Tag: spring

Make it make sense

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I was behind this … person … for a bit on the way home from work today, and the cognitive dissonance hurt so badly that I had to get a picture. You can, no doubt, see the “TEACH PEACE” sticker on the left there; that’s fine. The problem is the decal on the right, which, just in case you can’t quite parse it, is a Punisher skull, with an American flag overlaid on it, with the words “FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT” around it. This image in red vinyl, basically. As an open endorsement of American fascism it’s not quite as overt as, say, a thin blue line cross, but it’s pretty fucked up! In general, any time you see someone idolizing the Punisher, that’s a bad person, and they are to be avoided (I’ve said this before: any police organization in particular that uses that logo needs to be dissolved, immediately) but combining it with “teach peace” is just fucking unhinged. The fact that it’s on a pickup truck is even weirder; that may be the only pickup truck on the planet with a “teach peace” sticker on it.

I can see someone already fixing their fingers to suggest that a married couple owns this truck and one of them picked one sticker and one picked the other; these people should not be married and they should also own separate cars. It’s unfair that they managed to cause me pain when all I was trying to do was get my ass home from work. I mean, the one who is married to the Punisher asshole is probably in pain every day, but I want them both to suffer.

Anyway, it’s April so I hate my job; there is no place in the world that is worse than a middle school in the spring, except that there is, and it’s a middle school during standardized testing during the spring. Unfortunately I have to go to that place every day, and tomorrow I get to be there from 7:30 in the morning until 8:00 at night, and then I have to go back on Friday morning for some fucking reason, so don’t expect much out of me tomorrow and whatever you get on Friday is going to be through a veil of barely repressed rage. It’s gonna be awesome for everybody, is what I’m saying.

Still raining!

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

We’re in the midst of Round Two of apocalyptic hellstorms, although as far as I know there haven’t been any trees knocked down nearby, but we did have to go into the basement for half an hour or so because of a tornado warning. One way or another, I’m half-expecting the power to go out again any minute now (we were out from about 1:00 in the morning Sunday night to yesterday afternoon, and spent Monday night in a hotel room) so I’m going to cut this short so I can turn my computer off. I do owe you a review of Galileo’s Daughter; the short version is that I’m starting to really enjoy reading biographies of geniuses.

Today was exhausting

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

The weird thing is I don’t even know why. I mean, I do sort of; it’s spring and I teach 8th grade, and Spring Break is six days away. And there was a field trip for all the band and orchestra kids today, which should have led to an easier day and somehow didn’t.

I am so tired of 8th grade boys that I’m starting to genuinely lose my shit about it, and something about today made that a much bigger problem than it has been. I literally told two of my boys to “sit the fuck down” in fourth hour. In my defense, the previous thirteen times I had told them to sit down apparently didn’t take. Tomorrow, “won’t sit down” will become an office-referral level event, because I need to be done for a while. If I have to be a complete asshole for the rest of the time before Spring Break, I’m perfectly happy to do that. It’ll be fine.

Anyway.

I was gonna shoot Nazis some more– I’m in the final level of Sniper Elite 6, so I’m starting to think about the next game after that– but somehow it’s 8:53 already, so maybe I’ll go to bed a little early and read instead. I have a meeting tomorrow morning to help pick the building’s Teacher of the Year, which is disappointing because presumably I’m not being invited to vote on an award I’m up for, but it’ll mean having to get to work a little early and eight or nine seven or eight hours of sleep tonight might be a pleasant change of pace.

In which it’s weird that I enjoy this so much

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

Okay, so this time it’s really-really the first day of spring, the calendar says so, so instead of 70 degrees and beautiful like it’s been who knows how many days recently, we had fucking snow. Again. And there’s more expected later this week.

That said? This wasn’t a bad day at all. Work was productive– actual teaching happened in all of my classes, which is always nice, especially after how messy yesterday was. I bought tickets to a Counting Crows show in June, meaning that I’ll be seeing both the Counting Crows and Weird Al Yankovic at the same facility within three weeks this summer, and to be honest I can’t decide which show I’m more excited about. I’m seeing Weird Al with my family and the Crows with one of my oldest friends, which is going to be super cool.

And then I came home and since I got tomorrow’s planning done at work (!!!) I had time to shoot some Nazis. This poor bastard up here got killed with a grenade, dropped neatly at his feet from a bush a dozen meters away, and blew up both him and his friend. He ragdolled into the barbed wire, which I find incredibly hilarious for some reason. I never found the other dude’s body, which I assume was blown directly to Hell.

There’s probably something really creepy about how relaxing I find WWII-based sniper games; there is something incredibly cathartic about blowing a Nazi’s face off (in high-definition, bullet-cam, slow-motion detail) from 300 meters away with no one the wiser about where you were or where the bullet came from. It’s okay, see, not because it’s a video game, but because Nazis aren’t human beings.

I really shoulda booby-trapped that guy’s body, though. Maybe I’ll go back. I left a trail of destruction behind me so who knows if there’s even anyone alive to find him (no one heard the grenade) but they’d cut back to it if something happened. It would be worth it. There are always more grenades, right?

Wait no

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I said it was the first day of spring last week? That was wrong. Today was the first day of spring, and the way I can tell was the fact that half the building was pissed off and the other half was crying today. All of my ability to can has been replaced with cannot. I still haven’t finished that Lego set so I think I’m gonna go do that, for real this time. Maybe go to bed early. Really early.

Jesus Christ you annoying little shits STOP TOUCHING EACH OTHER

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Teenage boys need to be sent to an island, far away from everyone else, and not released until …

… hell, just not released. Send all the teenage boys to an island. Far away from me. Forever. I have been a middle school teacher for a very long time and this is the most exhausting spring in my memory. I’m going to bed.

Wednesday cat picture

On By Luther M. SilerIn PhotographyLeave a comment

Not much to say today, so have a picture of Gideon and Jonesy enjoying a sunbeam:

Spring Cleaning

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

So, do you know what happens when you renovate a bathroom, and said bathroom backs onto your bedroom?

Okay, a lot of things; that question could have been a bit more specific. The biggest one, though? Dust. Oh, my God, so much fucking dust.

But the bathroom is oh so very nearly done, and what’s left to do isn’t going to generate any more dust, or at least isn’t going to generate any more dust that makes it into the bedroom.

So today I put all my laundry away, wen through my clothes for Goodwill donations, took all the boxes that came out of what used to be a closet and is now our shower and put everything back into its new location, dusted every Goddamn horizontal surface in the bedroom, dusted all the furniture, swept, vacuumed, moved most of the furniture (the bed will be a day all by itself, and I’m not touching the bookshelves) and vacuumed under that, then mopped probably 60% of the floor, with the 40% unmopped being the area under and around the bed.

Now it’s raining and the bedroom looks much better and I have game recording to do, I guess, because YouTube is still happening, so go subscribe.

The end.