Some odds and ends and also swear words

On September 29, 2017September 29, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn life, PoliticsLeave a comment

crappy-day It’s been a depressing couple of weeks, honestly. A bunch of things that haven’t managed to make their way into entire posts yet:

I didn’t get the job at my old district, which blows my goddamned mind. Blows. My. Goddamned. Mind. I’m trying to avoid, y’know, despair at this point. I’ve applied for another job at Notre Dame; Notre Dame has already done a really good job of ignoring my applications in the past so I have no particular hope for this one.
There’s another local university, by the way, that I’ve sent several applications in to for various jobs, all of which I was very qualified for, that has literally never replied to a single application. Not a no-thanks, not a fuck-you, not an interview offer, nothing. I wanna know who the hell they’re hiring.
I read Hillary Clinton’s book. I wasn’t going to at first until I realized how many assholes were enraged by the fact that the book existed and I enjoy being able to make even a tiny contribution to making that kind of person feel bad. I can’t really say I enjoyed reading it, though, because the whole damn thing was so profoundly depressing.
Every time I come even close to writing a post about politics I start literally seeing red around the edges of my vision. I thought I hated George W. Bush; I had no idea what it was like to hate a politician until this current piece of shit. None. I would name George W. Bush dictator-for-life in a second if it meant I never had to hear the current fucker’s name again for as long as I lived.
Fuck the NFL, while I’m at it, and fuck America for everything leading up to me having to say the words “Fuck the NFL” on my blog. This current controversy is everything wrong with America in a nutshell. And America as a country is as completely and enthusiastically fucked right now as it has been in my lifetime.
I’m stealing the phrasing of this from Twitter, I admit, but if we can’t get an overwhelming military presence to Puerto Rico immediately to put together some sort of hurricane response than we have no fucking reason to have a military at all. Trillions of fucking dollars a year and we may as well flush the shit down the toilet. The shitgibbon doesn’t care; Puerto Ricans aren’t white. I doubt he knows they’re American citizens; I’m certain he doesn’t think they’re people.
Speaking of Hillary’s book: you may be aware that I previously had a point of pride that I had at least one book for or by every President of the United States. I have now had to amend that to every legitimately elected President of the United States, and this is a picture of my Presidency bookshelf. The book is located where it properly belongs:

FullSizeRender

Sales on Tales haven’t been remotely what I’ve wanted them to be so far, but I got a big stack of paperbacks this week for Kokomo-Con 2017 in a couple of weeks and that was pretty exciting. I haven’t done a con in quite a while and this one is just a simple one-day thing a couple of hours south of my house. I’m looking forward to it.
I need to decide what my next book is going to be. I’m leaning toward knocking out the Skylights sequel finally but it may be something new. We’ll see.
Speaking of big stacks of paperbacks: the Buy Autographed Books link in the masthead of the site has been completely updated. I price the books cheaper than Amazon does but it probably evens out after shipping– but you get an autograph and a personalized copy, so bleah.
Speaking of the Amazon: consider this the part where I’m begging for reviews. Please? Pretty please?

Well, that’s enough of that

On August 16, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Work3 Comments

As if today wasn’t enough of an unalloyed shitstorm already (those last two posts were both after midnight) I am pretty sure that I am now back on the job market. No, I haven’t quit– and I won’t until I have a new job– but I’m back to looking. I don’t even have the energy to go into why right now. Maybe sometime this weekend.

Until then, and on a happier note, if you haven’t watched Stranger Things yet, it’s worth paying for Netflix all by itself.

Monday miscellany

On June 20, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

36004771 I spent a few minutes looking for a meme pic or a GIF or even a YouTube clip of Marlon Wayans doing the “Got me a G-O-B” bit from Don’t Be a Menace to Society while Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, but was both unsuccessful and powerfully reminded that that movie is even less funny than I remember. So: South Park reference.

At any rate, however you spell it, I’ve got me one. My first day was only notable in being almost entirely unworthy of discussion; there was some paperwork, some training videos, and that was about it. They actually even let me go a bit early, time I used to wander around the sales floor and try to get used to the vast amount of inventory I’m expected to know stuff about.

And then the skies exploded, and we had perhaps an hour of some of the hardest fucking rain I’ve ever seen– rain so hard that I was unwilling to cross the parking lot to get to my car, because I would have been completely soaked in the five seconds it would have taken to get across the lot. So I wandered the sales floor some more.

There is… uh… quite a lot to know.

IndyPopCon is officially the first convention that I came back from saying yes, I will definitely do that again next year. Miracle of miracles: I actually made a profit! Friday kind of sucked, but Saturday and Sunday were excellent. I ran out of bookmarks Sunday morning and resorted to putting a plate of Oreos on the table in front of me. The deal: you get a free Oreo, but only if you point at a book and say “Tell me about this one!”

More Oreos for greater enthusiasm. $12 worth of Oreos probably made me over $150 in sales. I’ll use that trick again. My only real complaint about the con was the parking situation; my car was obnoxiously far from the convention center, and I’m not certain that the small amount I saved on parking that far away was remotely worth it. I will investigate other options next time.

That said, my next convention has to be some sort of literary convention/book fair sort of thing. I made money at this one, yes, but not exactly a lot of money, and I want to go somewhere where people are explicitly looking for books. I know Gen Con does something like that, but Gen Con is expensive as hell and a pain in the ass to get into, and I’m not super interested in even trying with them. There’s got to be something else somewhere nearby, though.

I feel like I’m forgetting something I wanted to talk about. I’ll update if I remember what it was.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Major Announcement Edition

On June 11, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories17 Comments

newcoffee

If we were having coffee, I suspect you’d quickly notice that I was in an uncommonly good mood, at least compared to the last, oh, eight months. Because good news: I have a job. Or, at least, I’m back up to my usual three jobs from the two I’ve held since October.

What’s the job? Speaking broadly, sales. Slightly less broadly, retail sales, but relatively large-ticket items. It ain’t gonna be glamorous but I’ll be dressing nicer than I was at my last job and at least initially I really like the people I’ll be working with. And, most importantly, 1) I can delete the “jobs” and “school” folders from my bookmarks, a fact that filled me with much more pleasure than the simplicity of the act might imply, and 2) I am not in imminent danger of running out of money and causing my family to lose the house. Which… yeah, both of those are real good things.

This coming the same week as my brother’s wedding has me tentatively hopeful that 2016 is gonna drop the bullshit at least for a little while, but we’ll see.

Also! You’ve probably figured this out if you’ve actually visited the site in the last week or so, but I’m going to be at Indy Pop Con in Indianapolis over Father’s Day weekend. Specifically, Booth 722 in Artist’s Alley, which looks like a pretty primo location:

Screen Shot 2016-06-11 at 9.37.54 AM

I’m hoping those tables there are a common area of some sort and I’m not facing, like, the back of the food court or a stage or something. This location is either going to be great or it’s going to be godawful; we’ll see. At any rate: come see me next weekend! This will probably be my last con appearance of 2016– at least, it’s my last currently planned one, although there’s a chance of appearing at at least one local event in the fall. So I strongly suggest everyone reading this plan to run to Indy.

The conversation might turn to projects at this point, maybe, and we’d discuss how there are awesome hardwood floors under the disgusting, filthy pink carpet in my bedroom. I’m planning on tearing out all the carpet over the next couple of days; pictures when it’s done. Exciting! Also exhausting.

So, yeah, coffee buddy, it’s been a good week. 🙂 You can fully expect me to spend the week after the con whining about how I haven’t had to work a 40-hour week in forever and I’m so tired and waah waah waah and all that sort of stuff, so be glad you got to spend part of the morning with me before I had to reacclimate myself to a working person’s schedule.

On making mistakes

On June 1, 2016June 1, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

When I went on medical leave for the first time in… God, was it September?, and started thinking about resigning before the school year ended, never in a million years did I think I would still be out of work in June. I was about to say that I would have wagered large sums of money on finding work quickly, but the simple fact is that I did wager large amounts of money. Hell, I wagered our entire damn house that I would find steady paying work before my savings ran out. And while I’m not quite ready to drop off an application at Meijer or Target just yet, and the interview today really did go well, I’ve had positive interviews in the past that didn’t end up resulting in anything and… well, I’m not applying at Meijer or Target yet, but I can see it from here, if you know what I mean. We’re not in panic mode yet; we won’t be for a bit. But it’s a hell of a lot closer than it was in January.

You may be wondering if I think I made a mistake, walking away from teaching.

I had wondered myself. Until today.

My wife and I ended up running errands in shifts today. I went out this morning, then when I got home she headed out, and by the time she got home from her stuff I’d come up with more that I needed to do and went out again. One of the tasks was to pick up cat food from my local pet store. Where I ran into another teacher from my previous school. He wasn’t on my team– in fact, he taught on the other side of the building– so the way teaching goes hell if I know when I’d last talked to him, and he’d likely only heard rumors about why I’d left.

He was at work, by the way. I asked him if he’d quit too, but no; this was just his side job. Because God forbid teachers ever just have one goddamn job, but that’s a side rant.

I asked him how the year was going. And I should make sure I’m clear: I like this guy, and I think he’s a dedicated teacher. So the torrent of bile and stress and caged-up antipathy toward his own students that poured out of him is not something I’m going to blame him for. It’s the job. This is what it does to us. And this and that happened with this student, and we’re sending the fuckups to the office like they tell us to but then the office is just sending kids back to class, and God I don’t want to blah blah blah the guy but blah blah blah. We’ve all sung this song a thousand times, and everybody knows the chorus by now.

It stressed me the fuck out. I could feel the shit creeping back in again around the edges, just in a five-minute conversation. And all I could think, talking to him, was Oh my God I am so incredibly glad that I am not you.

So no. I might have thought I regretted it a few days ago, and I’ll admit that I do miss being around kids. I liked being around kids. But do I miss teaching? Do I think I made a mistake, quitting when I did, even though it led to months more unemployment than I had ever dreamed it would?

My book about teaching, Searching for Malumba: Why Teaching is Terrible, and Why We Do It Anyway, is just $4.95 for the ebook and $15.95 in print. Check it out!

In which lots to do today

On June 1, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking2 Comments

to do list.jpg I have guest posts set up for the next several days (and if you’ve sent me something but haven’t heard back yet, don’t worry, you’re in) but per my usual MO it’s extremely unlikely that I won’t find time to put some posts up while I’m running my brother’s wedding. At least some pictures. I’ve had a pretty full day already; I had a job interview this morning that I think/hope went quite well, and ran three or four other errands before coming back home and letting my wife run out to take care of the several errands she needs to do. Then packing and putting final touches on my speech and putting together the “final” version of the booklet I’ll be using to make sure I don’t call the bride by the wrong name or anything like that during the ceremony.

(Seriously. I’ve been having literal, no-bullshit nightmares about calling the bride by the wrong name. I may actually buy a gun today so that when that happens I can simply shoot myself on the spot before anyone else realizes what I’ve just said.)

I’ve also got fifty pages or so of beta reading/commenting to do for another author’s WIP that I am bound and determined to get off my plate before I leave. Oh, and my son finished preschool yesterday, so I’m dealing with lots of weird Dad moments where holy hell how is my kid old enough that he finished his first year of school. He’s actually repeating this year of preschool because he’s the youngest in his class (there are kids a year and a half older than him in there– even being held back a year, he won’t be the oldest next year) so I will not have a kindergartner next year, but it’s still weird to think he’s finished a year of Real School.

And it would probably be good if I could convince myself what day it is. As it worked out, my interview this morning was scheduled precisely when the place opened, so when I arrived fifteen minutes early it meant I had to cool my jets in the parking lot for a bit. I checked the posted hours and I swear to God it took a good two minutes to reconstruct what day it was. The boy being home isn’t helping; I’m convinced it’s a weekend.

So. Yeah. I should probably at least have some of my around-the-house stuff done by the time my wife gets home from her errands. I can check off blog post, I guess. Be nice to each other, y’all.

Oh screw you

On May 25, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized8 Comments

Just aborted a job application in midstream when it became clear that they wanted me to take one of those godawful personality tests, where you have to Agree or Disagree, or worse, rate your level of agreement or disagreement with an ambiguous-ass, obnoxious statement like “Although I don’t let little things get to me, in a big project I can easily get stressed out.”

Here’s my answer to your personality test, guys: I have a perilously low tolerance level for bullshit, both my own and that of others, and the second you start making me parse shit like that alarms start going off and I decide very quickly that I don’t want to work for you. If that makes you not want me as an employee I’m good with it; I am absolutely certain that it is more your loss than mine.

(I am aware that they think these things represent something real or they wouldn’t do them. I’m also well within my rights to think that maybe a fifteen-minute phone interview will tell them more useful information about me than whatever bullshit data their test spits out. Fuck these things.)

Anyway.

Kitty passed all of her blood tests and was dropped off at the vet this morning for her dental surgery, so I’ve been staring at the phone waiting for the vet to call me and tell me everything went fine and she’s okay. One mistake I made: not actually bothering to ask when the surgery was. I headed straight over to them, cat in tow, after dropping the boy off at school this morning, and it didn’t occur to me until I was back in the car and heading home that just because they wanted her dropped off by 8:30 did not mean that they were going to immediately commence to yanking teeth out, nor do I really have any idea how long it might take to deal with a tooth abscess in a cat. I strongly suspect they’ll end up pulling more teeth than they initially thought, as she’s had not-great teeth pretty much forever and I’m sure they’re going to find something else in there they don’t like. I just hope to not be too completely broke when they’re done.

And also to have a healthy pet. That too.

Hmm. Last night as I was drifting off to sort-of-sleep I had a great idea for a politics post float through my head and I no longer remember a single word of it. I’ll update when I get the kitty back and if I remember what that was about I’ll toss that at you too. More later, in other words.

In which I guess it’s Tuesday

On May 24, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Work2 Comments

I’ve applied to… five different jobs today? Six? Something in there– and I’m playing phone tag with someone who called me. So hopefully we’re getting somewhere.

What I haven’t done is thought or done anything interesting enough to warrant a blog post, so you’re gonna get another Prince video, because I’m at OtherJob tonight so there won’t be a late post tonight one way or another.

Let’s pretend that I’m focusing on my speech for the wedding. That makes it sound like I’m doing something.