Category: idiocy

They’re just not that bright

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

Really freaking rough day at work today. The day started off with an emergency staff meeting. As you can probably imagine, an emergency staff meeting, this one called on literally three minutes’ notice, is never a good thing, and this one was worse than most, as we lost a student over the weekend. Apparently she had a massive seizure while in the tub. Halloween was her fourteenth birthday, and was also the day her parents decided to take her off life support.

She was not one of mine, and not a kid I knew, but the building was a mess as a result. We were given a statement we were asked to read to our second hour classes, and there were grief counselors in the building all day long.

And as much as I would like to blame that for my kids’ academic performance today, I really can’t do that, as once again a huge percentage of my students decided to pretend today that they had not only not attended a single second of any sort of 8th grade Math class, they had spent their entire lives living in a small, dark box and had never encountered the concept of numbers in general. Far, far more kids, unfortunately, than could be reasonably presumed to have known this girl. Plus it was also happening during first hour, before anyone knew what had happened.

I don’t know if non-educators can really understand the frustration of spending an entire month of class time talking about solving equations every single day, and then to wait a week and have a solid majority of your students act as if they have never encountered any such nonsense before. Or to ask an eighth grader what three plus nine is as part of explaining an admittedly somewhat tricky story problem and be greeted with a blank stare and three obvious guesses before you finally pry the answer to that first-grade math question out of them.

I still can’t figure out how it is fair that I get judged on the academic performance of people for whom being a moron is aspirational. “When am I going to use this?” indeed; you will never in your life use anything, and I wish I could get across to you how intensely depressing that all is.

Are there standardized tests later this week? Of course there are. They are never fucking dumber than right before something that is important to me, but not to them.

OH you BASTARDS

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I’m overreacting juuuuuuust a little bit, maybe, as normal grown men with reasonable temperaments and decent mental health recognize that waiting one extra day for a book is not that big of a deal, and also because slightly unhinged book goblins with perhaps more money than they really ought to have can just order the ebook for another fifteen dollars that goes to the same company that is shipping your preordered book late and start reading it today anyway.

This is how I know that trying to shame me out of shopping at Amazon is never going to work: it is specifically their fault that I don’t have this book right now, and I gave them more money so that I didn’t have to wait 24 extra hours.

I have a sickness.

Today was madness from start to finish, my room was way hotter than it had any reason to be, and I am very nearly dead. I meant to stop at the post office (this Amazon thing here is not the only problem I’m having with getting my shit shipped to me; I’ve had a package tied up in Evansville, of all fuckin’ places, for over a week) and at some point after pulling off the highway I slipped into a fugue state and the car starting driving me home instead of to the post office without my permission. Once I realized where I was actually going, I lacked the strength to alter my direction and just went the hell home. Tomorrow we have a field trip, then half a class, then lunch, then two shortened classes and a reward party. I already told the kids in the two and a half classes I’ll actually see that we aren’t doing a damn thing. There is no universe where education can take place under those circumstances. There is only keeping them alive and me out of jail.

Also, after talking to my boss, I’m taking the day off instead of going to this.

It’s okay when I do it

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, ReadingLeave a comment

I’ve been reading a lot of Sarah J. Maas lately– ACOTAR 6 comes out in a few days, and in the last month or so I’ve reread the first four books; I’ll finish A Court of Silver Flames next week sometime, then go into the new book, then in between ACOTAR 6 and 7 I’ll reread the Crescent City books. The Throne of Glass series is actually my favorite of her work, but it’s not as tied into the rest of them, so rereading that will have to wait until next year.

I don’t argue with people about books very often– it just doesn’t come up, to be honest– but I especially don’t argue with people about SJM. She has a couple of little quirks about her writing that drive some people up a wall, and while I don’t share them, I get it, more or less. The biggest one is her insistence on using “male” and “female” to refer to her fae and angelic characters and never, ever “man” or “woman.” Men and women are human. It’s a hard line. I noticed a moment in ACOWAF a couple of days ago where a character actually uses the wrong word, and she immediately corrects herself.

The other one is her use of “mate.” The mating bond in ACOTAR isn’t entirely voluntary and tends to make its own decisions, for lack of a better word– simply making eye contact with the person who is supposed to be your mate can trigger it, and once it snaps into place, it can be ignored, at some cost, but it can’t be reversed. The fun bit, also explored in ACOWAF, is that sometimes the mating bond makes shitty decisions? The main male (sigh) character’s parents were mated and weren’t good for each other at all.

You’re gonna see the word “mate” a lot in ACOTAR. A lot a lot. And if it gets on your nerves, you’re not gonna have a good time with the series.

Anyway, I read ACOWAF and ACOFAS back to back, and I picked up another book off my Unread Shelf as a sort of palate cleanser before going into the next book. This book has lizard people in it. Lizard people are nearly deaf and psychic, so they communicate via telepathy. Only the book never uses the word “telepathy.” The word the author has chosen– or, at least, the translator, as the book was originally written in Korean and it’s not entirely clear how one translates neologisms from one language to another– is nearm. Nearm is both a verb and a noun; one nearms a nearm. I’m not sure how to pronounce it, as I’m reading the book and not listening to it; the one TikTok video I found discussing the book pronounced it “neerm,” and I can’t shake “knee-arm” out of my head even though “neerm” is probably closer.

Nearm is a dumb word. It might sound less dumb in Korean, maybe; I don’t know a damn thing about Korean. It sounds really dumb in American English. I’m pretty sure it sounds equally dumb in all the other Englishes as well. And any time one of the lizard-people shows up on the page you’re gonna see the word as many times as you might see “said” for any other character. God help you if there are more than one of them and they’re talking– sorry, nearming— at each other.

It’s got me ready to put the book down, and I was really looking forward to this book, and damn, Maas-haters, if I didn’t get it before, I get it now.

Two quick stories

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, life, TeachingLeave a comment

I went to work today! I still feel like butt.

QUICK STORY 1 of 2: I walked to Bree! Sort of. Every so often an ad for this app called The Conqueror will scroll across some social media or another, and I finally decided to bite and try the first Lord of the Rings challenge they offer. The idea isn’t super complicated: walk 145 miles, over whatever time frame you personally desire. You get access to an app that helps you keep track of your walking and after 145 miles they send you a medal that says you walked from the Shire to Bree. There’s a little miniature ring inside that envelope on the back of the medal. There are several more of these, of varying lengths; the next one takes me to Rivendell, and eventually all the way to Mordor itself. There’s also one that lets you follow Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas’ road instead, or you can do all of them. I just signed up for the one at first, because there’s a cost to it and I wanted to make sure the medal felt like it wasn’t a piece of junk, and it’s not. It’s a decent little display piece, and it’ll look even cooler with seven friends on it. So: off to Rivendell!

QUICK STORY 2 of 2: I had my first real referral of the year today, for something I’ve never written a kid up for before: starting a fire in class! With a lighter he’d managed to kludge together by stripping some wires on a vape! I would be impressed with his ingenuity if it wasn’t being used in the pursuit of such sheer stupidity. He rolled up a piece of paper into what looked like a joint and lit that, so it wasn’t a big fire, but as it turns out that’s not an especially salient detail when you set a fire in a school. Even small ones are a problem! You’re not supposed to do that.

NOT A STORY BUT I’M INCLUDING IT! I’m reading this book right now, and this is easily the prettiest author signature I’ve ever seen:

I really want to see the fountain pen she used. That had to be a fountain pen.

Scammers make no sense at all

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

I always have the weird urge to fuck with people whenever I get a wrong number text message, and this was waiting for me when I got out of the shower earlier today. I almost responded with the literally true “No, I just got out of the shower” to that first message, and then decided I wasn’t in the mood to troll a stranger and just played it straight, expecting either no response or a quick apology and then radio silence. Instead, I got this interaction, which just gets weirder with every message.

Why did you send Emma a selfie of you already at the gym?

Why did you ask me to confirm I wasn’t Emma, when I’d already told you twice? Was there a chance that I was going to turn out to be wrong, and realize I had been Emma all along?

What’s the deal with “work” coming through as “wr ok” both times? And “numbver” twice?

And I made sure to include the timestamps on the rest of the messages, because the timing was so weird. There’s an hour between “How should I address you?” and “You haven’t answered my question,” and then another 40 minutes between that and Emma showing up, nearly two hours after the original message. Nothing about this interaction feels normal at all, which makes me feel like it has to be a prelude to a scam, but this is not the first time that I’ve felt like I was on the path to being scammed by someone and, bewilderingly, never actually got to the part where the scamming happened.

(Follow-up to that story: I did eventually get a response from the real editor on LinkedIn confirming that no, that message was not from her, and I got a whole different message from a different scammer a few weeks later which I replied to with total credulity, hoping something fun would happen. No response to that one either.)

Anyway, I dunno. Maybe Mia’s older than she looks and English isn’t her first language and she’s maybe friendlier than she ought to be and that’s why everything feels so off, but I kept waiting for the part where she hits me up for $500 for a picture of her tits or something, and instead it just sorta trailed off. If anybody has a good idea about what the hell was going on here, or wants to try to convince me that this was a normal interaction that I’m reading too much into, feel free.

I wanna be sedated

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I have been in a miserable, hateful mood all day today, I forgot my coffee this morning before leaving for work, and I had a dream last night that has knocked me so thoroughly out of sorts that I’m genuinely starting to think I need to look into a therapist. I have been a fucking mess for the entire day, to the point where one of my third hour kids noticed. The last time I tried talking to a therapist was quite a while ago and didn’t really do me any good, but there’s probably more than one out there, right? Maybe I’ll try one of the others.

On frugality

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, life1 Comment

Just got back from an impromptu date night with my wife, which ended up, as I suspect many middle-aged date nights have, at Costco.

(Trigger warning: mild bragging, or at least a failure of humility)

The first thing you see when you walk into a Costco, of course, is the giant TVs. None of us really watch television, to be honest, and what TV is watched is generally done on a tablet; the TVs that are in the house are there for video games. But we glanced at the $2000 98″ set at the door and, as happens sometimes when encountering high-end electronics, I took a minute to reflect on how much better off we are now than when we got married.

“I could impulse-buy that TV,” I said. “Right now. Absolutely nothing bad would happen. We wouldn’t have to cancel anything or even cut back on anything. Just, fuck it, and buy a $2000 TV.” She laughed, we did not impulse-buy a $2000 TV, and we kept on walking. And, like, okay, there was no chance that we were buying a TV, but if we did, the actual problem with it would be where to put it, and not the cost.

Less than a minute later we walked past the saddest man in the world, some poor bastard who was trying to sell whole-house generators to random Costco people walking by. He greeted me, I said no as politely as I could, and then my wife surprised both of us by stopping and asking him what the basement price was to acquire such a thing. The hilarious thing was that it was completely obvious that no one had asked him anything during the time that he was there, as he took way too long to come up with an answer, which was ten thousand dollars, and then went straight into complaining about how two years ago it would have been five thousand dollars, and it was crazy how expensive his product that he was trying to sell us had gotten.

After we were done talking to him, my wife reminded me that we do, in fact, talk about having a generator installed every time our power goes out, which generally happens about once a year. So, okay. Ten grand, if we wanted to do that. Put that in the back pocket for now, though.

A few minutes later we were in the produce aisle, and I discovered they sold organic dates. The last time I had dates of any variety was in Israel, nearly thirty years ago. I would like to eat a date, I thought to myself, trying to ignore the fact that because we were in Costco the only real option would be to buy many dates and not just the one or two that would probably satisfy me, and then looked at the cost. $10, basically, for, I dunno, a couple of pounds of dates.

And I, the same dude who had just discussed impulse-buying a 98″ TV and had just had a serious conversation about a $10,000 home generator system (likely more than that, because remember, $10K was this guy’s floor,) almost put them back because the notion of spending $10 on dates was more than I was willing to do.

We bought the container. I look forward to throwing 95% of them out in a week or so. Or maybe longer. Hell, I have no idea what the shelf-life of organic dates might be.

#REVIEW: The Rouse, by China Miéville

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading, Reviews2 Comments

I’m not gonna lie. Y’all, I have no idea.

I assume I’m not the only person who does this; when I am reading a book I know I’m likely to write a review of, I read it with that eventual review at least somewhat in mind. I’m not always likely to take notes or anything like that, but bits and pieces will jump out at me and I’ll stick them in the blog-part of my brain to discuss later.

The problem is that I could say literally anything about this book and I’m pretty sure it would be true. I hated it and it was brilliant. I loved it and it was exhausting. It’s got a complicated, detailed plot and it makes no fucking sense at all. I cannot tell you, as I’m sitting here, whether its central mystery was ever resolved, as it’s entirely possible that it was resolved in such an oblique manner that I missed it. Bits of it are, literally and without a trace of sarcasm or exaggeration, gibberish. At least six different languages make their way into the book, none translated, some not in Latin characters. There are two different main fonts, at different sizes. I don’t know what percentage of the words in this book Miéville straight made up but whatever you’re thinking it’s way higher than that. The book is largely dialogue, mostly of the circumspect and elliptical variety, but there isn’t a single fucking quotation mark in the book and sometimes it’s very difficult to tell who is talking or whether someone is speaking or thinking, and sometimes that’s because the characters themselves do not know if they’re thinking or speaking out loud.

One of the main characters spends a couple of chapters kidnapping children, exposing them to eldritch horrors, and returning them to their parents. The eldritch horrors in question: a literal ghost under a white sheet. The other’s vaginal secretions are more important to the story than vaginal secretions have ever been in a book before. She also occasionally drips from other orifices.

If China Miéville had not written this, I would never have finished it. But no one other than China Miéville could have written the fucking thing in the first place. You should pick this book up if and only if you are already a big fan of China Miéville. Not “I liked the Bas-Lag books.” You should pick this book up if and only if you have reread either Kraken or The City and the City, on purpose and of your own free will. And if that is the case, you already own it.

It is 1260 pages long and you will not have any idea what is going on the first time you read it. Expect to have to read it at least twice. There are four hundred and sixty-seven characters and they all go by their last names and one of them changes his name midway through the book for a reason that technically is given on the page but still doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. The lead antagonist might be Satan. The lead antagonist also might be one of the main characters. Or one of their friends. I’m really not sure.

The following is the entire “Plot” section for this book on Wikipedia as of 7:54 PM on September 29, 2026, and at least one of these sentences is not true:

The novel revolves around the suicides of multiple British army soldiers. It is set during the Cold War.

I’ve tried to read some “professional” reviews of the book; most of them are paywalled, unfortunately, but I did read one where the reviewer was honest enough to admit that he doesn’t have any idea what the fuck the book was about either. He still recommended the book. I get it.

I gave it three stars on Goodreads and Storygraph; it cannot be ranked using such a pedestrian manner as stars.

The physical copy of the book is really fucking cool, but I read it digitally, because a lot of time I read laying down and I would have broken my nose on this fucker at some point.

I’ll write another review after I read it again. When will that be? I have no earthly idea.