In which I turn a tweet into a post

Luther M. Siler4 Comments

Who’s the dumbest Democratic elected official, at a national level? Meaning, like, either a member of the national government or a high enough state or city-level official that people who don’t live there might have heard of them?

I’m either back on my bullshit or still on my bullshit, depending on how long you’ve been around here, and I have (like many of you) grown increasingly impatient with stupid Republican arguments. The person in the White House is still insisting, as recently as today, that America is having more coronavirus infections on a daily basis than some countries have had in total because we have more testing. A recently elected Republican Senator announced this morning that America fought in World War II to preserve Europe from the horrors of socialism. And enough Republicans have confidently asserted something about masks that was utterly horseshit or pointed at a mostly-red electoral map of America recently and smugly declared that they don’t understand how the Democrats could possibly when when so much of America votes red that I really don’t feel the need to point to a specific example. It literally happens multiple times a day.

There has got to be a similar Democratic equivalent. There’s got to be. Like, this has got to be my bubble working against me. There are dumb Democrats, I know there are, because Democrats are people and people are dumb. By definition, there must therefore be some really dumb elected Democrats. I’m not asking for stupid on the level of the numbskull that just lost his job, or any of the various no-exaggeration brain-damaged Qanon morons they just put in office. Just regular, run-of-the-mill, that’s a dumb guy dumb guys.

Like, Biden is probably the dumbest person I’ve ever voted for for President, but the only reason that can be true is his competition. When you’re being compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore and John Kerry (himself probably the least of that group), it’s gonna be really hard to come off as intellectually impressive. On any kind of remotely objective scale, he’s at least high-average, I think.

The funny thing is that I think if I asked Republicans who the dumbest elected Democrat was, I’d probably take their answer as evidence that they themselves were pretty fucking stupid. I suspect it’d be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, frankly, and I don’t know how many times this woman has to run rings around Republicans before they admit she’s smarter than most of them. That’s only something they go after her for because of sexism, racism, and ageism; she’s a young woman of color so she can’t be smart.

Seriously. I want to know. Who’s the Mike Pence of the Democratic party?

In which I hope for less bullshit

Luther M. Siler

I spent the day administering standardized tests, of all fucking things, which are somewhat more difficult to do remotely than in person. Furthermore, spending seven hours in front of my computer– I literally did not leave my desk all day, and my wife was nice enough to bring me lunch– watching numbers slowly tick up from 1 to 53 has got to rank as one of my most boring days as an educator ever.

And I get to do it a minimum of twice more, since they’re not all done yet. This is basically the plan for the rest of the week.

Nonetheless, I’m going to loudly insist that I’m not complaining, because the alternative remains worse.

Speaking of that: neighboring districts have announced their plan to move to hybrid learning in a couple of weeks, which will be fun until they back off of it right before it happens. The state’s numbers have done nothing but worsen in the month of August, and so have the county’s, particularly once Notre Dame came back– so do you know what the state board of health did? They took a set of metrics that had everything in the red and added a new color band so that what was once red and definitely recommending distance learning was now orange and distance learning was just “strongly recommended,” or some shit like that.

Just say you’re bored and you don’t care if people die. Just fuckin’ do it, we all know it’s what you mean.

It’s more honest and I’m really tired of bullshit.

We closed everything down in March, when there were virtually no cases in the state. We closed them again in August, when things were much much much worse than they were in March because Americans are dog-stupid and selfish as fuck and no one could be counted on to act right. Now in September damn near everything is worse than it was in August and with Labor Day next weekend, guess what’s about to happen? Motherfuckers are gonna have parties and then two weeks after that they’re gonna get sick.

Oh, and Notre Dame, fresh off of two weeks of quarantine, is about to allow crowds at the football games they’re still insisting they’re going to have. So, a super-spreader event in my town roughly every two weeks for the next few months? Awesome. Just what we want.

It’ll work out fine, I’m sure. After all, we’re bored.

In which I am out of clever and patience, and running low on hope

Luther M. Siler5 Comments

I almost just started this post by posting pictures of Covid-19 graphs; needless to say the state spiked monstrously yesterday and CNN finally heard me griping about how they clearly hadn’t been including Notre Dame’s numbers in our averages, because we had a similarly terrifying jump in our county numbers there as well. Meanwhile, the county health department says that our current seven-day rolling average of new cases is at over a hundred, and they want it below twenty before schools should reopen.

That’s a rolling average, remember, which implies, since the numbers have been going up daily for a while, that we’re seeing significantly more than 100 cases a day recently, according to the health department.

Dandy.

So I guess I need to find a way to get used to sitting in front of my computer for eight or nine hours a day, don’t I? I mean, granted, this is what I want, compared to the alternative, but it continues to blow my mind how people cannot simply act right so that we can get this thing dealt with like every other country on Earth. Because Americans are a uniquely toxic blend of selfish and stupid. I’m never going to pretend otherwise again. There’s simply no available evidence that we have any sort of national will left, if we ever actually did in the first place.

We are not going back to school in 2020. We just aren’t. And every day I move closer to declaring that we’re not going back this year at all. Colleges and universities will start shutting down in a couple of weeks. Just wait for it.

I dunno. I’m tired and my neck hurts and my back hurts and I’m already kind of half-assing my instructional videos and my attendance is already dropping off pretty significantly. So, that’s all bad. But it’s still better than being at work. My son’s only a couple of days into his school year (he’s home too) and he seems to be doing better than I thought he would be, but we’ll see where we’re at in a week.

Gah. I have to record a video about square roots now, because I need to make sure the kids know what they are for the next thing we’re doing, but what that’s going to lead to is a blowoff assignment for half of them and the ones who need to learn this aren’t going to bother trying. It’s way too early in the school year for cynicism to be setting in already, dammit. I need to get this together so that I can play video games for a bit and then go to bed early. Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow.

In which we’re all gonna die

Luther M. Siler1 Comment

The Wonder Woman Funko POP on the far left is brand new as of today; do I keep her with the other Wonder Woman or move her with the other three Funkos on the desk?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

I have left the house more in this last week than in the six weeks prior to it, mostly because I have to drive my wife to and from work, which is automatically two trips a day, and I went and got groceries yesterday and picked up the grill and blah blah blah. I had a couple more errands that needed running today, unfortunately, but other than work runs I shouldn’t really need to go anywhere for most of next week. When I’m out, I’m wearing a bandana over my face, and I have a friend who is a seamstress making a few proper masks for us. Witness:

We are under a state order right now to wear masks when in “enclosed public spaces,” and the county health department has released a bunch of recommendations as well. What this has led to is a bunch of businesses posting prominent signs outside that you need to have a mask on to be inside … and a bunch of people inside without masks on. One of the errands I had to run was to the pet store, and I was in and out in under five minutes, and less than half of the customers I saw while I was in there were wearing masks. Indiana has had 1400 Covid-related deaths, and St. Joseph county is closing in on its thousandth confirmed case.

This is not fucking complicated, God damn it. It blows my mind that, three years and some change into this person’s administration, the GOP is still finding new ways to be venal and cruel and stupid, and then it blows my mind that I’m still capable of being surprised by these people. Wear a mask so that you don’t get sick! Wear a mask so that you don’t get other people sick! Why is this difficult? Why is “stop being a fucking asshole” a partisan statement?

My Google-fu has failed me, but I saw a clip of a comedian a bit back where he explained that he’s figured out the equation for this administration, which is (surprised x disappointed)2, because if you multiply it properly, first you’re surprised that you’re surprised, then you’re surprised that you’re disappointed, then you’re disappointed that you’re surprised, then you’re disappointed that you’re disappointed. Or something close to that, anyway. I can’t find it.

The other thing I want to bitch about is that on three different occasions today I have either read or heard people speculating about the “second wave” of this disaster that’s coming this fall. Y’all, this shit hasn’t slowed down yet. If anything, we’ve plateaued. There are a few specific localities in America that have bent the curve a bit but they’re about to be overwhelmed by the states that are all opening too fast– probably about another week from now, if past experience is worth anything. We can’t have a fucking second wave if the first wave never stops. And the way things are going, this isn’t going to get any better anytime soon. We have an entire fucking political party openly fucking dedicated to making it worse. We’re fucked for as long as any of these people hold any power, damn it.

5:25 PM, Saturday May 9: the world crossed four million confirmed infections today, with 1,305,199 of those being in America; 78,469 Americans have died, and we’ll be over 80K by the end of the weekend. And y’all are too fucking manly to wear a mask. Fucking idiots.

A brief note to drivers

Luther M. Siler4 Comments

If y’all don’t mind, I’d like this to become my most famous post ever. I want this getting 10,000 views a day for the rest of my life. I want it shared in drivers’ ed classes. Hell, I want it to be the only topic of entire days of drivers’ ed classes.

If you stop, unpredictably, in order to allow someone to pull from a side road or exit from a business and turn left in front of you, ESPECIALLY if you are already in the left lane of traffic when you do this, you should lose your license. On the spot. It should self-destruct inside your goddamn wallet and burn a painful hole in your ass. And once you have lost your license and bandaged your burnt ass, whoever is behind you and managed to avoid rear-ending your ignorant self should get to choose one of your body parts (possibly the other unburnt half of your ass) to cut off and wear around as a hat.  

The protection of the law should no longer apply to you if you make a decision like this.

Fucking stop it.

In conclusion, I hate you and hope you die. Which, given how you drive, will probably happen sooner rather than later.

The end.