The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Missing a day once in a while is no big deal, even if I don’t do it very often. But I refuse to be busy enough to miss two days in a row, even if the post for that second day is a ridiculous two-sentence half-assed excuse for a blog post.
This one is three sentences.
I absolutely refuse to have an opinion on the whole Will Smith/Chris Rock Oscars thing. I will say this, and this only: that every middle schooler in America yelled the words “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth” in the hallway at least once today, and I could maybe have done without that. If you really need to hear my opinion on it, feel free to go on the Internet, find someone else’s opinion, and assign it to me. I hear that it’s not hard to find people talking about it.
ALSO! My wife and son are out of town. It is the boy’s Spring Break, and she took the week off so that someone was home with him, and they have popped off to Indianapolis for a quick overnight trip to see some friends. I suppose technically I was invited. In accordance with my new temporary bachelor state, I had Chipotle for dinner, bought incorrect lightbulbs at Target (I did not realize that “sunlight” not only meant “full spectrum of light” but also meant “installs two miniature suns in your office”) and I am also currently not wearing pants. I will play video games for three hours once I am done with this post and then get two hours of sleep. It’ll be super.
Let’s see, what else? I have survived the first of the necessary four days until my own Spring Break, which doesn’t really start on Friday, but since Friday is a day with no students it may as well. Tomorrow should also be survivable; I’m hoping for suspensions and/or injuries leading into Wednesday and Thursday.
I received this email from my boss toward the end of the day:
To provide a little bit of possibly-unnecessary context to this, this year the teachers’ day starts at 8:40 on Tuesday and Thursday instead of 9:20, which is when school actually starts. Those two extra 40-minute blocks are supposed to be used for professional development and team meetings. Now, keep in mind, all day Friday is supposed to be PD this week, and as of right now I don’t have the slightest idea what the hell they’re throwing at us. I will be skipping this event and daring anyone to say anything to me about it, because I do not recognize “fun movement activity” as a concept that exists and this is either an extraordinarily tone-deaf joke or an actual insult. I ain’t going. I suspect that “morale raising” is supposed to be the point of this; they can best support my morale at this point in the year by leaving me the hell alone. If anybody asks, I got to work late. Fire me.
And, on that note, I’m off to the Lands Between. Hopefully I’ll notice when it gets dark; this lamp is really out of control.
…never give them two posts on a Saturday. It inevitably leads to a Sunday in which I’m either too busy or too stressed out to write anything. Today was “too busy,” I think; I actually got a fair amount of stuff done around the house, so that was good, but none of it involved, like, words.
Go give somebody a hug; I’ve got to go over my kid’s homework with him.
Simultaneously, I feel like I got nothing done today and a whole lot done. We had a snow day because it was 20 below outside this morning, and I got a bunch of grading and work stuff done, but at the same time… bleah.
Had plans for the blog tonight, too. Maybe tomorrow.
It is somehow 9:00 PM, and if I had anything of relevance or interest to say at any point today, it has long since dissolved and fled my brain.
Last day of work for the week tomorrow; I’m taking Friday off to be here for the renovation crew. Hopefully we’ll be done soon? Yes, hopefully. I am tired of having only one toilet in the house.
I’ve blogged, like, ninety days in a row or something like that, and I had a streak of much longer than that going before a long day where I literally forgot broke the streak, and I simultaneously 1) don’t care about the streak, 2) have nothing to say (this digestive thing will not go away; all I’ve eaten today is a banana, a little bit of turkey and a sandwich) and 3) am posting anyway because apparently I do care? Except I don’t.
Anyway, it’s not 8:30 yet and I legit might be in bed in a few minutes, how are you?
I think the most damning thing I can say about Dune is that even now that I’ve started typing I kind of want to bail on the idea of writing a review.
I am more of a Dune fan than most people but not very much of a Dune fan, if that makes any sense. I have read (and, to be clear, enjoyed) the original novel four or five times, maybe, most recently within the last couple of years, but have never picked up any of the sequels, a fact I consider rectifying every year and never do. Over the last few days I’ve seen lots of people pretending the novel is terribly complex and difficult to read and I don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s long, yeah, but it’s perfectly readable. I have not seen the 1980s original film, either, although my wife keeps threatening to make me watch it, and is probably going to ramp up her campaign now that we’ve watched this one. Frankly, were she not interested in seeing the new film, I wouldn’t have watched it.
It’s … meh.
It’s pretty. It’s got an awesome sense of scale; anytime you’re looking at something that’s supposed to be real real big there’s always something in frame to make it clear just how colossal whatever you’re looking at is. And if I stop typing right now, I can move on with the process of forgetting that I saw it, which I suspect will take all of a day or two. Even complaining about it for a few more paragraphs will give my dislike of the movie more weight than it deserves; I barely have the energy right now to point out the bits that I didn’t like. I mean … bullet points? And not worrying about complete sentences? Sure, let’s try that.
I mean, see it if you want to, I suppose, it’s not going to, like, hurt or anything, unless you see it in a theater and get Covid-19, and man, dying because you went to see Dune has to be the worst way to go ever.
Colin Powell died today; if you’ve been around for a while you can probably predict my feelings on all aspects of that situation without me going to the trouble to type them. Today is also the last day of my Fall Break– moving into the last couple of hours, frankly– and if you’ve been around for a while you can probably predict my feelings on all aspects of that situation without me going to the trouble to type them just as well.
My wife just came into the office to get some work done and I asked her if she had any strong opinions she’d like to express on my blog and she declined. So I’m going to get a couple of minor things done for work that I’ve been putting off and finish listening to Finneas Eilish’s debut album (so far, thumbs up, but we’ll see if I’m still listening to it in a month) and then I think I’ll curl up with a book or something. Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall have Opinions on Things.