Month: May 2020

Hmm let’s see

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Feeling kind of bullet-pointy today, so let’s do a bits and bobs post rather than trying to construct some sort of coherent narrative:

  • After discovering at least one other teacher was doing this, I’ve decided to just go ahead and record my e-learning lessons for the rest of the year and get them all posted as fast as possible. I’m already done with the rest of this week and so I only have three more to do; they’ll probably all be finished tomorrow.
  • In theory, the kids are done on May 20, although they have until the 27th to turn in their work, and the district appears to think that we’re going to be doing trainings until school would have actually ended in June, but they haven’t actually given us any details on how that would work. I’m sure I’ll be super psyched about it once I know.
  • If you live in South Bend, you should have requested your primary ballot by now, dammit. I’d appreciate it if you’d vote yes on the referendum questions that are on the ballot so that my job can afford to keep paying me and we can invest in roofs and drinkable water and such in our buildings.
  • The usual gang of dipshits has discovered our dastardly plan to raise tax money and then spend it in such a way that it has a chance to benefit brown children, so naturally there’s a Vote No movement. I’ve only actually seen two signs about town but every time I do I have to forcibly restrain the urge to either steal the sign or drive up into people’s lawns to destroy them.
  • It is possible that the whole home-isolation thing is affecting my generally genial and go-along-to-get-along personality, I’m not sure.
  • I think Mike Pence probably has tested positive for coronavirus, because there was an announcement today that they were isolating him from that other person. I do not think that there is a single chance in hell that the White House would tell the truth about either of them being infected. Hell, I’d trust North Korean media about Kim Jong Un before I’d trust this White House to tell me the truth, and that’s kind of scary.
  • I am Back on My Shit in a number of ways recently, and in my idle moments today have been researching larger monitors for my computer (utterly unnecessary, as my iMac is already the largest possible size and I sit no more than two feet away from it, plus I already have a secondary monitor) as well as bikes for fat guys (they exist, and as far as I can tell America’s fat men have already bought them all, because none are in stock anywhere) and green screens for my office, which will become much less necessary tomorrow, when I’m done recording e-learning lessons for at least the next few months.
  • I have not been on a bike in over 30 years, as I basically learned how to ride one because my brother wanted to learn and then never did it again. If it is possible to forget how to ride a bike, I have done so. This is an exceptionally poor idea, especially given how much any bike robust enough to support my fat ass would cost.
  • I am wearing shorts. It’s not warm outside or anything like that, but it’s fucking mid-May and I’m wearing shorts because fuck you, mid-May.
  • We just ordered a new refrigerator for our garage, because I need a place to store my many beverages that will keep them cold. I do not actually drink alcohol, so yes, I’m actually envisioning an entire refrigerator filled with Pepsi, tea, Mountain Dew, and Gatorade.
  • Additional Back-On-My-Shittery: I’m back on oh man I really want to do a podcast I should buy a bunch of equipment for podcasting pay no attention to the fact that I still don’t have the vaguest idea what my podcast would be about I just wanna buy shit.
  • That said, my Blue Yeti desk microphone has finally earned back the money I spent on it over the last couple of months, as it really does sound a lot better in my videos than the internal mic on my computer. It’s also not entirely impossible that I’ll let myself invest in a better webcam than the one that’s built in, but I shouldn’t.
  • Lurking in the back of my head is the certainty that we will absolutely be needing to teach from home again this fall. That will probably be what ends up getting me to pull the trigger on the greenscreen, at least.
  • I also spent a few minutes yesterday looking into an online Ed.D, which … nah.
  • I’m listening to Post Malone right now, and this track he does with Ozzy Osbourne is amazing.
  • 3:42 PM, Tuesday May 12: 1,358,901 confirmed cases and 81,650 American deaths.

The 10 Album Challenge

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

I just finished this the other day, doing it slightly wrong (my 10 albums was 15 albums, and this post will add at least two more) and I figured I’d at least post the albums I chose here, in no particular order beyond the first one:

This is the most important one, and it should probably be its own post, as virtually no one I met beyond high school would ever have met me had I never listened to this album. This is the single most important piece of music I’ve ever listened to, period.

The soundtrack to my junior year of high school.

I really could have chosen any of Pearl Jam’s first three albums and it would have been fine.

Similarly, there are about three Public Enemy albums I could have picked.

The part of my brain that wasn’t marinating itself in hiphop during high school was marinating itself in reggae.

Speaking of marinating in hiphop, this was either the first or the second hiphop album I ever bought, and it had much more of a long-term impact than the other, which would have been the Fat Boys.

The other soundtrack to my senior year of high school, and the album that was being played at incredibly unsafe volume during all sorts of high-speed, late-night drives in the boonies in southern Indiana during college.

I got very heavily into blues music in college; there are a half-dozen BB King albums I could have picked.

One of only two Dave Matthews Band albums I really like, this one got me through my sophomore year of college. Will never forget having this on in the background about three days after it came out while a friend and I were hanging out and her remarking after a few minutes, incredulous, “You’ve memorized it already?”

Speaking of memorization: another big car album, and an album that we were listening to during an unforgettable game of euchre in high school, where the only words spoken by anyone at the table other than loudly singing along were to claim the trump suit. Whistling in the Dark was fucking epic.

I used to actually meditate to a couple of the songs on this album.

Listening to this one right now. Another case where I could have chosen any of several albums.

The other utterly unforgettable album from my blues period. Things Gonna Change is a perfect song.

The soundtrack to my senior year of high school.

And, closing in on 30 years after I first bought it, an album I still listen to on the first really warm day of every year. It’s not spring until I’ve listened to No One Can Do It Better, preferably in the car.

8:17 PM, Monday May 11: 1,346,723 confirmed cases and 80,342 deaths, which represents a remarkable slowdown over the last couple of days, and the smallest two-day total in months, which I’m afraid is going to end up having something to do with people not reporting much over Mother’s Day. We’ll see how tomorrow and Wednesday go.

#REVIEW: Birds of Prey

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, ReviewsLeave a comment

…and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Because I’m not putting that entire damn title into the headline.

It’s possible that you remember my review of Suicide Squad, way back in 2016 before the world went mad, which was basically “this is exactly the movie you think it is, only maybe 20% better.” Birds of Prey isn’t exactly a sequel to Suicide Squad, but it isn’t not a sequel to Suicide Squad, and in a whole lot of ways it’s exactly the same movie, right down to me being able to basically review it the same way: even if you haven’t seen this movie, you already know what you think about it, because this movie is exactly what it appears to be, and you probably already know what you think of those types of movies. It’s big and kinda dumb and kinda pretty and the acting is a weird combination of interesting and entirely inexplicable and, like most things, it could have been much shorter if Batman had been in it.

Seriously, there’s a bit toward the end where “You’re Harley Quinn, I bet you can find a way to attract Batman’s attention” is easily the best way to solve the problem the characters have, but then they’d have to find a way to stuff his name into that title and it’s already too unwieldy. This was an interesting comic book movie for me to watch, honestly, because despite being a Batman fan in general I actually own very few Batman-related comic books and I really don’t know much about most of these characters beyond the very broadest strokes, and even then I had to look a few people up here and there. The big draw is the action sequences, of course, which are better than a bunch of other comic-book movies I’ve seen, and I found myself a big fan of Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s performance as Black Canary, especially a reveal she gets toward the end.

Ewan McGregor is in it. His performance is … memorable. Yes. I will remember his performance. That is true and accurate. His final scene is also Quite a Thing. Like, “my wife and I both yelled out loud at 11:30 at night when The Thing happened” level Quite a Thing.

If you want to see it, it’s available as a digital rental right now; I would recommend you follow your gut on it. If you think you’ll enjoy it, you probably will and I suggest you check it out. If Harley doesn’t interest you, I don’t think this will help much with that, though. I hear Snowpiercer is going to be a TV show soon; maybe check that out. 🙂

5:20 PM, Sunday, May 10: 1,326,328 confirmed cases and 79,384 deaths, thankfully not much of a change from yesterday’s numbers, although that’s typical for a Sunday.

In which we’re all gonna die

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

The Wonder Woman Funko POP on the far left is brand new as of today; do I keep her with the other Wonder Woman or move her with the other three Funkos on the desk?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

I have left the house more in this last week than in the six weeks prior to it, mostly because I have to drive my wife to and from work, which is automatically two trips a day, and I went and got groceries yesterday and picked up the grill and blah blah blah. I had a couple more errands that needed running today, unfortunately, but other than work runs I shouldn’t really need to go anywhere for most of next week. When I’m out, I’m wearing a bandana over my face, and I have a friend who is a seamstress making a few proper masks for us. Witness:

We are under a state order right now to wear masks when in “enclosed public spaces,” and the county health department has released a bunch of recommendations as well. What this has led to is a bunch of businesses posting prominent signs outside that you need to have a mask on to be inside … and a bunch of people inside without masks on. One of the errands I had to run was to the pet store, and I was in and out in under five minutes, and less than half of the customers I saw while I was in there were wearing masks. Indiana has had 1400 Covid-related deaths, and St. Joseph county is closing in on its thousandth confirmed case.

This is not fucking complicated, God damn it. It blows my mind that, three years and some change into this person’s administration, the GOP is still finding new ways to be venal and cruel and stupid, and then it blows my mind that I’m still capable of being surprised by these people. Wear a mask so that you don’t get sick! Wear a mask so that you don’t get other people sick! Why is this difficult? Why is “stop being a fucking asshole” a partisan statement?

My Google-fu has failed me, but I saw a clip of a comedian a bit back where he explained that he’s figured out the equation for this administration, which is (surprised x disappointed)2, because if you multiply it properly, first you’re surprised that you’re surprised, then you’re surprised that you’re disappointed, then you’re disappointed that you’re surprised, then you’re disappointed that you’re disappointed. Or something close to that, anyway. I can’t find it.

The other thing I want to bitch about is that on three different occasions today I have either read or heard people speculating about the “second wave” of this disaster that’s coming this fall. Y’all, this shit hasn’t slowed down yet. If anything, we’ve plateaued. There are a few specific localities in America that have bent the curve a bit but they’re about to be overwhelmed by the states that are all opening too fast– probably about another week from now, if past experience is worth anything. We can’t have a fucking second wave if the first wave never stops. And the way things are going, this isn’t going to get any better anytime soon. We have an entire fucking political party openly fucking dedicated to making it worse. We’re fucked for as long as any of these people hold any power, damn it.

5:25 PM, Saturday May 9: the world crossed four million confirmed infections today, with 1,305,199 of those being in America; 78,469 Americans have died, and we’ll be over 80K by the end of the weekend. And y’all are too fucking manly to wear a mask. Fucking idiots.

On the limits of my principles

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Politics1 Comment

I’ve mentioned that my wife broke her foot the other day. She does most virtually all of the grocery shopping. While I am perfectly capable and willing to step in and handle that job, the simple fact that I don’t do it means that it will likely take me twice as long to get the job done because I don’t know where everything is, and I’ve discussed my (getting better) issues with panic attacks while wearing masks a couple of times as well. So as soon as we discovered that we could do curbside pickup for our groceries for just $5 extra plus the tip, we decided that at least for right now that’s how we were going to handle things.

Now, they allow you to set general rules for what to do if something you want isn’t in stock. I’m not sure what the options are (she did the ordering) but basically it boils down to they pick substitutes or they don’t. Our son has some allergy issues so she decided that the best move was just to go with no substitutes, and if for some reason we’re denied something that we feel like we need I can always make a run tomorrow for a couple of things.

You may recall also that I wrote a Comprehensive List of Things I am Currently Boycotting a couple of weeks ago. One of my friends mentioned Papa John’s in the comments. Papa John’s is another sort of edge case for me; I generally avoid eating there but that’s as much because my aging digestive system can no longer handle their garlic sauce (which is absolutely essential to the Papa John’s experience; do not insult me by suggesting that I can eat their pizza without drenching it in garlic sauce) than it is because of their politics.

That said, I’ve been craving the damn place ever since reading that comment. It’s a terrible idea, so we haven’t caved, but it’s been lurking there in the back of my head.

We decided on the way home from getting groceries that we’d have pizza for dinner, as there were supposed to be two pizzas in our order. Then we got home and discovered that one of them wasn’t there, presumably because they were out of stock on that specific kind of pizza.

Damn. We briefly discuss other options, and Papa’s comes up, and I shoot it down, because it’s a terrible idea. And then I interrupt the conversation to go use the bathroom, and while I’m in the bathroom I hear my son yell for my wife from our other bathroom. And when I come out, she tells me that I have something I need to deal with in the other bathroom.

And, well, a minute or two later, after seeing what I had been summoned for, I sent this text:

If you’re thinking “Okay, this sounds like that happened, but the size of a baseball? It has to be something else.” No, it doesn’t. That’s what happened.

I have about an hour to get my affairs finished off for the evening before I begin paying for dinner.

8:45 PM, Friday May 8: 1,283,846 confirmed cases and 77,178 American deaths.

OK Boomer

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

Our grill has shit the bed, so we ordered a new one from Lowe’s, finding it online and setting it up to be picked up curbside at the store. I dunno if you’ve done this or not, but the way it works (at least at our Lowe’s) is that you pull into one of about eight labeled parking spots, dial a phone number, put in an extension, and then tell the person who answers the phone your order number and the spot you’re in. It took me a few seconds longer than it might have because I didn’t immediately realize that you can dial a # extension pretty much any time I want (I was waiting for a “to dial a specific extension, press blabla” prompt) but somebody answered the phone and said they’d be outside with my grill in a few minutes.

Cool.

Five minutes or so later I hear the unmistakable sound of a grill being rolled across a parking lot, and I put on my mask and hopped out of the car, figuring social distancing or not there’s no way dude is going to get this thing in my trunk by himself. And I notice that the guy pushing my grill out to me is being followed, at quite a bit less than a six foot distance, by a mask-free woman (note that wearing a mask in any retail store is currently mandated by our governor) who is highly upset that he is bringing me a grill and not bringing her something. Apparently she belongs to the minivan a space over, and she tried to call the number but no one answered and apparently this massive sin is worth abusing this poor dude who had nothing to do with it.

Dude, to his credit, is doing an admirable job of not getting caught up in her shit, and when a moment later she looks over at me and snots that She will Never Use This Service Again, but it’s Good that You got HIS Stuff for Him, he actually rolled his eyes at me, correctly figuring out that I was as annoyed by her as he was.

So, uh, Karen, look here: you either don’t know how to use a cell phone or you don’t possess the awareness necessary to realize that, every once in a while, it’s possible that people in retail jobs are busy and maybe you call back in two or three minutes if your call isn’t instantly answered. You also don’t have the sense to realize that you do not need to involve me in your shit. I don’t want to be involved in your shit, I have no reason to be involved in your shit, and if you insist on me being involved in your shit, you will probably not like the way that I involve myself, which will be to mock you into the grave and back. Because I don’t give a fuck if you had to call these folks twice.

A moment later, while the gentleman and I were ignoring the shit out of her and putting my grill in my trunk, someone else came out with all of her mulch, so … what, you got through after all? Was that whole thing just bullshit? Who the fuck knows.

Please don’t try to involve me in your customer service drama, people. I am always on their side, even if they’re wrong. If I need to paint that on my fucking mask, I’m happy to.

#REVIEW: Split Tooth, by Tanya Tagaq

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

Content warning: Split Tooth contains rape, sexual assault, child abuse, infanticide and a really weird and explicit erotic dream sequence involving a fox god.

I don’t really know how the hell to write this. I’m 20 books into my planned 52 books by women of color in 2020 project, and in all honesty I came across this and basically bought it blind upon realizing that Tanya Tagaq was a Canadian Inuit and I’m fairly certain I’ve made it through 43 years and have never read a book by a Canadian Indigenous author. Split Tooth really straddles and/or defies genre categorization; I saw it referred to as a “mythobiography” in one interview with the author and I like that word so let’s go with that. It’s partially memoir, but with one foot firmly in mythic fantasy (the main character is impregnated by the Northern Lights late in the book, for example) and probably 15% of the total wordcount is poetry. It tells the story of a young Inuk girl growing up in Nunavut in the 1970s, and while there are moments of carefree joy and childhood scattered here and there it is safe to assume that there are a lot of things about growing up in that place and time as an Indigenous person that are, frankly, terrible, and Tagaq’s depiction of the sexual abuse that her main character has to endure are unflinching and harrowing. She’s not going to sugarcoat anything in this book; the content warning at the beginning of this piece is as necessary as anything else I’ve ever written.

But here’s the thing, and you need to realize as you’re reading that I’m saying this about a book with poetry in it: the writing in this book is beautiful, and while under normal circumstances I am the type of reader for whom “it’s 15% poetry” would cause me to not pick up the book in the first place, the way the book slides from explicit, brutal realism to naturalistic fantasy sequences to the poetic sections (which can contain elements of either) is just astounding. I haven’t ever read anything like Split Tooth before, and I’m super glad I went with my gut and just ordered the damn thing without thinking about it too much, because it really isn’t a good match with most of the stuff I usually read and thinking about it too much would probably have led to me not purchasing it. Sometimes my tendency to impulse-buy books works in my favor; this is definitely one of those times. Take the content warning seriously– while, at 190 pages, this is a quick read, it’s definitely not an easy one, but it’s absolutely worth it.

3:11 PM, Thursday May 7: 1,244,119 confirmed cases and 74,844 American deaths.

In which I am appreciated

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

We were listening to the radio today while taking my wife to the doctor to have her foot inspected (verdict: no weight-bearing for two weeks and a different boot and they’ll reassess at the follow-up; also, she can’t drive, so it’s good that I’m not going into school because I have to drive her back and forth to work now) and the radio DJ was talking about how it was Nurse’s Appreciation Day and how much he appreciated those nurses for all the nursing they’re doing. And then he pivoted to the fact that it’s also Teacher Appreciation Week, because let’s get all these assholes out of the way at once, and cracked a joke about how we’re all “chilling” because school isn’t in session.

And right about then was when I blacked out, and I’m told that I had to be restrained from calling the station right then and there and possibly having a negative impact on someone’s day. And right now at this exact moment I’m at home and not driving to somebody’s place of business, because it ain’t exactly a national secret where U93 broadcasts from. So, yeah, “Big Perm,” it’s good for both of us that my wife is a more civilized person than I am.

Any notion of “teacher appreciation” is always going to be a big joke in America anyway; there is no more anti-intellectual country anywhere on Earth short of a handful of dictatorships and theocracies, and certainly nowhere among the countries that are supposedly democracies. This country hates education and always has, and frankly at this point I’d rather be ignored than “appreciated.” Y’all can keep your damn coffee mugs. I have enough of them already.

I’m gonna go figure out how to teach math to some kids who aren’t in the same building as me and are worried about their families and friends keeping their jobs and lives intact; y’all let me know when the appreciatin’s over.

(This post was going to be about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs before this Perm human got my jimmies all rustled; turns out that there’s good reasons why my kids might not be in the very best place to learn right now, believe it or not.)

5:33 PM, Wednesday May 6: 1,219,952 confirmed cases; 72,617 deaths.