postcoiltal

Music: Love & Rockets: Lift Today I am going to visit my favorite garden shop, Howard's Nursery, which Roger and Amanda said is electing to "go out of business." I'm sad to see this place go, as it is a sort of "a little more pricey" mom and pop shop where people know your name. In any event, perhaps I'll pick up a neglected bit of statuary (I've already got all of the gnomes, though), but I do know I need to buy my third garden hose. The first one sucked, and the second, despite its price and overblown self-touting packaging, sucks even worse. Where do I get a friggin' decent garden hose in this town? How does that Bright Eyes song go? "I want a hose I don't have to love, I want a flexi-pipe that doesn't suck."

Speaking of hoses, my legs are cold (why doesn't air-conditioning ever have a "medium" or "baby bear's porridge" setting?). And, I'm happy to report the long, winding history of my "Hystericizing Huey" essay has come to an end, the kink in the line has, well, straightened out.

Some of you long-time faithful readers--all two of you--may remember my journey with this essay began almost three years ago. After a successful conference paper on Huey Long as a phallic master, I whipped up the thing into a psychoanalytic critique of demagoguery (which is really about Bush II . . . duh) and sent it to Rhetoric and Public Affairs, where it was rejected, and then to Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, where it was rejected, and then to the Quarterly Journal of Speech, where it languished for six months and, then and only then, was it rejected. I finally sent it to the Western Journal of Speech, where it was recommended that I revise and resubmit it, which I did, and now, finally, the damn thing will see print. Whew. I knew it was a decent essay, I just knew it was. I just needed some reviewer to actually take the time to read it and give the thing a fair shake. Which Barb Biesecker did; all hail "the Barb." She reads what she reviews, and if what she reads has potential, she'll help you realize it.

Anyhoo, you two may also remember I've documented the journey of this manuscript to print, at the behest of my students. I've updated the web pages that chronicle the invention of an essay to its publication. For the first part of the story, click this link. For the second part of the story (focused solely on Western), you can click this link. These pages have PDF scans of various cover letters, essay reviews, drafts and revisions of the essay, and so on. You're free to point your students to it, or to live vicariously through my failure, whatever. Just don't cite the pages in anything without checking with little ol' me, okie? Anyhoo, I was hoping the story would end in publication so the thing will do that teacherly thing that network television does: you know, pay homage to that song by Sly and the Family Stone, "you can make it if you tryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy." To which we should add: "it just may take some time" and "people may be mean along the way." Not that people are intentionally mean. Except maybe one certain blind reviewer from Penn State. But he and I made up and made friends; I kinda like him now.

I've not heard the comment "oh, but publishing is so easy for you" in almost a year I think. I don't know why, but maybe I've bitched and moaned enough in public about the process that people started to get the idea they shouldn't say that. For whatever the reason, I will underscore again that publishing is not easy, but it does happen. One must be persistent and resign oneself to the process taking many months, or in the case of "Hystericizing Huey," many years. Regardless, I've said it before and I'll say it again: for tenure you must be a terrier dog, not an Einstein.

Alright, the rose bushes are thirsty, the petunia looks sickly, and the car needs a good wash. Time to buy a hose and squirt stuff.