Urban Honking

My husband has been forcing me to stay up until 11:00 because he believes it will help with my middle-of-the-night insomnia. For the past week, when I start fading around 9:30 or 10:00 he starts his boot camp. “HONEY IT’S ONLY 9:30 IT’S NOT BEDTIME. HONEY TALK TO ME TELL ME A STORY.” I sit […]

What evil insomnia I have struggled with since I started my career! I’ve never been the world’s greatest sleeper—the slightest noise wakes me up and I require absolute darkness—but in recent years it’s gotten wild. I have the kind where you wake up in the middle of the night, not the kind where you can’t […]

I’m reading the diaries of Aaron Burr, on the recommendation of Freddy, who sent me a truly amazing excerpt I’ll get to in a bit. I’m reading them very casually, kind of letting them wash over me, and it’s been a weirdly interesting and relaxing experience. I can hardly follow anything that happens because a […]

I just realized that for many months I have not been getting emails when people comment on this blog! So there are all these un-approved comments you people have written that you thought I was simply ignoring! So sad. There was a great one on the post about the dogs of the Endurance, a very […]

Trying to learn about the 18th and 19th century liberal and anarchist thinkers whose names get bandied about willy-nilly these days but who most of us don’t read past a few excerpts in high school that we don’t understand. I have taken the important first step, which is purchasing copies of The Wealth of Nations […]

We’ve been on a Joel Schumacher kick, because we watched the 2004 Phantom of the Opera he made and it is INCREDIBLE. It got terrible reviews but critics are fools—I truly have never imagined that a film version could remain so true to the batshit psychedelic hysteria of the original. Seriously, five minutes into it […]

A longtime reader and IRL friend says I should write a GIFT GUIDE so guess what it’s a new holiday tradition: A GUIDE TO BADASS HOLIDAY GIFTS WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO CRITICALLY STUDIES CAPITALISM FOR A LIVING BUT WHO ALSO WANTS COOL SHIT Subscriptions!!!!! I think subscriptions are very fun. They aren’t called “the gift […]

I am at a conference, which means I am sleeping even worse than usual (side note: is me blogging constantly about my sleep problems more or less interesting than me blogging constantly about being Stressed Out At Work? I’m sorry but also F YOU, if you don’t like it you can go read some awesome […]

I am having an intense couple of weeks and today I am taking a break before another meeting thing I have to go to this afternoon. For me, taking a break = getting up at 6:45, putting on these weirdly fancy sweatpants I somehow acquired (dry clean only?? For sweatpants????), making the thickest darkest coffee […]

I am struggling with a rare bout of procrastination and I hate it. My refusal to procrastinate is honestly one of my only skills as a scholar and I live in fear of losing it. But right now I just don’t feel the inspiration that usually drives me into hunching over my computer for hours. […]