Erik Eklund

I am firm believer in the idea that sometimes people need to be treated like dogs. Hey, look, that’s your shit you did right there, and you’ve been ignoring it. I need you either to eat it or to learn from it.

Let’s see how this performs when I say this on the 4th of July around every conservative I know.

“In a flat-out chase between a shark and giant dog-paddling dinosaur” is the greatest hook I’ve ever heard. Thank you Morgan Freeman and the new Netflix Dinosaurs series.

Really meant to say “they neither have nor offer knowledge.”

LLMs have no intentionality. Intentionality is a basic prerequisite for meaning-making. Without intentionality, and without meaning, there is no knowledge. LLMs do not intend and do not mean, therefore they neither nor offer knowledge. Simple as.

Live your life such that people will always be surprised to find out you of all people were ever allowed to give a conference paper.

How many theology degrees do I have to get to become a literary critic?

Three. The answer is three.

Really though all it takes is one supervisor who doesn’t give a shit about theology.

I forget the poem’s title, but Nabokov somewhere plays with, or homages, Frost’s “For Once, Then, Something.”

Nabokov agrees with you. That’s like Shakespeare, if he wrote prose, agreeing with you. So you’re good.

First saw Kathryn Joseph at a Tiny Changes benefit concert back in February 2020. Amazing.

Is smog also a verb? How does chloroform work? The things you look up when writing on Nabokov.

This has me thinking about somewhere where Javier Marías says, “We always arrive too late in other people’s lives.” I told my wife this line and I think it broke her for like a week.

I don’t care who you are. The new Wuthering Heights is amazing. We need someone who, like Baz Luhrmann, lives and breathes and directs on vibes, but, you know, is good at it and doesn’t live up their own ass.

So I have an article on *checks notes* Nabokov, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa coming out from Religion & Literature sometime this year. I’m still surprised myself at the combination.

In due time history will have denounced everybody, etc etc etc. Nabokov, rarely wrong.

Ten glorious years of a guy who has mostly been the president and always been the main character of American political life doing posts like this and everyone trying to figure out what cable news segment he saw, misunderstood in the way a dog might misunderstand a crossword, and made into policy.

Who do I know in Philly?

Did Mark Driscoll write the last line?

To quote The Big Lebowski in the direction of PCA theobros on Calvin: “You’re not wrong; you’re just an asshole.”

Calvin is as great as the PCA says he is, but for very non-PCA reasons.

This is so incredibly dumb but there’s some family drama I can never share with anyone that just makes this so damn funny to me, a research fellow affiliated with one of these schools 😈

And bruv it runs so deep too though. The writer in an interview compared himself to Kinbote, Villeneuve to Shade, and started pointing out all these allusions he may or may not have forced into the film.

That and all the Pale Fire

I was the shadow of waxwing slain etc etc etc

You’re the fucking Gallup poll. What the fuck are they going to do to you? There’s nothing that calls your own integrity into question quite like licking boot.

Fucking weak ass motherfuckers

a man is standing in front of a crowd with his arms outstretched and a sign that says fine behind him . ALT: a man is standing in front of a crowd with his arms outstretched and a sign that says fine behind him .

How long O Lord

One reason TED talks became so incredibly popular was that their house intellectual style papers over thoughtfulness of the kind serious humanities research requires, allowing people who would rather not think hard to feel that they sound profound.

Close reading close reading close reading. And explaining to them that I can only grade what is written, not what I think they may have meant by what is written.