You Know What's Great about Blogging?

Congratulations and celebrations, even when the inevitable has happened! Hooray!

But seriously, thanks all for the excitement over the final tenure decision. I'm excited, even though I know it's dumb, as really it was a done deal from the time I got the provost's letter a few months ago. And yet - yes, it's awesome to have the final word. And it's also awesome that everybody in my dept. who went up with me also got tenure! Yay!

Now, in non-self-congratulatory news, I actually got some (decent, though not totally productive) work done on the R&R. First, can I just say that (as I'd suspected) the reports really gave good freaking advice? I mean, I went through the manuscript, and I totally get where the comments were coming from, and I totally see why they made the suggestions that they made, and I totally see how to fix what's wrong. The true fixing will be for tomorrow, but yes, this will be a better essay for it. I'm a dummy for having procrastinated for so long out of fear. A serious dummy. In the words of A.'s nephew, I think that I was a real "whopper junior" (his latest name to call people who do lame things, which by the way I think is totally awesome as a term for lame-o people, and I plan to spread it around as such, as I encourage you to do as well.) Because you know what? The problems are along the lines of the exact same things that I tell my students that they need to do to make their papers better (though on a more sophisticated scale, of course). Basically, I need more analysis, more complication of assertions, more support, more complexity. And I'm totally prepared to do all of that. Looking over the article, it's clear to me why the harsher of the two readers responded as ze did. I probably would have been harder on myself than ze was, if I'm honest, if I were the reviewer. Seriously. These are really awesome and helpful readers' reports, and the suggestions are beyond manageable. Now, sure, this very selective journal may reject me ultimately, but even if they do, I know the article will be stronger for revising in these terms. Stronger on my terms, and something that I will be more proud of, at the end of the day. And if it is rejected, ultimately, I'll send it someplace else and be proud of it.

In other news, I started working on April Conference Paper (ACP henceforth) and I realized that I needed to take a trip back in the wayback machine to when I was doing my MA and to take a look at Jameson's Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. SERIOUSLY. WHO KNEW? I certainly didn't realize that I'd ever return to that, in anything other than a peripheral way. Especially in a paper that is, almost entirely, about the representation of gender and sexuality. But apparently, a) the things I read way back in Olden Times still are locked in my brain and b) I'm not totally locked into a Here's My Argument, Just Add Theorist I Use program, which is nice to know, as I sometimes worry that this is who I am. Apparently, I have original ideas every now and again. Original ideas that totally ignore my favorite theorists, in spite of my general tastes, which do lean toward my favorite theorists. Frederic Jameson is like some cardamom, in my general cooking repertoire, which includes salt, pepper, garlic, cayenne, and cumin. (Salt = Foucault, Pepper = Barthes, Garlic = Cixous, Cayenne = Butler).

So I'm sure I should do more work tonight, but I'm not gonna. Not. Gonna. Do. It.