Tag: rant

Yeah, well, what if I don’t wanna?

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching1 Comment

Like most teachers, I absolutely fucking hate the question “When am I gonna use this?” The answer is never. Never. You, personally, as someone whose sole concern is defending your ability to remain as ignorant as much of the world as possible, are never going to use what we’re doing, because you’re never going to use anything. You live in a country that hates education and educated people, and you’re going to be forty and still using apostrophes like they’re an early defense system for the letter S, mixing up basic homonyms you should have been getting right in second grade, and telling people that you did terribly in school but it doesn’t matter because “you did all right” while hoping your shitty car gets you home to your trailer park and wondering where you’re gonna score your next dime bag from since your weed guy got arrested last week. You barely use the alphabet. You’re not gonna use algebra.

*Ahem.*

I may be a little unreasonable in my hatred of that question, actually.

I have to start teaching transformations this week, and I fucking hate teaching transformations. I have come to terms with teaching equations of lines and slope despite the disinclination of 8th graders to learn them because they genuinely are fundamental to a lot of more advanced stuff, and the correct response to an 8th grader who says they don’t wanna learn that stuff is that you don’t give a shit and you’re not about to let their futures be determined by what they wanted to do when they were thirteen and idiots. Siddown, shuddup and pay attention, you whiny little fucker.

They’re never gonna use transformations. They’re just not. I can’t even figure out what this shit leads toward in an abstract sort of way, and it depends on spatial reasoning to really be able to figure it out, and I don’t know how to teach that, and I have never once in years of teaching math been able to explain satisfactorily how to write a rule for a dilation or a reflection or especially, Jesus, fuck these things rotations, and my kids stare at me with flummoxed and slightly betrayed looks on their faces because they’re used to me making sense at least in theory and Christ do I hate this unit more than anything else in the curriculum. Ever.

I may just make a deal with my kids that I’m not gonna teach this, and they’re just gonna miss the one question that is guaranteed to involve transformations on the ILearn, and everything will be fine anyway, and the trick is don’t tell anybody that we’re watching movies and practicing fucking addition and subtraction and fractions for the next few weeks because God fuck me dead if any of these kids can add -17 and 23 without a calculator and they don’t even know how to put 1/2 + 2/9 into a calculator, much less what it means or how to figure it out. Can we just do that instead and skip this entire fucking unit? Because it really and truly and genuinely does not matter if they don’t learn this in eighth grade.

Fuck saving money

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

If there are people– any people– working in schools during the summer, the Goddamned air conditioning in those buildings needs to be on, and it is bloody fucking insane that I’ve had to deal with this bullshit twice this week. It’s going to happen again tomorrow, but I’m going to show up prepared to be a sweaty fuck all afternoon, which I did not do today, because I had already forgotten the lessons Monday should have taught me. And the AC was off, and it was humid as fuck, and I was not dressed to be moving furniture in a windowless classroom with no moving air.

Tomorrow’s gonna suck too, but at least I’ll be prepared for it.

Have you seen this man?

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy7 Comments

So this asshole here has been my parents’ primary care physician for, more or less, my entire life, and was my doctor during the time when I had no choice in the matter as well. His name is Dr. Lawrence Curry, and you can damn sure bet that I want Google to pick up on the fact that I’m using the name Dr. Lawrence Curry of the McKinley Medical Clinic a whole lot in this piece, because I am pissed.

I’ve never liked Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O.; his receptionists are rude, he clearly doesn’t have time for his patients (oh, you wait, if you think that’s an unfair thing to say) and he consistently overbooks so that you are guaranteed a multiple hour wait any time you set foot in his smelly, dirty office, which will be playing vaguely racist black and white comedies the entire time you’re there on a tiny and yet incredibly loud TV in the corner. But I’ve never mentioned him here, at least not by name, although I think I might have bitched about the TV show that was playing in Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O’s office the last time I was in there without actually using his name.

I saw my dad yesterday, and he asked me for my doctor’s name and phone number. This surprised me; as I said, I’ve been trying to get him to change doctors for forever with no luck. I asked what happened, and he said something curious– that the office wasn’t answering the phone any longer. Which is … kinda weird for a doctor’s office, even Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O.’s, right? So I called the number on their typo-ridden, shitty website, and it’s disconnected.

Huh.

I had to go see Dad today for something unrelated, so I decided to hell with it, I’m curious, and I swung by the office. Not a car in the parking lot. This was on the front door:

Fuckin’ classy, eh? Apparently dude doesn’t have access to a printer. Note also that today is May 30th, which is relevant, because this is their lobby on May 30th, two days before they apparently stop accepting insurance:

Now, I didn’t get a picture– I should, and I will probably swing by tomorrow and take a closer look, because I’m pissed, and I’m pretty sure there are some laws being broken here– of the office/reception space, but it sure as hell looks to me as if everyone’s medical records are still in there. Hundreds if not thousands of patients; as I said, my mom and dad have been seeing this guy for 40+ years.

Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O., has literally just ghosted all of his patients. Fucking disappeared. Shut down the office without telling anyone– the Shipshewana office mentioned on his website has a disconnected phone number too– and disappeared. Poof. Not an email, not a letter, nothing, and you can tell from looking at recent reviews of his practice on, well, basically any rate your doctor site. There’s one semiliterate screed that suggests that all of his employees quit, which wouldn’t surprise me, because he’s an asshole– but it’s literally so full of typos and crappy grammar that I can’t take it seriously.

Oh, did I mention that his practice shares a building with a physical therapy group? This is on their door:

If it seems like I’m taking this personally, it’s because I am– as I’ve said, I’ve thought the guy was a bastard for decades, and even if he was dead it’s fucking inexcusable that his patients literally have had to do research to find out that their doctor wasn’t their doctor any longer, and now all have to find new doctors– when one of my doctors retired some time ago she passed all of us on to someone else, but that isn’t the case here, because the practice is simply gone. And, again, there look to be several thousand HIPAA violations sitting in cabinets just waiting for some fucker to break a window and go on an identity stealing spree. I want every piece of paper in that office with a member of my family’s name on it, God damn it, and if putting this fucker on blast on the internet helps in any way with making that happen I’m sure as shit gonna do it.

Math is stupid

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

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

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

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

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

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.