Tag Archives: career

“Henchman” – Randy the Tech #1A

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Right. This is part one of a two part chapter about Randy the Tech. This is still a bit rough, but hopefully not too rough. Don’t worry, all of these stories go through an editor before being published. I just like to give away pretty much every chapter for free now before actually publishing.

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Henchman – Author’s Note
Henchman – The Day Dave Subbed
Henchman – Randy the Tech #1A

Randy the Tech Tests Out A Mind Control Unit

 “Hey, dude,” Washington said to me from his side of the doorway.

I looked over at my co-worker, a huge, scary, pipe-hittin’ brother who towered over me by a good six inches, and could snap me in half as if I were dry spaghetti. He looked distressed, yet his voice was casual, calm. Maybe he looked distressed. When he gets all crazy, his eyes get real big, and it makes me begin to shake inside because I start getting little movies playing in my head that feature Washington on a rampage, picking me up, and literally pile-driving me through the concrete floor like we were in a cartoon. But he didn’t look like enraged Washington. He looked like he might have had an accident in his fatigues.

The fact that he sounded casual and called me “dude” made me possibly more frightened of him. Washington didn’t talk much, but when he did, it always seemed like he was a drill instructor and you were some lowly piece of shit new recruit that just caused the entire platoon to lose out on a three day weekend where they’d all planned to hit Tijuana for some female company. I’d never heard him say a single casual thing to anyone but the Vils, and that was maybe three times in the eight years I’d known him. All three times, he looked like he was strategizing just how quickly he could kill everyone in the room and escape.

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“Henchman” – a new series of stories

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Right. So. Carly and I talked about this idea, and I sort of just went with it. We hear all about the superheroes and supervillains, but we never really hear from the henchmen, the guys who make all of the magic happen (well, for anyone who doesn’t have a superpower).

Henchman – Author’s Note
Henchman – The Day Dave Subbed
Henchman – Randy the Tech #1A

Henchman – by Mike Williams
Author’s Note & Introduction

I bet you’re wondering why anyone would write a book about henchmen. Actually, I bet you’re looking at the cover of this book again and asking yourself “who the hell is ‘Mike Williams?’. There’s all kinds of books and TV shows and movies and comics and novels and action figures and pop culture when it comes to superheroes and supervillains. But let’s be honest and admit that you know nothing about how this semi-hidden culture actually operates.

For instance, did you know that superheroes have almost no henchmen? And yes, I’m counting the fact that the good guys (I call bullshit on this, by the way, but that’s for later) don’t call their helpers “henchmen.” So let’s say that Jake Donovan, the famous superhero detective, has his bombshell secretary Lila Donovan, and his two junior detective sniffers, Kyle & Donna. To you, they’re sidekicks, but to everyone in the business, they’re henchmen. Just because they work for superheros instead of supervillains doesn’t change the fact that they’re lackeys, grunts, handlers, and any number of things that all of the henchmen that work for supervillains are.

Anyway, superheroes rarely rely on henchmen to do their jobs, yet supervillains employ armies of men and women like me. Literally, in some cases, armies. Why? See? You’re already partially hooked.

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We Are All Responsible For Public Education

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(This is my response to some people in a Facebook thread who think their tax dollars shouldn’t be used to provide others with a public education)

My wife teaches in the BISD (Boise Independent School District). I’ve met hundreds of teachers. I’ve met maybe two out of hundreds that probably shouldn’t have been teaching kids (go figure, both were male coaches).

There aren’t many professions that work harder as a whole than teachers. When you take away from the public education system, you hurt teachers (boo hoo, right?). Teachers have this dreaded word they use, you might have heard it used in other instances, and that word is “attrition.”

Attrition in education is when the public school system continually gets underfunded, or talking heads on cable news shout as loud as they can how terrible teachers are, how rich they are, how lazy they are, how ineffective they are.

Attrition is when new teachers that went to college, passed all of the tests (and they aren’t easy, don’t ever let anyone tell you becoming a teacher is ‘easy’) and started their career in the public education system, KNOWING they were going to make very little money for the first ten years, and even after ten, they’d never be making these ridiculous numbers shouted by talking heads like “$100,000 a year! to work for nine months!”.

Attrition is when these new teachers begin to realize, some in their second year, some their fourth, each teacher is different, that as much as they love their career, it is no longer economically viable, nor is it a career that holds the prestige that it used to, and in a lot of cases, the politics at all levels, from the Statehouse down to the local county commissioners, is so negative that it makes these new teachers begin to dread having to deal with it on a daily basis. Continue reading →

You Think You Know What Teachers Do, Right? Wrong.

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Washington Post

“The problem with teaching as a profession is that every single adult citizen of this country thinks that they know what teachers do. And they don’t. So they prescribe solutions, and they develop public policy, and they editorialize, and they politicize. And they don’t listen to those who do know. Those who could teach. The teachers.”

Disclaimer: My wonderful wife is a badass high school History/Human Geography (AP) teacher. I’m properly biased.