Math is stupid

Luther M. Siler

On paper I think I had a good day. I got a bunch of stuff done, including voting and getting some episodes recorded and heading over to NewDistrict to get some paperwork done and pick up my teacher devices. The only problem is when I signed the contract I found out I wasn’t getting a pay raise by moving over. In fact, I’m getting a cut. Why? Because I forgot an elementary fact about being a teacher– which is that we don’t get paid during the summer, or rather, we don’t earn money during the summer. Which means that salary gets prorated when you jump mid-year, because the time you’re earning money is less but you still have those same number of earning-free summer pay periods to cover. I’m pissed, because I should have remembered this. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because the amounts we’re dealing with are manageable, but planning on a number going up and then discovering it’s going to go down is fuckery, and I don’t like fuckery.

And since I’ve started this post I’ve discovered that I don’t remember simple, complex and compound sentences nearly as well as I thought I did, meaning that I wasn’t able to really help my son with his homework properly, and now I’m just shitty about everything.

Bah.

Oh screw it

Luther M. Siler

I have spent some time actively resisting trying to write this, but fuck it, I’m pissed and if I can’t complain on my own Goddamned blog I can’t complain anywhere.

I have only very recently and very reluctantly become a Taylor Swift fan. To this day I don’t know why the hell I downloaded folklore, it was a completely random decision, but for some reason I loved it, and then when Evermore dropped a few months later I bought that too, and then I found out that she was re-releasing her old albums basically just as a giant screw-you to her previous producer, and to hell with it, that’s punk as fuck, and so now I’ve got Taylor’s Versions of Red and Fearless on my hard drive too.

Also, to make it clear, I don’t stream. I still buy music. I’m not gonna stop. Just take that as a given and roll with it.

Anyway, she announced Midnights, and fuck it– I actually preordered the Goddamn thing, and do you see my mistake yet? Are you keyed into Taylor Swift’s shenanigans enough to know where the rest of this post is going? Because three fucking hours after this album I pre-ordered became available for download, before I had even woken up to listen to it, she released a new “3 AM” version of it with seven additional tracks.

There is no way to pay the $3 difference between the cost of Midnights and 3 AM to get the extra tracks. Since I pre-ordered two months ago, I can’t get a refund on the original version and download the new one. My only option is to pay $1.29 for each individual song, which means paying $21.02 for an album that I could get for $14.99 if I hadn’t pre-ordered the album.

This is a shitty, shitty thing to do to your fans, lady. You’re a multifuckingmillionaire and you’re trying to bilk my ass out of nine bucks. And I have nine bucks! Daddy can do this. All day, every day. No problem.

But you best believe I’m stealing those seven songs anyway.

Shit.

In which I peeve your pets

Luther M. Siler

black-man-yelling-into-phone2It was, basically, a perfect day.  Not a cloudless sky, quite, but I like a few clouds in the sky for contrast.  Sunny, low eighties all day, not humid, nice breeze.  If there’s a way for South Bend to have a better day in July I can’t imagine what it might have been like.

I was at OtherJob, expecting a busy day, an expectation that was, more or less, fulfilled.

I had the following conversation one thousand times today:

Ring ring!

“<other job>, how may I help you?”

“Yeah, are you guys open?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, thanks!”

Click.

Lemme explain something, Internet.  First of all, OtherJob is an outdoor family destination.  If you can’t figure out that a place that does 70% of its business for the year in June, July and August is open at 4:00 PM on a Thursday on what will probably prove to be the nicest day of the year, you may in fact be too stupid to use the phone.  Yes, you morons, we’re fucking open.  Look outside!  Of course we’re fucking open, what the hell is wrong with you?

But even.  Sometimes shit happens, right?  Maybe we lost power, or the sewer exploded again, or maybe everywhere else you’ve been to today has been inexplicably closed and you’re starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with the universe.  Or you live forty miles away and you just want to be sure.  That’s okay!  I mean, you can probably safely jump to a conclusion on this one, but it’s okay!

Here is how that conversation should go, guys:

Ring ring!

“<other job>, how may I help you?”

“Oh, hi, I was just calling to make sure you guys were open.”

“Yep!  We close at (time.)”

“Okay, thanks!”

Click.

Alternately, instead of admitting that you’d just called to make sure we were open, you could ask about closing time or the prices or something.  Or just hang up!  That’s actually okay too.  Because, see, if we answered the fucking phone, it means that we’re open.  We don’t pay employees to sit around in a closed building and answer the phone to tell people that we aren’t here.  No one does that!  It doesn’t make any goddamn sense!  Seriously, what the hell did you think was going on here?

You goddamn idiot.

Sigh.  Seriously, one thousand times today.

Now that I’m done griping about customers, lemme take a minute and thank a couple, because it was kinda rude for me to horn in on that couple’s private conversation at the picnic table just because I heard the words “bacon” and “peanut butter” in the same sentence, and when you explained that you were actually talking about a bacon peanut butter jalapeno burger, and where I could get such a wonderful-sounding thing, you became my very best friends for ever, and I wish I had gotten your names and addresses so that I can babysit your kids or something.  Because holy shit bacon peanut butter jalapeno burger.  Oh my god.  

Dinner was good tonight, y’all.

Edit, maybe one minute after hitting “Publish”:  I will say, however, that bacon peanut butter jalapeno burger farts are not something that I’m hoping to have as part of my life for the rest of the night.  I really don’t want to sleep on the couch.