Tag: blech

#REVIEW: Operation Bounce House, by Matt Dinniman

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

In a word: skippable.

I’m genuinely tempted to make that the entire review, to be honest. This is the ninth Matt Dinniman book I’ve read, and the tenth is going to be out in March, and of the nine I’ve loved seven of them, thought the eighth (Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon) was okay, and … then there was this. I forced myself to buckle down and finish it over the course of last night and today, and to be honest I could have put it away after a hundred pages and been fine with it. It really feels like a manuscript that he had lying around and the publishing house was desperate to put something out that was trad-pubbed from the beginning, so he gave them this.

I don’t want to spend a ton of time shitting on this book, especially since it isn’t going to affect my enthusiasm for Dungeon Crawler Carl, but skippable is probably the perfect single-word review, and if I were to write a two-word review it would be half-baked. Nothing about it is particularly well thought-out, the main character is entirely indistinguishable from Carl, including his uncanny ability to come up with complicated plans on the fly, and I defy you to explain to me why the book (or the in-universe show the book is named after) is called Operation Bounce House. Everyone talks like they’re a teenager in 2020 even though the book is set hundreds of years in the future and on a planet Earth has colonized. I cannot emphasize enough how there has been no cultural change of any kind during all this time. I spent the whole book waiting for a twist where it turned out they had been on Earth the whole time and not actually in the future.

The plot: Oliver, who is Carl, is a farmer on a colony planet. The planet gets attacked by mechs being remotely piloted by, mostly, bored and wealthy teenagers on Earth who have spent lots of money to be part of a game show and may or may not realize they’re killing actual people. There’s lots of talk about how the showrunners are portraying everyone on the planet as terrorists. They fight back.

Why does this game show exist? Why are they killing people? No reason, really. Dungeon Crawler Carl earns a certain amount of “don’t think about it too hard.” This book very much does not. Nothing feels like it has been thought through.

It is not a LitRPG, by the way, even though the attackers are technically playing a game. There are no statistics or leveling up or unlocking abilities or anything of that sort; it’s more of a military sci-fi than anything else.

I have read worse books, to be sure— hell, I have read worse books in 2026— but I have no real reason to recommend that anyone else pick this up. Read Dungeon Crawler Carl, definitely. Ignore this one.

Oh goody

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, Teaching1 Comment

The first sentence of this post was going to refer to “nameless dread” initially, but nah, work starts on Monday and I know perfectly well what the name of this dread is, along with its home phone number, address and probably the motherfucker’s social security number if I look through my files.

One way or another I’ve been in a mood all day and I’m taking tonight off. Go be nice to somebody.

Must be Saturday

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I have felt like hell for something like five Saturdays in a row, and today featured yet another five-hour afternoon nap. Currently trying to figure out if I have a stomachache and shouldn’t eat or if I’m hungry; I feel like evolution should have found a way to make these two things more distinct by now.

One way or another I’ll see y’all tomorrow.

Blech

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I slept like absolute shit last night and I’ve been alternating between nauseous, dizzy and chills (?!?) all day. God, the second day after Mounjaro sucks.

At any rate, I’ve got nothing for you today, so feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

In which I’m alive, I think

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

We had frozen pizza and garlic knots for dinner on Tuesday night. I wasn’t terribly hungry and didn’t eat a whole lot, at least by my standards. Around 10:00 PM we went to bed, with a two-hour delay already called for Wednesday, and I commented to my wife that I actually felt more full at 10:00 than I had after dinner. And that was an accurate description of how I felt– I wasn’t in pain, particularly; I just felt like I had overeaten. A lot. And it had been a good three hours since I’d had any food, and I hadn’t had a ton of food to begin with.

I, uh, don’t remember a whole lot in between that and waking up around 9:30 this morning? I mean, I clearly managed to call in sick a couple of times and do lesson plans and such, but I was probably asleep for 80% of Wednesday and I mean asleep asleep, not just, like, tossing and turning. I just got out of the shower, the first I’ve had since Tuesday morning, and I’m pretty sure my humanity is fully restored at this point, but holy shit the last couple of days have been unpleasant, and the amount of material that has come out of my body in that time has been genuinely unnatural.

So. Yeah. This was supposed to be a four-day week, then a day got cancelled, then I called off sick, and I guess I’ll go in to work tomorrow? I was supposed to ironman my way through January and not take any days off and it looks like I’ve blown that, but … yeah, I suspect toughing it out and going to work would not have been a good idea.

So what’d I miss?

Sunday doldrums

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I have accomplished nothing this weekend, which has been spent mostly reading books I wasn’t really enjoying and lazing about and moaning.

On the plus side, I expect to find out that I have a new nephew sometime tomorrow. So that’s all good.

(They won’t let me post pictures, so I’ll have to find one of a similar newborn. Y’all won’t know the difference.)

MALAISE

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching1 Comment

Does anyone else just … not wanna? Like, today has been a weird day, and I am not in the mood for a single damn thing, up to and including getting ready for school tomorrow (remember Wednesday is a day with no synchronous teaching for me right now, meaning that I literally had all day to get a lesson pulled together and I haven’t) or getting ready for any of these parent phone calls I’m scheduled to make from 6:00 to 7:00 this evening.

Technically parent/teacher conferences are tomorrow night, but I’m scheduling phone calls in 10 minute increments, and my two and a half hours filled up almost immediately, so I opened up another dozen or so slots today. I talked to four parents between 3:30 and 4:30 and was generally a gibbering, incoherent mess for most of it; I have lost my ability to talk on the phone, apparently, and on top of that I kept going glassy-eyed and not here right now in between calls and kept being a minute or two late.

I slept well last night, too. I’m just a damn mess today.

In which I guess I’m ready to go back to work or something

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

The last few days have been characterized mostly by pointless ennui and waiting around for things that didn’t happen. We had a Plumbing Incident occur on New Year’s Eve, which is the perfect day for such things to happen, and while the Incident itself hasn’t really affected my life all that much tomorrow will mark the third (and, hopefully, final) day that I’ve spent sitting around waiting for a plumber to come out to my house, charge me an arm and a leg, and hopefully this time actually fix my problem.

Which will involve digging a hole in my back yard. For a while yesterday it looked like the problem was going to require a backhoe to fix. We think we’ve dodged that particular bullet, but I’m at the point where I’m mostly just thoroughly tired of this and just want it all to go away so I can stop thinking about it. My wife went back to work yesterday and I think I might be jealous. I spent all day on Twitter today, leaving the house only to go get the cat from the vet after my wife dropped her off for shots this morning. It was supposed to be Plumber Day 3, but they called at 8 and rescheduled for tomorrow. The boy is perfectly content to spend the entire day fucking around on the iPad, so if I don’t man up and find some non-iPad activities for us to do, that’s what’s going to be happening. There has been precious little energy lately for good parenting, unfortunately.

I dunno. This is a proof-of-life post, I suppose; the music challenge posts are all written and will continue apace but I thought I’d make sure y’all knew I was still out there regardless.