Catholic school it is.
Jake creamed the entrance exam. Said that the toughest thing about it was the time constraint: 298 questions in 3 hours. But he still managed to answer at least 293 of the questions.
Jake said the test was Easy. Disturbingly easy.
At one point, the other kid taking the test asked Jake, “What’s perpendicular?” Jake stared at the kid and pressed on. He said to me afterwards (and this really cracks me up): “How does someone get to 9th grade and not know geometry?”
Okay, so I’m bragging. So sue me.
No place in town to buy the uniforms. I gather most parents have already gotten stuff mail-ordered weeks ago. Perhaps we’ll have to make a trip down to LA to go to the uniform store this weekend. Meantime, we shlepped down to the mall tonight for a white polo shirt and khakis so that Jake wouldn’t look too much out of place tomorrow. (Tomorrow’s the orientation, Friday is the first day of school.)
Next to the best thing about creaming the entrance exam: no interview! We don’t have to worry about the dreaded “What is the role of faith in your life?” question! We won’t have to fret about the impression Jake would make while explaining lynchings in Mafiascum! (As in the response to the question, “What do you do for fun?”)
But the best thing about going to the Catholic school: we can tell the public school system to blow it out their Board of Education!
D.
crazy tired
My trainer is vicious.
This one thing she made me do tonight? She had me do pushups on the stability ball (that’s that huge ball, looks like an elementary school kickball on ‘roids), such that my thighs are supported on the ball. Fair enough, but while I’m doing ’em, she’s rocking the ball, moving it back and forth, side to side beneath me — all to improve balance. The pushups are the easy part.
Ever hear of a Bosu? Sort of a half-dome thing. You can stand on it with the flat side up or down, hence the acronym, Both Sides Utilized. Flat side up is the more difficult of the two.
Try touching your toes while standing on the Bosu flat side up. Try reaching down with a weighted bar in your hands, or with one of those heavy medicine balls.
I never would have thought training required so much balance. She’s a great believer in core strength, my trainer. We’ve hardly done any weights at all.
I touched my toes today! (You know, the hard way, by bending over and doing it.) So the question now becomes: what am I training for?
One of these days I should give movie reviews: movies that are great to watch while doing aerobics.
For example,
Rocky with Sylvester Stallone. Five Burly Biceps. I hate Stallone as much as the next guy, but hot DAMN this is a good movie to work out to. I think I stayed on that damned elliptical trainer more than 90 minutes, just to find out how the movie would end.
You mean I have to watch the sequel now?
Or,
Something’s Gotta Give with Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, and Keanu Reeves. One puny biceps. The plot, per IMDB: “A swinger on the cusp of being a senior citizen with a taste for young women falls in love with an accomplished woman closer to his age.” I’m sorry, but Jack? You ain’t on the cusp of senior citizenry. You a full citizen, pal.
Or maybe they were referring to Keanu?
Anyway, I’m not sure what’s more of a turn-off: the idea of metrosexual Keanu consorting with on-the-cusp Keaton, or the idea of Jack Nicholson consorting with anyone. This movie sucked the life right out of me.
Yeah, I could go on . . .
D.
You can spend all you like on toys . . .
But sometimes the old favorites reign supreme.
You know. Like paper bags.
D.
Back to school . . . but which one?
If things go as we expect/hope them to go in the next week, our little heathen son may soon be a freshman at the local Catholic preparatory school.
Here’s how it played out. The “best high school in town” continues to be a pain in the ass. As you know from the previous post, they now want Jake to take another Algebra II test (excuse me — they’ll allow him to take another test. They’re doing us the big favor) but now he has to score a 90 to pass on to Math Analysis/Trig. We were given one of their textbooks, but yesterday, I asked for a second one — that way, Karen can prep for the next day’s work while Jake is doing today’s work.
They refused. Only one book per student, we were told. “We’re giving out textbooks next week, so we can’t spare another.”
I don’t believe that for a second. Either they’re being sticklers for rules (there is, indeed, a district policy of “one student, one book”) or they’re being dicks. And if it’s the former explanation, they’re still being dicks.
We’re tired of their attitude. They regard themselves as the best school in town, and their comments suggest we should feel privileged that our son can go to their school. We, of course, being parents of an only child, and a bright one at that, tend to take the opposite view. They should be bending over backwards to satisfy Jake’s needs.
I called the District’s office and spoke to a woman who confirmed my worst fears. The schools are allowed free rein in determining student placement. We can fight it out at the District level, but guess what, there are other schools in town.
We thought it best to skip the local Full Quiver Academy, and only briefly considered another Dominionist school. Sorry, but if our kid’s gonna go to a nonsecular school, it had better be one that’s cool with Charles Darwin and an Earth that’s older than 6,000 years.
I called the Catholic high school, talked to someone in administration, and felt very good about things afterward. I don’t know how much flack they’ll give us if we insist on our son taking Math Analysis/Trig, but hey, the snooty public high school is always another option. Anyway, Jake will have to take an entrance exam this Tuesday, and he’ll have an interview (with us present) some time this upcoming week. Friday is the first day of school.
If he becomes a student there, he’ll have to wear the school uniform.
Should be interesting. I keep worrying how Jake should respond if asked, “What is the role of faith in your life?” I wonder if, “I consider that an intensely personal part of my life, one I would rather not talk about with strangers” would wash?
In other news: my weight is down to 173.5, about 8 lbs down from my post-Nut Creek weight. Woot! Funny what diet and exercise will do.
D.
Of asspulls and diaboli
So the local high school is making our son jump through hoops in order to be placed in junior level math (math analysis – trigonometry) as a freshman. Score 86 or better on this test, they tell him. Then it’s score 80 or better on this test. Sorry, you got a 78, which is close but no cigar. But we’ll let you re-take the test . . . but now you have to score a 90 or better!
From the website TV Tropes, this “score 90 or better” business is known as an asspull:
An Ass Pull is a moment when the writers pull something out of thin air in a less-than-graceful narrative development, violating the Law Of Conservation Of Detail by dropping a plot-critical detail in the middle, or near the end of their narrative without Foreshadowing or dropping a Chekhov’s Gun earlier on. [Hyperlinked text back at the TV Tropes website.]
And what the Principal pulled with his “score 90 or better” bit was a special type of asspull, the feared Diabolus Ex Machina:
Enter: Diabolus Ex Machina, the Evil Twin of Deus Ex Machina — a last-second twist designed to ensure, if not a Downer Ending, then certainly an extension in the villain’s favor. Drop a bridge on the hero’s girlfriend, Shoot The Shaggy Dog, and whip up a good pot of Deus Angst Machina with a side-order of Outer Limits- or Twilight Zone Twist. Do whatever it takes, as long as you make absolutely sure that everyone goes home depressed. [Once again, hyperlinked text back at the TV Tropes website.]
Needless to say, things are gloomy at Chez Walnut. Oh, my friends, it’s a crapsack world.
D.
What do women want . . .
in their guy-on-guy gay romance novels? (Because you know guys aren’t the market for this stuff.) No, really: the women who crave this stuff, what do they want to read? Hot man-on-man action followed by tender cuddling? Or two guys hitting the mall together for a romantic day of shopping?
Is it boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy? Must one boy be young and beautiful, the other worldly and experienced? Should all members be thick and empurpled?
Do you have to have an HEA?
Discuss.
While you’re thinking about this, have a kitty.
D.
It’s over
I think I might have mentioned that Jake will be getting back into the public school system this year. He’ll be a Freshman. A Freshman taking Math Analysis/Trig (which, here, is a Junior year course), if we have any say in it. A few weeks ago, we learned that they would require him to test out of Geometry and Algebra II, so he’s been cramming away, weekends too. This kid hasn’t take a summer vacation for the last three summers and it’s not something that was ever an issue for us. I think it really bothered him, how much math he would forget between the end of one school year and the beginning of another. So we decided to press on through.
As a result, he’s way ahead of the game. You’d think the school would be satisfied reviewing his homework (we’ve saved EVERYthing) but no, they like their tests. He took the Algebra II test on Friday, the Geometry test today. We still don’t know how he did, but he doesn’t feel bad about either test.
Anyway, I’m not sweating how he’s going to do in Math Analysis/Trig. I’m sweating P.E.
P.E.
Team sports.
Showers.
Well, a guy can get used to showering with a bunch of other guys, but team sports? Truly traumatic. I told him he should just start getting used to hearing, “Hoffman, you SUCK!”
D.
Various and sundry arthropods
Scientists are closing in on the mass production of spider silk.
Spider silk is nature’s miracle fiber: three times stronger than Kevlar, ounce per ounce stronger than steel, able to stretch up to one-half its normal length, and packaged as a minuscule filament 80 times thinner than a human hair. It’s even been said that a strand of spider silk the width of a pencil could stop a Boeing 747 in flight.
Spiders have great eyesight in the UV frequencies, and exploit it to create dazzling neon dances — for sex, of course.
Spiders are bad-ass predators, but centipedes are, um, bad-asser:
Speaking of arthropod sex, horseshoe crabs on the shores of Delaware Bay are having an orgy. It’s like The Dating Game — only all the boys win!
Shrimp sterilizes all life in a salt water aquarium? I can believe it. We used to own a freshwater shrimp who accomplished the same feat.
The Eurypterids may have gone extinct over two hundred million years ago, but a close relative of these giant scorpions may have survived to the present day — underwater.
I’ll close with a picture of a guy getting nipple noogies from a coconut crab.
A little to the left . . . aaaah, that's it.
D.
Saturday Science
Over at Daily Kos, Darksyde’s This Week in Science is even better than usual.
Highlights:
* Discover Magazine covers science’s greatest fails
* As many of you know, Texas Board of Education sets the pace for the nation’s public school textbooks. In the past, they’ve been dominated by Dominionists (hey, it’s what they do) who believe in their own interpretations of science and history. Guess what, folks: these ultra religious whack jobs are at it again.
* For counterpoint to that last story, here’s some awesomely great news: Lonesome George got laid!
D.
Coming soon to a hotel near you
So I had this idea last night to write something truly preposterous and call it The Holy Tome. I could lead with a creation myth or two, create a God whose arbitrariness and cruelty rivals any of the extant deities, perhaps tell the story of a Chosen People whose criminal pettiness makes the rest of us seem noble, throw in whole chapters of “begats” . . .
Out of curiosity, I’ve been searching the Barnes and Noble website for other Bibles. Who knows, maybe someone’s been there and done that already. That’s when I found this gem:
The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged): love the title. I admit to a plummeting disappointment when I realized this was a humor CD and not the screw-up of some dumbass publisher — somehow, “The Complete Word of God (Abridged)” is a much funnier joke when it’s accidental rather than intentional.
Anyway, I then started wondering what other Bibles I could find. Out of 48,315 items (!), surely there would be more gems. In the first few pages, I found Bibles of various size and vocabulary level; I found Green Bibles and TruTone Bibles, children’s Bibles and New American Bibles. Only when I got up into the thirties did I find a bit of irreverence, such as The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, which I first heard about on NPR and still strikes me as a potentially fun read. Another one with promise: Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible:
Along the way, he grapples with the most profound theological questions: How many commandments do we actually need? Does God prefer obedience or good deeds? And the most unexpected ones: Why are so many women in the Bible prostitutes? Why does God love bald men so much? Is Samson really that stupid?
Yes, Samson is really that stupid.
I hope they paid James Earl Jones well for James Earl Jones Reads The Bible. Compact Disc – 14 CDs, 19 hours. Is the New Testament covered, too? Because I would really, really love to hear Darth Vader say, “Jesus, I am your Father.”
You wouldn’t expect something entitled Bible Illuminated, The Book New Testament to be about vampires, but dig the cover:
Okay, I’m well into the 200s and finally finding a bible for vegetable growers, another for marijuana growers, and yet another for bodybuilders (penned by Arnold Schwarzenegger, no less). I’d like to know more about Grindhouse Experience Presents: Spaghetti Bible, but sadly, there’s no description.
Ugh. I’m getting tired. I’m up to #330 (The Barbecue Bible) and HONESTLY I don’t think I’m ever going to find The Orgasm Bible.
This is enough religion for one evening.
D.