The source of my user name for those who haven’t seen Boogie Nights:

Those are great names!

I love movies, some TV, some anime/manga, and have come to love going to concerts thanks to my partner’s deep love of them. Still, I’d prefer the dark theater to the concert, if I’m being totally honest.

I’m a member of the academic precariat (AKA non-tenure track faculty), though a bit of a labor aristocrat among them, since I’m unionzed at least. I generally teach writing and composition, which I actually am fairly passionate about even though I didn’t get my degree in rhetoric and composition. I’ve been doing what I can to get some institutional clout and maybe find myself in control of a writing program someday. I’m surprised how many writing instructors still focus on grammar/style rather than larger questions of rhetoric/argument.

So as to not doxx myself, I’ll just say my academic work was english literature. While I’d love a position teaching that someday, I recognize the material conditions and so have been positioning myself to be part of the humanities “moneymaker” for the university, writing. I generally don’t write on Marxism because, to be frank, a bunch of marxist academics basically suck (including the ones at my institution).

I discovered Marx probably 20 years ago (give or take) when I was in college in a philosophy class. We read the hits (German Ideology, Capital’s “How much does a coat cost”) before moving on to other stuff. I had already worked several really shit jobs though, so it really resonated with my experiences with wage work. However, at the time, I was very much the kind of “socialism is good, communism bad” liberal. I think if it hadn’t been for the 2008 crash I would have probably turned into some copywriter or other “creative adjacent” worker.

However, with no jobs in 2008, I decided the best thing I could do is apply to grad school. So I did, and became more and more radicalized as I saw the way that academia has been hollowed out like every other institution touched by neoliberalism. I think a combination of a graduate union strike and then COVID led to my shift from “socialist friendly liberal” to full on communist. We must “end this nightmare.” I’m here for the comradeship and the eclectic mix of marxists/anarchists we have here . As a sophist, I love being drawn by our various left perspectives, including the esoteric ones.

I hope someday we all get together to sing Billy Bragg songs after the revolution.

Oh, I also have two dogs I love. Sorry cat comrades. Here they are: