archives for Monday 7 April 2008

an exchange by the refrigerator

Monday 7 April 2008 | I like a cookie

“You were so sneaky! You were all innocent: So which god do you think you are, dear? And you didn’t say anything about your blog post.” “I wasn’t even thinking about my blog! It was a genuine question.” “And I said Pluto, do you remember that? I can bring you great suffering and, along with [...]

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david foster wallace’s personal collection of ugly english [diatribe warning]

Monday 7 April 2008 | 6 cookies in the jar

From the opening to his 2001 essay for Harper’s, “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage.” Are these eggcorns, or, as the Brujo would mutter, just plain wrong? I’m an English teacher, you know what I think. “Save up to 50%—(and More)!” Between you and I. On accident. Somewhat of a. Kustom Kar [...]

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so *why* am I teaching english again?

Monday 7 April 2008 | I like a cookie

Still, how could anything be better than $665 every two weeks and a lineup of a dozen querulous students today and another twenty tomorrow? People, you can’t beat that with a big red stick! As it were.

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sadly without blue mallow flowers

Monday 7 April 2008 | I like a cookie

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a condensed romantic history

Monday 7 April 2008 | someone left a cookie

With a Dionysus partner (e.g., a cult leader), a Persephone woman gets madness [my father]. With an Ares partner, she gets physical abuse [the Monk]. With a Poseidon partner, she gets emotional abuse [op. cit.]. With Zeus, she gets cheated on [well...the Parisienne was really Aphrodite]. Hermes [the Footie Lout] and Apollo [the Republican and [...]

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spinculum obnoxium

Monday 7 April 2008 | I like a cookie

Sunday flew past with papers ungraded and manuscripts unedited, long sunslanted hours spent seeking out with pricked fingers and uprooting the branching vines of this little number, a naturalized (and I would venture to say, invasive) ground-hugging burr from the Mediterranean. True, it provides forage and crop cover in Southern Australia and Texas; but when [...]

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