I might be dead

On March 22, 2017March 22, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Work3 Comments

This came up when I Googled “dado joint.” I have no idea.

Sitting very near to me is a pile of paper, about an inch high, that I will need to absorb to some as-yet unclear degree in order to pass an examination on Friday. The test is going to take two fucking hours, and right now I have not the slightest idea what they think is going to take that long. I am and always have been a fast test-taker, so I expect this to take no more than twenty minutes. In theory, I ought to be studying at the moment.

I’m going to save it for tomorrow. I haven’t had a good old-fashioned cramming session in a few years. We’ll see if I’m still any good at it.

A shocking admission: despite my exhaustion, this has been a worthwhile trip, and there is nothing happening tomorrow that makes me think it’s likely that I’ll change my mind. As a lifelong educator the notion that professional development and/or training might not be personally insulting, much less actually useful, is almost unprecedented. Meeting with vendors is great. Granted, they’re all salesmen too and thus hucksters to some degree or another, but I’m actually learning shit.

Oh, and there’s HGTV on the hotel room TV, so you know how I’m really spending my evenings, right?

Also, people who live nearby are posting on Facebook that the local weather services are muttering about a foot of snow on Friday. If the world suddenly ends you know why. Good luck, thanks for all the fish, and all that.

I’m not dead yet

On March 21, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Work3 Comments

Jesus, I thought doing cons led to long days. I’m dead exhausted right now. The good news is that the company is not wasting their money or my time, and we are being well fed. I have no real complaints other than I’m not at home and not asleep.

Also, Denver is very flat, which surprised me, and seems to consist entirely of warehouses and factories. It may be that I’m in the wrong part of town but there are a lot of goddamn warehouses and factories. We’re pretty much confined to the hotel at all times so there’s been no real opportunity to sightsee and that’s unlikely to change.

“Why are there no pictures of the mountains, Luther?” you might be thinking. Well, it’s because so far the only time I’ve seen them has been while I’ve been in a van with ten other people and that does not lead to prime photography opportunities.

Sleep now.

The View from my Hotel Window: Denver edition

On March 20, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography, Work1 Comment

Well, la-di-fuckin’-da, Denver. I’m not even convinced you exist yet. On the plus side I’m apparently already The Guy Who Brought Painkillers, so everyone is coming to me for help since the air here isn’t fit for humans to breathe.

Dinner had better be delicious. I have been up since 5 am and it’s 7:48 my body’s time. I require something heavily potato- and beef-based, dammit.

On schadenfreude and self-improvement

On March 19, 2017March 19, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

So there’s this house I drive past basically every time I have any reason to drive north, and since I live on the south side of town “heading north” happens quite a bit. It’s a shitty house. There’s mold on the siding, visible plant life growing in the gutters, the roof is rotting, and the garage is not anywhere close to plumb. I suspect I could push the thing over if I wanted to, and there have been nights on the way home where I was tempted to get out of my car and do so.

There have also been a couple of prominent Confederate battle flags flying prominently around the house for the last several years. They keep moving them; sometimes they’re on the garage, sometimes by the side door, sometimes in the windows, sometimes just flying off the back of the shitty rusted-out pickup truck that you were already picturing in their side yard even without me telling you it was there.

I have no idea who lives there, but I kind of hate them. I don’t need to see your racist bullshit every time I leave my fucking house, and at this point anyone still willing to fly one of those symbols of treason over their house is pretty clearly signaling they’re not someone I’m going to enjoy associating with at all. These people are almost certainly assholes of some stripe or another and I don’t feel bad about not liking them on reflex.

The last couple of weeks I’ve noticed the flags were gone, and sometime in the last day or two a bunch of bank auction signs have sprouted up around the house. So it looks like the bank foreclosed on whoever lived there and is trying to sell this half-decayed house to recoup some of its costs.

And my first thought upon seeing all this was Good. Fuck ’em.

I’d like to be the kind of person who doesn’t celebrate in even a minor way when people lose their homes. For all I know there are kids living there who don’t deserve to be tarred with their parents’ asshole brushes.

I bet they’ve found a way to blame black people for them losing their house, though. Which brings me back to “Fuck ’em.”

Sigh.

In which I defend myself against something no one accused me of, and other bits of nonsense

On March 17, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

510Cy7ZwEHL._SX338_BO1,204,203,200_ I watch a lot of Hulu, right? Lately we’ve been binging all of Scrubs, which means that generally if the television is on in my house and there isn’t some sort of childrens’ programming on that’s probably what we’re watching. Hulu’s been promoing this program lately that appears to be about a fat old rich white guy who gets accused of rape.

Be it known to the world at large: at this particular point in my life I find it really fucking difficult to arouse any sympathy for old rich white men accused of rape, and I sure as shit am not interested in watching television programs that cast said old rich white men as the victims. Can I just fucking watch Scrubs, please? Maybe advertise other light comedies? And not this show, like, ever again? Thanks.

A warning: this part of the post is going to be kind of ill-formed and unfinished, as it’s still a work in progress in my brain and I’m not at all sure how I feel about any of it, so don’t expect me to come to any conclusions. I had a dream the other day where a former student (and I am one hundred percent certain that she will both see this and know who she is) sat across a table from me and lectured me about representation and cultural appropriation in my work. I’ve been reading a lot about both issues lately (the recent spate of articles about the whitewashing of Nnedi Okorafor’s The Shadow Speakers is only the newest example) and as someone who has actually written a science fiction book and deliberately made sure to get the black woman on the cover it’s kind of an important issue to me.

So, yeah, here’s the thing: I’ve got two books in the works right now featuring women of color as the leads. The lead race in my fantasy series is matriarchal. And my short stories tend to feature non-stereotypically-western cultures. I’m not good enough about writing LGBT+ characters but when you come down to it there are precious few straight relationships in my books either for some reason.

I do not write this to be awarded cookies. I don’t want cookies. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if I’m approaching all this the right way at all. Do me a favor, and go read this, and then read this.

I’m torn as hell on this and still thinking about it. But it’s on my mind at the moment.

I leave for Denver in, like, three days. I am still not looking forward to it. At all.

Yeesh

On March 16, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking2 Comments

This particular blog hasn’t been active for that long, but WordPress just notified me that I registered with the site ten years ago today.

Today’s inexplicable work thing

On March 14, 2017March 14, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Work3 Comments

I had a customer call me and demand to have her delivery scheduled on a certain day. I was able to accommodate her request, and did so nearly immediately. She then got mad at me and rather rudely insisted that I have her original salesperson call her back right away.

Uh. K. Sure.

I’d write more, but I’m trying to find a way to watch MSNBC so that Rachel Maddow can open Al Capone’s vault. At least that’s what I think she’s doing. I suspect watching it tomorrow will be more likely.

Just checking, pt. 2

On March 13, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Work5 Comments

Occasionally I have reason to call customers that have been in my store but I haven’t actually sold something to. Sometimes it’s because they’ve asked me to keep an eye out for something for them and I’ve seen a piece I think they’ll like. Sometimes it’s because something they were thinking about buying has gone on sale and I’m hoping I can convince them to come in and buy.

Actually it’s pretty much just those two reasons.

So this guy came in two weekends ago with his two kids and his wife. He’d been in at least twice with one of the boys previously, and I’d talked to him both times pretty much by pure coincidence. He and his son picked out five thousand dollars worth of bedroom furniture. Five thousand dollars of fairly ridiculously ornate furniture.

For a fifteen-year-old. We’ll lay that aside for the moment.

At any rate, they didn’t buy. Dad said he’d be back “tomorrow” with cash and I sent them with a quote. And they didn’t show the next day, which isn’t entirely surprising. It happens. But I had his phone number, so when we had an “everything on sale” thing going this weekend I called him and let him know I could save him some money. Left a message. Today was the last day of that sale, so I thought I’d leave one more message for him.

He answered the phone. I said who I was and where I was from.

“I’m with a patient right now,” he said. “I’ll have to call you back.”

252-word leadup to this question: what the fuck kind of doctor keeps his cell phone on while he’s meeting with patients, much less answers it when he doesn’t recognize the number? Have any of you ever had a doctor answer a goddamn cell phone while you were with him? That’s fucked up, right? I’m not crazy here?

He didn’t call me back, by the way.