If you’re wondering why I’m posting twice a week now, it’s because I’m in the final throes of the thesis and am positively bubbling with ideas I need to vent. The tricky thing about writing one of these things is that you can absolutely guarantee that absolutely no-one will read the damn thing.
Sure, your supervisor(s) will read it, but they’re getting paid to do so. And paid to do so again, and again, and again. Before I come over to New Zealand for a well-earned holiday in November I’ll hand a copy to ‘the boss’ and she’ll get that look like ‘here we go again’.
For this reason I am eternally grateful to you all for reading me. Now this assumes three things. One that someone is actually reading this stuff, two that they’re doing so voluntarily, and three that they’re doing so more than once. But hey, its better than spending six years writing something you have to bribe people to even pick up and look at.
Much of the ranting I do in this blog is the product of those years of thought (unsurprisingly), so as I say, you lot are the only ones ever likely to actually read the results. Sure, a few years from now you may find a grizzled looney shouting ‘I am the brain child of Will Kymlicka and Iris Marion Young. Hear my words and repent!’ on the corner of Cuba and Manners Mall, but until then I’ll try to keep a lid on it.
To try and escape this intellectual marginalisation I’ve been firing off Op-Ed and journal pieces to various editors and chiefs trying to get access to that lucre I know is lurking out there somewhere in media-land. With any kind of luck I’ll strike the right formula at some stage and open that door to Uncle Scrooges vault.
What am I aiming for I hear you ask? Actually, it wouldn’t be too bad to assume the status of ‘blogerati’, an exalted position above ‘blogger’. If there’s something above blogerati, something mystical and unknown, then I’m game to find out. And if it means I get something akin to rock-star fame then I’m up for it. The name seems to help, the housemate called me an ‘Irish revolutionary’ the other day.
I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment.
Actually, the name is a good story. Apparently I was called ‘the boy’ for the first six months till ‘the Man’ made them name me. Damn hippies…
They reckon my first gig was Elton John and I was wearing tie-dyed nappies. Which would explain why I can’t wear nappies to this day without cringing.
Hmmmm… I think I’d like to be blogerati so I can finally impress someone enough into marrying me. And yes ‘ladies’, that does mean I’m single. When I was in my twenties there wasn’t such a rush, but these days my ears are starting to get really, really hairy. Combine this with the two caterpillars I call eyebrows and I’m quite a sight.
So ‘ladies’, if you’re happy hitching your wagon to a suspected mogwai, I’m your man. I’m cuddly, dip me in water and I reproduce, but Sundays adventure proves the sunlight doesn’t seem to effect me. It’s a quandary without explanation.
This brings me to the question of what in the hell to write about to secure this exaltation. I’d like to think that explaining how Kymlicka's theorisation of the complementary positioning of individual and society within liberal ideology will do the trick, or that Young’s discussion of 'association' being the primary impetus for a cohesive civil society will make some heels kick up, but I’m guessing that will limit my chances.
As it is, a statement like ‘biculturalism is a majority acceptance of immutable minority difference, and the cooption of that difference to secure minority participation in their own governance’ usually results in quiet whisper’s of “Shazza… was what he said English?” and then they try and slip me a roofie.
I should have learned to play the guitar.