Whiners.

That would be you. Yes, you. I took the blog down a couple of weeks ago after a colleague in my grad program found it and I was unable to undo the persistent google-link to my 'real' name. Fearing untold ruin was being done to my scholarly reputation with every post I wrote about cookbooks, bad dates, and painting my toenails, I decided to do away with The Paraphernalian. And then you started. Every day, multiple emails (many decidedly paranoid in nature) demanding to know why I had decided to lock him or her out of my blog. And then, after I had written each one a careful and consolatory email in response, every day, more multiple emails asking me to reconsider. The following are actual quotations from reader emails:

"I mean, what kind of a scholarly reputation do you really expect to have anyway?"

"You're not on the job market YET."

"How many of your students actually know how to read?"

"Can't you just write your blog in an email and send it to me and a few of my friends?"

At first I thought that last one was the most ridiculous of all. And then it occurred to me: most of the people who read this blog are my non-academic friends, and I'm really only concerned about keeping the odd googling job search committee member or conniving student out...so why not just make it an exclusive, invitation-only affair? That way I get to keep priming the pump of my dissertation with this decidedly non-academic writing, no one who doesn't need to know about my life outside of the library is the wiser, and you can all stop filling my inbox with your bitching and moaning? How's that?

Addendum: should you decide you would like to share this blog with the 'uninvited,' I will require proof that he or she is not a) on a job search committee for an institution of higher education, b) on an editorial board for a peer-reviewed academic journal, c) possessing access to an active English department listserv, or d) one of my past, present, or future students.

Resurgam!