Eric M. Murphy

It’s more interesting if you read the full thread.

Hehe. Love it

“Should” does a ton of normative work here.

That’s kinda what we historically want from the Marine Corps, isn’t it?

O hideous little bat, the size of snot, With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes, To populate the stinking cat you walk The promontory of the dead man’s nose, Climb with the fine leg of a Duncan-Phyfe The smoking mountains of my food And in a comic mood In mid-air take to bed a wife. Riding and riding with your filth of hair On gluey foot or wing, forever coy,

Hot from the compost and green sweet decay, Sounding your buzzer like an urchin toy— You dot all whiteness with diminutive stool, In the tight belly of the dead Burrow with hungry head And inlay maggots like a jewel. At your approach the great horse stomps and paws Bringing the hurricane of his heavy tail; Shod in disease you dare to kiss my hand Which sweeps against you like an angry flail; Still you return, return, trusting your wing To draw you from the hunter’s reach That learns to kill to teach Disorder to the tinier thing. My peace is your disaster. For your death Children like spiders cup their pretty hands And wives resort to chemistry of war. In fens of sticky paper and quicksands You glue yourself to death. Where you are stuck You struggle hideously and beg, You amputate your leg Imbedded in the amber muck. But I, a man, must swat you with my hate, Slap you across the air and crush your flight, Must mangle with my shoe and smear your blood, Expose your little guts pasty and white, Knock your head sidewise like a drunkard’s hat, Pin your wings under like a crow’s, Tear off your flimsy clothes And beat you as one beats a rat. Then like Gargantua I stride among The corpses strewn like raisins in the dust, The broken bodies of the narrow dead That catch the throat with fingers of disgust. I sweep. One gyrates like a top and falls And stunned, stone blind, and deaf Buzzes its frightful F And dies between three cannibals.

“The Fly”
Karl Shapiro

allpoetry.com/poem/8526997...

Will listen!

You’ve long been one of those stars I use to navigate.

Now I need to navigate to Montana, apparently. 🤣

Lost a friend today. Hit hard for a minute, & I’ve only just realized how much it was with me all day. I suspect it will be with me in some ways forever.

Smile. Hide a rainbow in every slide. Shake hands like you mean it & won’t ever let go. Say “Poop!” with humor and conviction. Love & be loved.

When @queenofthinair.bsky.social writes, I read. I’m going to have to read this again and again—ethics work is hard work, or you’re not doing it right—but it matters, so I’ll do it.

www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Mar...

The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah" When Leonard Cohen first wrote and recorded the song “Hallelujah,” it attracted little attention or airplay, dismissed by both fans and critics alike. Today, it is one of the most recorded songs in hi...

As a bonus, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend Alan Light’s fantastic book.

www.amazon.com/Holy-Broken-...

“Hallelujah” — Jeff Buckley Podcast Episode · 60 Songs That Explain the '90s · 12/03/2025 · 1h 43m

This podcast, one of my favorites of the last few years, has been on a long hiatus…and then @harvilla.bsky.social canes back with a bonus banger covering a song that never fails to punch me in the gut. Lovely.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/6...

Suggestion accepted for future syllabi.

“What Birds Were There”
Brother Antoninus (William Everson)

www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/willia...

a man is holding a stop sign on a highway ALT: a man is holding a stop sign on a highway

I don’t often have really hot takes, but here’s a candidate:

The playing of national anthems at sporting events not involving national teams (e.g., Olympics or World Cup) is profoundly stupid, jingoistic, performative nonsense.

Just. Fucking. Stop.

WILCO. I've thinned a lot of that over the last few years, but I have enough to make it interesting. :)

I just realized...I've been at this for over a year. I wonder what I'll put on the shelf in 2026? Maybe some spice from home--fiction, poetry, math, etc.? Maybe more conflict-specific stuff? Maybe more regional studies or domain-specific content?

It's funny how much fun I have with this each month.

I think it’s an important but problematic work…and the man can write. 🤷‍♂️

I think I’ll change the titles on this little shelf each month.

Here are a few IR favorites from my shelves at work.

Realists: The Melian Dialogue demonstrates the logic of realism.

Of Course Jim Carrey GIF ALT: Of Course Jim Carrey GIF

I get the feeling that people who should have read Thucydides did not, so they summarize him with one line from the middle of the book, and know nothing about the war and what Athens did to itself.

Of course these are the clowns “reforming” PME.

I think my “dressing gown” is pants and a shirt with shoes and (matching) socks…shorts and flip-flops in really hot weather.

What in the world is a “housecoat”? It sounds like the sort of thing Vicki Lawrence wore on “Mama’s Family.”

Also…always take a walk, friend.

I think before they saw me the giraffes Were watching me. Over the golden grass, The bush and ragged open tree of thorn, From a grotesque height, under their lightish horns, Their eyes fixed on mine as I approached them. The hills behind descended steeply: iron Coloured outcroppings of rock half covered by

Dull green and sepia vegetation, dry And sunlit: and above, the piercing blue Where clouds like islands lay or like swans flew. Seen from those hills the scrubby plain is like A large-scale map whose features have a look Half menacing, half familiar, and across Its brightness arms of shadow ceaselessly Revolve. Like small forked twigs or insects move Giraffes, upon the great map where they live. When I went nearer, their long bovine tails Flicked loosely, and deliberately they turned, An undulation of dappled grey and brown, And stood in profile with those curious planes Of neck and sloping haunches. Just as when Quite motionless they watched I never thought Them moved by fear, a desire to be a tree, So as they put more ground between us I Saw evidence that there were animals with Perhaps no wish for intercourse, or no Capacity. Above the falling sun Like visible winds the clouds are streaked and spun, And cold and dark now bring the image of Those creatures walking without pain or love.

“The Giraffes”
Roy Fuller

allpoetry.com/The-Giraffes

Advice we should all heed, perhaps.

Regardless of that, I’d have failed the student. The argument presents nothing representative of evidence in the norms of the relevant discipline, it’s not well written, it’s poorly structured, etc.

The instructor’s comments go above and beyond to exhibit respect (in most cases).

🤷‍♂️

That seems to be the consensus.

Ok. That’s funny.

I agree, with caveats.

“Consensus science” is a thing when we don’t have anomalies that lead us to look for refinements/alternatives…& it’s still a paradigmatic umbrella even WITH anomaly.

We should probably also acknowledge the post-positivist view of science is itself a kind of consensus. 🤷‍♂️

This. It’s possible to be skeptical and critical without being a whack jobbing illiterate asshat bent on murdering millions.

Science is about skepticism at some level, but that’s not an “I believe what I believe…cuz Google” get-out-of-jail-free card.

RFK Jr: Stupid, illiterate, AND mendacious.

Persuasion Podcast Episode · In Our Time · 01/19/2023 · 51m

“Persuasion, Jane Austen's last complete novel was published…five months after her death. It's the story of Anne Elliot, now 27, and losing her bloom, we're told. And of her feelings for the man she was engaged to eight years before, an engagement she broke off under family pressure.”