Hello internet

On May 20, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Taking the night off; talk among yourselves. Amongst yourselves? Screw it, just talk.

What the shit, 1985?

On May 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Music31 Comments

Okay, I had a post in my head, and there were going to be words and punctuation and maybe a laugh or two and a whole bunch of other shit. Then, for reasons that are not interesting, I saw this video, and now all I want to know is what the shit was going on in the eighties. Because what the fuck.

Reagan was in office while this shit was happening. How does that and this even coexist?

WATCH THE WHOLE VIDEO.

Not to step on my own post or anything, but…

On May 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized5 Comments

I just discovered that BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES, VOL. 1 is an Editor’s Pick this week over at OpenBooks.com. There’s a stellar new five-star review of it over there, too.

An intelligent sense of humour is the best implementation of intelligence and the only valuable kind of humour. If I was sapiosexual, after a couple of sentences like the ones above I would have taken my briefs off, so maybe it’s better that I’m not.

Yeah, that’s right. The word sapiosexual got used in a review of one of my books. Word.

On miracles and odd decisions

On May 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy15 Comments

I walked into the building in less than a fully chipper mood this morning, said “good morning” to the first several students I saw anyway, and was rewarded with nothing but sullen stares for my trouble. Well, fine, fuck ’em; I went into my office and started working on paperwork that had been building up over the last several weeks.

I apparently managed to create an aura of hatred and anger and evil so powerful that no one bothered me all day. I spent from 7:30 AM to 2:00 PM in my office doing paperwork, completely clearing my desk of every single thing I had to do, and no one came in and asked me for anything all day.

I expect I will have to pay for that tomorrow, but hey, at least I’m not behind any longer.

In other news, I’ve decided I’m done with the Song of Ice and Fire books. Oddly, it was the events on the show last night that made me decide I wasn’t reading any more of the books. This makes sense, but requires a long explanation in order to make my reasoning clear, and I’m still angry enough about the show– a show I don’t watch, mind you— that I really am not interested in talking about it beyond the few short rants I’ve put on Twitter. But yeah. I’m done; those are out of my life now.

So that was my Monday. How’re you?

Two things

On May 17, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Work7 Comments

First, this image, which is more of a Facebook post than a blog post, but I laughed like a hyena so you get to see it:

The British makes it funnier.

Second, that the largest of our local high schools had their Prom last night, and we had a group of about a dozen kids attending that prom show up to play miniature golf in all of their finery last night. I am now old enough that kids dressed up for Prom generally all look like charmingly awkward dorks to me, which may sound like it’s an insult but really isn’t supposed to be. Prom is going to be one of the first times you’ve ever worn clothes like that and kids that age aren’t really all that used to inhabiting their bodies in the first place so there’s just going to be a bit of a mismatch from most of them in the grace and poise department most of the time. It’s not their fault.

That said, this particular group of kids looked good. Startlingly so. The girls in particular impressed me; my understanding is that the trend in prom dresses lately has been toward the…we’ll say minimalistic, but the six of them had all picked dresses that were dresses and not excuses to show off a bunch of skin. Several of the guys had white tuxes on, and– particularly when paired with the right color vest (I always preferred vests to cummerbunds)– white can be really striking.

At any rate, I’d just commented to my co-worker about how the kids looked quite a bit classier than several of the Prom groups we’d had in the past when I happened to look up and see one of the girls cup both hands under her breasts and jump, adjusting her dress in some not-entirely-clear and probably none of my business fashion while in midair.

And in spike heels, which made the whole thing quite a bit more impressive.

So yeah. Still teenagers.

One of these things is not like the other

On May 16, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy8 Comments

I shop at a local fat man store from time to time. They call themselves a “Big and Tall” store, but I never see tall guys in there and tall guys generally don’t need 5XL shirts, which is most of what they carry– I’m at the small end of the distribution in that place.

They send emails. Lots of emails. I got one today, in fact.I was a little confused as to what this had to do with Large Person shirts and pants until I saw the capacities down in the corner there. I need a portable chair that can support a thousand-pound human. I need it for science.

There was more to the email:

This part, I have to admit, confused me; I don’t go to the beach as a general rule but if I did I can’t see that I’d want to bring a beach tent. I didn’t know beach tents were a thing; if you’re a beach person and you would want such an object, fill me in.

Back to the chairs. There’s no capacity listed for the Picnic Time Portable Fusion Backpack Chair, but holy hell does that thing look heavy-duty. No price listed, either.

And then the email went completely off the rails, as they forgot who they were marketing to:

I don’t know what the overlap is between “people interested in portable chairs with a capacity of half a ton” and “people who need neoprene wetsuits,” but it most certainly does not include me. I’m glad the zippers are heavy-duty, though.

Question for the authors

On May 16, 2015May 16, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing25 Comments

I asked this last night on the Twoodle and only got one response, so I’m trying again here: if you’re reading this, and you’ve written a book (or, preferably, more than one) how many copies of your books do you have lying around in your house? Not “I’m going to sell these sooner or later” copies, but actual shelf copies that you are more or less keeping permanently.

Just curious.