In which I contain multitudes

On December 11, 2017December 11, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting3 Comments

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I have always been very ambivalent about Santa Claus. Hell, as a non-Christian I’m ambivalent enough about Christmas, so the idea that I’m compounding celebrating a holiday that’s supposed to be about the birth of a divine being who I don’t believe in with lying to my kid about a white dude who drops presents down the chimney just hasn’t ever sat well with me. I don’t like lying to my son– and yes, I think telling your kids about Santa is lying to them, unless you also want to explain why Santa seems to like wealthy white kids more than everybody else. But I’m not so opposed to the idea of Santa Claus that I’m stomping on it, so to speak. The position my wife and I have evolved over the years is that we simply don’t talk about Santa. My mom can tell the boy whatever she likes; he can absorb whatever messages about Santa he wants from the wider culture. Hell, I’ll even read A Visit from St. Nicholas to him on Christmas Eve if he wants, like my parents used to do with me. I let him read Captain Underpants and don’t make a big stink about him not being real; why should Santa be any different? My policy has simply been to neither confirm nor deny, and I don’t write “from Santa” on presents that we bought him– the “from” tag on all his presents is just left blank. He hasn’t seemed to notice that Santa seems to think he lives at his Grandma’s house. And we’ve never done the “go to the mall and sit on Santa’s lap” thing either. Which, honestly, as I’m typing this, I gotta admit I regret just a little bit.

So last week he told my wife that one of the kids in his class was telling everyone that Santa wasn’t real. My wife, caught by surprise, fell back on our usual “What do you think?” shtick and eventually he dropped it, or so we thought. This morning, as we were getting in the car to go to school, he ambushed me with the same question, and seemed frustrated that I reacted the same way. He is 6, and in kindergarten, just so you can properly contextualize this if you’d like.

And then he said something that really caught me by surprise, which was that he thought that this other kid was “ruining Christmas” and “taking all the fun out of everything” by telling the other kids that Santa wasn’t real. I pushed back on this as gently as I could– if Santa wasn’t real, does that mean that the tree and the lights and the presents and the cookies and the family stuff weren’t fun anymore? Surely the fat white guy isn’t the most important part, right? He didn’t answer, but I could see him thinking about it.

And then my reaction surprised me, because I found myself more than a little bit pissed at this kid, and by extension this kid’s parents. I think the family in question is at least nominally Muslim, as I’m pretty sure they’re ethnically Pakistani, but at any rate they’re from that area (the boy may or may not have been born here; I’m certain the parents weren’t) and while in general they’ve struck me as more or less secular people they’re definitely from an area where Christianity isn’t the majority religion. So, okay, your kid got raised with no Santa. You told him the truth. Cool. But maybe you go ahead and make sure your kid knows that showing everyone else the light isn’t so much the way to go? My son is friends with this kid, and he’s visibly upset with him for, again, “ruining Christmas.” And if my son decides that the boy is right about that, then I’m going to have a talk with him about not screwing the shit up for the other kids.

And I gotta admit, I’m thisclose to dropping an email to either my kid’s teacher or this other family (our school makes sure everyone has everyone else’s emails) and in the most polite way I can manage to phrase it suggesting that they tell this other kid to knock it off.

That’s probably in utter contradiction to everything in the first couple of paragraphs. Do I care? I dunno. I care enough that I wrote this to try and hash it out in my head, and I probably need to be talked out of contacting any of the other adults involved– which, again, I promise I’d do politely.

“Eventually ruining Christmas for him was my job, dammit” is not the most persuasive line of argument, after all.

Blech. Parenting is stupid.

I’ll kill your friends and family to remind you of my love: In which I liveblog the #2016Debate

On September 26, 2016September 26, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics11 Comments

wegotthis Oh god just kill me now

FOR THE RECORD, I’m gonna be reuploading this every, oh, I dunno, ten minutes. It will update frequently. Feel free to do whatever in between hitting reload all the time.

8:47: In a move that will be meaningless to all but a very small number of you who have been following me for decades, I put on my Jackass wristband.

8:56: I realize that CNNGo isn’t working and briefly scramble to get it back on again.

8:57: Is Lester Holt Matt Lauer? Is that the same person? Oh, God, what am I doing?

8:59: Dear God, an hour and a half? No commercials? This liter of pop I have sitting next to me is going to be a problem one way or another, isn’t it? Some dipshit CNN commentator admits that the first 15 minutes are the most important because the other dipshits who have his job are going to start writing their stories right away.

9:02: Shouldn’t they have started by now? C’mon. I don’t wanna listen to these dumb CNN people any more. I wanna listen to other dumb people, like the moderator, and the vulgar Cheeto. Oh, and occasionally throw Hamilton lyrics into the liveblog, because I’m behind the times and just got into that.

9:03: The nationwide polls aren’t a dead heat, Wolf. Hillary has been ahead the entire time and Trump has never been ahead once.

9:04: Woo here we go. Are we sure this isn’t Matt Lauer?

9:o6: God help me, my first thought is “Why did she wear that?” I’m a bad person. I am vaguely surprised that Trump’s tie isn’t red.

9:08: Hillary starts by surprising me, not spending the first several minutes talking about thanking people. I’ve already forgotten what the first question is before she really starts talking. Jobs. I dunno.

9:09: Dummy has his Serious Face on. Hillary is a little hesitant at first; I’m assuming she’ll hit her stride in a bit.

9:10: He relies on Terk Err Jerrbs, which isn’t surprising. I already suspect the story of the night will be Trump sniffling. He’s actually giving a half-decent answer to the question, up to the point where he says we have to stop companies from taking our companies.

9:12: “Trumped-up trickle-down” isn’t funny and she almost forgot what it was before she said it. Hits him right away with inheriting money from his dad. Is she standing on the left on the stage? She’s looking offscreen the way CNN has things set up.

9:13: Oh, this’ll be fun; she’s under his skin already. Back to the breathing. The “small loan” from his father was millions. He’s talking faster and sniffling more. My wife says he has a cold.

9:16: “That’s called business, by the way.” Oh, this is gonna be fun.

9:18: He’s tried to interrupt her two or three times and she’s treating him like he’s not even there. He’s not gonna make it through the entire debate if this keeps up.

9:21: Dude can’t stand still. I haven’t looked at Twitter. I take a second to do that and see that people are already RTing where Trump blamed global warming on the Chinese. Now he’s trying to holler over her. It’s not going to work. I seriously thought the guy would last more than 20 minutes before he started falling apart.

9:25: “I’m going to cut taxes big-league, and you’re going to raise taxes big-league.” Sure, dude. She plugs the fact-checker on her website and my wife audibly starts laughing.

9:26: “You’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.” Huh?

9:27: I go to both Clinton’s website and Trump’s. Clinton’s website, yes, has a fact-checker. Trump’s is down. Every answer he’s talking faster than the one before. He’s stopped sniffling for some reason.

9:29: Man, searches for “Donald Trump tiny hands” return a cornucopia of riches.

9:31: I’m really not sure what “the worst recovery since the Depression” actually means.

9:32: Ruh-roh. Lester Lauer is bringing up Trump’s taxes and who he may or may not be in debt to. My wife notes that Trump’s skin looks surprisingly normal.

9:33: Whoa. Lauer directly points out that the IRS has stated nothing is stopping him from releasing his taxes. Whoopsie!

9:35: The knives are out. “That makes me smart,” he says in response to Hillary claiming he’s paid no federal taxes. That was the wrong answer, dude.

9:37: I’m kinda surprised that he kept his mouth shut the whole time she was eviscerating his ass about his taxes.

9:38: Someone Tweets at me saying “It’s like watching a lion rape a sheep only in a bad way.” Which I laugh at and then feel bad about.

9:39: Imagine if any Democrat said we were a third world country. He’s done nothing this entire debate but talk about how terrible America is. But Colin Kaepernick is a problem.

. новый-коллаж__700.jpg 9:40: Oh shit. Oh shit. OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT. She’s going straight at his business dealings. Oh god I didn’t think this was going to be this much fun.

9:42: Any second now there will be video of Trump saying he’d negotiate down the debt. He keeps his mouth shut while she cuts him apart again. I hope she brings up the little kids who were singing at his rally and are now suing him.

9:44: “Let’s talk about race.” OH THIS SHOULD BE GOOD. LET’S DEFINITELY DO THIS.

9:45: Wait, I was gonna quote Hamilton as a joke. Uh… young, scrappy and hungry. Or something.

9:46: Say Black Lives Matter, Hillary. SAY IT.

9:47: My “Interesting People” list on Twitter is moving so fast I can’t even keep up. I can’t imagine what my full feed looks like. He got the FOP endorsement at least a week or two ago, not today.

9:48: Oh, good, let’s talk about taking guns away and stop and frisk. That will help you a lot. 2600 shootings in Chicago in 2016 so far, btw.

9:49: Matt Holt is actually doing a pretty good job so far of pointing out Trump’s bullshit. Holt points out th
at it was ruled unconstitutional and Trump flat-out denies it. Untrue. He’s back to sniffling again, btw.

9:51: My five-year-old son, who is supposed to be asleep, walks out into the living room to announce that he needs a drink, and looks at the TV and says “Is that Donald Trump?” HOW THE HELL DOES MY SON KNOW WHO DONALD TRUMP IS?

9:52: I’d like to hear the phrase “Systemic racism” from Hillary right now.

9:53: HOLY SHIT SHE SAID IT. My wife is demanding Law & Order memes. I swear I really did type that right before she said “systemic racism.”

9:54: Trump is about to call himself the least racist person who ever lived. Hitting update before he says it.

9:55: I’d like to point out that I thought Barack Obama lost his first debate against McCain and against Romney. So I’m generally not shy about saying it when I think Dems are losing debates. Hillary is grinding Trump into a thin orange paste right now and he’s STILL defending stop and frisk. Holy shit.

9:58: DANCE BREAK!

BYdPwg

10:00: “I was preparing for this debate. And I’m also prepared to be the President of the United States.” She’s been waiting for a chance to use that line. He has no response at all. He’s less manic now; he seems to be getting tired.

10:02: She’s about to cut his balls off again.

10:03: Have I made this clear yet? I will be proud as hell to vote for this woman.

10:04: He still hasn’t actually said “Barack Obama was born in the United States,” by the way.

10:05: That should have been an applause line. And Clinton’s team did nothing to advance the birther nonsense. I was paying really fucking close attention, goddammit. I would have noticed.

10:06: “Everyone got sued for it, and I settled the lawsuit without admission of guilt” is not a good defense, Donnie. I can’t believe he’s not actually bleeding at this point.

10:09: She’s leaving absolutely nothing on the table with this guy, and it’s all going to happen again twice more.

10:10: Who or what is Ice?

10:11: “As far as the cyber…”

10:12: Sure, let’s fat-shame nerds too while we’re at it, assholes.

10:13: How the fuck is ISIS beating us at the Internet? What the shit does that even mean? STOP SAYING CYBER. Does he even know how fucking stupid he sounds when he says that?

10:14: Holy shit, there’s only fifteen minutes left. This was actually fun. What the hell’s wrong with me?

10:15: The second I type that, my feed goes to shit. DAMMIT!

10:16: I get the feed back on and he’s yapping about “taking the oil” again. I have never had the slightest idea what the hell “take the oil” means. It ain’t like you can fly a giant biscuit over there and sop that shit up. You can’t do it. And he never gets called on it; I hope she does.

10:17: It occurs to me that maybe my Twitter feed is actually somehow killing my internet connection because it’s moving at Goddamn lightspeed. I shut it off.

10:19: I may have blacked out for a second. Why is he talking about NATO?

10:20: He’s pronounced “terror” three different ways in the last thirty seconds.

10:22: What the hell is this “no one wants to call Sean Hannity” nonsense about? They did an article in a major magazine? But he doesn’t mention the magazine? tumblr_nlsosxLH3C1tew7o3o1_1280.png.jpeg

10:23: He says he has a better temperament than Clinton does and there is audible laughter in the audience.

10:24: Ba-da-da DAT da! Dat da-da da DIE da da!

10:26: The weirdest thing about Trump tonight is how quiet he’s been while she’s been tearing him apart. I don’t know if his attention is wandering or what but there are places where he SHOULD have been interrupting just to try to knock her off her game. She just had two uninterrupted minutes and ripped his ass to shreds.

10:27: Seriously, how can he get away with constantly saying “We lose on everything!” and the Republicans just lap it up?

10:28: He doesn’t know what “the current policy” is, Lester.

10:29: I kinda hope Clinton points out that he has no idea what policy Holt is talking about. For the record, I actually don’t either, which is why I’m certain that Trump doesn’t.

10:31: IT’S PAST TEN THIRTY LESTERMATT HOLTLAUER WHY ARE WE NOT DONE YET

10:33: CALL ME SON ONE MORE TIME it may be time for bed

10:35: “Secretary Clinton, would you care to sautée Trump’s balls one more time?”

10:36: “Why yes, Lester, I would.”

10:37: Okay we’re way past OH WAIT HE CANNOT BE TALKING ABOUT ROSIE O’DONNELL my bedtime and maybe it should be time for these people to stop talking now. His defense just now appears to be “I was gonna say mean things but I decided not to.”

10:38: He really shouldn’t have had to ask that question. Trump, naturally, doesn’t answer the “Will you accept the result of the election?” question. (Wait. No. He does at the last second. Good.)

In summary:

giphy

REBLOG: Sex positive parenting: the book we are going to burn

On March 14, 2015March 14, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting1 Comment

I endorse this message.

My wife and I are huge book lovers, the word ‘bibliophile’ definitely comes to mind. On top of this, we are also very sex(uality) positive when it comes to parenting, both wanting our four children to grow up with a healthy understanding of sex and sexuality, theirs and in general. Our eldest daughter is 11 now and is going through puberty; she loves reading puberty books, demolishes the damn things, then reads them two, three, four more times… and a month later will get them out from the library again. It got to the point we ended up buying the books for her.

A few months back we were in our regular secondhand bookshop, perusing the shelves full of booky potential. I came across a hardcover book – ‘Questions Kids Ask about Sex: Honest answers for every age’, Melissa R. Cox (ed) – and thought HEY! THAT SOUNDS FUCKING…

View original post 1,632 more words

In which my day starts off strange

On February 26, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy13 Comments

I should have taken this and gotten a picture on the spot; I apologize for my failure as a blogger.

My day began with an irate parent in the office– before I was even able to get to my desk and put my stuff down. She’s mad that a teacher has sent a note home without any “useful” information on it, including her signature, and is furthermore angry that her daughter was prevented from leaving the gym at the end of the day so that she could go to said staff member and acquire this all-important signature. She’s demanding to speak to the teacher in question immediately.

Right away I smell a rat, for several reasons, not least among which is the fact that the teacher in question has gym duty at the end of the day and would, therefore, be in the gym. I ask to see the note. The parent hands me two pieces of paper: her daughter’s progress report, which has every single grade carefully scratched out with what appears to be both black pen and Sharpie, and the handwritten note from the teacher.

Note that the parent is mad at the teacher, which means that I don’t help her mood any when I immediately start laughing and tell her daughter that she has exactly one chance to tell the truth before we have a serious problem. Because this is basically the note:

MS WHATSERNAME:

YOURE DAUTERS GRADES ARE INCORRECT THESE IS THE REAL ONES:

1) A
2) B-
3) A
4) B
5) B+
6) A-
7) A

SHE IS DOING A LOT BETTER LATLY PLEASE CALL US IF YOU HAS ANY QUESTIONS.

I didn’t memorize the motherfucker; I remember there was definitely one word in there that had a superfluous “e” in it somewhere, but you get the idea. Furthermore, every letter on the page has been gone over at least two times in a way absolutely no adult anywhere writes but is currently a popular affectation among teenage girls.

Note also that the students have eight classes, not seven.

What’s Mom mad about? That the classes aren’t labeled. She apparently hasn’t noticed the… uh… various other issues with the note. She then proceeded to get mad at me for declining to punish her daughter at school; sorry, lady, this one is clearly your problem. I’m not doing anything about it.

And, say it with me: if the daughter doesn’t pass ISTEP, it’s my fault.

“Road trip”

On September 27, 2014September 27, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I am not sure I was properly warned about the nature of this expedition.

On scammery

On August 16, 2014August 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing4 Comments

Got this in the mail yesterday. Fascinatingly, it was sent to Luther Siler— who, remember, isn’t a real person– at my actual physical address. The number of organizations that can pair his name with my address are… limited. And I am not happy with them.

This is page 3 of a three-page letter; I’m not going to bother reproducing the first two. If you happen to get this in the mail, you should throw it the hell away.

Before we start, the first page is a fake check for $601. Their “Ultimate Publishing Package” costs $1600, meaning that with their “discount” you’re only spending nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars of your money– before they make you a single dime, and as we’ll see it’s going to be more than that anyway.

Let’s walk through this “offer” bit by bit, shall we?

100 Printed Copies of Your Book. This is the meat of the offer, because printed copies of books are expensive. A thousand dollars divided by a hundred copies is only $10 each! Except paperbacks generally cost $7-8 to buy, and… oh, wait, if you look at the description, this is assuming your book is only fifty pages long, and books longer than that will incur additional costs. Skylights was about 450 pages; most genre novels nowadays are in the 300 range at least. I’m guessing by the time the additional charges are added in for your $10, 50-page book, you’re only getting 20-25 of them if you don’t cough up more money. Why am I assuming that the rest of their services wouldn’t cost money? Because most of them don’t. Note that there is no mention of shipping cost, which I have no doubt will be passed on to you. Continue on:
Cover Design. Okay, this can be expensive, I’ll admit. But they include no examples of their work, and I’m guessing that it’s going to be shoddy based on the rest of the flyer.
Interior Page Layout. Not actually that hard, and takes an hour.
ISBN Number with Bar Code. If you’re buying ISBNs in small batches, they can be expensive– I spent $295 for a batch of 10. Left out of this is that this organization is probably buying them in batches of 1000 or 10,000 at significantly lower cost– and that it lists them as your publisher, since they own the ISBN. Bar code registration is, like, $15.
Library of Congress Control Number. Free.
Publicity Kit. Costs some money, but not much; note that no information about paper quality or color is given, and note that this shit is just mailed to you, probably charging you for shipping in the process. I don’t know who the hell I might mail five hundred goddamn postcards to about my book, and the types of people who use this sort of service are not likely to be doing in-store signings where they might pass out bookmarks.
One National Press Release. Note that you write the press release, and that that’s all it is– just a press release, which compels no one to write about your shitty little book. I looked up costs at PRWeb, and for one person buying one “Standard” press release is $159. I am certain that their costs are substantially cheaper.
Author Website (Plus One Year’s Hosting). This is especially hilarious; they’ll set up a WordPress site for you! Wow! That’s free! And a year of hosting at GoDaddy will run you next to nothing, especially since they’re probably registering an impossibly specific domain name that no one wants. Note that they don’t promise a .com site; just a “custom URL.”
Online Bookstore Set-up. They’ll “list” your book on their site, pay you 80% of sales, and charge you $9.95 a month to maintain a fucking link. So the minimum cost of this “Ultimate Publishing Package” just went from $999 to $1118.40, assuming your “book” is only fifty goddamn pages long. This is pretty clearly a POD outfit, so there is literally nothing being stored in their “warehouse.”
The Square (credit card reader system for smartphones.) Is free! Go ahead, sign up for one here.
Expert Consultation and Personal Project Manager. They have a phone line; you can call a dude. They have a curious definition of “unlimited basis,” too, since I’m pretty certain if I need my Personal Project Manager at three in the morning he ain’t gonna answer the phone.

Fuck these folks, and I seriously want to have a word with whoever sold them my address. If you get mail from them, throw it away. They’re assholes.

Oh to hell with today

On August 10, 2014August 10, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics7 Comments

I got to wake up to this shit this morning, leafing through Facebook on my phone while trying to convince my legs and arms and torso that getting out of bed was going to be a thing that was physically and intellectually possible.

You may have seen the article yourself by now; the headline is “NYPD Officer Kills Baby Following Breastfeeding Argument.” It’s from a website that I’ve never heard of called the National Report. And I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with these people but everyone involved with the website and especially the author of the article desperately need the shit beaten out of them.

The National Report is, apparently, supposed to be a “satire” website, but they are painfully goddamned bad at their jobs. Important fact: this article is not true. It is, in fact, apparently entirely made up.

The problem here is twofold:

We live in a world where the NYPD, and basically police departments across the country, are so militarized and out-of-control that there is no reason to initially disbelieve the article; and
There isn’t so much as a wink anywhere in the article or on the website itself to indicate that this story isn’t true.

I can not believe that I’m about to write these words in a context where I think people don’t understand them: cops killing babies isn’t fucking funny. We’ve already had a situation recently where cops on a no-knock midnight raid AT THE WRONG FUCKING HOUSE threw a flashbang into an infant’s crib and blew a hole in his chest. That’s not satire. That’s the fucking truth, it fucking happened.

This. Shit. Is. Not. Funny. There is no universe where you can make cops murdering babies a funny story, and if you think there is you are in desperate motherfucking need of mental health care. If you’re reading this right now going “hurr durr librul no sense of humor,” do me three favors: 1) unsubscribe me, 2) never read anything I write ever the fuck again and 3) kill yourself. You are not human and I do not want you in the same world as me.

I read through the damn article begging for a sign that it was a satire or a joke or a hoax and couldn’t find one; only a subsequent Google search led me to the Snopes page that indicated it was false. Looking around at the National Report’s front page would have helped, but the site frequently seems to confuse “satire” with “flat-out spreading lies”– and the fact that they have appeared to have decided to double down with a follow-up article stating that the (again, nonexistent) arresting officer has been cleared of all charges is just further proof that these people are fucking horrible, horrible scumbag meat-things whose bodies are in the shape of humans but appear to be missing some critical component– let’s call it a “soul”– that leads you to realize that cops killing babies isn’t fucking funny.

Fuck you, National Report, for even considering this bullshit, much less for the follow-up article, and fuck you, NYPD, for being such a fucking lawless street gang that this article doesn’t immediately fail the smell test.

Fuck today, too, while I’m at it. I don’t need this shit.

On teaching and money (and Miley and Sinead)

On October 3, 2013October 3, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Politics, Teaching1 Comment

ku-bigpic

I am– forgive me for knowing about this, much less bringing it up– kind of really enjoying the Sinead O’Connor/Miley Cyrus thing going on right now. The first one was just interesting in an intellectual sort of “hey, this happened” kind of way; the second one interests me as a writer. I knew Sinead O’Connor was kinda fucked up but I wasn’t aware she had a bitchy side and I certainly wasn’t aware that her bitchy side was awesome. The second letter has this wonderful sort of “Ok, look, we can end this now, but here are my knives if you are foolish” sort of feel to it, as if O’Connor has absorbed Cyrus’ semiliterate trailer trash Twitter response to her initial letter, shrugged, and moved Miley to her mental “destroy” file. The phrase “you have one last chance” doesn’t appear anywhere in the letter, but it should. I really hope there’s a third.

I mean, Christ, the line “You could really do with educating yourself, that is if you’re not too busy getting your tits out to read” is art.

I voted to approve the contract, but I’m not terribly happy about it. Oh, it’s not bad, as they go– we’re getting a small stipend this year basically just for the hell of it and we actually get our first real raise in seven years (two whole percent!) next year, that is assuming we don’t get placed in one of the two lowest evaluation categories. More money is good. I like money, even if 2% after having frozen salaries since 2007 is kind of bullshit. It’s still better than the no-money we’ve been getting on the last several contracts.

The problem is that this round of negotiation really has driven home one important fact for me: That two percent hike got eaten by inflation years ago. We are never really getting a raise again, and by “we” in this case I basically mean all of Indiana’s teachers. I get a yearly pay raise at my fucking minigolf job, people. The way things used to work, we got yearly step increases until you hit sixteen years of experience and after that you’re depending on actual increases to the pay scale (ie, “raises”) for any further increase in salary. What this meant is that if you stuck it out long enough eventually everybody made the same amount– sixteen years is a long time, granted, but it leveled you out sooner or later.

Now? Anyone in my district who makes more money than me right now is going to make more than me forever, and anyone under me– particularly anyone unfortunate enough to have started in the last few years since even step increases became impossible– is going to make less than me forever. There’s no merit pay of any kind that can increase salary– not that I even think that’s a good idea, mind you– and no bonuses for good performance. There’s only the stick; you don’t get any raise of any kind if you end up in the lowest two evaluation categories, but it’s not like you get more money if you get a superior ranking.

It’s unfair in a way that I really, really don’t like. Teaching is already a career with effectively no mobility– a teacher is a teacher is a teacher and while most districts do name team leaders and things like that (a job I’ve held myself on a few occasions) there is no actual salary increase attached to that. As a teacher, I’ll never be anyone’s boss unless I move to administration– which isn’t teaching. There’s literally no way to be promoted. Which means that the fact that there are teachers in my district who not only make ten grand more than me but will make ten grand more than me forever really stick in my craw. Similarly, I’m mentoring a first-year teacher this year; I make fifteen thousand dollars a year or so more than she does and I will make fifteen thousand dollars a year or so more than her forever, until she wises up and realizes that spending her entire life making $32,000 a year is untenable. (She gets a raise to $34,000 in 2014-15; the poor schmucks stuck in the bottom two pay steps get a little bump. But she’ll be stuck there forever.) Once she realizes that she can make better money and have much less stress in her life doing something else, she’ll be gone, and she’ll be replaced by another 22-year-old making the same $34K that she did until she quit.

Note, also, that while teachers making more than base pay will be quitting a lot, or retiring, they will only be being replaced by teachers making base pay. Which means that you travel far enough down the road– and I bet it won’t be more than seven or ten years– and something perilously close to all of us will be stuck at that base pay level. Which people will put up with until they have kids, then they’ll move on to jobs where they’re actually treated like educated professionals, and kiss teaching in a public school district goodbye.

Which is a feature, and not a bug. This is what they want, and this is what state law is written to do.

I fucking hate Indiana.