Professor Chiltepin and EC1 had a great idea going in the comments of this (untitled) post. Here's a copy of the conversation so far:
I
am eager to discover the nature of the confession. I hope it's not
that the blog is closing again. I can't take heartbreak like that.
The RGMs are all associate deans who get bonuses for cutting faculty lines.
The confession is worthy of a caption competition, or some other way of listing what we think will be confessed.
Could it be:
The RGM has sold our e-mail addresses to Scientologists?
CM will have its own ISSN, and everything we post is a peer-reviewed article?
The blog is closing again?
Yaro isn't real?
We woke up and it had all been a dream?- Yaro is the only thing that's real.
The RGM is a sock puppet of a certain fellow.
We're subjects in a scientific experiment.
Everyone on this blog are BFFs and drink wine together and teach the fuck out of Victorian novels. (Screw subject verb agreement) 
There is no duck.
(But I have occasionally wondered whether we're subjects in some sort of long-running behavioral experiment. It might be hard to publish, however, since I don't remember providing any sort of consent. Maybe that's not necessary when the whole thing takes place in a public space where participation is entirely voluntary?).- I was going to suggest that the RGM is going to confess that s/he is a doctoral candidate collecting data (and the reboot is the 2nd phase of data collection).
I'll add one more: If this is just a research project on us, then the joke is on the RGM. Maybe I'm also collecting data on CM. Maybe we all are. We're like a street gang comprised of undercover police trying to infiltrate a street gang.
So let's here your ideas for a confession from the RGM. The clock is ticking... You have two weeks to guess before you're proven wrong.
I confess, April Fool's Day is coming soon.... and I got nothing.
ReplyDeleteAside: I do that to my students all the time. Nothing makes a classroom activity more fun, that the build up to it. I will talk about an activity for weeks, just to get my students going. And then when we do it, it is just a normal activity, but it seems ten times better!
My dissertation was way better in my head than how it turned out on paper.
DeleteMy dissertation was never particular good in my head, or on paper (though there may be a few salvageable bits, I'm working on a different book, and it's a relief).
DeleteAnd I, too, suspect that the denouement will be something of an anticlimax (but maybe I just don't have Cindy's skills. Honestly, I usually have to consult the calendar I wrote back when I was awake at the beginning of the semester to find out what we're doing today, let alone in several weeks).
"The Mediocre Reveal" was anything but mediocre. It well exceeded both my imagination and anything I could have pulled off myself. I am still in awe.
DeleteIt was totally ten times better!
DeleteI checked the archives for the sabbatical timeline. It didn't match the clock.
ReplyDeleteBEN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??????
ReplyDeleteThe truth comes out about the "four" of us.
ReplyDelete*Spoiler alert:*
There are actually five.
First rule of countdown clock. Don't talk* about countdown clock.
ReplyDeleteSecond rule. Ignore rule one.
* don't know about you guys, but I'm typing about it...not quite so silverbacky that I get to dictate stuff.
Run a blog. You can dictate everything. It will kill your reason to live, but you can decide how you go out!
DeleteIt's my statistically-significantly better half who decides how I go out.
DeleteTweed & leather elbow patches are apparently not worn during honeymoons.
I've got it! The RGM is Jesse Stommel!
ReplyDeleteNo. Nooo! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
DeleteThere is a duck. In fact, there are four ducks (or maybe three ducks and an alpaca), and they serve, in rotation, as the RGM (because on the internet no one knows you're a duck. or an alpaca.) Or maybe they're the four horsemen of the apocalypse, in disguise (how did we not notice the significance of that particular number before? Eek).
ReplyDeleteOr maybe Terry is Leslie K. Or Leslie K is Cal. Or Cal is Fab. Or Fab is Ben (hmm. . .there are actually four of them, aren't there?). Or vice versa. Or they're all Wicked Walter. Or Strelnikov (now we're heading back toward the apocalyptic, or maybe just nuclear Armageddon).
I suppose I wouldn't be entirely surprised if any or all of the above turned out to be true (well, maybe not the ducks, or the alpacas. The RGM types too well, and too quickly, to have webbed feet, or hooves). I suspect there's just a bit more going on behind the scenes than we realize, but I also suspect it's mostly the occasional quiet tradeoff of moderating duties when we manage to drive the current RGM to the edge of sanity (which seems to happen with some regularity/predictability), rather than anything more mysterious or exciting.
But who knows, I could be surprised. Whatever it is, it seems to be coming a bit more quickly than originally promised/predicted. If it turns out to be bad, we can, indeed, all blame Ben. Why not? He's a former RGM, or RGM-ish figure, and it seems to be what we always do.
Is there a sense among anyone that somehow I don't see any of these comments?
ReplyDeleteAccording to h_p, you actually write them.
DeleteYou said you only work on the blog from 9 to 10 am each day. I thought I had more time to figure out your diabolical plan.
DeleteAnd I would have figured it out, if it weren't for you meddling kids and your dog.
Just fooling around. Apologies if anything rubbed the wrong way. You have to admit: if the goal of the clock was to get our attention, it worked.
DeleteAnd extra credit to Ben for the Scooby Doo reference.
And I was just trying to join in. Not a big deal.
DeleteGlad all is well.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI sped the clock up 7 days as a little joke with Ben. it wasn't intended to punish him or anyone else on the blog. I apologize to those folks who've suggested I was taking out something on him. But it was nice to get some mail all the same.
ReplyDeleteAw man, I missed it. That would have been funny.
DeleteFolks, for future reference, anything the RGM does with me is all good.
I felt gaslighted when it changed (back, I guess) to 14 days. Clearly the RGM was taking something out on me. It is all about me, isn't it?
DeleteOgre Proctor Hep has a machine that can confirm it's all about particular authors.
DeleteYup. I just now fed it some of my own stuff, and it spit out "I need validation", which I couldn't argue with, and which I recognized was of the same cloth as "It's all about me." Let's just say that self-actualization is a developing skill I have not yet mastered.
DeleteHey, where's my parking pass? I can't get out of the garage without getting it stamped.
Know the problem? I've never done April Fools Day on the page. I'm freaked out. There's a confession. Fab and Les always got Cal's help. It's just me!!!!
ReplyDelete...a festschrift for our favourite hybrid pedagogue?
Delete...guest editing from Strel?
...outlining the details of Gawker's purchase of CM?
...real godamned mail's "greatest" hits?
If you did nothing special on April 1, that would be a good one, too.
Delete