Month: August 2019

RIP, Summer 2019: 2019-2019

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

This summer sucked, and now it’s over. Which is the rough equivalent of complaining about both the taste and the portion size of your food, but such is life at the moment, I suppose.

It would be a joke if it weren’t so close to undeniable truth: I have previously said, in this space and elsewhere, that 2016 was easily the worst year of my life, and I usually pair that observation with the comment that it feels odd to me to be able to so easily pinpoint something like that. 2019 thus far has handed 2016 its beer, lit itself on fire and jumped off a cliff, and there are still four and a half months of this impossibly miserable soul-sucking bastard of a year left. I wanted to get a novel written this summer; that became a sad joke so fast that it’s barely even worth reminding everyone of. My total fiction output for the entire summer probably did not reach 10,000 words, and the book got a page-one rewrite anyway before I gave up on the entire idea.

I have mostly been talking about this on Patreon due to my somewhat less public profile over there (and the fact that no actual relatives subscribe to me on Patreon) but there have only been perhaps three or four days since April 26 where I did not have at least one if not both of my parents in some sort of medical facility, either an actual hospital or an inpatient physical rehab place. My dad is home– still having issues, but home– and my mother is due to be released Tuesday. I will be in my classroom all week, my first contractual day is Wednesday, and the students return on Thursday.

I, along with every teacher on Earth, only very rarely begin the school year genuinely feeling ready for school to start, and even when I am I’m more likely than not to at least joke about mourning the end of summer. I am less prepared, on every level– emotionally, mentally, physically, curricularly, you name it– for school to start right now than I have ever been in my life. I feel like returning to work in general may actually be making a mistake right now. That said, I have about a month worth of money left in the bank– just enough to make it to my first paycheck of the next school year– so it’s not like I have a choice.

I am very, very strongly considering making an appointment with my doctor to go back on my brain meds. The only problem with that idea is that I probably won’t be able to get an appointment for a few weeks and even once I do the first month on Lexapro all I want to do is sleep and I don’t think that’s a thing I can have going on during the first grading period of a new job at a new school. So “tough it out” is going to have to be a strategy for dealing with mental illness, I suppose.

I can’t pretend to be excited about this year– not right now. The best I can hope for at this point is survival. We’ll see how it goes.

Damn

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking1 Comment

At 968,927 total words, I am closing in on a million words written on this site since it started in 2013:

There will probably be a real post later, assuming I shake off this ass-poor mood I’m in, but I just decided to check on my word count and felt like it ought to be noted.

The answer to this question is “No.”

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

…and it should probably just be a Facebook post.

Do I want to pursue administrative certification?

I don’t, right? Because really the only reason I might want to be a principal is the higher pay and not being in the classroom any longer, and neither of those are good reasons. And I’d have to take classes, and I’d have to pay tuition when my current student debt load is already more than I make in a year, and I’d have to figure out where to apply to take those classes, and that costs money, and … well, I’d have to be a principal, which if anything is even more impossible a job than being a teacher is.

I’m fine with making roughly $55K a year for basically the rest of my career, and being locked into this district, because the way the law works moving to any other district nearby will permanently lower my salary by probably $5-10K a year. Right? Sure I am. And just because I’ve been looking for three straight years for jobs that pay similarly to what I can earn as a teacher in my current district and literally haven’t found a single thing that was even close doesn’t mean that those jobs won’t magically appear soon. They’re out there! I’m just really bad at job hunting. And have been for three years.

Gaaaaaaaaaah. Somebody shove an icepick into whatever part of my stupid brain keeps bringing this idea up.

Classroom update

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Ain’t panorama mode cool? I didn’t do a ton today, mostly just rearranged desks and got my bulletin boards covered. There’s a banner on that stretch of wall to the extreme left that happened after the picture and you probably can’t see the number line on the far right. Monday I’ll get some stuff on the wall in the back by my desk and quite possibly swap some desks out for a round table, which will fix a lot of the tightness issues, which are mostly on the far side of the room.

Sooner or later I need to think about curriculum, too, but … yeah. Sooner or later. I met several of the teachers on my team today and a few that weren’t, and it was really interesting to me to hear myself swing back and forth from sounding like a burnout to … well, not. But there’s definitely some burnout talk happening. Hoping to get that killed off before school starts. We’ll see. Five more days!

Here we go here we go here we go

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

Spent most of the day in my classroom, alternately rearranging desks and staring at the wall. I ended up taking the second classroom from the earlier post, mostly due to some late-breaking information about occasional temperature problems in the other room. The good news is that the other teacher has moved out of the room; the bad news is that she, uh, took a little bit more of the furniture than I was expecting her to, and one of the things I had to do was email the principal and ask for things like a file cabinet and a teacher desk.

I’m going to end up swapping about a third of the big desks for one-piece arm desks, which I think will end up as a best of both worlds situation in my room– I’ll have mostly the larger desks, which are more comfortable for bigger kids (and bigger teachers) and left-handed kids, and still have some of the smaller one-piece desks that will give me a little bit more room to move around the classroom once there are actual bodies at all of those desks. Right now there’s too many places where not only am I convinced I can’t move around between desks, I’m not sure I can have kids seated at both of them without bumping into each other.

I’ll get it sorted. Once I have I’ll post some pictures.

Oh, and I dropped just under $180 on classroom necessities today, too, without touching things like new clothes (not really an expense I can count, but still) and office supplies– just stuff that I know good and well I’m going to need no matter how I end up laying the room out. I do so love having to spend my own money to get my room set up, guys. It’s awesome.

Anyway. All sorts of family stuff going on tomorrow, which means I won’t have time to be in my classroom, so I’ve got Friday and all of next week to get ready for this. I am surprisingly enthusiastic about it, despite how this post might sound. This is gonna be a good year, dammit, if it kills me.

In which I recommend something problematic: on THE BOYS

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, TelevisionLeave a comment

Trigger warning. For, like, everything. If you’re the type of person who has been helped by a trigger warning in the past, don’t bother reading this post and avoid this show like the plague.

Let’s get some stuff out of the way right away about the first season of The Boys, the Amazon Prime adaptation of the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson “What if superheroes were all fucked-up assholes?” comic series of the same name:

  • Not one but two male characters’ prime motivation is to avenge the death of, respectively, a girlfriend and a wife. The girlfriend is fridged within fifteen minutes or so of the start of the first episode.
  • While the lone female member of the “good guys,” such as they are, is never actually referred to as The Female as she is in the comics, she never talks.
  • This is an insanely graphically violent show; at one point an infant is used as a weapon. Multiple people are murdered with– not by— a baby. That is not a joke. That’s a thing that happens.
  • While it doesn’t happen on screen, and in fact it’s toned down from what happens in the comics (“toned down from the comics” is a recurring theme) the main female character is raped in her first episode.

There is, in other words, a lot of lazy, sexist writing in this program, particularly in the initial episode. And I would not for a second get on the case of anyone who looked at those four bullet points and went “Nope, not for me.” Honestly, had I not been familiar with the comic series from when it came out, I probably wouldn’t have made it past the first episode either. But I was curious about how they were going to adapt the series (12 graphic novels, so not at all a small amount of source material) to television.

And here’s the thing: all of the stuff in those bullet points is in the comics, and in general this is a pretty loose adaptation of the source material. All of the decisions that the television producers made– every change that they introduced– kind of blunt the bullshitty edges of what happened in the comics. They certainly don’t turn away from how over the top The Boys was, but this isn’t Game of Thrones, where they took a series with a bunch of sexism and rape and decided the best thing to do with it was to add more sexism and rape. And the show is independent enough from the comics that by the end of the first season I have no idea where they’re planning on going with it next season. That, for me, is always a win for an adaptation.

Here’s some more good news: the acting, across the board, is absolutely phenomenal, and one of the cool things about having a show where damn near every character is a deranged mess of a human being is that it gives every actor something to really dig into with their character. Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher and Antony Starr as the Homelander are particular standouts– I don’t know what sorts of acting awards someone on this program might be eligible for, but Starr in particular needs to be up for something for this role. Chace Crawford’s portrayal of The Deep is also worth mentioning– although, as the rapist mentioned above, the fact that he sort of gets a redemption arc, or is at least eventually portrayed as a sympathetic character complete with his own sexual assault, is also … skeevy.

And the thing is, everybody is fucked up in this show. All of them. There are no characters without some damage to them in The Boys, and there are no underwritten roles, either– even The Character Previously Known As The Female has some interesting moments, and watching the cast inhabit this world is tremendously compelling– and that, to me, is more than enough to make overlooking the more troublesome and lazy aspects of the show and its premise possible. Plus, again for me personally, I first read these books when they came out in 2006 and so nothing about the problematic aspects of the story is new. Which, I think, might make me a bit more likely to look past them than some other people.

Your mileage, obviously, may vary. And with Amazon Prime at $99 a year I’m not about to tell you to subscribe in order to watch this. But if you already were, and you were on the fence about the show? Definitely give it a couple of episodes and see if it grabs you.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave 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.
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  • 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

#REVIEW: JADE WAR, by Fonda Lee

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews1 Comment

I’m not going to bury the lede: Jade City and Jade War, the first two books in Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga, are the best first two books in any speculative fiction series since George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. And frankly, they may well be better.

I have been open about my affection for Jade City, the first book in the series. It was my favorite book of last year, and I reread it before starting Jade War, which just came out. I suggested in the end of my review of the first book that I expected the second novel to begin incorporating spy elements, and holy crap was I right. Jade War’s most impressive achievement is the way it effortlessly broadens the scope of the series to incorporate literally the entire planet, with not only the clan conflict going on but multiple overlapping and competing interests, from rival governments to crime gangs in other countries to any number of different ethnic groups, some in their home countries, some expatriates, and others refugees, and their (sometimes intermixed) second-generation children. The scope of the book and the ease with which Lee keeps everything straight and their alliances and motivations clear is astounding.

There are several maps at the front of the book, and damn near every place on them is relevant at some point in the story. And it does this without losing focus on the core figures from the first book: the No Peak Clan, now led by Kaul Hilo and his sister and Weather Man Kaul Shae, and Ayt Mada’s Mountain Clan.

The first book got compared to The Godfather a lot. I did it myself. And the amazing thing is that it’s not remotely unfair to compare Jade War to The Godfather, Part 2, one of the most acclaimed sequels of all time. It is, if anything, better than the first book– which, as the middle book of a trilogy, is damned near an impossible feat.

I went out onto my back porch this morning and sat out there for a couple of hours to finish the last 200 pages or so of this book. I legit had to wipe a couple of tears away when I finished it. I know I’ve already compared it to ASoIaF, but despite all of my reservations about how the last several books of that series have gone, one of its most outstanding strengths is how well-drawn its characters are. One of my weaknesses as a reader is remembering character names– I’m bloody terrible at it– and in both ASoIaF and The Green Bone Saga if I wanted to I could sit down and sketch out a character map with everyone’s names, primary affiliations and family relationships. The characters in this book are an astounding achievement on Fonda Lee’s part. I said on Twitter after I finished the book that she had the talent of any other six writers, and I mean it. As a reader, I couldn’t be happier that I get to read this series. As a writer, it’s fucking depressing, because my God I will never be this good.

I knew last year when I finished Jade City that it would be very high on my list of favorite books for that year, and it was my favorite book of a very good year. Jade War is better than Jade City. I literally cannot recommend it any more highly.