A new philosophy of scholarship: "Running up the score."

With the one ancient language that I've been studying up on for a number of years, now, and have made myself quite the expert in, I've recently decided to adopt a new philosophy of scholarship --

From here on out, I'll be trying to "run up the score."

Basically, it's like when you're in a basketball game and you're creaming the other team, but you don't pull your strongest players and let the weak ones have some game-time, but rather you just keep going full force, and you just relentlessly drive the opposing team into the ground.

For one thing, although I have ways to claim ideas and I have some very marginal access to journals and conferences, it's become pretty clear to me that they'll never "let me in," or at least not on any predictable timeframe.

There's just not any jobs, and people horde any opportunities and exposure for their "own people" or to flatter those who are already plugged in, beyond any dynamics where the tenure system has produced that common malfunction where instead of being vetting *for* quality, it's become vetting *against* competition, and has effectively created cartels of enforced stupidity.

I mean, there's exceptions, like, there's some current scholars who seem nice enough and who do some good enough work, but overall, that area of research is a relatively collapsed one, which is both why I can do such good work, but also why I can't get any toeholds to launch further through acquisition of a paid research position or a slot at a plum paid international conference or the like.

Like, if people were truly appreciative with what I did, they would have let me in after my first two-and-a-half projects where I made notable progress, because those were on topics that were just peripheral enough that they wouldn't necessarily be automatically threatening to everyone since it didn't seem like I was rocking the boat of "established" findings all *that* much, for it was more like I was clarifying long-standing problems that were known problems or I was tidying up some unexpected stuff, but only around the edges of the linguistic system, not at its center.

Since then, though, I've gone straight to the heart of major analytic flaws that are just deeply, deeply embedded in the field, which now makes it much much much much harder for the people who are "there" to accept me, since not only did they not find those fundamental findings like I did, but I found those fundamental findings as a hobbyist outsider, with almost no connections whatsoever to their rigid and highly overestimated training and employment structures.

Furthermore, I'm increasingly realizing that some of my recent work opens up new vistas onto other major findings...  It's like a linguist friend who I consulted in late winter said, over time I should start noticing that I'm producing a set of interlocking hypotheses, where there's suddenly an unexpected explanation in a different area, or my positions or progress on some new and seemingly unrelated topic actually stems from or depends on what I've already done.

So, it's like I'm cracking open this tough nut where stuff has been f*cked and people have been floundering for a while -- over a century, to  be exact -- and I now have not only caught that field flat-footed on that first finding of a major analytic flaw, but there's work that logically follows upon that, that they're not even aware of yet, so it's like they're even more flat-footed than in the first case, if that's even possible.

So, given that I haven't been accepted yet and it's increasingly unlikely that that will happen now, why *wouldn't* I just try to plough ahead and sort through material and "get there first" and rack up major findings for posterity?

I somehow feel like me and this field are just locked in this death-grip, where I just keep doing better and better and better and it's just increasingly worse for them that they haven't let me in, but with each new finding of mine, it makes it harder for them to "swallow the crow" and do so.

It's all faintly ridiculous, but I really do wonder at what point people will have to start to reckon with what I'm doing.

Back problems.

My lower-right back right above my buttock began hurting on Valentine's Day, when I was working at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now and we were moving around tables to prepare for the onslaught of  "two-tops" aka couples and I must have done something with picking up tables or turning or both, to somehow re-injure my back from when I injured it years ago on a multi-day canoe trip, which is easily going on twenty years, now.

Anyhow, since Valentine's Day, sitting on my low 1950s ("mid-century") style couch has occasionally made the pain flare up again, as has sitting in my one arm-chair, though less often, and as has lying on my right side when I try to go to sleep, or lying on my back in the exact center of my mattress where it's dipped down a little bit in the middle, permanently, since I haven't bought a new mattress in like forever, specifically, never.

So, at night, often, I slide my body down in the middle of my mattress, so I'm positioned below center and my feet are almost sticking off the end of the bed, so my lower back doesn't lie in that dip in the mattress that makes my pain flare up again.

I wonder how long I'll have to do this - - - What a life.

In-demand jigsaw puzzles, locally.

When I've left them there, the two jigsaw puzzles that have gone the quickest on the local library's "take one, leave one" honor-system jigsaw puzzle exchange table were a jigsaw puzzle of a hand-drawn "Americana" scene of winter ice-skaters in a quaint snow-covered town with horse-drawn carriages and nary an automobile or (black) person in sight, and another jigsaw puzzle that's a photograph of multiple 1990s Hallmark figurines called "Snow Babies." 

Both were gone in less than a day, since I returned the very next day at approximately the same time that I had left them there to see if they were still there, and they were both gone by then.

If I'm not mistaken, my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature would call both puzzles, "Kitsch."

A big life decision -- further "checking out," professionally, and from thinking about the future.

A few months ago I was thinking more and more that I should just stop looking at LinkedIn and actively keeping my ear to the ground about the health of different sectors, like actively asking around with people I know or with people I meet, how things are going in their sectors and what they're seeing, etc.

Like, I've been doing that for 15 years, and it's produced no career trajectory for me, and the information has been useful but it's also increasingly showing wage compression and wage growth from the bottom, with no solution in sight, so, like, why pay attention anymore, what else will that be able to tell me, and it just makes me focus on how I've had like 15 years of bad luck with me being misaligned with opportunities and careers as sectors etc. have unexpectedly shifted and radically declined, to the point where the overall economy and my overall chances are both worse than before the pandemic (apart from my being comfortable in a so-called 'low-end job,' which has an hourly pay level that increasingly looks like that of so many so-called 'professional' jobs).

And, just like my life, I don't say I'm "dropping out," I say I'm "checking out," a distinction that people like my one (white) colleague from (Mississippi) likes, since, as he says, if you're "checking out," you can always "check right back in," should something arise.

And, alongside this, I was thinking more and more that apart from professionalization efforts that don't take much time and money, like quickie trainings that fall in my lap or whatnot, I just stop thinking about the future beyond a horizon of like 1-2 years, since it's even further beyond my ability to meaningfully plan for, anymore.

So, I surveyed different people I know whose perspectives I value, and absolutely no-one advocated for me to continue to keep doing what I've been doing, with proactively monitoring and thinking ahead so much.

And, the only three people to give me lengthy feedback, all said to just stop and let go.

The one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living) client with (disabilities) said it's important to monitor sources of negative energy in your life.

And, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker said it's important to keep away from things that make you unhappy, and it makes a person happier to not overly plan or think about the future.

And, my one (art school) colleague who wears (women's) clothes, besides saying that my one (Thai) coworker's advice is kind of (Buddhist), said that it's like Alice in Wonderland, sometimes the only way out is to go in deeper.

So, I think I'm doing it. No more LinkedIn, and no more planning for the future besides knowing that I'll probably be where I am for a year or two more, at least.

Somehow this feels like a huge thing, like my giving up somehow. I don't know why.

Somehow it's like an admission of defeat.

Checking yourself.

One thing I've learned is to trust your impressions of situations and trends -- if you're seeing something, it's probably there, on some level.

On the other hand, it's also nice to have statistical confirmation that you're not off-base or paranoid or anything like that.

Like, a few months ago I was reading an article about local homelessness in the college town that I now live in, and it said that it's **doubled** in a two-year period during which I've lived in the town, and the next round of statistics are coming in soon, and they'll likely show that it's since become even higher.

Like, it's like I'm not on crack, and I truly have been seeing a big change here, even for during the relatively short time that I've been living here!

It's just like how I was saying drivers had become crazy in the city that I used to live in -- I actually stopped taking long-distance bike rides for leisure, because of that -- and then years later someone crunches numbers, and yep, some valid data showed a huge jump-up in crazy driving behavior like right around the time that I had noticed that and had changed my behavior, it wasn't just me being dramatic.

I've also had people suggest that my perceptions of crime in the city that I used to live in might have been biased because of increasingly dramatic news coverage, but I always push back, and say how I worked in the same areas for a period of years,and there was an increase of crime in those immediate areas, that just wasn't there before, and that's something happening, even if it's not captured in whatever statistics have you about overall crime levels.

Avocado sneeze

A few months ago in my little cottage in the college town that I now live in, I had turned on the radio to catch the early afternoon broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, as I was making some coffee and toasting toast for my raw onion and avocado on toast thing that I eat for breakfast, most mornings.

And, the preceding radio show was on, with some historic recording of Schubert's ninth symphony, and as it ended, the host was saying something about the unusual tempo in that recording, and how usually the work lasts fifty to fifty-five minutes, and, just as he was saying that, I not only popped a bit of avocado into my mouth and was chewing it, but I also suddenly somehow needed to sneeze, only, I was afraid to sneeze and not hear how many minutes this unusual recording was, so I tried to do like a half sneeze while I held the avocado in my cheeks, but, as soon as I sneezed and tried to choke the force of the sneeze down in order to decrease its volume, the repressed and tightly-channeled airstream somehow created in my mouth like funneled bits of avocado out through my mouth and out through my teeth and like flecks of avocado bits rained down all over onto the sink-edge and stove, like a big burst of little green lines here and there, all going in the same direction.

. . .

(The unusual recording was an hour and five minutes.)

Four events at one day at work...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) My one (chubby) (Thai) coworker texts that she's late and on her way, and she and I are replacing my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones and our one (tall) (young) (Latino-American) coworker, so I text her back something like "Okay," and then I send another text saying that our one (tall) (young) (Latino-American) coworker is getting angry, and I have him do a theatrical angry face and he puts both his fists up and I take a picture of him like that, and I text her that picture of him, too.

2) When I come table-side to refill water for two (older) (demure) (nerdy) (white) women, the one is just picking up her water to take a sip, which she does as I stand there waiting with my water-pitcher, and then, she holds out her glass for me and is like, "That sip was badly timed."

3)  When a (younger) (Chinese) guy comes up to the front counter to pay his like $90 bill, I see him sign and leave no tip, so I ask him if everything was okay with the food and service, and he looks at my one (taller) (Chinese from China) coworker who happens to be standing there and he says okay, he'll leave some tip, but he told his friends that this place was a nice place and a bowl was dirty, and at that my one coworker says that line about the boss seeing no tip and wondering what went wrong with the food or service, etc., a completely non-coordinated reaction between the two of us, as the customer puts down a $10 tip.

And, after the customer leaves to go back to his table, my coworker says that one of the soup bowls that they brought to the table for the group of four wasn't clean, and so the group sent it back and asked for a clean bowl.

(That was it! And, for that, no tip on a $90 bill?!?)

Later, I mention this to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and she just shakes her head and sighs, and I said it was reminiscent of some other (also presumably rich) (similarly young) (Chinese from China) students who were in like half a year ago, and one girl called us over and was upset because the ice cream for dessert had begun to melt in the bowl that we brought out (?!?!?!?!), and, just like this customer, that group blew it all out of proportion and left a low tip, and yes, she agreed, it was probably a rich Chinese thing.

I also wonder, too, if it's a cultural thing, where they don't know how to appropriately adjust the tip for (mild) dissatisfaction, or what (mild) dissatisfaction is.

4) When I call to the one (younger) (male) (Lao) cook and say his first name with (English) question intonation -- that is, the kind of intonation where you'd be like, "John?" -- my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker overhears, and she's very insistent that I use the proper tone when I say his name, and she repeats it for me and I can't do it, and as we're repeating it back and forth, the one (older) (female) (Thai Chinese) cook hears and starts tittering at what I'm saying, and finally I can say the name right, so we go back to what we were doing, but later I ask my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker what what I was saying meant, and she says she won't tell me, and then I ask her if it's a bad word, and she says yes, and so I tell her that she has to tell me, and then she holds her hand out and says it means something that's lying down and then stands up, and she raises her hand up, and I'm like, "Like 'erection'?', and immediately at that she starts laughing, and is like yes, when you said his name with that tone, that's what you were saying.