We went to the zoo yesterday

On October 12, 2015October 11, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography1 Comment

I only took a few pictures, but why not, they make for a good Monday morning post. The zoo previously had two elderly Amur tigers who both passed away in the last year from natural causes. They just recently replaced them with four, effectively, kittens. They’re all two years old, and apparently the tiger people are having fits from having to adjust from two geriatric tigers to four energetic babies.

Well, not so much “energetic” today, I guess. Witness the Triangle of Tiger! The fourth one was around the corner.

Flamingo. They have a dozen or so but this one was close by.

And a peacock. The zoo has two peacocks and they’re allowed to just wander around as they see fit. Both of them were hanging around the food court trying to steal french fries. It was pretty cool.

Note that this isn’t typical behavior for them, which is kind of surprising. If I was a bird and I knew there was easy food at the food court all the time, I’d be there more often, but I’ve never seen the peacocks there before.

SUNDAY MUSIC VIDEO POST!

On October 11, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

Just because.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On October 11, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

Welcome to Infinitefreetime! I’m Luther Siler. I’m the author of Skylights, available for $4.95 from Amazon, and The Benevolence Archives. Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 is 99 cents from Amazon. Volume 2, The Sanctum of the Sphere, is $4.95. All three books are available in print as well, and the print edition of Sanctum includes BA 1 as a bonus! Autographed books can be ordered straight from me as well.

My newest book, a nonfiction book about teaching entitled Searching for Malumba: Why Teaching is Terrible, and Why We Do It Anyway is currently available for preorder and comes out October 27.

Here’s where to find Luther Siler on the interwebtron:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. I am on Twitter pretty frequently; I use it for liveblogging TV, whining about anything that strikes me as whine-worthy, and for short, Facebook-style posts. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
Sign up for my mailing list here.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
I have a Tumblr! I don’t actually know what Tumblr is, because I’m old, but I’ve got one.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

Here is a thing that you need in your life

On October 10, 2015October 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Mostly Human edition

On October 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories8 Comments

If we were having coffee, I’d clue you in to a monumental development: last night I felt normal for the first time in two weeks. That is not a minor thing. This week I was reminded rather emphatically that my blood pressure medication includes a water pill, which I had completely forgotten about, and that it is sometimes possible to become rather badly dehydrated despite drinking water all the goddamn time. The reminder was rather unpleasant. My doctor used the phrase “perfect storm” to describe the wicked bout of dizziness and exhaustion that closed out my week, and it turns out that I need to start slamming a bottle of Gatorade as my first act of the morning until I run out of the current bottle of blood pressure medication, at which point they’ll yank the water pill part of the prescription. Also, the Lexapro has been cut in half.

I’m out of sick days for the 2015-16 school year, by the way. In October. That’s… kind of a problem, but there are ways to get some of them back that I’m looking into. Hopefully I won’t follow up two weeks of struggling with medication and anxiety issues with actually getting physically sick. But hey! I feel human. Let’s focus on the positive, hmm?

I’m also kind of sick of talking about medication, so let’s hope this is the last time for a while.

This would be the point where I’d realize that drinking coffee is probably not the greatest idea, as coffee is a dessicant. Waiter! More Gatorade!

Book news: Searching for Malumba is out in just a few weeks, so I really ought to finish the damn thing. As you might imagine, the last few weeks have not been good for any sort of creative work, and while the book mostly requires some fiddling around the edges– it’s 98% releasable in its current form without another touch– I need to actually do that fiddling. I’m hoping to be working on the print cover by tomorrow, which will mean the manuscript itself is ready by tonight. Early commentary has been good, so if you enjoy my commentary on teaching around here, you may wish to pre-order.

There’s no #SilerSaturday this weekend, by the way, as I currently lack the time and energy to be a salesman all day. However, my buddy James Wylder’s birthday is this weekend, and he’s put all his stuff up for free, so go download his books instead.

How’re you?

FEAR THE WALKING DEAD recap up at Sourcerer!

On October 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn TelevisionLeave a comment

It’s the finale. And I am displeased! Check it out.

In which I #review things

On October 9, 2015October 9, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews1 Comment

…a whole bunch of things, actually, none of which are really worth a post on their own.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #1. Let’s start with this: I’m not a fan of the new armor design, particularly given how awesome the last two suits were. I don’t like the faceplate at all, although I can’t put my finger on exactly why, and the whole suit seems a little too streamlined for my tastes. That said, Brian Michael Bendis is one of my favorite comic book writers, and David Marquez’ art is excellent throughout– I’m just not a fan of the design itself. This first arc is bringing back Madam Masque, who I haven’t seen in a long time, and the villain who shows up at the end is, without spoiling things, a hell of a surprise. I’ve been really happy with Iron Man for quite some time, so it’s good to see the book is still in good hands. My only complaint: BMB is fond of multi-panel layouts that stretch across two pages, but isn’t a hundred percent about doing it that way, so there are occasional moments where it takes a while to figure out the panel flow on any given two-page spread. I attribute this to Marquez not being used to working with him; Mark Bagley, his frequent contributor, hardly has pages like that at all any longer. I’m sure it’ll get better.

DOCTOR STRANGE #1. Doctor Strange is one of those characters who I have historically not been a fan of, but have always sorta wanted to be a fan of, if that makes any sense. And he has an axe on the cover of his new book, which pretty much guaranteed I was going to pick it up. I know little about the character other than what you’d pick up via osmosis after 30 years of buying comic books, so it’s possible Jason Aaron’s take on him as a sort of exhausted, cigaretteless John Constantine is going to annoy longtime readers, but I liked the book enough that it guaranteed a few more issues. Chris Bachalo’s art is superb, too, which doesn’t hurt at all, and the book was way more action-packed than I was expecting. The axe comes in handy; let’s put it that way.

INJECTION TPB, by Ellis, Shalvey & Bellaire. I almost didn’t buy this. I bought INJECTION in single issues as it came out, and by the end of the six-issue run I had no damn idea what was going on at all and was basically only buying the book because I was too lazy to take it off my pull list– which, I think, comic fans know happens a bit more often than it probably should. So why spend more on the TPB? Because I had a hunch that the book would work better if I sat down and read it at a gulp than it would have in singles when I’ve read 30 comics since the last time it came out. And… man. Yeah. That’s exactly what happened. INJECTION is complicated enough that honestly I feel like it should have just come out as a trade paperback rather than bothering with the singles, and I’m glad I jumped at it twice. Warren Ellis doesn’t do bad work, guys. I shoulda known better. Check it out.

EMPIRE, the entire first season. I had to stand up and walk away for a bit before I wrote this part, because I’m still sort of in “What the hell?” mode on this show. Some facts: We watched the first season in maybe three or four big gulps. The acting is, by and large, phenomenal. And the characters and story arcs and quite possibly the entire setting of the show make no goddamn sense at all, especially if you know anything about the music business. Watch this show for Taraji P. Henson as Cookie, because she’s Goddamned amazing, and she needs to win all the awards. Pay no attention to the fact that the show seems to have no goddamn idea what year it is, or to know anything about trends in music at all, and definitely ignore the guy in the first couple of episodes who appears to have been unsealed from a time capsule first buried in 1985. Do not think too hard about consistency, because this is a soap opera, and holy shit is it a soap opera, and it’s probably best if you go in knowing that and don’t have to figure it out like I did. But watch it anyway.