Deanna K. Kreisel is Associate Professor of English at The University of Mississippi, where she teaches and writes about Victorian literature and culture, ecocriticism, and feminist theory. She also writes creative nonfiction in her “spare time.” Her 52 Mini-Essays project is available at doctorwaffle.substack.com (new essays are posted every Sunday). She is Team Cake.
Website: https://doctorwaffle.substack.com
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) I have no idea what the lyrics to the Oasis song “Champagne Supernova” mean,[1] except for one single line: “Where were you while we were getting high?” It’s a plaintive refrain heard several times throughout the song, not part of the chorus itself but a kind of obsessively…
by Deanna Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) I am no stranger to waking up in the middle of the night with a nameless feeling of dread. Like everyone else I know, I developed chronic insomnia around age 40, which was exacerbated by the “election” of Trump and the ongoing pillage of American democracy. And then perimenopause…
by Deanna Kreisel [Doctor Waffle Blog] The other day, over cigarettes and beer, my friend M. told me the story of the Ghost Cop of Rowan Oak. She was speaking from authority, as she had just encountered it a few days before. Her boyfriend P. was there—both at Rowan Oak and on my front porch…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle) I have a confession to make: I ❤️ Seymour Glass. If you don’t know who that is, count yourself lucky and walk away now—come back in a few weeks when I’ll be discussing humiliating experiences at middle-school dances or whatever. (Obviously I am joking—as always, I desperately want you…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) The first time I came across the “candy bar interiors” quiz, I was not disturbed by how many I got wrong, but rather how many I got right. While a few of the pictured confections were alien to me (Zagnut? who the hell eats a Zagnut? did Charlie…
by Deanna Kreisel [Dr. Waffle Blog] About a third of the way through a first-year humanities honors course, one of my more engaged and talkative students pulled me aside after class for a private chat. She waited, clearly anxious, while the rest of her classmates filed out and then turned to me with her eyes…
by Deanna K. Kreisel [Doctor Waffle Blog] I really don’t understand those podcasts where young women with their whole lives ahead of them spend an hour each week obsessing over serial killers. There are between one and 87 of these shows—I don’t know their names, I’ve never listened to them, and frankly I don’t want…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) Let’s get the humble-bragging out of the way first: I’ve always had a remarkable memory. [1] I’m not sure if it’s photographic or “eidetic” (which apparently is the official-ish scientific term)—I’ve never had the experience of seeing an entire page of text in my mind’s eye and then…
by Deanna Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) It’s not about dying, really—it’s about knowing you’re about to die. Not in the abstract way that we haphazardly confront our own mortality as we reach middle age and contemplate getting old. And not even in the way (I imagine) that someone with a terminal diagnosis might think about…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) A couple of years ago I briefly became famous for hating Vancouver. By “famous” I mean that a hundred thousand people or so read an essay I posted on Medium, and for a few weeks it became a part-time job to answer emails from well-wishers, cranks, and haters.[1]…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) What does the word “utopia” mean to the battle-scarred denizens of the twenty-first century? A shockingly unscientific survey of the nine or ten people I buttonholed last week suggests that the key connotations of the word are: ideal, perfect, imaginary, unrealistic, and unattainable. I’ve arranged these terms purposefully…
by Deanna Kreisel [Doctor Waffle Blog] Where do you see yourself in ten years? What is your greatest weakness as an employee? What do you know about our company? To the best of my recollection, I have never been asked any of these cliché questions during a job interview. Here are the kinds of questions…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) A little while ago my friend Bethany requested that I write an essay on the following topic: “Can/should pedantry be reconstituted as a virtue, maybe particularly for women.” I filed it away on my list of possible future essay ideas, but like a previous topic suggested by this…
by Deanna Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) I assume that if your eye was drawn to this essay, then you are also troubled by feelings of rage. But I don’t want to be presumptuous—there are other reasons to read an essay that promises to tell you what to do with your anger. Maybe you think I…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) I am writing this essay during my ninth trip to New Zealand, a country that I love dearly and that is also trying to kill me. The first time I nearly died here was 21 years ago, and it’s been happening with a fair degree of regularity ever…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) There are two kinds of people in this world: those who find basements scary and those who find attics scary. I suppose there might be some folks (bless their hearts) who are disturbed by both, like those ethereal creatures with one blue eye and one brown. I refuse…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) When my father died a few years ago he left behind a wife with advanced dementia, a large collection of memorabilia from the Franklin Mint, and every one of his tax returns dating back to 1964. Of course he left other things too, including a house and a…
by Deanna K. Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) The other day my friend Matt told me a story about a camel that fell in love with him. Scott and I were on a Zoom call with him and his partner Tania—the two of us in Mississippi, Tania in Santa Barbara, and Matt in D.C. It had…
by Deanna Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) I had my first panic attack at age sixteen, which was (deargod) over 35 years ago. It happened during school, much to my teenage mortification. Some friends and I were hanging out in our high school newspaper office during a free period, sprawled on one of the crapped-out couches…
by Deanna Kreisel (Doctor Waffle Blog) Modern life would be impossible without pet theories. (One of my pet theories is that everyone has pet theories.) How could we make sense of the quotidian horror and cruel contingency of our lives under late capitalism without a little magical thinking? Everyone has a soul mate out there…