Publication disappointment.

So, it seems like after a ton of work, a miniature project of mine stalled out just after the point of initial fruition -- the story of my life!

I'd been keeping up membership in a civics group that had asked me to join its board, to help them meet meeting quorum requirements, and also to see if I could feel out that role as a means to do anything.

And, I'd put my finger on a serious issue that could perhaps be raised and productively pushed forward, and I did a ton of legwork including with a lawyer for a government agency to figure out how current structures work and how some proposed under-the-radar legislation would change them -- "I've been saying this for years," he said to me over the phone, in a conversation that of course left no written record -- and then I composed a very tight op-ed that would appear under the civic board president's name.

And, that happened last fall and most everyone was deeply impressed with the op-ed, but one single board member who wasn't even a regular attendee at meetings just happened to show up and pitched a fit for no reason because of some employment connection to something, and then between that pitched fit and the holidays the op-ed got massively delayed as the board president worked through her "concerns," and then the op-ed got turned down by one major newspaper, and the president delayed resubmitting it to another major newspaper, which then accepted it and even had him sign paperwork and everything...

And then, while that op-ed was in the course of being published, some other somewhat related issues blew up and derailed stuff and sucked the air out of the room around the cluster of issues that that legislation was on.

So, it got published, but its impact was snowed under, and on top of that the civic group is falling apart a bit because of aging leadership and people retiring from some roles that have kept the org up and running, so it doesn't look like it's happening, trying to get people to put in some time and reach out to other groups and get them to contact reps to sponsor the legislation. That's on top of how a point-person on a legislator's staff seems to have left his job now, too.

Overall, I've noticed with this type of writing and freelance writing and activist-y stuff, that I'm highly dependent on others who can behave in very arbitrary ways, and on many larger unpredictable developments.

Also, since I tend to be on the "cutting edge" and do deeply-researched stuff that I carefully digest for others, it tends to make others interested but it also makes them balk, since it's so different from what other people are saying, and they have to trust me with summaries etc. in ways that they don't have to when other people just spout off on current issues of the day where they spit back what's happening and give a "hot take" on it.

I also take on serious issues where you have to be very, very careful about what you say, so there might be liability issues lingering there, too, in addition to how these are actually sleeper meaty issues that truly challenge the powerful (people wouldn't have employment concerns, if they weren't).

If I had a position of power as some sort of activist or expert where I'd worked my way up, I could avoid some of that crap with publication venues, but unfortunately I don't, and to get that you'd really have to do the "spout off on current issues of the day" hot-take thing as a full-time unremunerated job in order to shape yourself into an opinion leader. I mean, there used to be more publications and editorial staff where you didn't have to do so much of that to break your way through, but those don't exist like they did even five years ago, anymore.

It's really no wonder that I've made my way back to ancient language stuff -- at least there, you can publicize on social media and through blogs or conference presentations or whatever and get your finding and thinking out there, even if you run into BS with journals and some conferences.

There's much less arbitrary barriers to bringing projects to fruition, and I'm happy that what I do is out there for those interested.

Affirmation from Cardi B.

One of the things that has p*ssed me off for years is people acting like I'm flighty with all the different things I've tried, where I've sized stuff up and tried to move forward but never was able to establish a lasting toehold despite all the time and energy and hustle I've sunk into it.

Interestingly, I just saw this great quote from Cardi B in a profile piece in Rolling Stone:

"When you give so much and somebody just drags it down, like you're just playing with your pussy all day, just watching Netflix all fucking day long, it's very hurtful."

I mean, isn't that the truth.

Like, I get that a lot from people, where they look at me suspiciously like there's something wrong with *me* because all of my efforts in different areas that had such auspicious beginnings didn't pan out because of stuff beyond my control (e.g. lower socioeconomic background, or "sliding sectors" where the terrain massively changes while I'm in the midst of it). It really is like the crassest form of religion, where you look at someone's current position in life and blame something personal in them for where they are now.

On another note, I find it interesting how much I've enjoyed reading celebrity interviews the past few years. It's like one major area in society where people still talk about big issues in life, since people really don't go to church anymore. I suppose another place would be self-help books, too, and perhaps literature (my one [half British] [half Sudanese] friend, the [brother] of the [brother-sister] pair has said as much to me a few times, that he finds himself reading a lot of literature nowadays since it has insights into life that are necessary but that you can't find anywhere else).

Stumbled-upon Feeling-sorry-for-yourself.

So, there's this one scholar who I follow on social media, who's done everything "right" with his project and has been one of "the lucky ones" -- that is, his project looked big and innovative by paying attention to a neglected ethnic group, but it threatened no-one, since they're actually decently small despite their prominence, and so he's been able to hop around multiple different institutions for years now, in endless post-docs that people dribbled at him and he managed to secure.

But now, they've dried up.

Online, he was saying something like how the collapse of tenure-track (i.e. "real") jobs has really affected his cohort, who spent so much time and energy and have done everything right, only for there to be nothing at the end, it seems to him right now.

To my ears, it was almost like him crying, "But I worked within the system, how can it have let me down!?!?".

It really does make my decision to just cut losses and never apply to anything back when I was graduating my doctoral program look smart...

I remember that the most recent economic shock then was causing schools to reduce their academic presses and so people with immaculate manuscripts couldn't get a book contract like they used to, and a few authority figures from my program were nevertheless continuing on like usual and saying stuff like I should try and start work on my book and look for jobs etc., except that I saw this huge chance that you would be sinking absolute **years** into very time intensive applications with no decent chance of a pay-off, and on top of that you'd be writing a book that's a rehash of your diss in a very inefficient way that is also very time-consuming, all with nothing really at the end, probably, and all while you weather just incredibly low and unpredictable and volatile wages.

(That's not even mentioning how I had around **three** years of my life wasted through dysfunction and malfeasance at my program, that kept me there way longer than I needed to be, despite my best efforts.)

It really is just astounding to me how this "career path" where you maybe had a decent shot has gotten completely insane and just collapsed, compared to when I embarked on it.

That's on top of how seriously unwell "lifetime jobs" folks (i.e. a significant portion of the tenured) have a stranglehold on fields more than ever, by ending people's careers by denying book manuscripts or screening out competition when they evaluate postdoc applications etc.

It's just sad and rigid and stagnant, and yet another realm while corrupt and debauched elites are more and more patently laughable, but have unshakeable control.

It's also weird how the rhetoric of vital intellectual inquiry and rationality maps onto very hierarchical and anti-intellectual power structures, more than ever. It's like a complete mismatch between what they say and what they are.

Some (Spanish) banter.

The other week at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I brought in a big bag of sweet cherries that I had bought on sale ($1.99 a pound!), and I got out two big curry dishes and split the cherries between them, leaving one up front for the people up front and then one in back for the people in the back.

And, because the (Spanish) word for "cherry" (cereza) sounds a lot like the word for "beer" (cerveza), I had some fun with that, too, with a number of my (Guatemalan) coworkers.

Like, initially I started by pointing out that I had brought the cherries in for everyone -- Un regalo para mis favoridos, I was like ("A gift for my favorites") -- and then I also made sure to tell them stuff like, "Come cerezas, pero no bebe cervezas" ("Eat cherries, but don't drink beers"), and I also would give them a more-extended explanation that A trabajo puedes comer cerezas, pero no puedes beber cervezas ("At work you can eat cherries, but you can't drink beers").

Later, though, that devolved into me just stopping them randomly when I was back in the kitchen and being like "Cereza, es OKAY, pero cerveza, es NO OKAY."

And, all displayed various levels of amusement or toleration, with this.

Towards the very end of the night, too, my one (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker told me that she doesn't drink beer, and when I asked why, she said that it's because in (Guatemala) women don't drink alcohol.

?Todas las mujeres?, I was like ("All the women?").

And then she paused and shook her head and was like, "Algunas..." ("Some...").

?Las putas?, I was like ("The whores?").

And, at that, her eyes just got really wide and she actually lifted her hand up and covered her mouth in what was either shock or surprise, and then after she recovered, she was like, yes, those are the ones who drink.

And then, she asked me what the word for puta is in English, and I said we had different words for the profession ("prostitute") versus the personality ("whore"), but the latter isn't the same, because it's mas negativa ("more negative").

Conversations with Coworkers (2 of 2): K-pop.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker says that the new song from Blackpink's Lisa isn't as big as her last song, but that a lot of people like it, especially in (Thailand).

For one, she filmed it in (Thailand) and uses (Thai) people and she's (darker) in the video, too, since she doesn't have that artificially (white) skin like she did when she was in Blackpink.

Also, she wrote the lyrics herself and she has this line about being asked to teach people Japanese, which she said was a call-out of how racist a lot of (Koreans) are to people from Southeast Asia, like they mix up all the (non-Korean Asians).

And, I said that I always suspected that they included her in Blackpink so that the K-pop company could market Blackpink more in (Thailand), since Lisa is (Thai).

And, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said that that's true, but she's on a different label now, and so she can say what she thinks.

Conversations with Coworkers (1 of 2): Covid.

At the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (tall) (new) (Chinese from China) coworker says he knows how he got Covid.

He used to work at this vague counter service grill with vague (Indian) food offerings near the campus strip of the university here in town, and that January right after break a (Chinese from China) student was coughing and coughing and finally got to the front of the line and while he was ordering, he coughed right into his face.

And, right after that, he got sick in the first wave, and he had to miss work for like a full thirty days.

Interesting verbal tic...

...of a (cool) (late 20s) cook from (Laos) at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now --

For real?

-- which he occasionally says as a pat default reaction whenever you tell him something, especially when you are in a conversation and something new and surprising is said.

. . .

(I wonder if he found an equivalent in English to something in Lao, or if it's just him.)