The red is bad.
Even for a method as poor as the Bitterness Bracket, this was a bad year.
Tag Archives: constructive ways of working out our anger
It’s highly probable that I’m the only person in the world with this problem
I am now getting semi-regular calls to my office phone number from a robocaller in Deming, New Mexico.
And every single time it comes up, I start hearing this track in my head.
If someone more VOIP savvy than I knows how to make this track play back to their machine whenever it calls, hit me up.
The Peter Brötzmann Tentet T-Shirt Story
I still wear an N95 mask indoors and in large groups of people. This makes me somewhat conspicuous, which in turn makes me somewhat self-conscious. I live in a pretty red part of a purple state (as we say in American politics) in which such choices are regularly taken up in partisan politics. Thus, most trips outside the house feel ripe for confrontation, which probably makes me a little more sharp-elbowed even when nothing is afoot.
Recently, I went to our local farmers’ market on a Thursday afternoon.
Doing some experimental pragmatics in the hallway outside my office today.
For science.
Konietzko Flash Defined
Konietzko Flash | kōˈnētskō fllaSH | noun
a psychological event, acute in its onset and accompanied by intense anger, in which a person realizes that the woman they dated back in 1994 was the one who stole their now-out-of-print KMFDM albums, goddammit; typically followed by an urge to drive to South Carolina and get the CDs back
“What’s up with Michael?”
“Oh, he’s having a Konietzko Flash.”
“Is… is that why he’s stealing my car?”
ALL HAIL THE BITTERNESS BRACKET!!!!!!
Clearly the greatest sports analytic system ever developed.
The very rarely discussed §73 of Epictetus’s Enchiridion
LXXIII
“If a messenger should bring you a letter informing you that you are now counted among the members of a council of scholars who shall meet frequently to discuss the methods, rules, and scope of notions by which you teach the youth, remind yourself what kind of consortium this is. When they insist that you meet with the council, place before you what happens at such meetings.
Continue reading The very rarely discussed §73 of Epictetus’s EnchiridionBitterness Brackets 2022
It’s that time of year again – that time when I show that maybe I haven’t completely processed *all* the anger I built up over the course of a decade on the academic job market. That’s right, it’s time for the Bitterness Brackets!
Continue reading Bitterness Brackets 20222015 Bitterness Brackets
I know very little about the head-to-head statistics of college basketball. I couldn’t tell you whether Lousiville or Duke has a better offense, for instance. But like many people, I enjoy playing with data. And one thing I do have is a series of longstanding grudges against many colleges and universities. I was on the job market on and off for 12 years with great success – I am now tenured at the third place to offer me a tenure-track job, which puts me in some ridiculously rare percentage of all candidates. But I also applied to hundreds more, much like all other candidates, and got jerked around furiously by some of those. So every year I pick an NCAA bracket based entirely on lingering bitterness towards schools. It’s cathartic, really. Very good for me. Picture the Emperor from Return of the Jedi hissing, “Let the hate flow through you…” as you pick your bracket.
The rules are relatively simple. Continue reading 2015 Bitterness Brackets
I appear to be a counterexample. 