Month: July 2019

On future nerd shit

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, movies4 Comments

You, uh, may have heard that Marvel Studios’ SDCC panel was yesterday. I have some thoughts.

I haven’t actually seen Spider-Man: Far from Home yet, due to a vile combination of Ongoing Medical Calamity and raw timing making it difficult to get out to movies. I think this is the farthest out from release weekend it’s ever taken me to get to one of these movies. Hopefully sometime this week. But! I was on Twitter and io9’s live blog last night during their panel (why why why wasn’t it being streamed?) and … well, here we go:

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: MEDIUM-LOW. Not terribly psyched about this except insofar as it’s going to be a return for the MCU to lower-tech spy films in the vein of Winter Soldier except even more, which ought to be awesome, and it looks like Taskmaster is the villain, which is double awesome. High hopes, but I’m not jumping up and down over it.

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: MINIMAL. I have been reading Marvel comic books since I was nine. I have never heard of a single character in this movie. I can tell you nothing. I’ll see it, because I don’t miss Marvel movies, but only to see how they tie it in with everything else. The cast looks great, but other than that if you’ve just heard about this movie reading about it just now you know as much about it as I do.

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: MODERATE-HIGH. I don’t have any particular fondness for Shang-Chi as a character, but the notion of the real Mandarin making his way into the MCU has me salivating. I just wish it was in an Iron Man movie like it was supposed to be. That said, they’ve been talking about the Ten Rings since the first Iron Man, so there’s a lot to do here. Also, while I’d never heard of Simu Liu, who will be playing Shang-Chi, before yesterday, his Twitter feed has rapidly turned him into one of my favorite Internet people.

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: EXTRAORDINARY. I’m not the biggest fan of Doctor Strange as a character, and I’m not the biggest fan of the first Doctor Strange movies– in fact, if I was forced to rank the Marvel films, it would be close to the bottom. But the notion that they’re selling this as a horror film, and the phrase “Multiverse of Madness,” and the fact that the Scarlet Witch is going to play a large role in it? Take my fucking money. All in.

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: QUITE HIGH. It would be higher if I didn’t know that the Jane Foster Thor would be played by Natalie Portman, who I loved almost at an indecent level as a younger man and have grown increasingly bored with as the years have gone on. The fact that they’ve got her back for the movie after having to cut around Jane in Endgame probably speaks volumes about the quality of the script, or at least the quality of the check, but yeah, I’m looking forward to this one quite a lot.

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY. Literally the only thing I know about this– as far as I know, they didn’t even announce the release date– is that Mahershalalhashbaz Ali is playing Blade.

Mahershala Ali is playing Blade. Okay, technically this is double-casting, because he was Cottonmouth in the first season of Luke Cage, but there is nothing I will not watch Mahershala Ali in. Nothing. I am all over this.

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: VARIOUS. It remains to be seen if the Disney+ streaming series will be tied into the MCU any more thoroughly than the Netflix shows were, which is to say, not at all, and the fact that they recast Mahershala Ali shows how little respect they have for those shows. But they’re putting movie actors into these shows, and talking about them at the MCU panel, so they’re probably gonna be tied in pretty close. That said, this is probably going to sell me a (reluctant, annoyed) Disney+ subscription, because:

Fuuuuuuuuuhuhuhuck the fuck yes Monica Rambeau confirmed as an adult in the MCU. EXCITEMENT LEVEL: IN NEED OF TIME TRAVEL GIVE IT TO ME NOW. I don’t know that the name Spectrum or any of her other superheroic identities were actually confirmed at the panel (she’s my Captain Marvel and she always will be) so it may be that she doesn’t have powers at first, but her presence in the ridiculously named Wanda Vision means that I have to see it, which means I may as well watch all four. And, I guess, The Mandalorian while I’m at it.

Interestingly, while they said “they’re coming” about sequels to Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy and left with a vague allusion to “mutants” and an actual Goddamn Marvel Fantastic Four movie, no dates for any of them. So Phase Four is going to be mostly dedicated to expanding the MCU again, which I’m all good with.

Other, non-MCU stuff: I’m really looking forward to the Dark Crystal Netflix series and while I want to be excited about Picard I haven’t managed to watch the trailer yet, which … yeah. If there’s anything else I should know about it hasn’t penetrated the fog yet, so tell me about it in comments and I’ll react.

Ha ha ha ha ha never mind

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

So, yesterday was a day, and it is a hundred forty degrees outside and I have already spent about half my waking hours in the pool, and you may disregard the entirety of yesterday’s post because why would things like saying I would like to offer you this job mean that you get a job, and I’m just keeping my mouth shut from here on out until I have signatures on shit.

I am tired and overheated and spent most of yesterday in an exceptionally bad mood and all I want to do today is play video games and not catch on fire.

Man do I wish I had been born in any generation other than the one that literally ended the world.

In which things happen fast

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

Welp.

Things happen fast. Within an hour of putting up that post yesterday, I got an email from another principal at a different school letting me know that they had an opening for the same job I currently have and asking if I was interested in it. I went in for a brief interview this morning, and … well, at this point we’re just waiting for dots and crosses, so to speak. Naturally, the first principal called me during the other interview to offer me the job, and to be honest, a part of me really does regret having to turn him down. But this way I don’t have to worry about grading for eight hours every Sunday for the entire school year, and I don’t care what else is involved; I’m just not going to ever miss that.

Of course, now I have to talk to my current boss, something I will happily put off until everything is good and official but nonetheless requires doing. And that’s gonna be a not very pretty sort of conversation, because “I know this situation we’re in is kind of shit, and rather than doing anything to fix it I’m kinda gonna make it worse, and, man, good luck with all that, I’ll be over here, not helping at all” is just not going to be any fun.

Do I feel bad about it? Yeah, a little. Not enough that it matters, though; not enough that I’m willing to put my family through what I’ll be like next year if I stay, but I feel bad about it. I’ll, uh, let y’all know how it goes.

When you’re trying to project confidence but on the inside you’re screaming

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

Had a job interview today.

A two hour job interview today. Not, like, interviews with multiple people in a row that totaled up to two hours. One interview, with one person, that lasted two hours.

I was interviewing for two different jobs– math at two different grade levels, basically, so it’s not like the questions were going to be different and that’s why the interview ran long– but I got the feeling that the principal was definitely zeroing in on one grade instead of the other by the end of the interview. Which is fine. I’ve been teaching middle school long enough that grade levels don’t really matter all that much to me any longer, although I do have a preference for one curriculum over the other, for whatever that might be worth. I gotta feel like if you sit down with me for two damn hours then you’re probably pretty serious about bringing me into your building; a red flag at any point could have ended the interview a whole hell of a lot sooner.

And here’s the thing, right? If you’ve been around here for a while, or if you’ve read Searching for Malumba, you know good and damn well that if you ask me questions about education you’re gonna get answers. I’m better at talking coherently about classroom praxis and education in general than I am at almost everything else. Which means that I interview really goddamn well for teaching jobs, and the number of teaching jobs where I’ve made it to the interview stage and not been offered a job is frankly pretty damn small.

At any rate, I think it’s probably reasonable to believe that I’m gonna get offered a job at this school in a couple of days. Not guaranteed, certainly, because shit happens, but I think it’s reasonable, especially since I was applying for two different jobs. Which will mean that I’ll be back in the classroom this fall.

Which I have … mixed feelings about, as you well might imagine, if you’ve been around here for a while. And those mixed feelings made honestly answering questions like why are you applying for this job a bit more … I dunno, fraught than they might be? Because I really do have mixed feelings about the idea of leaving my current position. It’s just that after being placed irregularly into a classroom over the last half of last year, at least until ILEARN hit and then my life went to hell, I’m pretty goddamn certain that I’m gonna be teaching this year on at least a part-time basis whether I want to or not, and I’m absolutely going to get asked to write lesson plans for classes I’m not teaching, and, well …

Here’s the thing: something has to change, one way or another, because of reasons having really nothing at all to do with me or the job I actually did. I know where I’m at right now is probably not tenable, so there are a bunch of available moves that represent improvement over my current situation, and one of these two jobs would do that. And … that’s basically how my answer went? That, honestly, returning to classroom teaching wasn’t ideal to me, but that if that was what was going to happen anyway (and I think it will,) I would rather be in control of the where and the when and the what than where I think I’m gonna be if I don’t make some changes.

And, well, the principal talked to me for another hour and forty minutes, so it must have been an acceptable answer, I guess.

We’ll see how it goes.

I had nothing, but now I have this

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking5 Comments

I didn’t post yesterday on account of having nothing to say, and I very nearly didn’t post today, but then I took a look at where my traffic was coming from today (as one does) and found the list of countries rather interesting:

Mozambique, Tanzania, Nepal and the EU (which I think means Kosovo, as every other EU country comes through as the actual country) all in the same day, in a day where I haven’t managed 100 hits yet? That’s something.

A brief plug

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m on day 7 of a Thirty Stories in Thirty Days challenge over at Patreon. They’re all microfictions, but still– a new story every day for a week. Tomorrow, day 8, is gonna be a Benevolence Archives story– the first new one since Tales came out.

Just thought I’d point that out. $1 a month gets you access to nearly everything on the site, including a bunch of other stories, and $2 a month gets you a whole exclusive book.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m Luther Siler.  I’m an author.  Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I’ve written several books you might be interested in, ranging from short story collections to near-future science fiction to fantasy space opera to nonfiction, all available as ebooks or in print from Amazon.  Autographed books can be ordered straight from me as well.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet.  Here are the important ones:

  • Support me on Patreon!  Just a dollar a month gets you access to exclusive stories, early access to new books as they come out, and more!  $2 or more a month gets you access to CLICK, an entire exclusive book!
  • You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page.  Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out, and Politics Luther is usually angry and profane.  I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
  • My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
  • 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!

Prostetnic hi-res cropped

In which oh, why not

On By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments
Just found this on FB. The beard is starting to get positively Rothfussian. If only my writing would follow suit.

So technically my fundraiser was supposed to end yesterday, and in fact I just double-checked and it is definitely set to end on the 12th. But for some reason right now it’s still up and donations are still possible, so if for some reason you wanted to donate and forgot or something you have some unknown amount of additional time to throw in a few bucks. We’re over $350, which is amazing. Those of you who donated more than $25 should expect me to be contacting you next week to find out what book I’m sending you. Thank you all so much!

I’ve been quiet this week, mostly because the Ongoing Medical Calamity which ate the last month-and-a-half of the school year has raised its ugly head again, and I’ve been tired and stressed out and generally not wanting to deal with anything. I’m crossing my fingers that things are going to start improving again soon, but … yeah.

(I know, that’s vagueblogging, and I apologize for it. I’m personally fine, for the record; the OMC is not my MC.)

Also– and I know this makes me the worst person in the world, so feel free to call me terrible names in comments since I deserve them– I am heartily tired of summer vacation. One of the very worst things about America’s cultural outlook on work is that I can be in one of the very, very few jobs that actually provide large blocks of vacation time and I spend most of it climbing the Goddamned walls because I don’t know how the hell to just relax and I don’t feel like I’m using my time properly. I’m at about exactly halfway through my break and I’m looking around going WHAT DO I HAVE TO SHOW FOR THIS and freaking the fuck out because I have a month of break left– which is more than most people ever get– and I’m gonna waste it.

How the fuck do you waste vacation? I’m an idiot, dammit.