Tag: government

Braindump

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I have nothing in particular to talk about tonight, so have a lot of not-enough-to-make-a-post-out-of thoughts:

  • I ended up being a substitute teacher on Friday, as we had a simultaneous spike in teacher absences and a run of bad luck in getting subs to show up.  So I taught 7th grade Math again for the day.  It went better than I thought it might going in, at least in terms of dealing with the kids, but it confirmed for me that I still really don’t miss teaching.
  • The SUNSHINE PATRIOTS review from yesterday is receiving a rather startling amount of attention.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a post get 60 Facebook likes in 24 hours and the fact that they aren’t coming from my Facebook page is even odder.  I’ll take it, mind you, but I’m always fascinated when things catch on.
  • My son is participating in a winter pageant through his day care tomorrow night, which I feel is probably a case of day care getting out of their proper lane.  I am not as enthusiastic about this as I might be, and I suspect I may get a post out of the thing.  We shall see.
  • I may have to go to war with St. Joseph county over $12.  They are claiming that my wife’s last name on the sole proprietorship form I filled out is “illegible,” despite the seal and stamp that the woman who accepted the form from me put on it.  My wife’s last name is an incredibly common English noun and is one of the top 250 most common American surnames.  The two words they suggest that it might be are not words and there is no one in America with those last names.  I know this; I checked.  That they are asking that I pay for the form again after one person already read it and approved it and the second, who I never saw or spoke to, had to make up words in order to deem it illegible has a high chance of ending poorly for someone.
  • I had like six or seven things in mind when I started writing this and now two of them have fallen out of my head.
  • This song has been running through my head for what I hope are obvious reasons:

In which the internet breaks my head, and I need a lawyer

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing6 Comments

AvI_0yPCAAII5dDSo, without getting into any details, because details would be terribly premature at the moment, I’m investigating another couple of avenues to use to sell my books, and my investigation of those avenues is leading me down a rabbit hole (yes, an avenue that leads down a rabbit hole, roll with it goddammit I’m tired) of all sorts of lawyerly nonsense and financial nonsense that I’m not used to having to think about.  I’ve had to open a new PayPal account, for example, and I hate PayPal with a fiery, flaming passion; I’ve been trying to get these assholes to allow me access to some of my money that they have had since 2006, and they are insisting that I provide information about a bank account that has not existed since 2004 to get into it, and now they have another account from me under my current bank, only going through Luther’s email address.

(If that sentence confuses you, remember that Luther Siler is a pen name, and occasionally I will refer to him as if he’s a separate person.)

Anyway, point is, my name has to be on Luther’s PayPal account, which is also annoying because I don’t quite understand how PayPal works (because I haven’t used it often, because I hate it) and I don’t particularly want my real name splashed all over any transaction that I do using PayPal– which means that I need a PayPal business account, which is kinda okay since I was thinking of setting up a sole proprietorship publisher for my books anyway, and then I could just use the name of the company for all my PayPallish dealings and not my real name.

Only then I have to learn how to do that, and pay fees and visit county recorders and file paperwork and open a new bank account and– oh– file goddamned taxes, which terrifies me.  Now, my dad is a CPA, so I assume he can help me with this shit, but I’m still generally not great about financial stuff and I don’t want to have to learn to get better so that three times a week someone can send me three bucks, y’know?  And while I’m generally pretty fond of my dad and I know he would help me and this is literally what he does for a living, there’s also an aspect of Some Grown Ass Man Shit going on here and I prefer to figure things out myself rather than running to Daddy for help.  Which is dumb.

Then again, getting my books into some of these pipelines I’m looking at would actually be pretty nice.  And, let’s be honest here, my taxes in 2015 were going to be a nightmare anyway.

So what I need is a free lawyer, who knows her shit and is willing to just deal with all this stuff and then tell me that it’s free of charge because she thinks I’m awesome.  I need my wife to become a lawyer, in other words, because ain’t nobody else gonna work that way.

Or maybe I just need to go play Dragon Age for a couple of hours and forget about all this nonsense for a while.

(Also, speaking of my books, I know I’ve been super-extra-harassy lately, but I’m one sale away from having sold books every day for a week, which would be really neat and has never happened before.  If you happen to have been on the fence, today would be a great day to hop off of it.)

Well, that was depressing

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

Just got back from an interview that, I think, went really well both for me and for the other folks– and which was, for once, a couple of people having a conversation across a table, which is how I think job interviews ought to go– and which ended by me basically having to admit that there was no chance in hell I was going to be able to work for them because of their legally-mandated-by-the-state-of-Indiana salary structure.  I have twelve years of experience and two Master’s degrees; no, I will not be teaching for you for $35,000.

It is literally illegal to pay me according to my experience and training.  I have another interview scheduled for this afternoon; I have already read through their master contract and it is going to go the same way.  I am sorely tempted to save myself the gas money and just cancel the interview.  They can’t afford me, because the state doesn’t want them to.

Governor Pence’s master plan to entirely deprofessionalize teaching in Indiana is having its intended effect.  I hope the state enjoys the results they will get.