This is not a blog post

What this is is a mid-evening apology for a failure to post anything of note. If I had world enough and time – or rather, a smaller pile of essays to mark, fewer writing tasks, and no sleep deficit – I’d pen a series of wonderful texts as per the below. Who knows, some of these might even find their way back onto the wires, once this next week’s looming deadlines have fallen.

An imaginary letter to all the students who used the word 'nigger' - apparently without hesitation - in their discussion of racist language in Huck Finn.
A speculation on the relationship of my research interest in typographical error to the proliferation of typos undergraduate essays.
A surly and indignant consideration of why it is that my gmail account all of a sudden refuses to talk to any hotmail addresses.
A love letter to miso.
An impassioned defence of Bill Henson, with qualifications.
A laboured effort to personalise the Bill Henson debacle through reference to the removal of paintings from the Albury Regional Art Gallery, seven minutes walk from the house which sheltered me in my adolescence.
A shocked response to my alarming (Facebook enabled) discovery that one of my colleagues is a Liberal voter.
A wry piece on my return to Bob Dylan and Allan Ginsberg with an elegy to a dear friend hovering under the surface.
A suite of true stories from a dodgy steroid pumped gym in Kings Cross.
A sketch or two in preparation for a review of The Necks.
A candid account of a croissant-making masterclass, with reference and due deference to Hugo.
A fantasy on the theme of Tom Waits and Gary Snyder.

No, these must all remain unwritten. I'll nod to George Steiner as the eminence grise enabling this flagrant display of opportunities lost. With due apologies.

Instead? Instead, I'm happily sinking back into three hours of Dylan via Scorsese.