Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Vintage TV
We spent the last hour treating Jake to one of our favorite examples of 1960s television: The Outer Limits’ “Controlled Experiment,” featuring Carroll O’Connor and Barry Morse as Martian agents Deimos and Phobos, tasked with understanding the uniquely human art of murder, and Grace Lee Whitney (y’know, Yeoman Rand?) as the would-be murderess. “Controlled Experiment” was probably the best satire of science fiction prior to the advent of Futurama, The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy.
You can watch the full video here, but it’s also available without commercial interruption through NetFlix. Enjoy.
Jake had his sophomore year orientation today; school starts tomorrow. They saw fit to lecture the kids for a solid hour on the evils of sex-texting and e-bullying. My son, so wise in the ways of most things digital, is a backward child when it comes to instant messaging. He’s our kid (neither one of us ever figured out how to use the IM feature of our phones). So of course he tuned it all out, or as much of it as he could.
They also blithered on about relationships. There was some sort of diagram where the inner circles represented closer relationships, the outer circles more distant relationships. Outermost were strangers, second-to-innermost were “soul mates” (how PC of them! I would have expected “husband or wife”). Innermost? God.
My atheist son tuned out that bit, too.
And I had always thought orientations were about giving you your locker combo and berating you about the dress code.
D.
Hope Jake’s first day is a good one; what were they thinking making Friday the 13th the first day of school? [:=
I saw on the news where they recently had a big national conference on bullying, so I guess Jake’s school was trying to be “current”.
I saw the news and had to run over here, immediately. #20 is on its way. http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/2010/08/theres-something-called-age-of-majority.html Note the artist’s depiction.
I like somewhat better this artist’s representation of Michelle Duggar.
The Quiverfull Brood Mother, Michelle Duggar.
sophomore orientation? shit, i only had the one. lol