Month: December 2023

In which I am not helpful

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, TeachingLeave a comment

Just had a student from last year text me asking if I could help him with trigonometry, which doesn’t make any Goddamn sense to me because freshmen who just took Algebra 1 shouldn’t be looking at trig yet, and also because holy shit have I forgotten everything I ever knew about trigonometry. I have a hazy memory of the sohcahtoa mnemonic but only the vaguest idea of what it actually means, and I absolutely cannot give you even the sloppiest description of what is going on in that graph above.

The interesting thing about me ending up as a math teacher is that I took literally no math at all in college– my SAT scores exempted me from the classes everyone had to take and then none of my majors required any additional math– and I was not, despite those test scores, especially good at math in high school either. I tell my Algebra kids every year that when I was in high school I got a D in the class that I’m teaching them now. I could probably muddle my way through teaching Geometry or (maybe) Algebra II by staying a couple of weeks ahead of the kids; I enjoyed Geometry in high school quite a lot and I figure if I can handle teaching Algebra I, I can handle teaching Algebra II. But trig is gone, and calculus was never there to begin with; the second I had a college acceptance letter in my hand I dropped the class and never looked back.

Or, at least, didn’t look back for years. I am currently sorta looking back, and have actually spent some time over the last few days musing over the idea of taking a couple of college math classes to try and regain trig and calculus so that I can get licensure to teach high school. I don’t really know if I actually want high school licensure after 20 years of teaching middle school, but I’ve been thinking about it. One thing for sure, though; I sure as hell can’t do it now.

REVIEW: TO SHAPE A DRAGON’S BREATH, by Moniquill Blackgoose

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews3 Comments

*happy dance*

I probably shouldn’t write this review yet.

It’s interesting, to read this book so close to reading Iron Flame, because on the surface they are such similar books: a young woman joins a school to become a dragon rider. The book focuses primarily on her experiences with her dragon school, where she is separated from her family, and her struggles with gaining acceptance in a place where she is felt by most to not belong.

Only, like, take that book and shake in a couple of cups of R.F. Kuang’s Babel, which I should remind you was my favorite book of last year, and then make the main character First Nations, and then make the worldbuilding approximately a thousand times more compelling and interesting and carefully thought-out than the Fourth Wing series, and … gimme a minute, I wanna do the happy dance again.

So. OK. This book is 511 pages long and I pretty much read it in two sittings with some sleep thrown in there somewhere, and if you happen to wonder Hey, Luther, did you decide last night that you couldn’t sleep after having your eyes closed for an hour and read another 50 pages before trying again, then I’d have to wonder what the hell you were doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night, because yeah, that happened, and also you’re a weirdo.

Oh, and a big chunk of the book is basically dedicated to the main character’s struggles with chemistry, only it’s magical, dragon-based chemistry, with different words for everything, and the map at the beginning of the book is very much of Earth, and the dominant culture is called the Ainglish, which you would think would map perfectly onto the English only for the bit where the Norse appear to have colonized the world instead of them, because everything’s super Germanic other than the social structure which is pure Victorian Britain, and my God I want Moniquill Blackgoose to write a thorough and unapologetic history of this world and how everything happened because I want to know exactly how much actual history went into this book along with the actual science and gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh it’s so so so so so good go read it NOW.

I started off by saying I should have waited to review the book, and the reason for that, plain and simple, is that I’m book-drunk right now, on a level I haven’t seen since Jade City came out (!!!), and I can’t pretend this book is perfect, because it isn’t, but I can tell you that every single problem I have with this book comes from my brain and that emotionally I am absolutely one hundred percent in love with this author and her world and I want more right now. A lot of the gripes are of the wait, this doesn’t quite make sense sort of fashion anyway, and I am pretty sure that I trust this author enough to believe that my questions will be answered in future installments. The “shaping” of the dragon’s breath is actually connected to the chemistry– dragon’s breath has weird effects on basic elements in a way that I’m not a hundred percent sure that I understand, but neither does the main character, who maybe??? is a little too good at literally everything??? but that’s another brain-complaint, and sometimes I like reading about cool and competent people who take no shit from anyone and refuse to be rescued, and yeah, I’m gonna compare her to Rey Skywalker, who gets complained about exactly the same way that I suspect some people might complain about Anequs, but who I love as a character in the exact same way too.

God. Why are you still here? Go get this book right now. Maybe I’ll cool off on it a bit– just a bit– in a week or two but you deserve to feel how I feel right now about a book too, so go buy it.

God is dead

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

A contest you’re going to lose

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

I have encountered what has got to be the worst idea of all time. I dare you– I dog dare you– I triple dog dare you with almond milk— to come up with a stupider idea than this idea. You cannot. It is impossible.

According to this article, McDonald’s is in the process of opening a new restaurant chain that will focus on “coffee and other drinks,” competing with Starbucks for that space.

That’s not the bad idea.

The chain is called “CosMc’s.”

That is not the bad idea.

Brace yourself for this shit. You’re going to gasp. I’m not joking. This idea is so breathtaking in its awfulness that I almost don’t want to expose anyone else to it, but I had to read this fucking thing so you ought to have to as well.

Here you go:

I need you to understand that this Kempczinski person is not making fun of McDonald’s for this incredibly bad idea, and that in fact he is the McDonald’s CEO, and he thinks this is a good idea.

I’m going to bed now, because my head hurts, and I don’t think it’s ever going to stop.

That’s a new one

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

I have this kid in my last class. He’s a decent kid; he’s not, like, one of my favorites or anything like that but he’s not a behavior problem and most of the time he’s a reasonably solid student. He’s absent a lot, though, and he asks to go see the nurse more often than most of my students do. Probably a couple of times a week. This is generally not something I say no to unless I can tell that a (generic) student is just trying to get out of class, and a lot of times with this particular kid I can tell just from looking at him that something’s bugging him and so I’ll let him go.

Today, though, he was off his game more than usual– fidgety, out of his seat a lot, more or less unmedicated ADHD behavior, although I can’t say for certain whether he’s actually on meds or not. He’s already asked to go to the bathroom right after getting to class and then asked to leave again to get a drink maybe ten minutes later, so the nurse request is the third time in a 55-minute period that he’s tried to leave the room, and I know good and Goddamn well the kid hasn’t gotten a single stitch of work done while he’s been in the classroom.

“Why do you want to go to the nurse?” I ask. He gives me a Look. I have been teaching for two decades; nearly one and a half times as long as this young man has been alive. I know this look. This look means I was not expecting to be questioned on this, and I am about to begin frantically making shit up.

“Well,” he says, and then he pauses. I wait.

“I was at the board during advisory, and someone threw an eraser at the board, and when it hit the board there, was, like, a cloud of chalk dust? And I breathed in the chalk dust, and now my stomach hurts.”

I took a moment to myself.

During my moment, I reflected upon a couple of things, to wit: 1) that advisory was a full two hours before this young man entered my classroom; 2) that everyone in the building was doing the same activity during advisory today, and that, while not impossible, it was unlikely that he had any reason to be near the board; 3) that his lungs are not actually connected to his stomach; and perhaps most importantly 4) that there is literally not a single chalkboard anywhere in the building.

I like our nurse; I have liked nearly every nurse I’ve ever worked with, but she is one of my top two or three favorites, I think. Fuck it, I decide, and send him to the nurse, and then I immediately go to my computer and compose a quick email, which I know she will see because her email is open 100% of the time, telling her to make absolutely certain to find out why he is in her office, because I cannot wait to see her reaction to this one.

Rather unsurprisingly, he was back in less than five minutes. I’m pretty certain he did not manage to get any additional math done with the remaining time he had in my room.

For no particular reason

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I’m really only posting today because I hate taking two days off in a row. I actually went home sick yesterday, leaving at lunchtime, and today I took my son to the dentist to get some cavities filled, which was already a day off. That’s … all I’ve got. It’s been a quiet couple of days.

EDIT: Okay they are literally picking these fucking things at random:

What in the hell

On By Luther M. SilerIn BlogwankingLeave a comment

Uh, WordPress? Maybe consider putting the “Recommended Tags” feature back into the oven for a little while, it’s not done yet. This was what they suggested after my last post; note that “Christmas,” the only one that is remotely appropriate, was already a tag.

In which we did the thing

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, ReadingLeave a comment

Over the years we have really gotten into alternative tree toppers, and this year’s is some sort of Pokeymans, I don’t know which kind. But the tree is up. There have been years when we haven’t bothered; I don’t think we had one last year, and three cats in the house means that we’ve forgone ornaments for pretty much the entire time we’ve lived here. Also, yes, that’s an artificial tree, because people who bring real trees into their houses for Christmas are lunatics, and yes, I’ll die on that hill.

The lights are controlled by an app, and do all sorts of fun stuff, only some of which looks like it’ll trigger epileptic seizures if we leave it running for too long. They’re pretty though.

Anyway.

I had to give up on a John Irving book this weekend, which I find immensely frustrating. I’ve read nearly all of his work, excepting only his nonfiction and … maybe? a short story collection that I’m not sure actually exists? But I’ve read all of his novels, at least, or I had, up until The Last Chairlift came out. Irving has always been an author who really, really liked his repeating tropes over his body of work, but this book– his first in seven years– reads more like a parody of a John Irving book than it does an actual John Irving book– as if someone much less skilled than him read all his stuff and then tried to write a book in his voice. It took me a week to get through the first three hundred pages out of like 870 or something, I didn’t care at all about what was going on, and then I hit the part where the POV character (who is, of course, another writer) started including long segments of his screenplays in the text of the novel, and that was where I decided I had to be done. The worst thing is this may very well be Irving’s last novel; he’s 81 and if it took him seven years to write this one, I don’t see another coming out anytime soon.

On to a Kevin Hearne book, which isn’t much shorter and I’ll probably finish in three or four days. The Seven Kennings series has been great so far and I suspect he’ll stick the ending.