Guilt free

I'm thinking about lots of things these days--my book, revising an article to resubmit, making sure the damned Norton Anthology reached the bookstore, prepping Beowulf, the pile of dishes in my sink, etc.--but it's nearly September, so the thing I'm thinking about loudest is the job market. I've been trying to come up with a justification for going on; given that my colleagues are so lovely and the College is so needy and resourceless and cute, it seems morally bankrupt of me to want to leave simply for monetary reasons. But let's obsessively review the situation one more time, shall we?

• I live in a teensy town that is a cultural sinkhole, even with a college campus in the middle of it. It is unreachable except by automobile, as the poor European graduate students who teach our language courses are inevitably shocked to find.
• The nineteen B.A.-granting colleges in this country at which assistant professors make less money either (a) are run by people in questionably legal compounds in Idaho, (b) have names containing some combination of the words "Bethany," "Wesleyan," "Bible," or "Our Lady of Painful Deliberation," or (c) are in Puerto Rico.
• The health benefits are so grossly dire that the diagnosis of an incommunicable, untreatable, harmless rash has cost me $400 this summer, of which the insurers paid $12.71. Of course, if I had a job at the U. of Chicago (average asst. prof. salary: $73,400) or even at another school that was interested in hiring me, this wouldn't be a problem. But $400 hits me pretty hard.

Okay, but do you notice how much of a whiny bastard I seem when I say such things? My department has the institutional equivalent of puppydog eyes when it comes to the question of my leaving or staying, and the joyous thought of getting another job always bears with it the anxiety of having to put a bullet between those puppydog eyes.

But thank goodness for relationships. Because the incontrovertible truth is that M. cannot and will not practice law in Nowhere, WI! So I have not only an excuse but an imperative to go somewhere that needs attorneys, which may also be a place that needs English professors, and might even be a city large enough to contain theaters and other such things necessary to someone who teaches drama. Heck, a job that pays better than graduate school would almost be gravy! So now I can just pet the puppydog and tell it I love it as I take it to live with a nice family in the country.

Of course, I also have to get a job offer, but after this moral quandary at home, that seems like a cakewalk.

Selfish bastards

So here I had the end of my summer all planned out. Two of my best friends, E. and B. (the latter of whom recently impregnated the former) were returning this week from Toronto and Bolivia, respectively. This meant that B. could help M and me move furniture, which he promised to do in exchange for us feeding his cat--to which we're both allergic--and watching his house while he's off anthropologizing. It meant that E. and B. could both come see my show, and it meant that I could finally have my friends back in Nowhere after a somewhat stir-crazy Wisconsin summer.

Unfortunately, they have had the gall to have somewhat demanding lives themselves. B. has been holed up with some kind of Bolivian gutbug, and the steadily growing krill inside E. decided to emerge early and announce herself as a 3 lb, 13 oz human called Maddy. So while the father scrambles to Canada, leaking gutbug juice, and the mother oversees the graduation of the new person to home-going status, we take care of the damned cat and have to find someone else to help with the move. How dare they?

Seriously, I couldn't be more excited to see the kid and I'm fair to bursting with joy. Anyone want to help with a move?

Bard to the Bone

That's me as Hamlet in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), which opens this Friday. All 37 plays in 97 minutes. It's a hilarious play, full of really stupid gags, lightning-fast versions of Shakespeare, and includes Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, the Histories as a football game, and the 40-second backwards Hamlet, pretty much my only chance to play the melancholy Dane.

Hopefully it'll go well, and maybe I'll have more pictures for you later.