What I didn't do on my Christmas break

Let me take a moment to express my appreciation that I did not have to attend MLA this year. The New York Times has the obligatory annual send-up of that confabulation's excesses. Some of the paper titles they highlight:

"'Dude! Your Dress Is So Cute!' Patterns of Semantic Widening in 'Dude,'"
"She's Just Like Alvy Singer! Kissing Jessica Stein and the Postethnic Jewish Lesbian,"
"A Pynch in Time: The Postmodernity of Prenational Philadelphia in Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon and Mark Knopfler's 'Sailing to Philadelphia,'"
and
"Wandering Genitalia in Late Medieval German Literature and Culture"

By my reckoning, either the NYT reporter was a bit lazy, or the program is less silly than usual.

In fairness, I will say that while I am immensely grateful that I have changed careers and do not have to don my best suit and spend a week selling myself when nearly everyone else in the country is gathered with family and friends, I do recognize that the academy is unfairly maligned by a fervently anti-intellectual culture. Secede from the Union stands up for the annual ritual, and bless her for it. The academy needs people who can think critically about its rites while not rejecting the whole proposition. For me, the cost/benefit analysis just didn't look promising.