Tales of yet Another All-Nighter

As I sit, here in the oh-so-writerly leather armchair, preparing to embark on a new historicist essay on Stephen Crane’s bleak 1893 realist novella Maggie, I must review the checklist that allows me to sit with some psychological comfort, in the knowledge that I will not have to get back up in thirty seconds because I’ve forgotten something:

1) Cup of strong French Roast, made from freshly ground beans, unfiltered, with the electric percolator. Check. I taste it. Damn, them’s good coffee beans.

2) Source text: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York), Bedford cultural edition, with all the wrong passages underlined because I changed topics at the last possible instant, as nearly always. Check.

3) Pencils, to be abused, blunted, and broken; sharpener, to restore care, keenness, and intact status to maligned pencils. Check and check.

4) Horribly bad intelligent design book What Darwin Didn’t Know, by some crackpot by the name of Geoffrey Simmons, M. muthaeffin’ D., lurking at the edge of my vision, leering and whispering, “Read me, so you can turn apoplectic at my bottomless inanity instead of writing your paper. You know you’ll compose better once you’re good and livid with rage.” Uncheck. That book needs to go away. Check.

4) Cigarettes, (check) and lighter (check) which will remain untouched until I put myself down at about eight A.M. with…

5) Bottle of inexpensive red wine. Nowhere to be spotted on the horizon, lest we include the sad, hollow remains of Alice White 2004 Shiraz, evoking fond memories of Melbourne in the Spring…er…medicating myself to sleep at eight o’clock this morning.

6) Backup plan once I run out of ideas: a trip to the grad lab to mine the OED online for arcane essay-padding materials such as the definition of “ruin” as applied in the late 19th century. I love the OED; it makes insipid, underresearched papers so much…longer. Check. The fact that this bluff has yet to be called by an instructor is testament either to its true shrewdness or their own utter disillusionment and cynicism toward essay-grading.

7) Something reasonably intelligent to write about the 19th century discourse of women deflowered prior to marriage: nope, still working on that bit. It shall require…

8) Second cup, French Roast coffee, English strength, black. Ah, it’s good to know that my blog post is now as ideologically strip-mined as my new historicist essay. And with that, I shall say…

9) Bye now. I gotta write a paper.