It is Friday night and I am listening to Bowie

On January 10, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

… the opening track to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, specifically. I’ve been on this kick lately where I’ve been listening to The Man who Sold the World on repeat and it’s broadening out.

I don’t have a ton to say tonight, really; it was a pretty damn good week at school, all told; the weird behavioral improvements in all but one of my classes don’t show any signs of degrading now that the first couple of days back are gone, and teaching this week has actually been pleasant, for the most part. I have more or less abandoned the idea of not returning to the classroom again next year, at least for now; I’ll keep my eyes open, of course, to see if anything presents itself, but I’m not going to kill myself looking, which was kind of the plan earlier in the year. If I’m back in the same classroom in the same building next year, that’ll be fine. Feels weird saying that, but it’s true.

I finished Jenna Glass’ The Women’s War yesterday or the night before, and I read it in three or four big gulps and was really happy with what I read. I haven’t reviewed it because since reading it I’ve read a bunch of other pieces on it and I’m reexamining what I thought of the book after taking what those folks had to say about it into consideration. I have read some gripes about the book that I think are mostly garbage (when it’s repeatedly harped on that one character has oddly pale skin and is the only blonde-haired person in the book, guys, it’s because everybody else is brown, and “brown” is the skin color that is the default) but a few have had some merit to them. I’m simultaneously trying to decide if it’s okay to let someone else drag down my own opinion of something I enjoyed, but hell, real issues are real issues. Some of this shit I should have caught on my own, y’know?

It’s going to be a busy weekend– I have a decent pile of grading to get to already, and I need to go talk to Money People about some shit, and a handful of family obligations. I’ll be around, of course, but I’m not going to be able to have my normal sluggardly Saturday, I think. Curses!

Some teachertalk

On January 8, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

This has, with the exception of maybe twenty minutes at the end of one class yesterday, actually been a pretty good first week back at work. Two things have worked out in my favor: first, I rearranged all of the desks in my classroom on the teacher record day before leaving for Winter Break, and I like the new layout a lot more, and it’s also quite a bit more conducive to instruction than my previous layout was.

In addition, quite a few of my students were reshuffled, something I initially regarded with wary concern but which seems to have worked out quite a bit better than I had dared to hope. I have lost a number of knuckleheads, replaced them with a bunch of kids who seem at first look at least to be pretty nice, one kid who I was expecting to be a knucklehead seems more manageable than I had thought he would be, and a surprisingly large number of kids have, on their own, come up to me and commented about how they’re having an easier time paying attention and behaving in their new class than they were in their old one. It’s actually rather fascinating.

All except 7th hour. I’ve talked about them before, I’m sure, although I’m not going to go search for a post to link to– my 7th hour class is so much more poorly behaved than the rest of my classes that it almost feels like they’re from a different building than the rest of my groups. The weird thing was that I didn’t really have any specific kids I could blame it on– the group was toxic, not any individual students.

7th hour is 50% different kids from last semester, a number of the tougher kids are in new groups (and many are among the “I’m doing better!” crew) … and the vibe in the room is exactly the same, if not actually worse.

I cannot explain it. Now, I know that there are other teachers in the building who also think their 7th hour group is their toughest, so maybe there’s something about 3:00 in the afternoon that makes them all insane, but I am generally pretty good about group psychology sorts of things and this phenomenon has completely eluded me. It’s only day three, of course, so there’s plenty of time for things to change, for better or worse, but right now I’m stymied.

In which I gain a level in Nerd Dad

On January 7, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Parenting8 Comments

The boy, who remember is eight and was never provided with a sibling, is forever crafting games that he wants his mother and I to play with him. They are damn near always some sort of Pokémon pastiche of one kind or another; “We create characters, and assign them powers, and then we battle!” only battle basically means that all of the moves he’s made up for his characters destroy all of our characters automatically. He, uh, hasn’t quite mastered the concept of game balance just yet.

“We should really get you into Dungeons and Dragons,” I said to him the other day, not expecting anything to come of what I meant as an idle comment.

Yeah, that backfired. He’s been talking about it for a solid week, and I’ve been kind of tossing around ideas for quickie adventures I might be able to run for him and my wife, and then I happened to be at Target tonight, as one does, and came across the D&D Essentials Kit, which frankly has far too much crap in it for just $24.99. There’s a rulebook (not really necessary, as I have the 5E hardcovers,) the adventure itself, some dice, a bunch of character sheets on nice paper (nonetheless, easily photocopied for backups,) a DM screen, and a bunch of little cards for status reminders and quests and magical items and other shit like this. An early look through the adventure reveals that what it actually is is a bunch of mini-quests set in the same area, so it’s going to be possible to do a bunch of shorter sessions that will be better suited to the attention span of an eight-year-old than the marathon gaming sessions I remember from high school and college.

I’m actually looking forward to this. I kind of feel bad not buying it from The Griffon, but that’s the nature of impulse buys, and I’m sure it’s gonna trigger spending a crapton of money on other stuff, and also holy crap have the nerds won the universe. You can get D&D stuff at Target. That’s kind of mind-blowing.

#REVIEW: SLAY, by Brittney Morris

On January 6, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

Decided to go full-res on the cover, because I love it.

I’ve already talked a couple of times about my plan to read 52 books by women of color this year– no link, because it’s not complicated, that’s the entire plan— and I decided to start with Brittney Morris’ Slay, which had been on my unread shelf for a minute waiting for me to be in a YA mood.

The premise has been described as Ready Player One meets The Hate U Give, which … isn’t half-bad, actually, as these things go; it’s about a seventeen-year-old named Kiera Johnson, an honors student and coding prodigy who has created a Black-themed MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, for those of you who don’t speak fluent geek) called SLAY. And then one of the players is killed in the real world over a dispute connected to the game, and, well, all sorts of merry hell breaks loose.

Here’s the interesting thing about this book: having read it, and having had various and sundry opinions about how certain things were handled this way as opposed to that way, or how this aspect of the plot might align with my understanding of how the world works vs that aspect … I have come to the conclusion that a fair portion of My Opinions on this book don’t matter. At all. Which is … kind of a weird thing to say in a book review?

Nonetheless.

Y’all, this is the Blackest goddamned book I have ever read in my life, and any young Black women you may happen to know should have this book put into their hands as quickly as possible, particularly if those young Black women have any preexisting interests in science or technology or video games, and once you’re done making sure all the young Black women you know have read the book, you need to start making sure everybody else reads it too.

When stood up against that fact of the book, my lil’ white-dudeley quibbles about whatever goofy-ass thing I might want to nitpick are just not that goddamn important. Evangelizing for the book is.

So, yeah: read it. And buy some copies for your local schools. And then buy some more copies, and give those away. But, uh, buy it at a bookstore, because for no clear reason Amazon doesn’t think it’s out until this summer. I assure you, it’s available.

In which my priorities are screwed up and I don’t care

On January 5, 2020March 9, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, video gamesLeave a comment

I go back to work tomorrow, and I’m surprisingly unstressed by it, although I do have a little bit of work I need to do tonight. No, it’s every other thing in my damn life that’s causing all my stress right now; work this week is going to be a Goddamn refuge.

(Yes, I plan to pivot from that into complaining about a video game; brace yourself accordingly. Talking about anything Real is beyond me at the moment.)

So, yeah. Hollow Knight. You might remember my review of Salt and Sanctuary from a couple of months ago; this is a similar game both in style and structure and in that I downloaded it forever ago, took a shot at it, then walked away, and now I’m back and playing it again. I’ve put about 35 hours into it over Winter Break and right now my main feeling about it is Jesus how is this game so big how can I possibly not be done with this by now, combined with a weird sort of completionist impulse that is keeping me from simply beating the damn thing and being done with it. No, I want to be finished, but I want to 100% the sumnamabitch before I do that, and oh Christ there is so much to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun, but I’m having the kind of fun that is at least 25% I need to be doing twenty other things right now while I’m having it.

Guilt-laced fun is the best kind, of course.

You may get a book review later, since I haven’t posted much in the last few days. I finished this yesterday and am still sorting out my feelings about it. Pay no attention to the fact that Amazon inexplicably thinks the release date is next summer; I assure you, the book is available.

In which I give up already

On January 3, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

It’s January 3rd, Goddammit, and everything about 2020 is already bullshit, from Castro dropping out, to Australia being on fire, to the shitgibbon starting a war with Iran, to the Ongoing Medical Calamity suddenly accelerating to the point where the phrase “eleven thousand dollars a month, paid in advance” was said in my presence by someone who wasn’t kidding, to, oh, because of course, runaway stomach flu today and yesterday.

Fuck this. I’m alive, dammit, but I’m not fucking happy about it.