Month: June 2020

Tuesday morning thinkytimes

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

No particular theme for today, as there are a number of things on my mind and none of them quite rise to the level of an entire post. So expect a bit of randomness. Good morning!

I had a LASIK initial conference almost exactly two years ago, and holy shit does the post I’m linking to entertain the crap out of me, and I’ve finally gotten to the point where I think it’s something I can actually afford to do. The only question is whether it’s a good use for my money right now; part of me thinks right now is a really good time because I was thinking about switching to contact lenses anyway to keep my glasses from fogging up every time I wear a mask– if I’m heading into a situation this fall where I have to be wearing one all day, and it’s already summertime so I have time to recover, it seems like a good decision. Then again, it’s a good chunk of my existing money, and who knows what kind of bullshit could happen that could lead to me needing it for something else.

If you have any experiences with LASIK, good or bad, let me know– most of the folks I’ve talked to have told me to go for it, but still.

I had to have a talk with the boy the other day where I pointed out that it’s okay to feel like certain things in our house have gotten easier and/or better since Mizu died. I do not miss, for example, having a litter box in my Goddamned bedroom because she didn’t want to leave the room, and the fact that we no longer have to worry about the other cats bothering her means we can leave doors open in our house and don’t have to worry about ever chasing kittens out from under our bed.

Sushi, for her part, has been rather hilarious lately, as she’s been spending most of her time in our room but still doesn’t seem quite convinced that she’s allowed in there, so whenever either of us come into the bedroom she acts like she’s about to be kicked out of the room. She’ll sleep on the bed with us from time to time but sticks herself in the far corner where we’re not super likely to notice her.

I have to admit, I had a bunch of ideas for how the person in the White House’s little Klan rally was going to go last weekend, but “no one shows up” was not among them. I spent all of 2016 assuming this man was going to lose badly and we all know how that went, so I’m not letting my guard down here, but if he can’t fill a mid-sized arena in Oklahoma, pandemic or not, something’s going on.

In other news, there are two primaries I’m keeping a close eye on today– Qasim Rashid’s Democratic House primary in VA-01 and the Democratic Senate primary in Kentucky. Kentucky looks like it’s going to be a trash fire, and I’ve not seen any polling on either race, but I’d like to start sending money to someone to get Mitch McConnell the fuck out of office and I’m not going to do it until the primary is over. I’ve donated a fair amount of money to Qasim already because I thought he had gotten out of the primary– I just found out a couple of weeks ago that I was wrong about that– so hopefully he wins today as well.

Also, no force on Earth can make me pay for John Bolton’s book, nor will I read it were I to somehow acquire it for free. I don’t need any further evidence on whether this man is a criminal or not.

Bike/health update: I have, somehow, lost seven pounds already; every time I start any sort of lifestyle change there’s always a quick burst of weight loss right at the beginning, and it’s happened again. Weight Watchers continues to confuse the hell out of me. I have not touched the bike in several days, because the last time I was on it I noticed that the gear the chain was on and the actual gear shown on the gearshift didn’t match … like, at all, and since I’d already switched gears at least once by accident without realizing it I’m going to just take the thing into a shop and have them swap it out, possibly taking the derailleur with it as well. I’ve already fallen off once and I’m not about to do it again, damn it. I suspect this is probably something I could do myself but finding out I was wrong would hurt and we’ve already got one adult in the house with a broken bone.

Pseudo-vegetarianism is going predictably well, although we did have enchiladas for dinner on Saturday and I finished off some turkey we had in the fridge to keep it from going bad. Most of this week’s dinners are going to be plant-based, so we’re continuing it for a bit longer than usual.

Vidya gaemz update: my plan to watch a YouTuber play through The Last of Us 2 appears to have been a good call, as so far nothing about the first few hours of the game have made me think I needed to play it. One thing I hadn’t anticipated is that lingering Dad feelings toward Ellie are still making it difficult to watch her die, and yeah, I don’t really need that shit for an entire game. Watching people react to the game has been really interesting; I’ve never seen a game where so many people looked at the level of violence and went “Nope, not right now” before.

In the meantime, I’ve been having a good time with Desperados 3, despite my lingering suspicion that Desperados is spelled wrong. The interesting thing is that it’s also a really murdery game– hell, so was Nioh 2, and so are most video games, frankly– but it’s all about the way it’s murdery, and it doesn’t go out of its way to make you feel bad about what the game is making you do.

The dialogue around this whole issue has also put the “Are video games art?” question to bed, permanently. The answer is yes.

I feel like I had one more thing, so let’s say this space is reserved for that. As is typical with these sorts of posts, I may update once or twice more as the day drags on.

11:18 AM, Tuesday, June 23: 2,313,445 confirmed infections and 120,451 Americans dead, and Texas is starting to run out of ICU beds.

#REVIEW: THE LAST SWORD MAKER, by Brian Nelson

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

The obligatory disclaimer: Brian Nelson’s The Last Sword Maker is another book that a publicist sent to me for free in return for an honest review.

This is one of those books where star ratings kind of fail me, because what you get out of The Last Sword Maker is going to be very directly related to what you’re willing to put into it. It is four hundred and sixty-odd pages long, I started it before bed last night, and less than 24 hours later I am typing out this review. That’s a good thing! The book is a hell of a page-turner; it doesn’t quite borrow the Dan Brown trick of ending every single chapter on a cliffhanger so that you’re compelled to keep reading, but it does borrow the classic page-turner move of short chapters– there are 44 of them, plus a prologue, a bunch of interstitial pages, and an epilogue, so you’re never dissuaded from just one more chapter. I mean, it helps that I’m a teacher on summer break during a pandemic; it’s not like other than keeping my son alive and fed I have a lot of other tasks to attend to. But! I have many books, and I did not read all of them in effectively one big gulp overnight. That’s an achievement, and if you are looking for a fast read that will keep your eyes glued to the page, this will absolutely be right up your alley.

Speaking of pandemics, though: The Last Sword Maker is about warfare and nanotech and genetics, about a bunch of very smart people and a bunch of very dangerous people trying to crack a new technology before … well, before China, specifically, because the technological edge granted by achieving self-replicating nanotech will effectively secure the winning nation’s top-of-the-food-chain status for generations to come. There are lots of references to nanobot-driven plagues that are able to target their victims based on their genetic code, and early in the book China tests that capability on a few Tibetan villages. All of the characters are therefore either scientific geniuses or hard-ass military types, and while it kind of seems like cheating to say if you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing that you will like, but … yeah. Chances are, you already know, based on what you’ve read, whether you’re going to enjoy this or not.

But to circle back to that star rating thing again: I enjoyed reading this! I read it fast, and I barely put it down once I started it! Those are definitely good things. I am, however, going to try really hard not to think too much about the plot, because while one of the advantages of the page-turner is that they’re very good at hey look over here boom bang zip pow! type of stuff, they don’t always hold up all that well afterwards? And I mentioned Dan Brown earlier, and he’s again the classic example, because his books feel smart while you’re reading them but don’t you dare think about them afterwards or they’ll fall apart.

If you are, and I swear I don’t mean this as an insult, because I am frequently this type of person, particularly with respect to movies, the type of person who does not waste a lot of time poking around for plot holes or thinking too hard about whether the tech described in the book ought to work as described, or if the sudden jump from Development A to Development B might be a bit too abrupt, this may be the book for you. If on the other hand you are the type of person to notice that hey, did that really important guy get kidnapped offscreen, and nobody seems to have noticed in America? then maybe it might not be your type of book.

Also, if repeated use of the phrase the hardness makes you giggle, especially when it is used in concert with phrases such as entered him or filled him, and no it is not in the context you think it is, well … giggling is going to happen. There’s a guy; he has a thing going on. It’s not what you think. You’ll see.

It also leans really hard into the Chinese being the villains, and there are a couple of kinda sketchy ehh moments here and there with some of the minority characters that maybe could have used another pass. I don’t think it quite reaches racism, especially given how it ends and who the big monster of the book ends up being, but it’s possible that it will get to you. Or not! This book is the type of thing I always think of when I hear the phrase beach read; it’s a thriller, and it aims to entertain you while you’re reading it and doesn’t have particularly lofty goals beyond that. If that’s your thing, definitely check it out.

7:51 PM, Monday June 22: 2,306,247 confirmed cases and 120,384 Americans dead.

Happy Father’s Day

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I just got off the phone with my dad (we saw him yesterday) and so far the highlight of my day has been trying to take a fatherly nap in my recliner in the living room while my son was playing video games and barking an endless series of questions at me. It was only marginally successful. But dinner is going to involve mashed potatoes, so the day is a win no matter what else happens.

…I dunno, that’s all I got for right now.

My most ridiculous product review yet

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Reviews2 Comments

I swear to you, I’m not important enough to have been paid to write this.

I didn’t know Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages Hydro Seal existed, All-Purpose or otherwise, so I feel like it’s possibly a thing I should tell other people about. I have had, for at least a few weeks, a vile mess of a sore on the top of my scalp. The problem is that it’s in a location where my hand automatically goes to whenever I’m thinking, reading, stressed, or really any reason at all, and as a result I absolutely could not stop fucking with the thing and it wouldn’t heal. I’d put a Band-Aid on it all day and in the ten minutes between taking it off and replacing it, I’d manage to screw it all up again. I tried to wear hats for a while; I’d literally take the hat off and mess up the sore without even realizing I was doing it.

And then I ran out of Band-Aids, so I went to Target to get more, and I discovered these Hydro Seal thingies. The phrase “multi-day protection” caught my eye. This seems helpful, I thought, since, well, if I didn’t have to take it off I’d have fewer opportunities to mess around with it.

Basically the way these things work is that the gel the bandage is made out of creates a moist enough environment for the wound that it encourages healing, and the adhesive is strong enough that they tell you to just leave it in place until it falls off– in my case, four days, including the customary number of showers and a couple of dips in the pool. And when it finally started to come off, there was a little chunk of dry dead skin left behind that pretty much flaked off immediately and afterward you couldn’t tell there had ever been a wound there at all. The only problem I see with these is they’re a little on the expensive side for Band-Aids (but we’re still talking about, like, four bucks for a box) and at least the kind I got was on the smaller side, although there’s a larger size designed to cover blisters that I assume would be fine for non-blistering larger wounds. If you’re like me and have a problem with wounds lasting forever if they’re somewhere you can reach to interfere with them, I really can’t recommend these damn things any more highly.

(Note that I am refraining from posting before-and-after pictures. Just trust me.)

8:35 PM, Saturday, June 20: 2,251,205 confirmed cases and 119,654 Americans dead. Yesterday was the worst day for new infections since May 1; today is worse than yesterday and there are still a few hours left.

Not much today

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Kind of just had a Friday; nothing in particular, for once, that I feel the need to talk about. I got a few errands run and just finished a swim with my wife and the boy; the water in the pool was up to 82 degrees, which is damn near perfect.

What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

7:59 PM, Friday June 19th: 2,219,119 confirmed cases and 119,086 Americans dead. We had the largest number of new infections today we’ve had on any single day since April. April.

#REVIEW: YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN, by Leah Johnson

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

Ye Gods, but I do love that cover.

I started off yesterday shit-talking 2020’s books, so naturally I’ve got two in a row I’m super enthusiastic about. The interesting thing is You Should See Me in a Crown and I kind of got off on the wrong foot. The main character, Liz Lighty (and that name really ought to lead to her having superpowers of some sort, but this isn’t that book) is a high school senior in an Indianapolis suburb. As the book begins, she discovers that she’s been turned down for a scholarship to Pennington College, her dream school, where she intends to go pre-med and play in their world-famous orchestra. Missing the scholarship basically means she can’t afford to attend, and eventually her friends will hatch a plan for her to be named Prom Queen, which will come with a scholarship fund in the same amount of money, because apparently schools in Campbell, IN are just that rich.

There is a bit of “roll with it” in the premise, I suppose.

Where the book hopped on my nerves was a super-brief reference to Indiana University, my alma mater, when Liz muses that if her plan doesn’t work she can just go there as her safety school. And, okay, IU’s a state school, I get it, but– dude! You want to play in the orchestra and become a doctor? IU might literally be the best school in the country if you want to do both of those things. Their music school and their pre-med program are stellar.

And then I found out that Leah Johnson, the author, actually grew up in Indiana and went to IU herself, so all was forgiven, because it was kind of a silly thing to get irritated about in the first place anyway. Incidentally, both Pennington College and Campbell, IN are fictional. So maybe the not-real school is better than IU at both music and medicine, I dunno.

So, yeah– this book and I didn’t start off great, and I was probably six or seven chapters in before the main character’s voice clicked for me, and I gobbled up the rest of the book in two big bites before bed last night and after getting up this morning. I have a rule about book reviews; if I don’t want to put a book down so I can go to sleep, that’s generally a book I’m going to talk about here, and YSSMIAC’s combination of a fun MC, a sweet love story, and story-based complications where the characters actually talk to each other to work them out makes for a great read. I recognize this kid– maybe not in her gestalt, but she kept reminding me of other kids I’ve had as I read the book, and while the book does traffic in some standard tropey high-school story stuff it subverts it just enough to keep things interesting. The single thing that’s hardest to buy is that there really might be a school that takes prom and the Prom court this seriously, but … yeah, there probably is. Mine didn’t, but they’re probably out there somewhere.

So, yeah: once you’re done with that da Vinci biography, which is 500+ pages so it’s gonna take a minute, You Should See Me in a Crown makes for a nice little palate cleanser. Give it a look.

10:42 AM, Thursday June 18: 2,164,071 confirmed cases and 117,728 Americans dead, and confirmed cases are undeniably trending upward nationwide again.

Ignore this one

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

Be it known that after 132 hours spread across my first two playthroughs and an additional 85 hours spread across my second two, and three months and five days after the game’s release date, I have now played through Nioh 2 four complete times, and that unless I decide to go through all of the Twilight missions and beat all of those, I have well and truly exhausted all of the game’s content until the DLC packs start releasing.

… and let’s be honest, I’m probably going to go through those Twilight missions too. Maybe not twice; my Onmyo build has definitely emerged as my favorite, so I’ll probably just do them on that build.

Favorite game of all time? Entirely possible. While I own games I’ve played through four times (at least a couple of the Soulsborne games, all of which I’ve played through at least twice, and I think I’ve got 4 playthroughs of DS3 and Bloodborne by now) I have not ever since the days of the old-school original Nintendo played through the same goddamn game four times before moving on to something else. Nor have I ever ponied up money for DLC before it was released, and I’ve already bought all of it. Nor, to this date, have I gotten every single trophy for any PS4 or PS3 game, although there were a few Xbox 360 games I did that with.

Good job, Team Ninja.

#REVIEW: Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews5 Comments

2020 thus far has been an interesting year for reading. 2019 had so many stellar books in it that I had to expand my traditional end-of-the-year Best Of list from ten to fifteen. In general, the quality of what I’ve been reading this year has been reasonably high, but there haven’t been all that many books that I was doing backflips over so far. There have definitely been standouts, of course, but nothing where I was rattling cages and shouting you must read this while running pantsless through the streets.

So it’s pretty cool to have identified my first major WHY DON’T YOU OWN THIS BOOK ALREADY of the year, finally, and even more interesting that it’s turned out to be nonfiction. There are usually a couple of nonfiction books in my top 10, but never one that I thought might be the best book of the year, and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci is absolutely a book that I could see being my favorite of 2020 once the end of the year rolls around. Assuming we’re all still alive, that is.

I have read one other book of Isaacson’s: I was a big fan of his biography of Benjamin Franklin, and having now read this one I’ve got my sights on his book about Albert Einstein. You may notice a theme here; Isaacson very much enjoys writing about geniuses, and one of the best things about this book is the way his sheer enthusiasm for Leonardo shines through every page. This is a book about, with no real fear of contradiction, one of human history’s most interesting people, written by someone who is utterly fascinated by his subject, and it just cannot help but being a tremendously compelling and educational read.

(Two things I learned about da Vinci: I was aware that he was able to write backwards and mirror-imaged, but I was not aware that he always wrote backwards and mirror-imaged. He was left-handed and just taught himself to write that way to save time and keep from smearing ink. Similarly, one of the ways his work is validated when its source is unclear is to look for signs that it was produced by a left-handed person. Second, and I’m not sure how common knowledge this is and it’s possible y’all are going to be surprised I didn’t know this, but he was gay. Not, like, “for the times” gay, or “if he was alive now he’d be” gay, but out and fabulous gay. There apparently exists one of his notebooks where he’s put a to-do list on one of the pages, and one of the items on the list is “go to the bathhouse to look at naked men.”)

(Also, and I’ve Tweeted at him and I’ll update if he responds, but I’d love to know how much work in language Isaacson had to do specifically to write this. I suspect the differences between Renaissance-era Italian and modern Italian are not minor, even before you get to everything da Vinci wrote requiring a mirror to read, and given his other books Isaacson may not even have known Italian before writing the book– every other book he’s written was about someone who, at least, worked primarily in English.)

I can’t pass up talking about the book as a physical object, either. I got the book in paperback, and the paper used both for the cover and for the pages is thick and textured in a way that makes the book an absolute joy to hold. In addition, it’s full of pictures, as one would imagine it would have to be, but they’re scattered throughout rather than as a tip-in in the middle of the book, and every single one of them is in full color. I don’t recall how much I spent for this book, but I’m genuinely surprised it wasn’t $40. Amazon currently has it for twelve bucks. That’s madness for a book of this high quality; this could not have been cheap to print.

I am also in love with the way Isaacson talks about art. I had to take an art history class as a random requirement to get my teaching MA, and while I honestly didn’t do terribly well in the class, reading people who really know a lot about art talking about paintings is something that I will never get tired of even if to a large extent I don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about. Isaacson can drop a paragraph about the emotional resonance of a detail in someone’s eyebrows that I can’t even see, and a good proportion of this book is dedicated to analyzing da Vinci’s artwork, both finished and unfinished. His chapter about the Mona Lisa is a masterwork. I couldn’t have written something like this to save my life; I just don’t have the eye for detail or the vocabulary for it, but it was an immense pleasure to read.

Ten stars, six thumbs up, one finger oddly pointed toward the heavens, go find this and read it right away.

1:07 PM, Wednesday June 17: 2,143,193 confirmed cases and 117,129 Americans dead.