The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Day 30, which should be the last day of the challenge but isn’t, is “A song that reminds you of yourself.” Which … huh? I’m reinterpreting this again, to mean “reminds you of a specific time in your life.” Which leads me to this song, which (despite coming out in 1992) will never as long as I live not remind me of my senior year of high school:
Do any of you have songs that you listen to and think “This reminds me of me”?
It’s a good video. It’s a real good video. I’ve mentioned recently how wild I think it is that my life keeps intersecting with Democratic Presidential candidates– not that I can find the post right now, but I swear I have– and now my mayor Pete Buttigieg has announced that he’s forming an exploratory committee to run for President.
I, uh, don’t really want to be in a position where I have to vote for him. This is a weird thing to write, right? Hell, I didn’t think Barack Obama was ready to run for President early on in his run, when he’d only been in the Senate for two years, and he very quickly proved me completely wrong on that front. Pete Buttigieg passes one of my first smell tests for someone running for President, which is do I think this person is smarter than me, and he also passes my second smell test, which is do I think this person would be a better President than I would. He is, and he would. However, I would be a pretty terrible President, so that second one in particular is kind of a low bar. I do not think that being mayor of a town of 100,000 for, what, six years or so adequately prepares you for the Presidency no matter how good of a mayor I think you were– and don’t misunderstand me, I’m quite fond of the guy. I just don’t know what the hell he’s thinking right now, because even if he’s essentially trying to run for VP he’s up against Mike Pence, and frankly as much as I despise Mike Pence I think Buttigieg is not enough to move Indiana back into the blue column given that a former Governor is the VP right now.
(Fun fact: there have been more Vice Presidents from Indiana, at six, than any state other than New York. There have been two just in my lifetime.)
If I had my druthers– and the world working the way it does, I have actually told him this– Buttigieg would have his eye on the Governor’s mansion or a Senate seat right now. Indiana has had both Democratic Senators and Governors in the not terribly recent past; while the state is pretty uniformly red right now, it’s not going to last forever, and I think we have another wave election or two potentially headed our way at the moment. I think eight or twelve years down the line we will be looking at him much more seriously as a Presidential candidate– again, my main objection is to him running now. I can very easily imagine a world where I’m happier to vote for him further on down the road.
But hey, I’ve been surprised before. Maybe the dude is even savvier than I think he is and he’ll find a way to light a fire under his candidacy. That would be damned impressive, close to impossible, but maybe. At any rate, it’ll be fun to keep an eye on.
(I am, at the moment, on team Kamala Harris. My affiliation is loose; I haven’t bought a jersey yet or anything, and of the currently declared candidates the only one I really have genuine problems with is Tulsi Gabbard. But just so y’all know where I’m coming from.)
Heh. A song that reminds me of my childhood, huh? Okay:
What were you listening to in 4th grade?
I am trying very, very fucking hard right now not to write an entire post about how we need to burn down a certain racist shithole of a school in Kentucky and then take what’s left after we’ve burned it down and throw it in the ocean. I am as angry about this horseshit as I have been about anything in a very long time. Martin Luther King Day weekend is always a trying weekend for me, because I am so, so, so very sick of white people (and it is always white people) trying to turn him into The Nicest Man Who Ever Lived, and it just never ever fucking stops.
That the former happened during the latter is not helping my mood one goddamned bit. And let’s be clear here: the boys are assholes, yes, and I suspect that a number approaching but not quite reaching 100% of them will remain assholes as grown-ups. But there’s a reason I’m directing my ire at the school and not at the students.
(WordPress, right now is not the time to start fucking with me about how you can’t handle italics anymore. Not. The. Time.)
No, the real reason I’m pissed is that at no moment anywhere in any of those videos is any adult presence at all seen. I have taken kids on these trips before, remember. Not just as a chaperone; as the person in charge of the trip. You have two jobs on these trips: 1) to get the kids safely home to their parents, and 2) to make sure that at no point during your trip are any of your students showing their asses. And … well. You may have seen the video of the one kid literally tearing his shirt off.
If any one of my students at any point during any of my trips to DC had even had a dream about taking off his shirt and making a fool of himself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, when he woke up he would have been on a bus, by himself, halfway home already, and probably hogtied to boot.
And there is no evidence of any adult presence anywhere in any of these videos. None. These kids are being allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, and what they want is to make asses of themselves in public and shout things about rape at passing women.
And all this was before the blackface imagery came out, and at that point I don’t even care what the fuck happened at the Lincoln Memorial any longer. If this school lets these kids show up at basketball games in blackface it needs to not be a school any longer, and I will not be entertaining any suggestion otherwise from anyone. The Memorial’s almost irrelevant at this point. Gaslight away, assholes. The school lets them show up to basketball games in blackface. We’re done talking about whether they’re all racists or not.
Fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck all of this.
I’m tired.
Day 28 is a song by an artist whose voice you love. And, again, this is perfectly interchangeable with Day 25:
Don’t front, dammit: Biggie may not be a singer, but his voice is beautiful, and you know it.
Who’s got pipes out there?
Day 27 is a song that breaks your heart. I have heard this song a million times and can’t get through the last verse without fighting off tears. That’s not a joke or an exaggeration. I can’t do it.
What song breaks you every time you hear it?
I ride around on a giant stone serpent I have named Tiny Snek now. I have played approximately five hundred hours of Pokemon Let’s Go: Pikachu since yesterday’s post, which does not count the twelve thousand hours my son has put into the game, and as of this exact moment I have not yet Caught Them All. I have Caught perhaps A Third Of Them, and I think perhaps I have played just a little too much Pokémon this weekend. I mean, my eyes are bleeding. That’s not normal, right? I don’t remember what my life was like before we bought this game but I don’t think eye-bleeding was ever really a prominent part of it.
This game has dick jokes in it, by the way. They are at least moderately subtle most of the time, but Jesus Christ the Boulder gym, the first one? Everything in there was a horrifying sex joke that my seven-year-old, currently perched on the arm of the recliner I’m writing this in and reading over my shoulder, did not understand. Also, all of the human character models, even the male ones, have at least a-cup breasts, which I’m really confused about. About half the time I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be talking to a male or female character until they give me a name. These are not things I was expecting to be thinking about while playing this.
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, so the boy and I have the day off and my wife has to go to work. I may have to accidentally break the TV at seven in the morning to save my sanity. Pray for me.
A song that makes you want to fall in love? This one’s easy:
Which obviously wrong song might you have chosen for this one?
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