![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Names of Stinging, Gnawing, and Rending Animals, Part 1
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 11:00 amSo, riddle me this: if I'm doing a literature search for "sex blog", why does it pull up the above article from The Journal of Philology? Also, "The Economic Determinants of Entry into Canadian Banking: 1963-7". Your search algorithm, I don't think it does what you think it does.
I am not adjusting well to the rude shock of being back at work, dealing with the usual continual string of student crises. I've basically bribed my way through the last two days with continuous tea and chocolate biscuits, coupled with a slightly manic determination not to do any actual work at all. This last hasn't been too successful, but at least I've been able to alternate admin slog with sex-blog literature searches, and with a gentle mosey through Dracula to select the more dodgy erotic bits for classroom analysis. I am fascinated to discover that the bulk of these in fact involve female rather than male vampires, which says a lot about Victorian patriarchal anxiety. It does considerable violence to my feelings, but for male-on-female bitage, or male-on-male, I may have to descend to Anne Rice. Sigh.
On the upside, my book is out! A copy arrived simultaneously with my return to Cape Town (DHL pitched up as I was unloading suitcases from the car), and now reposes on my desk, being Shown Off to passing students, supervisors and anyone who'll hold still long enough. It's .. pretty! On the downside, this afternoon I proceed reluctantly to the dentist for the Root Canal of Unlikely Delay, followed by (as Stephen Fry would have it), coronation. Me and my battered bank account will be found in a corner this evening, drooling gently.
I am not adjusting well to the rude shock of being back at work, dealing with the usual continual string of student crises. I've basically bribed my way through the last two days with continuous tea and chocolate biscuits, coupled with a slightly manic determination not to do any actual work at all. This last hasn't been too successful, but at least I've been able to alternate admin slog with sex-blog literature searches, and with a gentle mosey through Dracula to select the more dodgy erotic bits for classroom analysis. I am fascinated to discover that the bulk of these in fact involve female rather than male vampires, which says a lot about Victorian patriarchal anxiety. It does considerable violence to my feelings, but for male-on-female bitage, or male-on-male, I may have to descend to Anne Rice. Sigh.
On the upside, my book is out! A copy arrived simultaneously with my return to Cape Town (DHL pitched up as I was unloading suitcases from the car), and now reposes on my desk, being Shown Off to passing students, supervisors and anyone who'll hold still long enough. It's .. pretty! On the downside, this afternoon I proceed reluctantly to the dentist for the Root Canal of Unlikely Delay, followed by (as Stephen Fry would have it), coronation. Me and my battered bank account will be found in a corner this evening, drooling gently.
