlier cutting opinions. This is why you shouldn't read stuff. I often tell me students, "If a little learning is a dangerous thing, think of how dangerous a lot of learning is -- and I don't want that on my conscience." In this case, however, it's too late for me. Anyway, here's why I didn't initially like Carter -- as varied as her writing is (and I would never deny the talent), I just loathe most postmodern books. Things like Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O'Brien are exceptions, but I really, really, really disli...