The Aerie
In a recent study, high school students were asked to identify their sexual partners. The researchers claim to be surprised at the results, but I'm not. No, this graph pretty much explains why for a long time I've felt like a lone blue dot.
What this graph tells me is that there are (or were in my case) a lot of people having a lot more fun in high school than I ever dreamed of. I mean, take a look at some of these people.
Now, in high school, all I hoped for was 
. No, really. Okay, okay, alright, what I actually hoped for was 
. But really, I'd've been fine with just .
I eventually achieved a , due to a series of odd circumstances that broke in my favor for a change - every dog having its day, as it were. Years later some former classmates claimed that my , I was actually part of a 
, but they are hardly reliable sources. And of course, it's a complete double-standard for me to be judgemental, seing as I was hoping for myself.
So okay, my 
may or may not have been having more fun than I was at the time, good for her I say. This was of course back in the ancient past, before the holocaust of HIV. Putting together a back then risked pregnancy at worst, and while that was bad enough it wasn't the soul-chilling horror that lurks out there today. We didn't know how good we had it.
But my sordid and somewhat pathetic history aside, what about some of the other dots in that network? I mean, who the heck is this guy 
? What the!? And who is she? 
Clearly I suffered from a deficit of imagination in high school... Sure all this does is expose my naievete, but holy moly, what kinds of parties are these kids going to?
On the other hand, I have reason to believe this report isn't entirely accurate. I mean, the chart says that there are 63 isolated pairs of 's, but it shows no isolated 
pairs or 
pairs - and really only a couple of such hookups among the more "active" groups.
Somehow I find it hard to believe that there are no or in these schools. I suspect that they were there, but that the students chose not to respond accurately to these anonymous surveyors. That gives me hope that the 's and the 's were just having a little fun with the surveyors too. And in turn that the fellows who claimed my was a may also have been full of baloney.
Cause things are a lot different and a lot more dangerous now than when I was a 
. It seems like with sex you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. And since I have a and a starting high school next year, I worry. I don't know what fate has in store for them in this regard, but I want them to be 
.
If I never see Jude Law in a movie again it will be too soon. I think he's been in four films that I've seen in the last six months. Wait, I can actually check that, can't I? Off to IMDB...
I was right! He was in Sky Captain, Huckabees, Closer and Lemony Snicket (albeit only as the narrator). Damn, he WAS in four movies that I've seen in the last six months!
That's it, I'm creating a law. The Jude Law: if you appear in more than three films simultaneously playing in any theaters anywhere in America, you're DONE. You don't get to make any more movies, and you have to go back to your home country. You are allowed to direct or produce, but keep your face off the screen.
And if I'd been able to overcome my disdain for the book Cold Mountain, he would have been in FIVE. But I didn't like the book, and I can't say I was interested in seeing Renee Zellweger, either.
I mean, what is it with RZ? Is anyone else on board with me on this one? She has a face like a dried apple, her voice is whiny, and she has about two acting modes. When she smiles she looks like she's about to cry. When I hear or read these comments describing her as a beautiful actress, I feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone movie: if say aloud that she looks like a chipmunk sucking on a lemon, will she send me into the cornfield?
On the other hand I just borrowed "I Robot" from the Professor, and Will Smith, there's a guy who gives you the sense you could have a beer with him. That's all marketing and posture, of course, but it's SUCCESSFUL marketing and posture. He looks as if his millions haven't gotten to him.
The DVD is way disappointing. No outtakes, no extended scenes, and a single commentary track that's so deadly dull that my ears were straining past the blah-blah in order to hear the dialogue. It was the first commentary track that made me wish I could throw popcorn at the guys doing the talking. The "Making Of" is definitely worth seeing, but I'm glad I didn't buy this DVD myself...
But what terrific special effects. I don't care about the explosions and the other nonsese, I'm talking about the robots. There's not a moment in the movie when I find myself saying, "Ah, that robot is a special effect painted in later." Every scene with the robots looks as if they're actually there, part of the cast. It's easy to imagine them sitting around the extras tent playing cards between shots.
Will Smith was also in Hitch, a mildly amusing but infinitely forgettable romantic comedy. About 1/3rd of the way through I had the remainder of the movie correctly plotted in my head. And while I like Will Smith, I really don't need to see any more movies about the supposed troubles of improbably wealthy young New Yorkers. I don't care how successful a gossip columnist or Yenta one may be, you do NOT have those apartments in Manhattan.
However much I like Will Smith, however, I hope not to see him in anything more this year (and according to IMDB I won't). I can take one Will Smith movie, I can even take two. But once he gets three movies in the theaters, he's starting to creep up on The Jude Law, and then his career is OVER.....
Okay, life is slowly returning to some semblance of order, although how long that will last is hard for me to say.
I just finished the Big Project of setting up services on the new internal fileserver in the house. I have a computer with mirrored 200 Gigabyte drives, enough space, or so I thought, to store almost everything, forever.
Of course now it's 3/4's full and I'm starting to dream of external terabyte storage systems.
Meanwhile, I have sorted and assembled every bit of electronic data that I possess into neat little piles. All our family's digital photographs... here. Everything from my business, over there. All of my accumulated e-mail files for about 15 years, over here. Completely legal mp3 collection ripped from CDs that I purchased, right there. Illegal mp3's and other media... deleted! Destroyed! Purged!! Keep your RIAA away from me!
With everything neatly sorted into appropriate places, I then hooked up the new server to all of the family computers. Now everyone can obtain all the shared files on the server from anywhere in the house. Additionally, I hooked up my wife and daughter so that they can manage their webpages through the same connection - much easier than the way they were doing it before using SSH tunnels.
In the midst of wrapping that project we started the next, that being to excavate the boys' bedroom from beneath its piles of junk, papers, pencils, laundry, toys and junk. The accumulation is astounding. More pencils and pens than I knew existed. Money (I've made 28 cents so far!). Dishes. Batteries. And enough shaped plastic objects to swell landfills across the nation.
That project is about halfway done. This weekend we'll probably wrap it up, leaving the boys in a temporary and extremely unusual state of organization. Meanwhile, we're starting on the next project - washing all the laundry that came out of the boys' room!
Yes, spring has come early to Minnesota, and so has Spring Cleaning - driving everything in this household towards some temporary semblance of order.