Finally finished the paper today, sitting in a friend's apartment and babysitting the aforementioned kitten, who kept using the back of the chair I was sitting in as a scratching post and is totally adorable. I watched her stalk and pounce on a stuffed mouse toy for several minutes.

It won't get posted here, because it needs a lot of work, and if i'd given myself more time to write it, it would have ordered and structured it much differently and worked in stuff from The Practices of Diaspora and Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left, but the problem with the whole three term papers a semester structure of graduate coursework is that you can never read everything even if you really, really want to.

An anonymous commenter over at nerds thinks I'm unhireable.

Actually, there was an article in The chronicle of higher education about the danger of blogging for potential job applicants a couple months ago ("exposed in the blogosphere" http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i47/47b00702.htm). Being identified with a blog, especially if it contains personal information, can really hurt job applicants. Imagine reading weapon of class instruction (http://problemofleisure.blogspot.com/) and then seriously considering the author for a tenure-track professorship. there are universities where he might still be hired, but, generally, members of hiring committees might get turned off.

12/05/2006 7:45 PM

I'm not going on the job market any time soon, so the point's moot, but initially I thought this was intended in worse faith than it seems to have been. Most of the anonymous commenters over at that site these days generally preface their remarks by referring to one of the bloggers as a sphincter and perhaps I led my fear of anonymous commenters, which dates back to when it was me they were after, get the best of me. Or perhaps the derisionI thought I sensed when I first read the comment is indeed there but the point stands anyway. This far my response to concerns about blogging and the job market has been to defer such meshuggas until I'm much closer to actually being on the job market, if that is indeed where I end up. But that was part of the impetus behind the pseudoanonymity as well. That and getting the opportunity to rechristen myself with a smartass sobriquet.

Anyway, I'll have the customary year-end post up tomorrow.