Also,

I'm quite curious who the person from Poland is who keeps reading my blog. Do I know someone in Poland? I can't imagine this blog appealing to anyone much less a person I don't know from Poland.

In the interest of keeping my foot free of bullet holes, I am deleting this post about the punctuality of certain folks.

Typo Update

Praise Moroni! I sent an urgent email to the secretary about the unfortunate typo mentioned in my previous post and she was able to retrieve the application from the outgoing mail. This is one time when her leisurely way of doing things has actually been beneficial. This means I don't have to overnight a new cover letter to the search committee that otherwise would have received the defective letter. This victory is made all the more sweet by the knowledge that a very prominent faculty member in my department (someone with whom I actually have little contact) recently put in a plug for me with the head of the search committee at that very school. I found this out today as I was signing the revised cover letter.

Think psychometrics is hard? Try doing it in a well.

Another typo recently came to my attention after the application went out. This cover letter was to a university that wanted someone who seriously engages with the relevant science.

Version 1: In order to do this research in an intellectually responsible manner, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

I didn't like this version since it might have made my work seem more controversial than I'd like for it to seem.

Version 2 (intended): In order to do this research well, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

Carelessly, I did not delete all the words necessary to make the revision.

Version 2 (actual): In order to do this research in an well, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

Message conveyed by Version 2 (actual): Either this guy wishes never to work with others in the field (he prefers the isolation that one might find in a well), or this guy surely can't write philosophy if he can't even write a simple cover letter.

In other news, I added UC Davis, Carleton College, and UCLA to my list of schools.

t.A.T.u., Ya tebya lyublyu

Dear t.A.T.u.,

I just wanted to write an open letter to the both of you expressing my gratitude for writing such wonderful songs. Among my favorites are "Robot," without which I would have never learned to roll my 'r's and would not have learned about artificial love and artificial honey (?) and artificial ice; "Bylo i Proshlo" which makes wonderful use of the lately underused vocodor; and "Ya tvoya ne pervaya" (I am not your first) in which you lament a one-sided relationship. Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova, I don't care that you are not really lesbians. It was a great marketing gimic (credited to your producer Ivan Shapovalov) at the beginning of your burgeoning career to pretend to be lesbians masquerading as two girls who just really love each other a lot. The only thing cooler than Russian lesbians is faux Russian lesbians, because that means that all hope is not lost that I might one day wed Yulia (or Lena, if Yulia is taken). Your ruse on the world was something out of perhaps a latter day incarnation of Bret Easton Ellis' _American Psycho_. It was a clever expose of the early aught's fixation on a transgressive fantasy. It was a brilliant trick, and when you came out as heterosexual on the video "Anatomy of t.A.T.u" in December of 2003 and further corroborated the fact when Yulia had a child with Pavel Sidorov in September of 2004, I'll bet that you alienated that segement of your fanbase consisting of 50 year old single men living in their mother's basements, but those were not your true fans. Those of us to whom this makes not matter appreciate your artistry and don't need a gimic to sell us your music (great music has neither sexual orientation nor statutory rape clause). Though as I stated, that you had such a gimic, as such, makes me love you only more. It was a device for facilitating social self-consciousness. We learned a bit about ourselves as a culture when you kissed on Mtv and we cheered and purchased your albums because of the spectacle only to find it was all a charade. It took me a while to see the genius in your work and by the time I came around, the lesbian facade was dropped. Once we were ready to be truthful with each other, we were ready to love each other.




-Brian

Thesis Statement: Awesome

It looks like several applications have gone out with a typo in the first line of the cover letter. I'm a champion.

More about jobs

Here's what little news there is:

I've decided to apply for a position at Virginia Tech.
I've decided to apply for a position at the University of New Mexico.

The majority of the schools to which I applied had Nov. 1 deadlines. So, I expect to hear nothing very soon.

Like most application processes, once the application is sent, there is little one can do. For this reason, I don't have much commentary on the process. Like last year, I'm not terribly stressed about it. Now, if December rolls around and I don't have an interview, I might start getting a little anxious. However, worrying at this point is premature and achieves nothing. There are lots of annoying things about the process, but it is just part of it; you can accept it and work with it, or you can rant about it and imbitter yourself. Of course, were it not for the modicum of support I get from my department, I'd probably be singing a much different tune. I'm lucky that my department charges me only $2 to send out my dossier (even to programs overseas), and that the secretary prints off my cover letters on letterhead for me and stuffs my envelopes. From what I understand, that is more than a lot of places do for their graduate students, and if I had to pay $5 bucks per application (as some do) and do my own envelope stuffing (as some do), I'd probably be as bitter as this guy is.