What the hell, Indiana

On August 20, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

It has been hot and gross for a couple of weeks now, and the humidity has been grotesque enough that I have genuinely had some trouble breathing while outside recently. Yesterday was supposed to be in the low eighties; it didn’t really appear to make any difference and everything was still horrid. Today the high was supposed to be 77 degrees; I took a risk and wore my usual jeans.

I have not lived in Indiana for my entire damn-near-half-century life, but I have lived in the Midwest for all of that time, and I know what the Goddamn sky looks like in November. It looks exactly like that, which is what I was greeted with when I left work this afternoon, and stayed like that the whole way home. Even weirder? Maybe I’ve had the world’s strangest stroke, but I swear to everything you might find holy that I could smell snow.

Was there snow? No, of course not; that would be damn near unprecedented in late August, and it wasn’t remotely cold enough besides. I cannot describe the level of sensory discontinuity(*) this led to. My body was telling me slightly cool for August and my nose and eyes were telling me Mid-November; snow coming.

Stupid state.

(*) This is not exactly the word I want, but my brain is stuck on dysmorphia and dystopia, both of which are even wronger than discontinuity. If I happen to remember the word I want or someone volunteers it, maybe I’ll edit.

In which you’ve got to be kidding me

On August 10, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

We have had, despite global climate change and all that, a pretty damn mild summer here in Northern Indiana. So naturally now that we’re going back to school and I have to spend all my time around smelly-assed unwashed 8th graders the heat index has shot up to 105. I wish I could find someone specific to blame this on so I could have them shot. Genuinely. And that’s before they give everybody Covid. It’ll be a great first day.

That said, I’m as ready as I’m going to be; tomorrow’s session is going to be only partially improvised, which is about as good as I can hope for given that I spent most of the day only barely able to remember how teaching actually works. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight, too. I think. Maybe.

Expect me to be quietish the next couple of days, as most of my life activities are going to involve coming home from work and dying. For now, I’m going to stay in the air conditioning and curl up with Jade Legacy and see if I can finish it before bed. If Fonda Lee hits the dismount as effectively as I’m expecting her to, this series instantly becomes one of the greatest triumphs of fantasy literature I’ve ever encountered. I have high hopes.

In which it’s not just the legg

On August 20, 2019 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

You may remember that I picked my current classroom at least in part because I was told that the other room frequently was prone to heating and cooling issues. I am therefore just a little pissed to let you know that it was approximately a hundred and forty degrees and infinite fucking humidity in my room all day today, and by the time sixth and seventh hour– so far, my favorite and least-favorite group, back-to-back– rolled into my room, I was utterly and completely without a single iota of patience after five hours of being sweaty and putting up with the funk of dozens of fourteen-year-olds, some of whom were, incomprehensibly, wearing sweaters.

Sixth and seventh hour didn’t go well. I will take some– perhaps a majority– of the blame, because by that point I was just completely beaten to death by the heat and the humidity and it kills me. But one way or another they didn’t go well.

Anyway. That’s not the story. Here’s the story: during my prep period I walked into the office to check my mailbox, and I happened to walk behind my assistant principal and another teacher, who were standing at a counter in the office. The office staff were also in place. I nodded and didn’t say anything and walked back to where the mailboxes were, and then heard my name over my shoulder.

“Yeah,” someone was saying. “I think it’s Siler.”

I am not joking when I say I had been sweating for four straight hours at that point, so my initial reaction was basically pure terror.

“Christ,” I said, recovering the contents of my mailbox and walking back into the office. “I’ve been sweating like a pig all day. Do I smell that bad?”

I hear my principal laugh and realize he’s in the room as well. Dandy.

“No,” my AP says. “You smell good! There’s something–” and here she takes a deep breath– “kind of floral that just wafted past us.”

I take a whiff. I can’t smell anything Goddamn floral. All I can smell is axe body spray and funk, which is how I know I’m in a middle school.

“I promise it’s not me, then,” I say. “I don’t wear cologne and I promise you any odors wafting off of me right now are not floral. It’s a hundred and forty in my room. That might actually be the smell of death.”

I’m not certain my bosses know if I’m a good teacher or not yet, but at least they think I’m funny?

Not dead yet

On May 29, 2018May 29, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Two eleven-hour shifts in a giant building with no air conditioning when it’s 95 degrees outside down.

One to go.

In which I forget that posts need titles until after I’ve hit Publish

On July 22, 2016July 22, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Parenting4 Comments

It is not as hot outside as I was expecting it to be today– which is to say, when I look outside nothing is obviously on fire. That said, I have at least one customer out on the golf course at OtherJob right now who I am not entirely certain is going to survive the experience. I’m comfortably ensconced in an air conditioned gameroom that hasn’t had many people breathing in it, so I’m doing fine– but I need to figure out how to get to my car at the end of the day without leaving the game room, which might be a bit tricky.

In other news, despite above-average caffeine consumption for the morning, I’ve been yawning for six solid hours and have formally taken next week off from OtherJob, meaning that my string of five straight six-day, 53-hour weeks is about to finally be snapped. My day off yesterday featured taking my son to day care, grabbing breakfast, doing a competitive shop at a furniture store that I don’t work at (after waiting in the parking lot for 45 minutes because I couldn’t think of anything else to do to kill the time before the place opened) and then coming home and staring at a computer screen for two more hours before taking a three-hour nap. Despite that, everyone in my house was still in bed before nine last night. Needless to say, no fiction was written. Once I leave here I have to go back to the other furniture store for a moment– I was informed that I had managed to miss a critical piece that we need to know the pricing of– and then off to my mom and dad’s for pizza with my brother and new sister-in-law, who I haven’t seen since their wedding. I’m excited about it, but I also kind of wish I could find a way to have pizza and see family from my bed.

And then it will be Saturday, which is my Monday now, and everything will start over again.

In other, entirely unrelated news: did anyone reading this post have a dad like this? One of those “I’ll kill you if you touch my daughter” types? I don’t know why, but I caught myself thinking about this type of guy (note: I do not have a daughter) earlier today, and it occurred to me that the way you treat your daughter’s boyfriends has got to be a reflection of the way you, yourself, treat and/or treated women. I feel like it’s got to say something fucked up about you that you feel the need to go all alpha gorilla and shotgunny when some dipshit teenager comes near your daughter.

(The picture is probably a joke. Almost certainly. But we all know these guys exist. Or maybe they don’t; I dunno, maybe it’s a stereotype that isn’t really real– the father of the only girl I ever really dated in high school was literally on another continent and I met very few dads in between her and the woman I ended up marrying. Needless to say, by that point we were both grown and her dad very clearly understood that he no longer had any say in the matter one way or another.)

Any thoughts on that, anybody?

In which reality and Twitter are both dumb

On July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

So seeing this tweet from Kirsten Gillibrand got me all het up at first. There is no way in the universe that Citizens United is going to be overturned in Hillary’s first 30 days in office. It’s a literal impossibility. Even with the most compliant Congress of all time, it’s not going to happen, because it can’t. It would require either another court case to make its way through the system that would challenge United (but would likely not result in an overturn, since the court’s not that much different now) or an actual amendment to the Constitution, which cannot happen in a 30-day timeframe.

I had the blog post composed almost immediately, all full of Dammit, if Trump said something this stupid it would be because he doesn’t know how the government works, but I know you know better, so this is just a lie and a bunch of other similar critical-of-the-person-I’m-voting-for sort of stuff.

Then I clicked on the link, which I had actually missed on my first read of the Tweet, because I was eating and distracted while looking at Twitter, and what Gillibrand means is that Clinton will call for an amendment during her first thirty days, and that the “working to overturn” will start within the first thirty days, not the actual overturn itself. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing and while perhaps not politically possible is at least a thing that the President is capable of doing.

So there goes that post in a puff of “do your reading, asshole” and Twitter brevity. Sigh.

I’ve paid no attention whatsoever to the Republican convention and don’t intend to start now. So I have nothing to say about that.

I actually went and looked at a car this afternoon, and pretty much ruined the salesperson’s day by refusing to buy anything. The 2017 Escape does ride really nicely, though, and while they offered me what I’m pretty sure actually represents a good deal. He said I wasn’t allowed to take the offer sheet they gave me home with me, but then left me alone with it for a few minutes so of course I took a picture, because seriously, dude, it’s 2016, don’t leave me alone with the damn thing if you don’t want me to have a copy.

Nonetheless, I will not be buying a car until I’m certain I can hand over the down payment in cash. Which I can’t do just yet. But maybe by wintertime? We’ll see.

We’re supposed to see a 110 degree heat index on Friday, so all this is entirely moot, as the world will have caught on fire and I will have died by then. So… I dunno, try to get laid in the next couple of days? Because you may not have another chance.

I’M MELLLLTIIIIINNGGGGG and also on fire

On July 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Im-Melting-Feel-Desain Statistically speaking, it almost has to be happening somewhere: despite the fact that the rest of the world is slowly roasting, the temperature trend in the Great Lakes region has been distinctly cooler than usual for the last several years. Our last two summers have been unusually mild, rarely even getting into the 90s, and our last two or three winters have been brutally cold. It is July 18; to my knowledge we have not had a day even hit the upper 80s as a high yet, and the words “heat index” have not found reason to escape my lips thus far. There haven’t even been that many days yet that have escaped the seventies. I haven’t worn shorts more than once all summer.

It’s been glorious.

It will be over 100 degrees today between 1:00 and 7:00, and I have to work at OtherJob, which means I’ll be outside for at least two or three of those hours. And it’s not like 98 degrees is gonna be much better; it’ll probably be 10:00 before the temperature descends into remotely livable territory. And that’s not “Man, it’s been a hot summer” 100 degrees, it’s a twenty degree jump from what we’ve been used to.

Give my wife like a week to get used to the idea after I die, and then y’all can come over and divvy up my books.

NO I’M SERIOUS DO IT

On July 19, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

It is 7:48 in the morning, it is supposed to be one billion degrees today with a humidity level of nine jillion, and I will have to spend half of my day outside.

Kill me.