Tag: assholes

A couple quick thoughts on immigration, for no particular reason

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

I’ve only talked about immigration a few times here, but at least one of those times is the site’s biggest post ever, so I don’t know if that means it counts more? Maybe it does. One way or another, my opinion about immigration, nutshelled, has not changed: Let ’em in. I don’t care why they’re here, I don’t care why they want to be here, I don’t care if they’re in my community or my school because they already are, and I don’t care if it costs me personally some minuscule amount of tax money. Anybody who wants to come be an American should be able to come be an American. That might include some number of bad people. I don’t care; we have plenty of those already so a few more won’t matter. I trust any number of immigrants more than any similar number of Republicans anyway. Let’ em all in.

But that’s not the point of this post, which is really only a minor thing but it popped into my head the other day and I don’t have Twitter any longer so when something like this happens I have no real choice but to put it here: it is really easy to be incredibly disingenuous about immigration if that’s what you decide you want to do, and one specific way people are being disingenuous about immigration keeps getting stuck in my craw.

If we’re using “arrests at the border” as our metric for whether someone is doing a Good Job on immigration or not, the good guys automatically lose. And I’m deliberately phrasing that statement in a nonpartisan manner because it can go either way.

Arrests are up? We’re catching more criminals vs look how many more people are pouring over the border.

Arrests are down? They’re not bothering to enforce our laws vs people aren’t trying to come in illegally any longer because our laws work.

The actual numbers and the actual reality of the situation does not matter one bit when you’re using “arrests” as a metric because you can make any change in arrests good news for your side. 

Let them in, house and educate them, let them have safe, legal jobs, and provide them with a path to citizenship. I don’t care if it costs me money. Put an aircraft carrier on eBay or some shit. Have a bake sale. I don’t give a fuck.

The end.

In which I broke my promise

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, lifeLeave a comment

My big plan from yesterday to post something longer than a paragraph for the first time in several days ended up flopping, falling victim to the worst anxiety attack I’ve had in quite some time. Anxiety attacks are not normally known for carefully justifying themselves, but this one made even less sense than usual, given that I could not and can not come up with anything in particular that I need to be anxious about. But that’s not how mental illness works, of course; the shit fucks you up whenever it feels like it, and for whatever reason mine felt like fucking with me last night, and it was all I could do to sit at my desk and idly web surf last night. Putting any sort of coherent thoughts together was just not happening. I took a brain pill at like 8:00 and went to bed early, and today I’ve been more or less back to normal, whatever that is.

I’m done with my Christmas shopping– have been for a week or so now, so long as we don’t really consider find a Christmas gift to give my wife and tell her it’s from the boy to be a real responsibility. He told me again today that he didn’t have any ideas for her, and while in principle I agree with my son that my wife is one of the more difficult people to buy for that I have known in my life, I asked him if he’d asked her what she wanted, and he looked at me like that was a rare and challenging idea that no reasonable person would have ever come up with on their own. 

Sigh.

There’s an update on the Dr. Curry situation, too; after several months of calling everyone I could think of short of the actual police (multiple lawyers, the state medical board, the newspaper, the Better Business Bureau, any number of online doctor things) and getting no help from anyone, I’d decided that I was at the very least going to spend several hours Friday morning camped out in his parking lot. I brought a couple of drinks, some snacks, and a book, fully prepared to be there all morning at least. I was genuinely considering just breaking into his office if nothing appeared to be different, although it had occurred to me that one final (legal) remedy might be to see if I could find the owner of the building and see f they would let me in. The last resort would be to contact the police, and if the police didn’t or couldn’t do anything about the situation (and, let’s be real, the police were not going to be useful in this case,) well, I’d been in the building enough times to know that all I’d need to get into his office proper would be a crowbar and five minutes. The place is not exactly Fort Knox, and that’s taking the harder route of going through the doors rather than trying to haul my fat ass through a window.

Anyway, I won’t post pictures this time, but there were two new signs on the door– one from the landlord (!) advertising that the building was for rent and that loitering and trespassing was discouraged, and that the building was under “video severance,” which is about the level of competence I’ve come to expect from everyone involved in this damn ordeal. The second was more interesting, advising anyone looking for their medical records to contact the Indiana Deputy Attorney General through the Department of “Complex Litigation” at the AG’s office in Indianapolis. They provided a phone number; I called it and left a message when I got home, but as it was the Friday before Christmas I’m not holding my breath about a swift return call. I’ll try again on Wednesday and if no one answers that time I’ll try again after New Year’s. One way or another I hope they don’t make me jump through too many hoops to get Dad’s medical records back. ”Complex Litigation” makes me hope that someone has had more luck finding an interested attorney than I did and is suing the ever-loving shit out of this son of a bitch. 

So, yeah. I didn’t get arrested, which makes the story less funny than it ought to be, but at least I’m a step or two closer to getting this out of the way. 

In which fairness is stupid

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Politics2 Comments

I am tired, and crabby, and in no fucking mood for anyone’s nonsense, and the particular type of smug ignorance embedded in this TikTok is precisely the sort of thing that gets right on my nerves when I’m in this type of mood. Sure, okay, Congress gets lots of vacation time away from DC. Sure, Steve Scalise is a fucking asshole. Sure, the four-day work week would be just dandy.

But do you think the person who put this TikTok on the internet realizes that Congresspeople, like, actually have shit to do other than make laws in DC? Which is not, for the most part, where they live, and is absolutely not where their constituents live? I don’t know about you, but I would kind of like for my Congresscritters to be accessible to me once in a while, or at least be somewhere in my state, and I don’t have the time or money to fuck off to Washington DC every time I want to fucking yell at someone.

Yes, it is true, Congress takes lots of time away from lawmaking, and if you want to make the argument that they take too much, go ahead and make that argument. But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a good thing that these assholes have to come home every once in a while, and I don’t even think that the person who created this even realizes that’s what is going on. 

ETA: So long as I’m bitching about people bitching about Congress not working hard enough, let me point out that it is not at all abnormal to hear about bills getting debated until late at night, and that while I hardly have a cushy job, at least I can pretty well guarantee that I’m gonna be in bed by nine every night if that’s what I want.(*) I don’t know how the fuck these sixty- and seventy-year-old lawmakers are even remotely conscious at midnight much less still being awake and giving speeches no fucker is listening to.

(*) It is very much what I want and it almost never happens. I can’t guarantee a Goddamn thing. Ten if I’m lucky.

YES!!!

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Henry Kissinger is finally rotting in Hell where he belongs. Carter outlived the bastard!

On the imminent death of my TikTok account

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

This is not the first time I have had to address this nonsense in this space, so you’d think the whole fucking world would be aware of this and not make the same mistakes again, but God damn it, people, former presidents and particularly active presidents do not typically attend the funerals of First Ladies. They just don’t. That’s it. Biden, in fact, in attending Rosalynn Carter’s memorial service this week, was the first sitting president to attend the funeral of a First Lady since Kennedy.

I don’t care if you like it or not, it’s fucking protocol. It’s how this works. Quit bitching when you don’t see whatever president at a First Lady’s funeral. I’m fuckin’ tired of it.

You will note that every living real First Lady and that classless Eurotrash participation-trophy wife from the last administration were all in attendance, even though literally no human being alive or dead wanted Melania or her fucking grey coat there.

Anyway. I’m fucking tired of TikTok and it’s bullshit stupid people with their bullshit stupid opinions, because since I’m no longer on Twitter TikTok is now the place where I’m most likely to encounter that type of thing. And I can’t fucking take it any longer. I am really and truly going to have a fucking rage stroke before the election if I don’t do something to shield myself from internet stupid, and that’s going to mean TikTok has to go, which would make this my only active social media account remaining, and I’m in complete control of who gets to talk here.

I’d do it right now except that, again, in the absence of Twitter, TikTok is where I do most of my book discovery now, and I genuinely don’t know where I’d go to hear people talking about books without it. If you have suggestions, let me know, because if I don’t find a way to reduce my stress and blood pressure I’m going to have to exercise, and we all know that’s a fucking terrible idea.

Look goddammit

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Never vote for any Republican for any office ever again under any circumstances. The party has to be killed stone cold fucking dead for the health of the country. Enough of these fucking assholes.

In which I get an answer

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

I think it’s official, after a week of Gym Jordan trying desperately to become The Establishment and failing ignominiously, that there has never been a picture taken of him where he doesn’t look like a derpy little creep. It’s too bad; as an enabler of sex abuse he would have fit right in with the gaggle of criminals, buffoons and miscreants that the Republicans have elevated to Speaker for basically my entire adult life, and he wouldn’t even be the first (or even the second!) sex pest elevated to the position. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Republicans have no ability to govern whatsoever; we’ll see how long it takes before a few of them at least suggest breaking away from the rest of the pack to find someone who might get a Democratic vote or two. Until then, we’re all fucked.

Which is, of course, the explicit goal of the party for, again, my entire adult life.

A random little anecdote just for the hell of it, because I forgot to tell my wife and she’s downstairs: I drove past one of the local elementary schools on my way home, and I saw the largest flock (flock? I feel like it should be “herd” but that doesn’t make any Goddamn sense) of Canadian geese I’ve ever seen milling about in the field behind the school. I’m shitty at estimating numbers and distances but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple hundred of them. I considered doing the world a favor and doing donuts in the field but my Kia isn’t exactly an off-roader and the filthy bastards would probably have followed me home afterwards anyway. Man, I hate geese.

Weekend now. No plans. Just how I like it.

OK. We can do this. Or not! Fuck it.

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I spent a good part of the day today— five hours, maybe– getting prepared for next week and the two-eleven-hour-days-plus-an-elearning-day stint following, and while I’ve been mostly immune to Sundaying since starting this new job I have been a mess all day today. There’s just too goddamned much going on over the next couple of weeks, most of it related to not math, and I want to do Math, and not Not Math. But I’ve got twelve thousand other things to worry about this week, and I care about exactly zero of them– I don’t give a shit if the kids have a little Slides presentation to show their parents at parent/teacher conferences, because the only kids who will actually do those are the ones whose parents I don’t need to see, and I don’t give a shit about the door decorating contest that they gave us a week to do and then promptly filled every advisory period in between the day they told us about the contest and the day they were judging it, and I don’t give a shit about the schedule for Advisory they dropped on us today(*), and I don’t give a shit about the fucking lesson that I’m supposed to teach, which was clearly written by a non-educator(**), so that the kids are “prepared” for the field trip they’re taking on Tuesday that I also don’t care about.

Christ and fuck.

I need to clear this mood before first contact with the kids tomorrow or it’s going to be a rougher seven days than I already think it’s going to be. I don’t need any of this shit. Just get the fuck out of my way and let me fucking teach.

(*) “But Luther, isn’t it Sunday?” you ask. Yes. They dropped a new Advisory schedule on us on a Sunday that is supposed to be implemented Monday, and to hell with the seventeen other things we are supposed to do this week, all of which are supposed to be done in Advisory. Fuck Advisory. Fuck the entire concept. Get rid of it and give me more class time. I hate it.

(**) How do I know, you may ask? It’s a lesson plan for eighth graders that changes tasks seven times over the course of the lesson, with each section ranging from three to eight minutes in length.(***) Fuck you. You teach it.

(***) A sample task: “Put the students in pairs and have them write the letters A-Z on a piece of paper. Have them read whateverthefuck and list things by their first letter that are manufactured in this county.” Total time for this activity: five to eight minutes, which is insufficient time just to get them in groups and have them all write out the list of letters. Suck a cock.