Monday, June 27

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I had a doctor’s appointment today, and after the doctor’s appointment, I had to run over to the post office to mail a couple of packages. You will note that the post office is closed on Sunday, and while it isn’t impossible, doctors that have regular appointments on Sunday are few and far between. However, since today is Monday, neither of those things were a problem for me today.

I got a call yesterday(*) that a medication was ready for me at my local pharmacist. On the way back from the post office, I drive past my pharmacy, and I did not turn into the parking lot of the pharmacist to retrieve my medication, because it was Sunday. No more than five minutes after leaving the post office.

I’ve been talking about renewing my teaching license; I decided to go ahead and get myself set up with my required CPR certification today, since I had discovered (unsurprisingly) that I do, in fact, need to have an in-person training where I interact with a CPR dummy and can’t do the whole thing online. So I need a class, and that’s probably best done before school starts. Conveniently, there was one available next week on Wednesday, on June 29, which seemed good, so I paid for it and then opened up my calendar to put it in my schedule.

And it was good that I did that, because it is, in fact, the 27th, and typically on the 27th of any month it takes two days and not nine before it is the 29th.

EDIT: You will notice that the headline for this post says “June 27” and not “July 27.” I swear to you that I did NOT do that on purpose, and now I’ve noticed it I’m leaving it in. My doctor should perhaps have checked for recent head injuries.

(*) JESUS, YESTERDAY WAS ACTUAL SUNDAY. THIS HAPPENED ON SATURDAY, TWO DAYS AGO.

#REVIEW: The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell

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This had better be the worst thing I read this year.

More on it later, possibly, but I have a terrible movie to watch before I talk about the terrible book. Needless to say, I have no idea who Michael Korda is, but I don’t believe he even read this fucking thing.

In which I am unreasonably angry

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading2 Comments

That’s not a sticker.

I made multiple attempts to acquire this book through physical retail channels– I’m not sure why, but I really wanted to buy it in person– before noticing it was like 60% off or something like that on Amazon and giving up and ordering it, and it shows up with that … thing on the spine. I’m genuinely considering returning it and just reading it on my Kindle, because that’s going to bother me every single time I look at the book for the rest of time.

Maybe I’ll go to Half Price Books tomorrow and see if they have an earlier edition.

Same, Charles Darwin. Same.

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

It’s been a weird damn day. I’m definitely in Okay School Can Start Now mode, and as of right now I basically have two more weeks of break. I’m going to try to not live at work during the week before school starts like I usually do, and I’m going to try to not spend much, if any, money on my classroom in the next couple of weeks either. I’ve spent most of the day obsessing about money and trying to figure out the best way to get rid of lots of my possessions. I’ll spare you the details; bog-standard Anxiety Brain at work, and for no good reason. There’s nothing bad going on; I’m genuinely in the best financial shape of my life right now (knocks on wood) but I’m going through another one of those occasional phases where I’m obsessing about The Next Car, and I accidentally figured out yesterday that I can technically afford The Next Car right now, which is not part of the plan, and I’m sticking to the Goddamned plan, which is to wait until the boy gets his license, give him the Kia, and then either lease or buy myself a new car.(*) That’s a little over a year away. I have a target in mind for my down payment; I’m halfway there, and I don’t think pulling together the other half in the time I have will be difficult– and even if it doesn’t happen, it’s not like there’s a hard deadline for something like give my son my car.

Further complicating things: he’s commented more than once that he’s not sure he wants his drivers license, which is a startlingly common affliction for kids of his generation. God could not have stopped me from taking my driving test on the first day I was legally able to. Also a potential complication: I think my dad’s car is probably on its last legs. It might turn out to be more sensible to give him my car, but that’s not something that’s going to happen on my timetable.

Forgive me; I’m thinking out loud, obviously, but hopefully typing this out will calm my brain down a little bit. I got a few things done around the house, took a shower in the new shower finally (it works!) and read about a third of the thousand-page book I started yesterday with the parts of my day that weren’t dedicated to kvetching. Tomorrow I plan on fixing the toilet and a ceiling light in the other bathroom, and hopefully I can get that done without electrocuting myself (unlikely, as I know how to turn the power off to the bathroom) or breaking the shutoff valve for the toilet … which is a bit more of a concern. I’m perfectly capable of swapping out the guts of a slow toilet, but our shutoff valves are, by and large, Not Good, and replacing those is beyond my skill. So if that fucker snaps off in my hand we’re going to have to cut off the water to the whole house and call an emergency plumber.

Cross your fingers for me, will you?

(*) Spare me, for now, any opinions on which is a better idea, although keep them in your back pocket for the inevitable moment when I have to actually make that decision, because we all know I’m going to ask for advice. It’s kind of a pointless conversation until I know what loan rates are looking like when I actually get the car.

Glass is weird

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography2 Comments

In the absence of an actual post, since I have no thinkythoughts in my brain at all right now, enjoy this picture of my new shower, and contemplate how weird the reflections and shadows are.

#REVIEW: The Death and Life of Malcolm X, by Peter Goldman

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This will be brief, as it’s been a stressful day; we had most of the rest of the work done on the bathroom (there are, sadly, still a couple of tasks to finish) and the guys were both an hour and a half late and then took much longer than they anticipated, which means I’ve spent the entire day waiting, and I’m currently chewing my arms off and climbing the walls at the same time.

The Standard Malcolm X Disclaimer: Malcolm is one of my favorite Americans; I nearly named my son after him (I had my wife talked into it and everything, and then we mutually decided to name him after his grandfather instead) and I have most of a shelf of books about him. “This book is about Malcolm X” means that I’m going to read it and unless it is tremendously poorly written, I’m going to enjoy it. It’s kinda baked in from the jump. And this book is certainly not poorly written.

Peter Goldman’s book was the first major biography of Malcolm X, coming out in 1973, with the edition I read dated 1979. I’m honestly surprised I’d never encountered it before, but I read The Afterlife of Malcolm X back in February and it got referenced enough times that I felt compelled as an amateur Malcolm scholar to pick it up.

And it’s a surprisingly solid biography, especially when one considers that it was written by a white guy in the early 1970s. Goldman appears to have had a good relationship with Malcolm and while the book isn’t as heavily footnoted as I might have liked, I didn’t encounter anything that smacked of shoddy historiography. He focuses heavily on the last year of Malcolm’s life, and then — and this is what made me decide to go ahead and write about it — also spends about a fifth of the book talking about the trial of the three men who were eventually convicted and sentenced for the assassination. Now, Afterlife covers that material as well, but that book is more interested in Malcolm as a cultural icon and I don’t think one book substitutes for another. The real interesting bit of the book is the 1979 addendum at the end, where Goldman says that he no longer believes two of the men convicted for the killing had anything to do with it.

I can’t really issue a blanket recommendation for this book, not because it’s bad but because it’s 2026 and there has been a ton written about Malcolm X in the years since he was killed. If you’re only going to read one book about him, you should read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a book every single American should read anyway. If you want to read a biography, specifically, I’d recommend Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life Of Reinvention or Les and Tamara Payne’s The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. If you already read those books and you haven’t read this one? Definitely give it a read.

A couple of quick notes

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I finished another really good book today— maybe you can use context clues to figure out what it was!– but I feel like I’ve maybe used up all of my holy shit this was good you have to go read it now reviews for July? Or maybe that’s not a thing, or maybe I ought to just review the two books I DNFed in between this one and There Is No Antimemetics Division. Y’know, to combat the idea that all I do is slobber all over every book I read. I dunno. Are my book reviews too positive? Maybe I’m not trustworthy anymore.

I will say that July has been weird in that it’s featured both more amazingly good books and more DNFs than a typical month does.

Anyway, what else happened today? I spent part of my afternoon clearing out my Literal Physical Inbox, better known as the wire racks on my desk that I dump mail and paperwork into when it is too important to throw away and yet not quite important enough for me to file away immediately. Getting this done was a goal over Winter Break that didn’t happen, and then a goal over Spring Break that didn’t happen, and I swore to myself that I wasn’t getting through July without taking care of it.

I found stuff dated 2022, by the way.

Along the way I uncovered a ton of professional growth paperwork for my license renewal, which isn’t a critical necessity yet– my teaching license doesn’t expire until July of 2028, which means that technically it’s good through the end of the 2028-29 school year, but I figured I’d get a jump on getting the paperwork filed.

About half an hour ago I told my wife I was going to worry about getting it done tomorrow, expecting it to take the whole morning, and then I logged into the license renewal site just to see what I was getting myself into … and I’m done with the paperwork already. It took less than fifteen minutes. I have to wait for them to approve everything, which shouldn’t take more than a couple of days, and then I need to get my CPR certification up to date, and I think after that I can officially apply for my renewal, so in theory this might be done before the school year starts. Tomorrow morning I’ll find a CPR recertification class, which will probably take longer than uploading my paperwork did.

That will square up my teaching license through 2038, a year so far into the future as to be meaningless, and it might be the last time I have to renew my license, as I’ll turn 62 in 2038 and you best believe I’ll be retiring as soon as possible, even assuming that I make it through twelve more fucking years of teaching. That, all by itself, feels completely crazy. Not as crazy as the idea that if I don’t retire in 2038, I’d have to renew through 2048. That year’s not even going to happen. Let’s be real.

An open letter to Gov. Andy Beshear

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Here’s how you handle this:

Announce that Mitch McConnell’s office has until the end of the week to respond in a satisfactory fashion to your entirely reasonable letter about his health. If they do not, at noon on Monday you’ll be holding a press conference on the front steps (or equivalent thereof; the hospital probably doesn’t have a lot of steps) of George Washington University Hospital in DC, which is supposedly where he is. After that press conference, you will be entering the hospital and demanding to see Senator McConnell.

If you are provided sufficient evidence that McConnell is alive and able to perform the duties of his office, you will come out and tell everyone that. If you, the governor of Kentucky, the state that McConnell represents, are denied the chance to see him, either by hospital staff, DC police, McConnell’s staff, or literally anyone else, you will be notifying the still-gathered news media of that fact and then you will immediately either appoint a new Senator in McConnell’s place or name the date of the special election, depending on which method your office has decided you’re able to utilize this week. I feel like this part keeps changing.

They will sue you, if you do that. An awesome thing about facing a lawsuit, though, is that they would have to prove he is alive in order to sue you for unlawfully replacing him. Which happens to solve the exact same problem that you already had, so it’s all good.

It’s time to make an ass of yourself, Governor. Do it.