Research strategy.

I think that I'm going to start a blog for my specialized research on that one ancient language that I've been studying intensively for the past 5 years or so.

I don't think that it will have any substantial volume, but strategically, it seems like the way to go.

Like I have done for years, I always try to build a new idea into the title of a talk, so you can publicize it and stake out and claim the idea in an indisputable way -- there's the title, it's dated, you were there by then.

That strategy has served me well, but I've had a major and mega-sexy idea turned down by one conference (they only chose people in tenure-stream jobs) and then that same idea was waitlisted for another conference (???), which shows to me that I'm spending too much time pursuing these people, as well as that criteria for talk acceptance can be radically unpredictable (are they on a different wavelength? do I make someone look bad and so a committee member puts up a stink and so they compromise and put me on a waitlist?).

Recently, too, I had a very small paper that I quickly wrote up with an idea that I didn't previously claim anywhere, since it was a decisive but very, very small contribution and I thought that it would just sail through the peer review process.

However, the first reviewer went after it so much, he said that there was no way it could even be revised to ever make it acceptable for publication, and that it was one of the worst articles that he'd ever reviewed!

(In other words, I'm very right, and he abused the structure and went after me hard to eject me from even having that venue for where I can publish something and advance the field, even in a small way, since it makes him and the field look like cr*p-ola, since what I did is so intellectually obvious in retrospect, once you say where you look for evidence)

Anyhow, between rejected and waitlisted talks and that one peer review, then, I really am starting to worry about the possibility of idea theft.

Like my one (art school) colleague who wear's (women's) clothes also thought after he read that one super-nasty peer review, did the guy try to close off any avenue for publication to waste time for me, so he could edge in and steal it? 

The response was so extreme, it does make it seem like something else could potentially be going on.

And, I mean, my ideas are big and decisive and simple and memorable and clear a lot of cr*p out of the field, so it's not like he couldn't understand it, and that type of work makes the ideas highly stealable.

So, in any case, I think the answer is to have a blog, where I can circulate the basic ideas on social media and maybe a listhost, and when an idea is ready, it's there, and I don't have to waste time on talks etc.

I mean, I'll still maybe try to give talks if I feel it, like at that one regional conference where people are cool, but I'd focus that on ongoing research, and not use it to debut new ideas per se.

If I'm able to put this stuff out there like I hope, that will be three major advancements -- and one major major major -- that have been done pretty much entirely outside of the field by someone who didn't train in it, only had glancing contacts with it, and was repeatedly rejected and so defaulted to using a **blog** to avoid all the bullsh*t that comes with contact with so many of the quote-unquote "experts" in this contorted and insecure "discipline" where they expect you to fall down and worship them without question, when in so many regards they don't even have their basic sh*t together.

Honestly, it's just like one embarrassment compounding another, for them.

If this stuff gets all out there like I hope, what will people of the future think, when they look back at the publication and presentation history of the major ideas?

Honestly, an independent blog, decisively correcting one major part of the entire research history of the language?

It's understandable when you dig down into the dynamics, but it's also just appalling.

Resthome chitchat.

During my recent trip back to the city that I used to live in, I stopped through the resthome where I used to work, to say hello to people.

I visited this one (highly-introverted) resident who I used to see sometimes, and she was happy to see me, since she's thinking of making a book out of her more than six decade's worth of diaries about her dreams, including everything that was going on during her life during that time, down to the TV shows that she'd watch regularly.

(My advice: don't default to chronological ordering, but explore other ordering principles. Also, include as an appendix her original diary entries for any dreams that she references, so future readers can compare both her immediate experience and her later holistic interpretations, where she's taking stock of her life.)

"You're looking so tan and great!", she was like, too, to which I demurred, saying that I had been just having coffee outside on a patio the previous day, during a leisurely sunny afternoon.

(I didn't tell her that I compulsively use leftover lime wedges from the restaurant where I work now, to give myself treatments for highlights.)

We also started talking about jigsaw puzzles, and she said that she'd do them sometimes, and my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker would give her advice on how to do them more efficiently, like by grouping by color or by looking for odd edges.

(I guess she did that for many people, then, and not just me.)

. . .

A coworker revelation.

After she found out about how this (local) (mainly college student) club is hosting a K-pop dance night, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now said she is going to ask our one (younger) (female) (Guatemalan) coworker to come, since she's a BTS fan.

And, I was surprised at that, so the next time I saw her, I asked her about K-pop, and she was like, yes, she likes BTS a lot, but she doesn't really know other K-pop groups and so she isn't too sure about them.

Discovery anxiety.

So, I was talking with my one (Chinese-American) coworker at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, and I was saying that I was a bit nervous that someone will come across my one major major major ancient language discovery before I have a chance to sufficiently gather up all the loose ends and debut the idea, even though this is completely new in the research history of this one language and it hasn't happened yet ever in the entire history of research, so it's not likely to happen now, apart from me.

"But what kind of work did you have to put in to get this far?", he was like.

And so, I then listed off how I had to learn all the language phases and scripts, and how I've been gatheriing observations out of this one phase that no-one pays much attention to, and on top of that I had to read a gigantic encyclopedic linguistics book that people probably consult but don't plough through, and then I also have been reading comprehensive language grammars cover-to-cover for ideas, and just in general I've had to engage in multiple years of open-ended thinking that no-one really has the leisure for, keeping bits of ideas and observations in a notebook all the while.

And, this is rethinking of a major thing that people don't even recognize as a problem, it's so settled and unquestioned in basic grammars and recent scholarship, and it involves like assembling multiple, multiple  overlapping pieces, some with slight shifts, and others wholly new, in addition to my having recently studied the history of one branch of this well-recorded and well-researched entirely different language family, that's given me a point of comparison where I have different and higher expectations for what can be known, than other researchers in the area.

"Yeah, it sounds like your brain isn't accurately assessing the situation, you're probably fine," he was like, using therapy-speak.

Texting banter...

...after I sent my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the brother-sister) pair this story about how an unbroken egg was found from Roman Britain: 

Her: That's nuts!

Me: No it's an egg

. . .

Crime close by.

So, this was the "crime close by" calculus from my two recent trips back to the city that I used to live in:

On my one day-trip there for a museum exhibit that was about to close, there was a headline-making shooting four blocks from where I was walking downtown, a half hour before I arrived by train.

And, on my next trip there to see a stadium concert, within a week of when I visited, there were two robberies very close to where I had visited my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) and her family, and another robbery right near a major intersection of the hostel where I've been staying at and walk by all the time, and two more robberies up by a close-to-the-hostel business strip where I have gone to get food before and where I was by there on that trip two different times for coffee and dinner.

That's just an absolutely insane amount of crime activity close to places where I'd recently been, especially in such a short span of time, and especially considering how traditionally safe those areas have been.

It's like I saw someone saying on social media the other day, crime levels for that city used to be exaggerated and if you had your head on straight and kept your eyes open nothing would ever would happen, but now it feels like just by being there you're tempting fate.

Another joke, at work.

Everyone at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now was decently excited that I was going to see Madonna in concert.

And, the day after I got back, it was super busy at the restaurant, where we just ran and ran and ran all night with barely a moment to stop, and at one point pretty much every table in the house was full.

And so, when I was back behind the front counter over by the stack of appetizer plates and the little warming pot of miso soup, I turned to my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones, and, though I only had a moment to speak since we were both going off in different directions, I was like, "We're working harder than Madonna."

And, she didn't seem especially in love with that joke, but then like over a week later when it was a busy spurt again, she turned to me at a similar moment and was like, "We are working harder than Madonna."

. . .