In which this isn’t fair

On November 6, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Politics2 Comments

It is an unbelievably perfect demonstration of how fucking perverse all of existence is right now that, literally less than ten minutes after telling my wife that I was getting (hah!) stir-crazy and wanted to go out and impulse-buy something, I went outside and checked the mail and found a brand-new Goddamned Best Buy card waiting for me. The card currently carries no balance at all; I typically use it only for large purchases (really, the only reason I ever enter a Best Buy nowadays) and the last thing I bought was my desktop, which is a 2017 model. I could use a new laptop, as the battery on the old one is starting to go, or I could make the smarter choice and just replace the damn battery. Similarly, for the first time since my initial upgrade I’ve cast an eye at the new Apple Watch, but there’s just no good reason to do that either. In either case it would be spending money just to spend money, and I’m trying to be smarter about that crap nowadays.

(I do expect to have to shell out the money for the laptop battery pretty soon, which will be a couple hundred bucks. But the thing is … six? seven? years old and there’s no speed issues at all, and if I bought a new one it would be north of two grand. The only problem is the battery, and since I don’t go anywhere I can keep it plugged in most of the time. I even still have my work laptop at home in case of emergencies.)

(Checks to see if BB has PS5s available)

(They do not)

In general, the election has failed to improve my mood. Other than the presidency, which is all over but the shouting at this point, I went from “it looks like I’ve lost every other race I care about” the other day to “I have lost every other race I care about” today. The School Board race was especially heinous; not only did the plagiarizer not lose her seat to the crank, but the other district seat up for reelection, another person who voted to return, also won, and the teachers lost their best advocate on the Board in favor of an imperious ass who I am not at all looking forward to having to deal with, ever. My personal interactions with her when she was with the district were never good, plenty of people have much worse stories than I do, and her husband was fired for incompetence.

And yet, because this is South Bend and we hate education here, she actually got the most votes of any of the At-Large candidates. So. Dandy.

But yeah: I’ve been waiting for that moment when it feels like the weight falls off my shoulders, and apparently Biden at least theoretically clinching the Presidency hasn’t done it yet. In theory the rest of the networks (particularly the AP) getting the fuck in line and making the call might help, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax until the fucker is hauled out of the White House by his hairpiece, preferably to be tossed directly into jail to die alone in a deep pit. Apparently the AP is waiting for Biden’s margin to exceed half a point before they call Pennsylvania; I’m not sure what the holdup is otherwise. Either way, I thought I was going to feel better about all this by now.

Come on come on come on COME ON cOmE ON

On November 5, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

I got nothing, guys, and you alllllllllll know why.

Zzzzzz what

On November 4, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

As I write this, things look uncertain but tentatively good for the presidency– while a number of critical states haven’t been called yet, numbers look good in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, along with what I think is still a decent shot in Georgia.

That said, basically every other election I was interested in didn’t go my way, so I’m not in the greatest mood right now. I’m crabby and much more tired than I feel like I should be and I just got out of a team meeting that I can’t believe I didn’t fall asleep during. I don’t really want anything to do with work tomorrow.

So, typical day in 2020 I guess.

Go vote

On November 3, 2020November 3, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Vote for the side that isn’t gleefully locking children in cages.

Vote for the side that believes climate change is real, and wants to do something about it.

Vote for the side that believes the coronavirus is real, and wants to do something about it.

Vote for the side that believes that health care, clean water, clean air and healthy food are human rights.

Vote for the side that wants the phrase “preexisting condition” to be something future generations have to have explained to them.

Vote for the side that wants your children to be able to retire eventually.

Vote for the side that doesn’t have actual Nazis and open white supremacists showing up at their rallies.

Vote for the side that doesn’t threaten gun violence every time they don’t get their way.

Vote for the side that believes Black lives matter.

Vote for the side that believes women are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that believes people of color are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that believes LGBQTIA+ people are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that believes immigrants are human beings and expects them to be treated that way.

Vote for the side that understands that trans women are women and trans men are men.

Vote for the side that isn’t represented in government almost exclusively by white men.

Vote for the side that respects knowledge and science.

Vote for the side that knows abortion is health care, and access to birth control is a right.

Vote for the side that doesn’t have racism, sexism and selfishness as the core motivating values of every single one of its policies.

Vote for the side that understands that the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask in public is worth it, because it helps to keep other people safe.

Vote for the side that believes that the ultra-wealthy shouldn’t exist and that the wealthy should pay their share of taxes.

Vote for the side that believes working people should be able to lead comfortable and dignified lives.

Vote for the side that doesn’t think that having a place to live and health care should depend on whether you have a job or not.

Vote for the side that believes access to the vote should be expanded, not restricted.

Vote for the side that believes every vote should be counted.

Vote for the side that doesn’t believe that the police should be able to beat and kill us with impunity.

Vote for the side that respects competence, expertise, and education.

Vote for the side that wants public schools fully funded and high-quality, not strip-mined for resources that could be channeled to wealthy white kids.

Vote for the side that hasn’t had the phrase “death tolls” applied to their rallies by major news organizations recently.

Vote for the side that believes that a healthy news media is a necessary feature of a democracy and not an opposing force to be coopted or silenced.

Vote for the side that believes we should be focusing on helping families during the pandemic, not corporations.

Vote for the side that hasn’t been openly calling on older people to be willing to die so that younger and poorer people can go back to work.

Vote.

RIP, Rachel Caine

On November 2, 2020November 2, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn life, Reading4 Comments

Rachel Caine passed away last night. I have twenty-three books by her in the house, with one preordered (what I assume will be the final book in the excellent Stillhouse Lake series) and three more freshly ordered and on the way, as I decided to get off my ass about finishing the Great Library books. That’s without having read anything from what’s probably her best-known work, the fifteen-book Morganville Vampires series. And once those incoming four are all in the house I might have half of her books; the total is approaching sixty, many of them bestsellers.

She is, by any measure, one of my favorite authors– I probably have more books by Stephen King and I might have more books by Seanan McGuire, who is similarly prolific– but that’s it.(*) Rachel had already survived a battle with breast cancer earlier in her life and was diagnosed … last year? Earlier this year? Fairly recently, one way or another, with an aggressive soft-tissue sarcoma that finally took her away from us last night. She’d been open on her various social media feeds about the cancer and the toll it was taking but was writing until very close to the end; recent tweets from her still refer to the forthcoming Stillhouse book as the “newest” in the series and not the “last.” Hell, for all I know she’s written three more of them and they’re just waiting to be published. She was fast enough; it wouldn’t really be a surprise. Various surgeries and chemotherapy didn’t work, and I suspect by the end she was going through something very similarly to what my mom had to endure for the last months of her life, where the wounds from ostensibly lifesaving surgery simply wouldn’t close up and heal. Her assistant more or less officially took over her Twitter feed on Friday, letting us all know that it wouldn’t be long, and the official notice that she was gone came this morning.

I never met Rachel; she was reasonably active on the con circuit so if she hadn’t gotten sick it probably would have happened eventually, but you can’t read eight thousand pages of someone’s work and not feel like you know them on at least some level. I think we would have gotten along pretty well, and one way or another, she will be missed.

Fuck cancer.

(*) It is literally hours later, and because this is exactly the type of nerd I am I eventually found myself unable to not determine this for sure. Total number of Seanan McGuire books: eighteen. First count of Stephen King books: at least 38, but his are spread throughout the house and are in a bunch of different types of editions and there are a few titles that we have more than one copy of because before marrying me my wife occasionally bought books on her own. I would not be surprised to discover that I missed as many as half a dozen, but that would probably be cancelled out by the ones we have duplicates of, so let’s say “around 40,” call it a day, and hope that my brain doesn’t demand further clarification at 4:00 in the morning.