One big yawn? The academics bewitched by boredom

There's a great (peer-reviewed) article that provides a wonderful history of boredom while also exploring the ways to transcend, but better yet, to use boredom as put forth in David Foster Wallace's The Pale King. (Clare, Ralph. “The Politics of Boredom and the Boredom of Politics in David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. Studies in the Novel 44.4 [Winter 2012]: 428-46.) How I'm able to get my lady brain around such an article while also being a devoted scholar of Buffy Studies I'm not quite sure. Seriously, digs at other fields of study that you simply don't happen to understand are mindless ego-stroking and nothing more. I'm disappointed in you.

As the wonks have shut themselves up, department by department, who is going to be "shocked, shocked" that all have diminished, become boring, as human beings? The great thing about the departmentalism is safety. Those who crave orthodoxy of course crave safety. And what do they fear most of all as possibly infringing their turfs? The human. And, more than that, the humanities. We can't really blame the wonks. Thanks mainly to an America gone totally deranged, the world now has a murderous materialism paving, invading, polluting, droning everywhere. Tens of millions have been uprooted from their traditional cultures. Terror incidents grow about in the same proportion as people went to sleep in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." So of course we should pity the tenured that they so need safety -- boring orthodoxy. Of course we should forgive them for having given up en masse the humanities. Hey -- all speak wonk -- it's part of the tenure package. So losing literacy only increases the fear factor at all that unwashed, displaced, migrating humanity out there. So let's respect the fear and cowardice of our dear tenured. Experience has shown that every year hundreds of thousands more students will go deep into debt in order to reduce themselves, too, with the aid of the eunuchs. Bored eunuchs. Self-aborting eunuchs.

Gardening comes to mind. I think it's boring. But at the same time it's not a bad feeling to get your hands dirty now and then. Gardening is also a pretty good analogy for academic work. It goes around in seasonal cycles, styles come and go, weeds are sometimes pests and at others are promoted to flowers, the end product can be brilliant in its colour and flair but quickly pale and even die before your eyes. Hey, gardening and academia can't be all bad. As good a time waster as any other!