Tag: controversy

Not gonna do it

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I absolutely refuse to have an opinion on the whole Will Smith/Chris Rock Oscars thing. I will say this, and this only: that every middle schooler in America yelled the words “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” in the hallway at least once today, and I could maybe have done without that. If you really need to hear my opinion on it, feel free to go on the Internet, find someone else’s opinion, and assign it to me. I hear that it’s not hard to find people talking about it.

ALSO! My wife and son are out of town. It is the boy’s Spring Break, and she took the week off so that someone was home with him, and they have popped off to Indianapolis for a quick overnight trip to see some friends. I suppose technically I was invited. In accordance with my new temporary bachelor state, I had Chipotle for dinner, bought incorrect lightbulbs at Target (I did not realize that “sunlight” not only meant “full spectrum of light” but also meant “installs two miniature suns in your office”) and I am also currently not wearing pants. I will play video games for three hours once I am done with this post and then get two hours of sleep. It’ll be super.

Let’s see, what else? I have survived the first of the necessary four days until my own Spring Break, which doesn’t really start on Friday, but since Friday is a day with no students it may as well. Tomorrow should also be survivable; I’m hoping for suspensions and/or injuries leading into Wednesday and Thursday.

I received this email from my boss toward the end of the day:

To provide a little bit of possibly-unnecessary context to this, this year the teachers’ day starts at 8:40 on Tuesday and Thursday instead of 9:20, which is when school actually starts. Those two extra 40-minute blocks are supposed to be used for professional development and team meetings. Now, keep in mind, all day Friday is supposed to be PD this week, and as of right now I don’t have the slightest idea what the hell they’re throwing at us. I will be skipping this event and daring anyone to say anything to me about it, because I do not recognize “fun movement activity” as a concept that exists and this is either an extraordinarily tone-deaf joke or an actual insult. I ain’t going. I suspect that “morale raising” is supposed to be the point of this; they can best support my morale at this point in the year by leaving me the hell alone. If anybody asks, I got to work late. Fire me.

And, on that note, I’m off to the Lands Between. Hopefully I’ll notice when it gets dark; this lamp is really out of control.

In which I am curious

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Reading2 Comments

The post I wrote about TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea is, for no reason I can figure out, one of my most popular posts of the year, and I keep getting bursts of visits to it from sites that I don’t recognize and can’t access. Maybe someone following a link will look at the rest of the blog and answer this; what exactly is discuss.ourindigo.ca? Indigo.ca is “Canada’s biggest bookstore,” and I created an account there hoping that that meant I could get into the “discuss” site, but the two sites don’t appear to share common logins and while I can see lots of referrals from there I can’t see anything past the screen you’re probably looking at when you click on the link.

I don’t actually intend to participate in the conversations but I’d love to know why this post is getting so much attention, and every time it happens it’s from a site I can’t access. Anybody care to shed any light, or know what the “discuss” part of that site actually is?

Lots of family stuff today– my father-in-law’s birthday was yesterday– and so I’ve been busy, and I have grading to ignore, so that’s what I’ve got for today. Hopefully I’ll get lucky and someone will fill me in.

Three OtherJob anecdotes

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching5 Comments

Last night’s weather was beautiful and everyone is starting school soonish, so apparently everyone decided it was a perfect night to be outside.  So they all came to me.  We were insanely busy for most of the night.  Have some stories!

Anecdote the first!  I, for once, manage to restrain my tendency to start shit with people.  A group of four high school students– probably juniors or seniors– come up to the counter.  One of them is wearing a shirt.  It reads, more or less, like this:  WE SUPPORT MR. SMITH.  TEACH BOTH SIDES.  LET US DECIDE.

It wasn’t “Mr. Smith,” but I’m reproducing it that way because I don’t remember what the guy’s actual name was.  It started with a C; that’s all I’ve got.

Am I being presumptuous here if I assume that Mr. Smith has gotten himself into some trouble by teaching creation in his science class?  Probably not, right?  This line of argument doesn’t apply to any other education controversy that I’m aware of at the moment.  Basically Mr. Smith is being an asshole who isn’t doing his job and he’s managed to rope this foolish young man, and no doubt other members of their community, into supporting him.

Here are the points I might have made to this young man had I been in more of a crappy mood and not at my job at a business that I do not own.  And there are a number of ways in which I could discuss the wrongness of this garment but I’m going to limit myself to one.

Young man, Mr. Smith’s job is to teach science.  Do you know how I know that?  Because if he was teaching at a Catholic school, or a private Protestant school of some sort, you would never have a reason to own that shirt.

There is no “decision” here, son.  None whatsoever.  There is Science, and there is Not Science.  If Mr. Smith teaches a class called Science, he should not be teaching Not Science.  There are a lot of debates to be had about creationism but one of the debates is not whether creationism is science.  It’s not.  Period.  And therefore it does not belong in Mr. Smith’s Science class.

If I decided to start teaching about World War II in my Algebra class, I would get into exactly the same kind of trouble Mr. Smith is currently in, only there would be no one making shirts for me, because World War II isn’t as Jesus-ridden as creationism and therefore there would be no one feeling as if it should be shoved into every aspect of everything everywhere all the time.

Your teacher done fucked up.  If he doesn’t stop fucking up, speaking as a union representative, he needs to be gone.  You wanna support him?  Say hi at church.

Anecdote the second!  This is the shortest anecdote, but perhaps the saddest.  It is late in the evening and enough of my customers have cleared out that I can pay attention to what is going on around me and not just to what is happening in front of me at my counter.  There are three young women– possibly late high school, but I suspect from their clothing early college– sitting at one of our tables trying to calculate their scores.  They are using a calculator for this purpose.  Recall that calculating your score in this game involves adding precisely eighteen numbers, none of which should be above five.

I wait for them to screw up and start over three times– again, using a calculator– before I invoke one of the privileges of OtherJob, that being I can say anything I want to anyone ever and get away with it so long as I am smiling and behind my counter.

“You three are killing my will to live right now,” I say.  “Get over here.”

They bring me their scorecard.  I note that they have written 116 for the first girl’s score and 135 for the second girl’s score.  Those would represent averages of 6.4 repeating and 7.5 per hole.  You cannot score higher than five.  These scores are manifestly impossible.  I engage in vigorous mockery– “Wait, all three of you thought this was possible?”– for a moment, and then add up their scores for them.  In my head.

I refuse to take the blame when people like this can’t pass standardized tests.  You’ve had fourteen or fifteen years in which to master basic arithmetic.  This shit is your fault.

Anecdote the third!  It is an hour until closing.  A group of nine walks in, which is generally the worst thing ever, because these groups always want to play multiple rounds and manage to finish the first one just quickly enough that I can’t justify not letting them start a second even though it’s going to keep me there half an hour past closing.

Worse:  seven of the nine are kids, ranging in age from seven or eight to maybe fifteen or sixteen.  The majority are early middle-school age, and the two oldest appear to be dating from the way they’re standing just a bit too close to each other.

Even worse: The two adults are dads.  The first thing out of their mouths is to ask me when we close, and then they look at each other and say “We have an hour, then.”  Oh, great, that means you think I’m babysitting.  Thanks!  This is what I want.

Turns out dads are planning on heading next door to the bar and getting their drink on while the kids fuck up my evening.  Two of them are already chasing each other around and putting each other in headlocks.

Hm.  No.  I have a word with Dads and with kids about behavior expectations, and I watch as one of the dads pulls the oldest boy aside by the crook of his elbow and has a word with him in private.  I suspect he’s telling him to watch the other kids; I also suspect that he’s going to be too busy watching his girlfriend to pay much attention to what his younger brothers are doing.

I leave out my day job, and the fact that since Dads have made the mistake of letting me know where they’re going to be, that I will literally march their kids across the parking lot to them if they start causing trouble on my course.

Here’s the good news, though: the kids, after a bit of a rough start, calm down and finish their first course with little to no drama and misbehavior.  They have about fifteen minutes until Dads are supposed to come back over; I tell them to go ahead and start another round for free with the understanding that when the parents show up, they’re done, and that they don’t get to finish another entire round.  They agree to this and go on their way.

About ten minutes later, mom calls one of them.  I happen to be nearby, having had to have a word with one of the boys who has clearly had enough for the evening and has decided to start using his putter in non-approved ways.  Mom tells them to go find Dads, right now, and tell Dads to bring them the fuck home.  I find myself hoping that the oldest two have driver’s licenses.

And then I watch these seven kids walk across the parking lot to the place next door, and it occurs to me that they have to walk out of my view entirely, on a relatively dark road, to get in their front door.

I think about this for a minute, and then call the other place.

THEM: <Name of next door,> Hi, can I help you?

ME:  Hi, this is Luther, I’m calling from OtherJob next door.  How’s it going?

THEM:  Great.  What’s up?

ME: Did you happen to just have seven middle school kids walk in your door?

THEM: Yeah, actually.  Can I assume you know something about the field trip?

ME: Yeah, apparently their dads are with you, and mom called and insisted they go meet them.  I just wanted to make sure they made it there.  I’m not super interested in the news interviewing me about the missing kids tomorrow.

THEM:  Yeah, I get it.  Does that mean they’re my problem now?

ME:  Yup.  Good news is they’re mostly well-behaved.  And I’m closing in five minutes so no tag-backs.

THEM:  Awesome.  You owe us golf.

ME:  I can live with that.  Have fun!

THEM:  Thanks for calling!

Yay, Saturday night!

How to be an idiot on the internet

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy17 Comments

hC74A8988In convenient, step-by-step form.

  1. Read an article on the Internet about something that you don’t care about.  Like, for example, the fact that Lifetime has cast someone to play Aaliyah in their upcoming biopic about Aaliyah, and that that choice is controversial because the actress in question isn’t “black enough” or something like that.  Note that it is critical that you don’t care enough about Aaliyah to know what she looks like.
  2. Look at the picture of the actress they chose at the top of the page and determine that she manages to look like a black woman as far as you can tell.
  3. Google “Aaliyah,” because you don’t know what Aaliyah looks like.  Blink a couple of times at sheer disbelief at the nonsense people can get mad about.  Spend several minutes comparing pictures and thinking Jesus, this chick looks just like Aaliyah, what the hell are these people complaining about?  
  4. After several– several— minutes, decide that maybe the picture of the actress is just the most Aaliyah-ish picture of her they found– maybe already in hair and makeup for the movie?– and Google the actress’ actual name, Zendaya Coleman.
  5. Oooooohhhhhhhh.

Sooner or later, I need to stop procrastinating and actually do some goddamn work.

This one has some bad words in it

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Music, Politics15 Comments

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(First things first: if you need context on the picture, go here.  This post is gonna be sorta grab-baggy; it should make sense by the time I get to the end.)

Let’s start by griping about nonsense.  Y’all know the song OPP, right?  If you don’t we can’t be friends anymore.  One of hiphop’s classic anthems; it came out when I was a sophomore in high school and therefore I will have it memorized until I die.  The whole song is about infidelity, but because it doesn’t have any bad words in it and the writing is clever it got played at high school dances all the time.  Combine that with the call-and-response and what you end up with is hundreds of teenagers hollering about penises and pussies in public with none of the adults noticing what’s going on.  It’s wonderful.  It contains this verse:

As for the ladies, OPP means something gifted
The first two letters are the same but the last is something different
It’s the longest, loveliest, lean– I call it the leanest
It’s another five letter word rhymin’ with cleanest and meanest
I won’t get into that, I’ll do it…ah…sorta properly
I say the last P…hmmm…stands for property

It doesn’t stand for property.

I was listening to the radio on the way home from school when I encountered a picture-perfect example of why I bloody fucking hate terrestrial radio:  they played OPP, and they bleeped out cleanest and meanest.

They bleeped two words that rhyme with the actual name of a human body part that half of the human race has, in a song that is entirely about infidelity.

This makes sense on no levels at all, and makes me want to punch the shit out of everyone involved– like, “hit you until my hands break off at the wrists” level of pummeling.  I goddamn hate bleeped songs.  I feel like if you think as a corporate entity that you need to bleep part of a song you shouldn’t be playing it at all.  Ideas are more dangerous than words, you stupid dumbasses.  But this is a new level of stupid– even if I was willing to entertain the suggestion that the word “penis” needed to be sanitized from the airwaves, the suggestion that words that rhyme with penis should also be sanitized is so damn dumb that I’m literally in pain right now while I’m complaining about it.

Stop making me use italics, U93.  I fucking hate you.

New item!  I bring in the mail when I got home, and there was a flyer from our new wingnut Congresscritter in it.  Jackie Walorski is enough of a discredit to humanity that I’m not even terribly interested in describing why; she won her last election largely on the backs of 1) redistricting; 2) the incumbent deciding to run (successfully) for the Senate; and 3) disgusting, pathetic accusations of carpetbagging against her opponent, who grew up here (I went to high school with him) and then moved from the area to go fight in Iraq and start a veteran’s charity in DC.  It was literally true that he hadn’t lived in the area for several years, but his family still lived here and he spent the majority of his time gone on active duty and fighting in a foreign country.  Even if I wasn’t against her politics– and believe me, I am– I’d think she was scum for that.

Which made it interesting to me that most of the flyer– the bit that wasn’t a slanted short questionnaire– was all about trumpeting her bill extending whistleblower protections to sexual assault victims in the military.  Protecting rape victims isn’t generally something that Republicans are big on.  Crowing about having done so isn’t either.  Which leaves me to wonder if a) she’s trying to moderate herself a bit; b) she actually is more moderate than I’d thought; c) she’s just trying to look more moderate; or d) this is an interesting bit of microtargeting– since the flyer in question was addressed to my wife, and there wasn’t one in the mail for me.  Generally when we get these sorts of things (and they come frequently enough) there’s either one of them for each of us or it’s just addressed to the household and not to either of us specifically.  This one just had my wife’s name on it.

Hmmm.

Last but not least:  I just got into an interesting discussion on Facebook about Mike Krahulik’s latest bit of dumbassery.  (Be aware: if you don’t know who Mike Krahulik is, you probably ought not to read this part, as I don’t intend to provide a lot of context.)  The person who started the thread was saying that he was done with Penny Arcade on account of not being able to support Mike’s actions any longer, and while I agree with him that the man has gotten incredibly tiresome in a lot of ways I’m not able to pull the trigger on that just yet.  Which got me wondering about exactly what gets me to cut something I enjoyed out of my life on account of not agreeing with its behavior.  I can think of four examples:  Mel Gibson, Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons, and Chik-Fil-A.  In each of the four cases, I have previously really enjoyed their work (or their chicken; I hate Chik-Fil-A as a corporation but I will fight you if you denigrate their chicken.  We can hate them for their politics but let’s not get stupid here) and am no longer willing to support them in any way because of their beliefs and/or behaviors.  I kinda want to include Tom Cruise in here, too, but I was never really a fan of his so it’s not quite the same thing.

I guess the difference is hatred.  Mel Gibson hates everybody.  Card and Simmons and Chik-Fil-A are open in their hatred of gay people.  I don’t think Mike Krahulik hates anybody.  I just think he’s a sheltered geek with a short fuse, and spouting his mouth off about shit he knows nothing about frequently gets him in trouble– but I don’t think he hates anybody and I don’t think he’s trying to be an asshole most of the time.  My Facebook friend made a good point that once you’re past a certain age you either need to get better about things or own your own bullshit, and he’s right about that– but at the same time I’ve fucked up in my own personal feminism in who knows how many different ways, so I’m not always inclined to jump down the throat of somebody who seems to be trying to get better about sexuality and gender issues.  I’m just not sure how much more slack I’m willing to cut the guy if he’s not smart enough to figure out that “never talk about this shit extemporaneously, and have someone smarter than me read over my shoulder whenever I talk about it in print” is a sound policy.

Within minutes, a link to this article appears in my inbox.  For those of you too lazy to click, it’s about how Not Intending To Do That appears to be a magical fucking power that not only insulates the Unintender from owning the negative results of their actions but causes others to defend them as well.  It’s… right.  It also includes the word “kyriarchy,” which means something bad, which is sad, because it’s a fun-sounding word and I’d like opportunities to use it in public.

Thinking about this more: the bit of me that wants to defend Mike is related to the bit of me that refuses to give up on certain kids (I can’t honestly say all of them) in my classes who are for one reason or another generally assholes but seem saveable to me.  I think Mike’s saveable.  I might be wrong, and he’s a grown-ass man with a long, long cultural reach and not a fourteen-year-old, but I think that’s another part of the difference here as to why I’m not willing to lock the door on PA just yet.