iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 12/09/2026

Please enjoy this photo of one child's Christmas haul, circa 1972

Photo of young girl in a princess costume sitting among a pile of unopened toys

Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 20/04/2026

This is kind of stunning. The comments are running about 10:1 against Reeves on this one. Many commentators framing resistance to data centers (and AI more generally) as an issue that brings left and right together. Sorry, Tater Tot www.facebook.com/tatereeves/p...

Screenshot of Facebook post from Mississippi governor Tate Reeves sharing article headline "Left-Wing Foreign Billionaires Fund Groups Trying to Cripple AI Infrastructure"; his lead-in says "We can't allow them to win. And in Mississippi, we won't!"

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 08/04/2026

May I please present my happiest academic accomplishment: when Nineteenth Century Literature let me have THIS footnote:

Picture of a page of an academic journal with a footnote taking up three-fourths of the page

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 28/03/2026

Here I am last year at the rally in Oxford, Mississippi, with a sign that was *ahem* widely admired

Woma holding a sign with a picture of Elvis that reads “NO KINGS BUT THE KING”

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 02/01/2026

Whoever said there aren’t huge financial dividends to being a literature scholar?

Picture of letterpress broadside featuring a quotation from William Morris

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 06/12/2025

ANY ADDITIONAL SANTAS WILL BE ESCORTED OUT OF THE PARADE

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 02/10/2025

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

Screen cap of parodic version of William Blake's "The Tyger" that begins:
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
(Not sure if I spelled that right)
What immortal hand or eye
Could fashion such a stripy guy?
What the hammer that hath hewn it
Into such a chonky unit?
Did who made the lamb make thee,
Or an external franchisee?

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 19/08/2025

A U.S. District Court judge just granted plaintiffs in Mississippi a temporary injunction against the state's horrid new anti-DEI bill! Read it and weep (with joy)! #AcademicSky

Beginning of court ruling, reading: "This case presents a challenge to Mississippi House Bill 1193 (“HB 1193”), which itself takes aim at the presence of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (“DEI”) initiatives and so-called “divisive concepts” in public schools in the State of Mississippi. Upon proof, this Court finds HB 1193 at odds with the First Amendment (as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment) and the public interest of this State, and that its enforcement will cause irreparable injury to the named plaintiffs and the classes they represent. As such, class-wide and statewide, this Court hereby grants the challengers’ request for, and so orders, a preliminary injunction, by which the defendants are enjoined from enforcing select sections of HB 1193, pending the final resolution of this matter."

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 17/08/2025

Jiffy Pop says Happy Sunday. Put down the doomscrolling thing and try a blanket burrito

Picture of a sleeping tortoiseshell cat wrapped in a blanket

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 16/08/2025

I see your toast sandwich and I raise you

Picture of box of Kellogg's Rice Krispies Treats cereal

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 09/08/2025

Wow the barista really got my name wrong this time

Starbucks cup with “Happy Saturday!” written on it

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 15/07/2025

Here is Jiffy Pop as a kitten discovering a ukulele

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 13/06/2025

Well this is a hell of a graphic on the front page of the @nytimes.com

Cartoon showing members of the LAPD, LA Sheriff Department, and National Guard, with their respective weapons

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 08/06/2025

Kept getting ads for a learning app called “Nibble” so out of morbid curiosity I checked out their Literature offerings. Holy shit is this some steaming hot garbage #AcademicSky

“Dare of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: Uncover the nature of human relationships with the novel’s proud heroes as they triumph in the battle against time”

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 04/06/2025

My late father just received this junk mailer. Seems like a pretty good deal on Hello Fresh’s end

Coupon for free meals and add-on items “for life”

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 24/05/2025

I took a letterpress workshop and here is what I made. The first of (I hope) many cool new things!

Hand printed broadside reading "Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 05/05/2025

Okay! Here is a screen shot of a handout I use to explain FID, which has a bunch more specific info. In the case of GE, she rarely shifts verb tenses (that would be a truly pure, "classic" instance of FID), but she VERY often uses those typographical tics that Suzanne noticed.

FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE

DIRECT SPEECH/THOUGHT:
He said to her, “I cannot see you now, but if you return tomorrow, we could spend the day together.”
• purports to be a faithful, verbatim report of the character’s words or thoughts
• usually uses quotation marks or some other clear marker of exact reporting
• reproduces the grammatical features, and thus retains the grammatical tense, of the character

INDIRECT SPEECH/THOUGHT:
He explained to her that he could not see her then, but that if she returned the next day they could spend the day together.
• purports to be an exact version of what the character thought or said
• retains the grammatical features and tense of the narrator, not the character

FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE:
He couldn’t see her now, but if she would return tomorrow he would spend the day with her.
• lies somewhere in between, or is a mixed version of, the above two examples
• no marker of reporting: neither a clause (“He explained to her that”) nor quotation marks
• uses third-person pronouns to refer to character but a mixture of tenses or other grammatical features

MORE EXAMPLES:
• DIRECT: Tim strolled down the street and stopped short in front of the office supply store. He wondered aloud, “Why is the bloody store closed today?”
• INDIRECT: Tim strolled down the street and stopped short in front of the office supply store. He wondered to himself why the store was closed that day.
F.I.D.: Tim strolled down the street and stopped short in front of the office supply store. Why was the bloody store closed today?

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 02/04/2025

As always, charmed and impressed by the super-duper-secret Canada absentee ballot system, with its multiple inner envelopes, signatures, and prepaid postage. The only problem is trusting the US Postal Service to get it over the border 😓

Photo of an Elections Canada absentee ballot envelope

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 01/04/2025

Just came from giving a lecture in my Victorian literature class on medicine and health in the 19th century. Ended with this slide

Powerpoint slide reading "If you have been enjoying not dying of typhus, yellow fever, or cholera..." with a sad-face emoji

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 24/03/2025

Our paranoid fantasies are all coming true

"When it comes to scrutinizing people already living in the United States, investigators for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who typically focus on long-term inquiries have been searching videos, online posts and news clippings of campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war. They have then compiled reports on their findings for the State Department."

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 21/03/2025

A friend said my socks are the socks that monkey sock puppets are made from and now I can’t unsee it

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 02/03/2025

Virginia and Vanessa Bell playing cricket, 1890s.

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Deanna Kreisel 🌱 @doctorwaffle.substack.com · 25/02/2025

Hey I didn't name the survey; I just teach it. 🫤 A solid third of what I teach in that class is Irish literature. The alternative -- not including Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, Beckett, etc. etc. -- would be even more insulting, no?