Believe it or not, it looks as though I have finally achieved RESULT from Evil River Website which had raised a really peculiar issue with one of my books by misclassifying it as something it was not and refusing to sell it on any site but .com.
I am still not sure this can really be happening... But it does actually appear on the various other regional sites.
(Previous sales stats appear to have vanished, though.)
Sometimes there are projects and commitments that occupy a significant part in one's life, but when they are over, one heaves a sigh of relief and goes off humming 'My chains fell off' to oneself.
In other cases, one thinks, what? what am I going to do now? even if, for the duration, one has been entirely aware of other things nibbling at the edge of one's consciousness that need doing.
Even if it's not entirely over.
(In fact, after I completed the first draft of The Biography, there were rounds of editing it down, followed by all the fun stuff of publication such as copy-edits, proofs, the marketing questionnaire, etc: but still, it was a significant moment.)
One wonders if Arnold Bennett ever had this feeling, or whether he just went banging on to the next thing, whether it was another novel, short stories, journalism, non-fiction, or his diaries.
(I remember seeing an adaptation of Anna of the Five Towns at the Vic c. 1970...)
***
And, I think, completely unrelated, Rome has a problem with wild boar; wolves mingle with surburban Germans; mountain lions frequent LA. All around the world, city life seems increasingly conducive to wildlife. (I was, wot no lionesses whelping in the Roman streets?)
I have my email back, also my website!!!!
Happy happy day!!!!
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Dept of Nature Notes: spotted during my local perambulations today, 2 pied wagtails.
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Dept of, Exasperation - Do These People No Nuffink?
Really annoying piece in the most recent Literary Review (doesn't seem accessible on its website yet) -
While I am all for the deconstruction of popular myths, I am less inclined to be on-side with the person deconstructing them who appears to think that Byron's homosexual activities constitute 'more obscure details' of his life - some 30+ years since the publication of Louise Crompton's Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in Nineteenth Century England -
Also assumes that rampant heterosex activities were a 'smokescreen' (bi erasure, what) -
Assumes that comments about Byron's 'effeminacy' by contemporary observers were saying something about sexual orientation rather than disapproval of his dandyism: generally seems to have somewhat anachronistic assumptions around gender presentation and ideas of masculinity/sexual orientation -
And above all, seems to be entirely ignorant that one reason for Byron to conceal same-sex proclivities would be, hello, CAPITAL CRIME in English law.
The guy appears to have srs academic credentials in the EngLit field. Would not be the first time that I have come across lit types who are not up in developments in the history of sexuality
The realisation that it is rather more than a fortnight, rather than just under, until the event at which I am keynoting. Yay. Removal of pressure, a little.
***
Dept of, this does not sound entirely professional.
If you are sending out solicitations to publish in your journal, which is supposedly Important International Journal on [Subject], is it actually necessary to put the very basic definition of the subject in your email?
Will say that this one may not be so entirely outwith yr hedjog's sphere of interest as some of these solicitations to contribute to journals, attend conferences, etc (Sid says HAI!) but really, this does not give me a great deal of confidence in the enterprise, but not quite so little as the recent one which addressed me by some other person's name.
I suppose it's pretty similar to those SEO hopefuls who haven't actually worked out that my website isn't selling anything.
Yesterday An Event took place at my workplace of a kind my department had not previously essayed, and which I was i/c organising, involving an organisation whose archives we hold.
We are fortunate that we have a) dedicated AV and technical people on hand and b) a really marvelous admin person to handle all the room arrangements and hospitality.
But, still, it was my idea and I'd done all the inviting and briefing speakers and drawing up a guestlist and so forth.
I think it did go well, though perhaps the fact that I actually had to encourage people to leave at the end of the reception was more down to their having once worked together and having a chance to catch up... (with what was actually rather nice wine).
I don't know whether it was just the speakers we'd picked, or the general nature of the organisation in question, but they all seemed on good terms and there did not seem to be deep underlying tensions from strife and drama of years gone by (let's say we deal with other bodies which could give a Renaissance Italian court as imagined by Jacobethan authors of revenge tragedy a run for its money).
Ended up having a very agreeable discussion involving a range of topics including 70s feminism with one of the speakers, before I had to round people up to get them out of the building.
Have been looking for Yogi Lemon Ginger Tea in several shops now and failing to find it: what I did find was Green Tea with Lemon and Ginger *NEW*.
DO.NOT.WANT
(Green Tea, for all your monkey hallucination requirements... and even not going that far, have found it perhaps a leeetle over-stimulating.)
I was worried that, as in the case of so many other products, manufacturers cannot be content with a successful item but have to change it or mess around with it or just discontinue it.
But no: going to Yogi Tea website they still list Lemon and Ginger tout court, no green tea, not chai, so it looks as though I have just been unlucky in the shops I looked in.
Okay, there are other brands of Lemon Ginger tea, but this is the nicest, for my taste.
In other consumerist business, have grassed up PC World to the Consumers' Association and Camden Trading Standards Department (since the branch in question is in Camden).
In fact, I can haz 1 conference keynote paper (still needs tweaking and polishing) and 1 conference presentation (still lacking a few images, but those are in hand) - for the latter I still have to write a brief text for publication in proceedings, but now I have the structure down.
So I feel that I can go away for this long weekend with a clear conscience and a massive sense of relief. Because there have been points where I was almost despairing of getting a coherent keynote completed. The work-related presentation was more about making time to sit down and pull the images together/decide what new ones I needed, with sufficient leeway to get them processed.
***
Dept of, A Bit Weird:
Really rather sudden and substantial uptick in numbers of people looking at the Akademyk blog, over the past couple of weeks. WTF.
People whom I don't know, have not interacted with, and who have not introduced themselves a) adding me to their circles on G+ b) asking me to connect on LinkedIn. Are they bots? Is it just about having A Huge Circle/Network? Would rather have small choice circle of people Who Know Who I Am, but perhaps this is not the way it is done these days.
Ah. On closer perusal of my Wiscon schedule, two of those sessions are, in fact, in the academic strand.
Relief.
On the phone grump, the Evernote problem, at least, is a Known Issue in respect of the HTC Wildfire, according to their user forums recently checked.
Another cause of relief:
At my talk yesterday on STDs, nobody raised the horrid spectre of SIFILTIK JEENYUS or even namechecked the recent B Britten scandal (scandal by the definition of, it is scandalous that a biographer goes swanning off into such wild realms of speculation on the basis of zilch plausible evidence).
Because I don't think I've had Siegfried Sassoon before, and, in a week in which relief has been a keynote, the exuberant relief of 11/11/1918 rather than one of his many acerbic and grim war-poems:
Everyone Sang
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on--on--and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
Some weeks ago, I booked a couple of days off because a) I still have several days leave to use up before the end of the year and b) I was in a panic and a fret over the seminar paper I'd committed myself to giving at The Other Oxford University next week, which, what with one thing and another, I hadn't made a start on.
Lo and behold, I actually have that paper pretty much done, read through for length yesterday evening and editorial tweakage made. (It helped that I realised that I did have substantial amounts of text that I could self-plagiarise recycle for a new audience.)
Upshot of which is, I don't actually have to slog away at it today, I'm not going to even start on The Next Thing (1000 words for an encyclopaedia entry thinggy), not just till after conference this weekend and seminar next week, but until when I get back from Grayshott.
This is a weird feeling.
***
An immense sense of relief when the worst fails to happen is by no means a bad thing. It's like a good fictional ending where things don't go to hell in a handbasket but it's not all sunshine, lollipops, rainbows and unicorns either.
***
In the world of social networking:
I'm not leaving LJ, given that there are still people on it with whom I wish to keep interacting. It also seems that the new reading page is not going to be quite as horrendous as the original indications, though I hope they fix that layout issue.
Am somewhat irked by a rather remote academic acquaintance who has fairly recently friended me on FB and now keeps unilaterally signing me up to Groups (what happened to the 'invite' function?) and suggesting other people to friend, which hey, I get enough of from FB's automatic pushiness about people I might know. Hello, there are people one knows and would rather avoid, right?
I wouldn't say I've got a paper as such, all done and dusted and polished and ready to roll, but what I do have is an outline and a PowerPoint and a feeling that the thing has got some kind of shape to it rather than being a collection of random thoughts ('O HAI! we'd like to you to keynote at our conference on archives [relating to particular theme]' is a bit of a broad remit and it took me weeks even to come up with some kind of title.)
But, anyway, within the constraints that I really left all this too late to get new images done (because of another time-pressurey commitment, which had also gained the kind of momentum I didn't want to halt), so I have to use images I already have (of which there are a plenitude) plus a few things downloaded from the intawebz, I think I've got something that should more or less work and I'm in a position to do a preliminary runthrough if I can get access to the door-shuttable workspace.
Phewness abounding.
*Piss off early, tomorrow's Saturday.
At the moment I don't feel I'm getting much done, partly because the last couple of months at work has largely been eaten by a monster task of editing and revising a whole load of documents preparatory to massive redesign of work website along with major changes to the back-end system. I suppose it is good to get a whole load of documents, many originally created well before these here modern interwebz, on a rather ad-hoc basis with a certain lack of consistency, more consistent, though once I got stuck into the task I also found myself putting in a whole load of further improvements and have been stimulated to do some revision/expansion/etc stuff that I have been vaguely thinking needed doing for Quite Some Time. I do now see a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, I think.
But it's somewhat the sort of job that a) yes, ought to be done and b) but is anyone going to notice?
But, anyway, today I finally got arrangements for work-related Belfast trip next month sorted.
And have booked myself a week at Grayshott: yay, Grayshott!
Plus, this evening, checked off 'commitment I was really surprised to be asked to undertake' (and still don't know why they asked me, except, well, it was something I was able to do). O HAI, I now have time and energy to devote to the annual Wiscon travel-angst.
***
Dept of aaaaaargh:
(And so not linking to these)
John Sentamu on same-sex marriage (summarised as, he's agin it); review of that vibrator play which unproblematically assumes that it records 'the early days of electric vibrators and how they were used to treat hysteria in female patients' (have I struggled in vain?).
Amazon rec for That Book on the C18th 'sexual revolution'.
After a lot of fiddling about and tinkering I managed to uninstall and reinstall the wireless adapter and the netbook now talks to the net once more.
The downside is I appear to have lost all my 'Favourites' under connections. Not that that is a critical matter.
Doing a meedja interview, which involved discoursing on/about/around various hystoryk textz.
One of which, which I had been specifically asked to have to hand, was:
William Hunter's study, with detailed engravings, of the Gravid Uterus.
That William Hunter. That volume based on anatomical dissection of pregnant women's bodies.
And I was anticipating having to do my best to Quash The Sensationalist Tendency and indicate that while there were ethical issues over how they obtained the bodies (resurrection man was not a respectable trade), positing mass murder was almost certainly Going Rather Further Than The Evidence Would Suggest.
But in the event, we never even got round to that particular item.
Phew.
In fact, you may find yourselves asking, where is ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oursin and what have I done with the hedgehog; but I cannot find myself entirely devastated to have come to the conclusion that the files relating to the Interim Incarnation of The List I used to run, in the days when it was on the second of the two free list hosting services before attaining SRS academic credibility and stability, must have been lost during some computer crash or upgrade or something.
I might even describe my emotion as relief.
Because not only was the task of getting these into a form I could put on my website arduous and tedious, it promised revisiting some extraordinarily tiresome onlist brangles, most, but far from all of them, involving Nightmare List Person of whom I have posted on previous occasions.
The tiresomeness having just been forcibly brought home to me by tidying up my personal email archives for part of the period in question, as things got worse and worse and I finally removed Nightmare Person's access to the list. Quite traumatic enough.
Though also, looking back, there was a flourishing email friendship with another list-member which has, alas, fallen by the wayside and may in its day have been somewhat facilitated by having the latest list-horrors to commiserate about.
No doubt there was useful information exchange and productive discussion going on as well during the two and half years in question, but there was a fair amount which I suspect is no great loss to the annals of history.
Not to mention interchanges which the participants might not want out there and googleable.
So, farewell then...
(Any betting that now I will suddenly turn these up having burnt them to CD on some past occasion? Aaaaargh.)
Excellent news after my flaming bish over the proofs, failing to put in file in my hand luggage for correction during long spaces of travelling time. Email today from the volume editors saying that they have kicked up major stink with the publishers about how intrusive and incompetent the editing has been. As a result, the publishers are going to redo the whole thing, and we will be getting a fresh untampered with version in due course.
Relief.
Upside: no correcting of proofs edited by someone with an axe. Downside: this volume has already taken far too long to get even to this stage.
Twirling and pirouetting in the dance of the deferred deadline: two month extension! Wheeeeeee!
Also, had lunch with S who I hadn't seen for months (finishing her book, moving house, various familial and domestic crises), which was good as always.
Also, went, slightly out of obligation (as it comes out of project I'm in Steering Group of) but also personal interest, to seminar at the Ministry of Truth this evening. Excellent.
And a TGIF news items about drunken elks. Even sober, Swedish elk are not a pretty sight: I'd hate to see them drunk.
branchandroot