Tag: rants

On school supplies and other annoying arguments

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I feel like there’s something in the air out there this year, where the standard beginning of school arguments are just a little bit louder and angrier than they have been in previous years. So lemme match some energy here.

This is showing itself in two major ways: the “I’m not buying any school supplies, or if I buy school supplies, every single thing is for my kid” crowd, and the people who slept through and/or failed large portions of their school experiences insisting that schools should teach skills that, generally, schools already teach. There’s a video floating around of some fifty-something dipshit loudly and obnoxiously insisting that schools need a class called “life,” and the first thing he suggests that the “life” class should teach is balancing a checkbook, a skill that no human being has needed in at least twenty years.

Lemme throw out a couple of real obvious comments:

  1. Teachers shouldn’t be responsible for spending a single dime for supplies in their classrooms. The fact that most of us do it anyway and that I do it more often than most is only evidence that I don’t have the courage of my convictions and that the entire enterprise is set up to take advantage of people with consciences.
  2. You’re responsible for your own Goddamned kid so buy the fucking supplies.
  3. If your teacher lets your kid keep their crayons, fine. If your teacher puts all the crayons into a communal pot and lets kids take them as necessary, fine. Either way, buy the fucking crayons and shut the fuck up unless you want me showing up at your job and criticizing your cocksucking technique.
  4. Also, no one is trying to take your kid’s backpack, idiot. No one is advocating for communal lunchboxes. But there’s no reason why little Tragedeigh’s crayons and Kleenex can’t be shared among the class.
  5. There are other places for people to learn things that are not schools, and if you think there is some specific skill that your child lacks that genuinely isn’t taught in the schools any longer, you will not lose custody of your child if you teach them that skill yourself.
  6. That said, I took Home Ec and several shop classes in middle school. I remember having a genuinely good time in my shop classes, including one on architectural drafting. Mr. Korkhouse was awesome. If you want them back, that’s great; maybe advocate for a model in education where things that aren’t directly measurable by standardized tests still get to matter? Believe me, you won’t find any teachers who disagree with you here.
  7. In addition, the vast number of things that these people claim are not being taught in school actually are being taught in school, or if they aren’t being explicitly taught, they’re being taught by inference. IE, if you actually want to balance a checkbook for some fucking reason– I don’t know, maybe you’re at a Ren Faire or something– you need to be able to a) read, b) add, and c) subtract. We teach all of those things. Same shit with “nobody taught me how to do my taxes!” except add multiplying and dividing.

Anyway, that’s all an irate and profane lead-in to my yearly bleg; my readers have been excessively generous over the last few years, and while I don’t think you should be on the hook for buying shit for my classroom any more than I am, some of you are willing to buy shit anyway. My classroom Amazon wishlist is here, and school starts in about two weeks. If anyone cares to chip in some folders or some dry-erase markers, I will be immensely grateful.

How to Drive Without Killing Me: A Basic Lesson for People Who Don’t Want to be Fucking Morons

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Okay, y’all, see that lane I’ve marked with a blue arrow?

If you are driving in that lane, and there are stopped cars in front of you because of a light or a stop sign or whatever, and someone is waiting to turn left across traffic into a parking lot or a retail establishment or whatthefuck ever, do not ever ever ever under any circumstances stop early to let that motherfucker turn left in front of you.

Don’t do it. Don’t ever do it. You’re not being nice. You’re trying to cause a fucking car accident, and I hate you because you’re an idiot and you shouldn’t be driving.

Had some dipshit pull this move on me this morning, while I was in the lane on the far left, and of course that fucking slapnuts was driving a F4500 or whatever the fuck the big truck for guys with tiny dicks is, and because the yellow car can’t see through the car that is waiting for them, and the oncoming traffic in the far left lane can’t see the yellow car either, that stupid son of a bitch turned directly in front of me and damn near got T-boned for his trouble. Even a tiny bit of ice on the roads or the slightest bit of distraction and my ass would have totaled my car and his.

And, I tell you what, if I get into an accident under those circumstances, and I live through it? I’m not gonna blame the person I hit, even though they’re also a moron for turning directly into a blind spot. I’m coming after the idiot who stopped and let them through. I will flip your Goddamned car over with my bare hands.

You’re not being nice. You’re going to get someone killed. Anyone who needs to turn left should expect to have to wait until it’s clear.

Don’t fucking do it.

On narrative consistency

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

Okay, look, McDonalds. This is bullshit.

Nobody believed your asses two years ago when you said that the McRib was on its “farewell tour” or whatever the hell you called it. Absolutely no one. We all knew that the McRib is always a seasonal or at least short-term item (length of term: however long it takes for pork prices to rise again) and it’s going to go away and come back. Everyone knew this. You fooled no one.

But yeah. You had to make a big Goddamn deal about how no, really, this is the last time. No more McRib, forever, and all that shit.

And now it’s 2024, and the fucking world is ending, and you bring this bullshit back … and you dare to just not acknowledge that you insisted it was never coming back? No mention of it at all? What, are you just hoping we don’t remember?

Call the motherfucker Son of McRib and put it on a round bun for a while or some shit, I don’t care. Slap a little mustard on it (no, really, think about it) and pretend it’s not the same sandwich. I don’t care. But, shit, can we pay a little attention to worldbuilding around here? All I’m asking for is some Goddamned consistency. This ain’t comic books. You can’t reboot the menu. Or at least you can’t reboot the menu and pretend you didn’t do it.

Do not assume that just because I just ate two of these sonsofbitches because I am sad that I didn’t notice what you did here, Goddammit. I see the Hamburglar in my neighborhood anytime soon I’m slapping him.

In which I will not sell your shoes

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

I ordered some shoes off the Internet. No, not my beloved Kiziks, although I did order yet another pair of those,(*) but some other brand that are going to scan more as a business/work shoe than what I’ve been wearing lately. Am I going to tell you what the shoes are?

No, because they immediately emailed me– and they’ve emailed me several times since– congratulating me for my new status as a “brand ambassador” for them, and explaining how I can get money by getting other people to buy their shoes, and giving me discount codes I can share, and explaining their reimbursement structure, and I’m like … motherfucker, I don’t even have the shoes yet, and can you maybe ask me if I want to be a brand ambassador, maybe a week after I’ve had them, to see if I even like the Goddamn things?

(Also: I ordered these with my real name and personal email address and it’s not like you have to enter your website to buy shoes, so there’s no earthly way they could connect the shoe-buyer with this site. I’ve had things sent to me for review before, and that’s its own thing. I bought these and they think I should sell them as a side gig now. I assume they’re doing this to everyone.)

The aggressiveness is equal parts off-putting and alarming, and honestly it makes me want to return the shoes as soon as they arrive, which is vastly annoying, as I do actually like the looks of the damn things or I wouldn’t have ordered them in the first place.

(*) In all seriousness this is, I think, my fifth pair of Kiziks, and if they want me to be a brand ambassador I’m all over it, but these other folks are gonna have to generate some goodwill with a quickness if they even want to keep the business they already got from me.

Some miscellaneous thoughts

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

One week until Spring Break. And really the last day before the break doesn’t count, so only four teaching days until Spring Break. I can do this. And apparently ILEARN starts a week after we get back? I had no idea. I thought we had at least a couple of weeks, or maybe the last week of April. One way or another, I don’t even look at the results any longer.

We’re taking a road trip tomorrow for an academic competition for the boy, and we have to be up at like 5:30 in the fucking morning for it. I am complaining here because the boy does not read the blog– I’m pretty sure as of right now he is still unaware that it exists– and I will not complain about it around him, because I’m not going to be that kind of dad. It can be taken as read that the entire thing makes me want to die, though.

Pearl Jam has a new album coming out on April 19th. If you’ve been around a while you probably already know they’ve been my favorite band for basically my entire adult life. They just released a new single off of the album today, and along the way announced that they’re doing what they’re calling a “Dark Matter Global Experience” on the 16th at 500 theaters around the world. One of the 500 happens to be nearby, so I snagged tickets for my wife and I since they were basically the cost of a movie. They’re going to play the new album twice, once in darkness and once with “mesmerizing visuals.” I gotta be honest: even as a huge fan, huge enough that I just bought tickets to this thing, I have no idea if I think this is a good idea or not, but I’m willing to burn $24 on it, and I can’t wait to get home and wash the weed stink out of my clothes so that I can go to work tomorrow without raising eyebrows. If nothing else, this will be a unique experience, I imagine.

Speaking of new music, Fletcher, the other woman in the Miley Cyrus video that turned every woman on TikTok into a lesbian for a few days,(*) released her sophomore album this week. I’m four songs and– sigh– ten minutes into it and so far I’m liking it quite a bit except for the way streaming has fucking ruined music, because I should never be four songs into an album if only ten minutes have gone by. There is one song at 4:09, one at 3:05 and one at 3:02, and every other Goddamn song on the album is less than three minutes long.

I need the whole world to get off my damn lawn.

Every morning, I wake up, roll over, pick up my phone, and say a little prayer that I’m about to discover the shitgibbon died while I was asleep. I am going to add more Republican resignations to the prayer, because that shit is getting more hilarious by the Goddamn day and it’s not like God is listening anyway so I can ask for whatever I want.

I note that Jimmy Carter is still hanging on, though, despite all odds. He’ll outlive that fat bastard yet.

(*) It’s me, I’m women

On school supplies

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching7 Comments

A touch of housekeeping before I dive into this: I set a personal record this morning for the fastest time I’ve ever fled a PD session, leaving after the keynote address, which was basically a very nice and funny man going “Man, teachers are cool, aren’t they?” I left because apparently having a few hundred teachers in the building to learn stuff wasn’t enough of a reason to turn the fucking air conditioning on in the building, and I was sweating like a pig and I really needed eyedrops from my car and when I got to my car I found it impossible to get back out and go back into the building.

Do other careers do this? Do lawyers need to get together every now and again to get a rah-rah speech about how cool and important lawyering is? Do venture capitalists work in buildings where basic things like environmental control are hosted off-site and not accessible to the people who actually work there? No, right? It’s no.

Can we talk about school supplies, just for a minute? I had a whole rant I went into about this at dinner tonight, and part of the reason I have this site is so that when I feel compelled to rant about something or another it lands here and not on my family, and I broke that rule tonight. The problem, of course, is that now a lot of the venom is exorcised and I don’t necessarily need to write the post. Nonetheless! Let me provide you with a few pieces of advice, for those of you buying school supplies for your kids:

  • Yes, you are responsible for buying supplies for your own kids, the same way you’re responsible for food and clothing for them. Yes, the school is funded with tax money. Yes, you pay taxes. Would you like that dollar back? Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • Many teachers, myself included, keep large amounts of school supplies on hand for kids who for whatever reason don’t have them, and this is absolutely not a wealth thing. However! The very second you imply that I personally am responsible for providing your child with school supplies, your child loses access to anything I pay for and bring to work. This is irrevocable unless you personally apologize. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • Some teachers are very picky about school supplies! There are probably reasons. Some, but not all, of those reasons may be good ones! Ask them.
  • If your kid’s school is picky about school supplies, however, it’s probably because the school secretary is sick and fucking tired of parents asking what kind of pencils they are supposed to bring and so now the supply list says “Yellow Ticonderoga #2 Pencils” and not “Pencils.” Whatever pencils your kid has will be fine. Whatever paper your kid has will be fine, although do pay attention if a particular teacher asks for loose-leaf, because those little torn edges are annoying as fuck.
  • I have literally never encountered a school that asked for Yellow Ticonderoga #2 Pencils and actually got uppity about some other pencil. I would love to hear about it if it happens, and you’re within your rights to complain about it. Politely.
  • Some teachers (hi!) are going to shrug and say something like “they need something to write with and something to write on.” Others will be more picky. Guess what? Teachers are human, and policies vary from class to class, because there are different humans running those classes. Again, ask, and if a teacher says they don’t really care or doesn’t specify a list, just make sure you kid is prepared to take some notes. That’ll probably be good enough.
  • Some teachers will not have lists at all! Sometimes we just got our job four days ago. Sometimes we haven’t thought about it yet. You’ll be okay. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • Some things are going to be communal! If you don’t like it, eat a gallon of ass and homeschool your kid. That box of tissue paper isn’t just for your child. If you are upset because little Jimmy got the real expensive colored pencils and you don’t want the dirty poors touching his pencils, if you think that’s communism, find a bridge and jump off because your kid is better without a parent who ego trips about school supplies. I mean this genuinely and with all my heart. Go buy some fucking pencils and paper.
  • If you saw a supply list at Wal-Mart or whatever, be aware that no one at the school knows where the hell that list came from, and no one at the school has any idea that that list even exists. That list got made up on the spot and sent over by a secretary twelve years ago and they’ve been photocopying it every August ever since, and there is not a single person at your child’s school that knows anything about it or can do anything about it.
  • That said! You already know what the basics are. Buy those– paper, pencils, a couple of notebooks, some hand sanitizer and tissue paper, maybe some markers or colored pencils or crayons depending on your kids’ age. Again, nobody is really as picky as these lists indicate. Your constant stupid questions made us this way.
  • There is one exception to this rule: if your child is of middle school age, or otherwise is expected to travel from class to class while carrying their materials, do not buy them a pencil box. Buy them a pencil bag. Pencil boxes are for kids young enough to have their own desks that things can be stored in. Why? Because if you drop a pencil bag, it hits the floor and goes splat and maybe if it’s unzipped a pencil might fall out. If you drop a pencil box on the floor it will explode, and your kid’s shit will go everywhere, and because passing period is chaos and middle school students are savages, your kid’s stuff will quickly be kicked to the four corners of the universe and your kid will die of embarrassment on the spot.
  • This is what I mean when I say unreasonable-seeming specificity can sometimes have a good reason. Please do not buy middle schoolers pencil boxes.

This is what happened after the dinner rant, y’all.

And for the last time this school year, my Amazon supply wish list is here if you are willing and able to be generous.

On editing my brain

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

I decided tonight that I need to have admin access to my brain.

I mean, that’s not a new thought by any means, but it struck me particularly hard tonight. There are certain things that I know about that I really don’t feel like I need to know about, and I would like to be able to identify unnecessary information that’s stuck in my skullmeats and simply cleanly excise it, and if there was a way to prevent myself from relearning that information in the future– perhaps some sort of memory mute button– that would be great too.

There exists a man who intentionally wishes to be known as Yung Gravy, and I had to retype Yung four fucking times to convince WordPress that yes, that was the word I wanted, which really only adds more pain to this process. He is, supposedly, a musician; I am aware of one of his songs and I do not like it. This is his song:

I’m not watching this video. You can’t make me.

Anyway. Mr. Gravy presumably has fans; you may be one of them. That’s fine! He can have fans. You can be one of them. I just don’t need this man in my brain, and I would like to remove him. You may have my memories of him, if you’d like. That’s fine.

It gets worse. Would you like to know why I am aware of the existence of Yung Gravy? Because it’s not because of his music. No, the rabbit hole goes deeper than that, and I don’t want any of it.

I know Yung Gravy exists because, somehow, I found out that he was dating Addison Rae’s mother.

(Do you know who Addison Rae is? If you don’t, I suggest you stop reading now. This knowledge will not improve your life.)

I do not want to know that Yung Gravy is dating Addison Rae’s mother. I don’t particularly want to know about Addison Rae, although she’s not all that offensive– she’s just pretty and kinda vacuous, and … whatever, right? But I definitely don’t want to know about Addison Rae’s mother, who is far too old to be dating anyone with “Yung” in his name. She has also managed to be the famewhore in the family despite giving birth to someone who dances and prances around in a bikini for her millions of TikTok fans. Addison Rae’s mother is odious in a large number of ways, I do not like her, I definitely do not want her or her stupid Karen haircut in my brain, and while she is exactly the type of person who would divorce her husband and latch onto a third-rate rap artist with a stupid fucking name in hopes it would get her a couple of extra clicks beyond what she’s already siphoning off from her only-four-years-younger-than-her-boyfriend daughter, I don’t need to know about any of those people. At all.

So now I’ve made you aware of all of this, unless you had the good sense to stop reading this post before now– and who would blame you?– and it doesn’t help. All I’ve done is spread the infection, I haven’t cured it. Because you, as one of my readers, are a person possessed of both intellect and rarefied taste, and you don’t need this shit either. So help me. Let’s all go back to grad school and become brain doctors and figure this shit out together. Because after I get rid of Yung Gravy, I need to tear out the Kardashians and Kanye West, and that’s going to require a bit more work.

Anxiety disorder, or just stupid?

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Mental health is so much fun. There is nothing like being midway through a three-day weekend and finding yourself paralyzed and indecisive about what you should be doing, not because you’re overwhelmed with work, but because you haven’t finished Sandman yet even though every second you’ve watched of it has been amazing, and She-Hulk is probably one of your favorite comic book characters of all time and she’s sitting on your desk staring at you and wondering why you don’t love her enough and haven’t watched even a single second of her show yet, and oh by the way you have a Lord of the Rings tattoo on your leg and there is no work of human literature up to and including the Bible that has had more of an impact on your life than LOTR did and oh that new show started this week and have you watched that yet no you have not. How the hell am I eighteen hours behind on TV?

It is just amazing to be freaking out because you are so behind on things and what you are “behind on” is fucking television. Also I haven’t showered yet today, I’m halfway through like fifteen genuinely minor tasks that would take probably two minutes each to accomplish, and I need to write a blog post and record an episode or two of Raji: An Ancient Epic because like an idiot I found a way to make video games into an unpaid job.

An example of those minor tasks: there is a box behind me, maybe five feet away. That box is full of action figures and crap that I took off of my desk because I decided it was starting to look super cluttered and I only wanted it to look a little cluttered. I took a bunch of stuff off, put it in the box, and then put the box behind me, intending to move it into the closet in this room. We are talking about opening a closet door and moving the box ten feet. It might not even be that far.

The box has been sitting there for at least a week and a half.

There are three credit cards sitting on my desk that have been here for months. They need to be moved into my safe. The safe is locked and on a shelf down the hall. Months.

I’m really psyched about tomorrow. Why? Because I plan to spend all day at my computer getting shit done for work that didn’t get done before school started, so now that we’re about to start Week Four I probably ought to, like, get some vocabulary words up on the wall. Tomorrow at this time I expect to be happy at the amount of stuff I got done during the day, including a truly impressive pile of grading.

But that box? It’s still gonna be there.