Summertime, I guess

On May 30, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Is that an AI photo? Or just edited to amplify the sundog a little bit?

Anyway, yeah, I guess I’m on summer vacation. I spent most of the day asleep– and sleeping hard, too, which probably shouldn’t surprise me but does anyway– and when I was awake I was mostly feeling like I was taking the day off for slightly illegitimate reasons, like I’d called in sick on a state testing day so I could go to the beach or something like that. Yesterday was as emotionally rough as I expected it to be– I can’t remember the last time I had this many kids crying at the end of the day, and I absolutely can’t remember ever struggling to keep my own shit straight, but I damn near lost it as the buses were pulling away. My favorite kid this year has a relative who works at the school, and I said something along the line of “Saying goodbye to <kid> was hard,” and somehow that was where my voice cracked. He, of course, immediately began vigorously making fun of me and I told him I’d deny anything he told her to my deathbed.

True fact, by the way: I genuinely cannot remember whether I just finished year 21 or 22. I think it was 22, but I would need to count to be sure and I haven’t taken the time yet. Granted, I honest-to-God forgot how old I was once, so this isn’t entirely out of character, but the thought that I’ve been teaching for so long that I no longer remember how long I’ve been teaching is kind of alarming.

I’ve got a couple of book reviews to throw at you, but I might be out of town tomorrow and it’s the end of the month anyway, so we’ll see what happened. My niece’s birthday party is supposed to be tomorrow but I just got a text that she and her older brother both have diarrhea, so who the hell knows what’s going on. Maybe I’ll double-post tomorrow, we’ll see.

This might actually be real

On April 29, 2022 By Luther M. SilerIn moviesLeave a comment

My wife mentioned to me earlier today that Spider Man: No Way Home, or whatever it’s called, because I’m not sure that’s it, is fully available for streaming now … and I shrugged. And then I thought about the fact that Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is out next week and I have no desire to go see it, and that Thor: Love and Thunder comes out in June or July and the trailer for that didn’t do a damn thing for me either.

I know I’ve mentioned this multiple times, but it’s amazing that it seems to be actually true: I really don’t seem to care if I ever see another Marvel movie or not. Like, she could download the Spider-Man movie on her own and watch it (and she might) and I really don’t think I’d care at all.

Amazing.

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

On January 3, 2019 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.

blech

On October 22, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

Another night with nothing in particular worth talking about. Really not sure if I should blame my job for not being very good at generating entertaining material or the general state of the world for being so fucking depressing that I don’t even have the energy to get mad about it.

(Or Twitter, which seems to be where 90% of my political nonsense has gone to roost. I think I’d blog about politics a lot more if I didn’t have Twitter. I leave it as a mental exercise for the reader as to whether that’s a good thing or not.)

Enjoy the few hours of weekend you have left, I suppose. We’ve postponed the Great Pumpkinating until Wednesday because none of us are in the mood tonight. Also, I need to practice drawing out the design I plan to use. I’m hoping this one turns out really cool.

Aaightden

On July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

It’s been interesting, over the last several days, going through literally every single post of my previous blog in search of material for Searching for Malumba. My previous blog started in 2004 and finally petered out in 2009 or so, with a brief revival before moving to this space a couple of years ago.

I was really really angry during those years. Like, all the time. This isn’t a revelation to me, mind you; it was the Bush years, and I have not forgotten what those years were like, but getting the compiled output of my brain for five straight years of that nonsense– plus a year or so of startled relief toward the end after Obama’s election– all dumped into my brain at once has been a little sobering. I also had a horrible job for a good chunk of that time that didn’t help at all. Right now I’m just compiling these posts, but once I start actually rewriting and editing I will be removing a lot more profanity from the earlier posts than I will from the newer ones.

(I won’t be removing all the profanity, mind you, which will make my book a bit atypical in the “teacher memoir” genre. Most of those books are sanitized for the delicate sensibilities of the elderly kindergarten teacher. I will not be doing that. My policy on profanity for The Benevolence Archives has always been to remove about half of it on second pass, and I’ll be following more or less the same policy for Searching for Malumba. I’m considering putting a parental advisory sticker on the cover. I need to find out if that image is copyrighted or not.)*

Actually, speaking of copyright, the other thing I need to do is contact William Carlos Williams’ estate and see if I can get permission to reprint This is Just to Say in the book, because one of my favorite pieces is about that poem and it won’t work if I can’t actually include the poem. I’d quote it, but it’s only about 50 words long, so “excerpt” becomes “reprint half of it” really quickly.

Anyway. The image, in case you’re wondering, was one of my favorites from that time. I have no idea if I found it that way or if I added the speech bubble, but either way I cracked up and immediately saved it once I found it.

I’m starting to Sunday a bit, I think. I haven’t gotten a single callback for an interview all summer despite applying for several jobs that I’m perfectly qualified (if not actually ideal) for. I’ve told my principal I’ll be back at school on Monday; the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff we ordered at the end of the school year is currently strewn in boxes throughout the building and it will take at least a week to get through everything in anything resembling a coherent fashion. I still have one solid chance at a position that will keep me out of the classroom but I don’t know how much I should get my hopes up, especially since it comes with its own baggage anyway.

If I get the other job I intend to keep looking for other work, because it’ll be a job I can quit midyear without screwing anything up too badly. If I’m in the classroom… I don’t know. My wife insists that I need to keep looking even if I’m teaching. I don’t know if I can quit on a group of kids partway through the school year. And you never know; I used to like teaching quite a lot, and I’ve been reading lots of stuff about liking teaching. It might end up being a good year. I might not want to leave. But one way or another this has to be my last year with this district. Cold reality is starting to creep up in a way that has nothing to do with me and I need to be gone before all the rats flee the ship.

Actually, that’s not true. I still love teaching, if by “teaching” you mean “helping other people to understand things.” It’s everything else about teaching that I hate. All the non-teaching stuff is awful and gets worse every single year. Entertainingly, the IDOE is commissioning some sort of group to figure out why nobody seems to want teaching licenses in Indiana anymore. It’s been fun, because every article I’ve seen about it has been swarmed by teachers going “Are you kidding? You need to ask?”

The reason no one wants to teach in Indiana anymore is that the laws and policies passed by the Indiana legislature over the last dozen years or so are having their intended effect. This is exactly what they wanted, and no one anywhere has any right to pretend to be surprised.

So. Yeah. Plenty to do today; I just need to decide if I want to focus on fiction, nonfiction, getting my head back on straight, or getting my house back under control. Only a few more days before my time gets substantially restricted again.

Whee!

(* Answer: No! It’s basically just text and as such is ineligible for copyright. At least according to Wikipedia. So I probably will be including it, because doing so entertains me.)**

(** Slightly more complicated than that, but it still looks like it’s free so long as I file the proper paperwork.)

Uhhh…

On July 10, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking11 Comments

I dunno, guys, I got nothing today. How are you?

How bad you really want my whoa-oa-oa

On March 13, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, idiocy8 Comments

I’ve been low on blogs lately. Most of my posts for the last couple of weeks or so have either been pictures or very short, and the ones that haven’t been either of those have generally been about teaching. I suspect I’ve started to bore people a bit, and my traffic shows it. I mentioned this to my wife last night, and she blamed the fact that I haven’t been really pissed off about much of anything lately.

Apparently I’m funnier when I’m pissed off. My students would disagree, I think, but it’s okay if you think that way. It’ll be hilarious when my aorta finally blows from the stress, I promise.

Sadly, recognizing this problem doesn’t actually solve it, and while nine or ten years ago my reaction might have been to gleefully troll around the internet until I found something outrageous I’d like to think that I’m older and wiser now. So let’s chalk this up to a natural variation in my brain output; we just finished the first round of ISTEP testing today so I hope y’all will excuse my near-obsession with talking about my job lately; it ought to level off a bit for a while pretty soon. And I’ve got a hard deadline coming soon on getting the bathroom tub surround done, so expect more Terrible Decisions posts, and then I’m taking thirty thirteen and fourteen year olds eight hundred miles away from home after that and while there won’t be a lot of posting during those days what I do put up ought to at least be entertaining.

Let’s talk about this: I’m contractually obligated to produce a novel this summer, right? I’m curious, folks: what should it be about? Not, like, plot or anything, but genre, tone, that sort of stuff. I’m gonna leave the question pretty generic, as I’m interested in what sorts of things people think I should write about without my input. I’ll provide more detail on what I’m thinking later; right now I want to see what y’all come up with.

I promise to try and be more interesting soon.

In which I want to do things I don’t want to do, or vice versa, I’m not sure

On January 25, 2014January 25, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy10 Comments

ghibli_whispersdvdsleeve Sitting on the couch in the living room right now, watching the snow outside, which has been stuck on “whiteout” for the past half hour or so. I’m listening to Johnny Cash entertain a bunch of convicts at Folsom Prison in 1968. The boy’s taking his nap, the dogs are sacked out and content. There’s an enormous book about World War II next to me waiting for me to get back to it. All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

The Cash is playing through my Apple TV. When you’re listening to music, it plays a screen saver. I got tired of looking at the nature pictures it plays and just for the hell of it told it to start showing me movie posters as a screensaver. I’ve been sorta idly watching them as they’ve scrolled across my screen. And then it hit me: I really miss watching movies. There were several years in my life, most of the time I was living in Chicago, in fact, where I was seeing 40-45 movies a year.

I have not seen a single movie nominated for an Academy Award this year. Not one. And of the nine Best Picture nominees, I only have a haziest idea of the plot of five. I’ve never even heard of Philomena, Dallas Buyers’ Club or Nebraska. And there are lots of movies that I’m seeing posters for that at least pass the initial “that looks interesting” test.

(Sidenote: poster for 3 Days to Kill just spun past. When did Kevin Costner turn into Tom Selleck?)

I don’t remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater that didn’t have at least one Avenger in it, and that kind of makes me sad. And, to make it worse, it’s not like I don’t have all kinds of access to movies– I can stream damn near anything I want a few months after it hits theaters, and you best believe my iTunes wish list, which I’m using as a “Watch this!” queue, is chock full of stuff– I’m just not doing it. This could turn into a typical new-parent “get a babysitter/pay the babysitter/pay for the movie/pay for dinner/night costs $150” rant, but it’s not that. I have time to watch movies if I want. I just don’t. My priorities have shifted. And it’s a weird feeling, knowing that I want to do something, and I have the opportunity to do something, and that I’m just not going to. For no clear reason.

Anyway, that’s all. I could go get my DVD of The Maltese Falcon out of the rack in my office and watch it now, like I’ve kinda wanted to since rereading the book a month ago. What’ll probably happen is that I’ll clean up the living room or read something and keep on listening to Johnny Cash. I dunno why.