They’re just not that bright

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

Really freaking rough day at work today. The day started off with an emergency staff meeting. As you can probably imagine, an emergency staff meeting, this one called on literally three minutes’ notice, is never a good thing, and this one was worse than most, as we lost a student over the weekend. Apparently she had a massive seizure while in the tub. Halloween was her fourteenth birthday, and was also the day her parents decided to take her off life support.

She was not one of mine, and not a kid I knew, but the building was a mess as a result. We were given a statement we were asked to read to our second hour classes, and there were grief counselors in the building all day long.

And as much as I would like to blame that for my kids’ academic performance today, I really can’t do that, as once again a huge percentage of my students decided to pretend today that they had not only not attended a single second of any sort of 8th grade Math class, they had spent their entire lives living in a small, dark box and had never encountered the concept of numbers in general. Far, far more kids, unfortunately, than could be reasonably presumed to have known this girl. Plus it was also happening during first hour, before anyone knew what had happened.

I don’t know if non-educators can really understand the frustration of spending an entire month of class time talking about solving equations every single day, and then to wait a week and have a solid majority of your students act as if they have never encountered any such nonsense before. Or to ask an eighth grader what three plus nine is as part of explaining an admittedly somewhat tricky story problem and be greeted with a blank stare and three obvious guesses before you finally pry the answer to that first-grade math question out of them.

I still can’t figure out how it is fair that I get judged on the academic performance of people for whom being a moron is aspirational. “When am I going to use this?” indeed; you will never in your life use anything, and I wish I could get across to you how intensely depressing that all is.

Are there standardized tests later this week? Of course there are. They are never fucking dumber than right before something that is important to me, but not to them.

Monthly Reads: October 2026

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography, ReadingLeave a comment

I read a lot of really good books this month, and A Court of Splintered Harmony is definitely the book I’ve talked about the most, but Book of the Month goes to Christopher Buehlman’s The Thrice-Bound Fool, which somehow I didn’t review. You should read it.

Unread Shelf: October 31, 2026

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography, ReadingLeave a comment

Pretty heavy, partially because a lot of rereading happened this month. We aren’t going to talk about these:

These books are, uh, let’s say awaiting promotion to the Unread Shelf. They certainly aren’t the beginnings of a third shelf. That would be crazy.

#REVIEW: Well Dweller (2026, PS5)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video games2 Comments

So, remember Crypt Custodian? The guy (guy! one single developer!) who created that just released his next game, Well Dweller. In Crypt Custodian you played a ghost cat who literally cleaned up the afterlife. In Well Dweller you play one of the very last birds alive, who is trying to rescue his family from a wicked queen who killed all the rest of the birds to make a pretty dress. He fights with a matchstick.

The games share a lot of DNA; they’re both Metroidvanias with mild platforming elements; Crypt Custodian is top-down and Well Dweller is a side-scroller, but both feature huge, complicated maps, lots of power-ups that allow for a decent amount of build variability (or you can grind up to be able to equip basically everything if you want) and cute stories that occasionally punch you in the gut. I liked this game a lot; it’s short (I got 100% and the Platinum in about twelve hours) and easier than maybe it needed to be but those are the only real weaknesses. Well Dweller also offers occasional moments of incredible creepiness; witness the boss above, and the one below:

Your bird does indeed live at the bottom of a well at the beginning of the game, with the rest of his family, but what the title of the game does not mention is that they live inside of a skull, so these are either very small birds or a very large skull, I’m not sure which. You will also sometimes do things like have a little picnic outside of a rotting corpse:

The corpse will not be commented on by either of the characters, and it will not come to life and attack you. The whole game is like this. It’s nuts.

You already know I love games with heavy exploration elements, and I love Metroidvanias in general, and this really scratched an itch for me. I was especially pleased with the platforming; I generally think of platforming as something I have to get through in a game rather than something I enjoy, and this game doles out its platforming moments in little bite-sized chunks, and in general is not trying to hurt you. There was really only one bit where the platforming got on my nerves, and I’m comfortable calling it a skill issue, and one way or another it was over in a few minutes. There’s definitely nothing in this game that you might have to beat your head against for hours like certain other games. The graphics are pretty, the controls are tight, and the combat is maybe a little limited but still fun. You’re going to pick up some movement skills that will help you out but you’re not really going to pick up any combat techniques beyond swinging your match around and a little firebomb that you can either toss at your enemies or throw into the air and then smack at them, baseball-style, with your matchstick.

At $20, there’s no reason not to pick this one up. Go for it.

I can’t do it tonight

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I have, at the very least, a lot to say about A Court of Splintered Harmony, which I finished last night before going to bed, but that was before spending a heavy teaching day in my 84-degree classroom (it’s late October, so the heat has to be on, to hell with the fact that it’s still in the mid-seventies outside!) and then having my adorable little gay kids club and then going to Parent-Teacher conferences for my son and oh also Patrick fucking Stewart died.

I cannot. I am exhausted and I am completely emotionally spent and somehow I saw this coming, because I found myself weirdly worried about Stewart earlier this week, and I am going to take a shower to wash the sweat off and go to bed now that tomorrow’s lessons are ready.

Ok let’s gooooooooo

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, TeachingLeave a comment

This furry little asshole sits in my lap while I read all the time, and this is the first time she’s decided to take a bite out of one of my books. There are literally teeth marks in the dust jacket now. Brat.

Anyway, I survived the field trip and the reward party, and now I have two days of ILEARN practice tests and a Goddamned data-collecting exercise that no one is going to actually look at but we sure had better have done by Friday or there will be UNSPECIFIED CONSEQUENCES.

Bah.

Gonna go finish the book now.

OH you BASTARDS

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I’m overreacting juuuuuuust a little bit, maybe, as normal grown men with reasonable temperaments and decent mental health recognize that waiting one extra day for a book is not that big of a deal, and also because slightly unhinged book goblins with perhaps more money than they really ought to have can just order the ebook for another fifteen dollars that goes to the same company that is shipping your preordered book late and start reading it today anyway.

This is how I know that trying to shame me out of shopping at Amazon is never going to work: it is specifically their fault that I don’t have this book right now, and I gave them more money so that I didn’t have to wait 24 extra hours.

I have a sickness.

Today was madness from start to finish, my room was way hotter than it had any reason to be, and I am very nearly dead. I meant to stop at the post office (this Amazon thing here is not the only problem I’m having with getting my shit shipped to me; I’ve had a package tied up in Evansville, of all fuckin’ places, for over a week) and at some point after pulling off the highway I slipped into a fugue state and the car starting driving me home instead of to the post office without my permission. Once I realized where I was actually going, I lacked the strength to alter my direction and just went the hell home. Tomorrow we have a field trip, then half a class, then lunch, then two shortened classes and a reward party. I already told the kids in the two and a half classes I’ll actually see that we aren’t doing a damn thing. There is no universe where education can take place under those circumstances. There is only keeping them alive and me out of jail.

Also, after talking to my boss, I’m taking the day off instead of going to this.

Blink and it’ll be over

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I’ve got 300 pages left in A Court of Silver Flames, which means that I ought to be ready to start A Court of Splintered Harmony by bedtime tomorrow at the latest, so hopefully the damned thing shows up on time, as my luck with packages lately has been absolutely atrocious. This is going to be a really weird week; tomorrow is a relatively normal day but it’s a Tuesday after a long weekend. Wednesday the 8th graders have a field trip all morning and then the afternoon is going to feature a reward party for kids who got through the first quarter without being idiots or assholes. Thursday and Friday will be practice tests for the ILEARN, and then the first actual checkpoint is next week, after an election-related e-learning day. Maybe I’ll go to the training on Tuesday and get arrested! Maybe there will be civil unrest too! Who knows.

Oh, and we have parent-teacher conferences for the boy on Thursday and a meeting with a lawyer on either Wednesday or Friday. (Adulting stuff. Nothing to worry about, but one more thing in the context of the rest of the week.)

One way or another I’m hoping the next fourteen days soar by, and this week is going to be fast no matter what, I think. We shall see.