Little tidbits o' the last few days

DS9 playing on the television, my shoes off, candles sending off sweet fragrance into the air, brothers relatively quiet...at this moment in time, no complaints.

Yesterday (off-day! yay!) I headed over to my aunt for a lunch date that ended up turning into a dinner break. Youngest brother was off from school because it was one of the High Holy Days - Ascension Day. So, like a good Catholic, he never even thought about attending Mass. I decided to bring him with me over to Brooklyn, but didn't reckon on him delaying my departure by an hour and a half. Also didn't reckon on my aunt being hesitant to talk around him. Our usual frank discussion about the members of our family and my current situation was curtailed, but still somewhat interesting. And enlightening. For instance, I had no idea that, on finding out that my mother was six months pregnant with me, my grandmother kicked her out of the house. Which is funny because when my grandmother was 15 when she was pregnant for the first time. And also unmarried. Don't people learn compassion for those in similar situations? I guess not, especially when it comes to your children.

My aunt also started with the in-depth analysis of my sit., which always provokes feelings of relief and a little annoyance in me. Relief because I know that not every member of my family thinks I'm a worthless shit (she was in a startling similar predicament as me when she was around my age - her philosophy? "Different people learn their life course at different times"). Annoyance because she's a little *too* certain she can read all the nuances of every relation and situation. Hells, I don't do that, and I'm a psych major. And because she's likely to belittle (albeit indirectly) actions that I've undertaken that she doesn't agree with. Like Samaritans. But otherwise? it was time pleasantly spent. Or, at least, more pleasant that most.


Oh man! This is the DS9 where they discover Bashir was captured by the Jem'Hadar and there's been a changeling masquerading as him for a while now. And the one where Ziyal dies and Ducat goes stark raving mad. Or is it? I forget. And, wow, look at all those Jem'Hadar ships pour through the wormhole. Holey crap! Oh ho ho boy. Good times. I miss this show.

Watched a movie recently - "Love Actually" - that was fairly worthless...except for one hilarious exchange that I wish I had taken the time to transcribe. It's two frat-boyish characters bickering because one of them his determined to head to the US in order to pick up chicks (btw - the film is set in England. Heh; guy goes "American women love British accents", other guy - "You don't have a British accent!", first guy - "Yes I bloody well do!" - I'm paraphrasing here, of course). So they're sitting in their car (driving on the wrong side of the road while sitting in the wrong seat, but I'm not *even* going to go there) and they get into it (paraphrasing again because, lets face it, my brain's shot):

Guy: "I'm going to Wisconsin [I mean, come on!! - Fredericks] to get lucky!"
Other Guy: "No!"
G: "Yes!"
OG: "Nyet!"
G: "Da!"
OG: "Nein!"
G: "Ja, baby!"

...

Okay, maybe you had to be there. I just like the animated delivery and language thing. I'm a simple person.

Oh yes, I'm wigged the hell out

My two youngest brothers are at that age where puberty has taken full hold. And sex is on the forefront of their minds. How do I know this? because, Lord knows, my brothers don't talk to *me* about that stuff? Web browser address bar. I don't think those kids realize that any page they enter in is *saved*. And...it's wigging the hell out of me. And fucking up my computer (not that I get much time on it, anyway *snort*).

Whatever the hell they're downloading (and then deleting; they're not the sharpest crayons in the box) is clogging the thing that makes my PC go, well, "go". IE has this annoying pop-up maker embedded in it now that goes into affect intermittently, and the pop-ups have no border, so they're impossible to "x" away; you have to refresh the page to make them disappear. Ad-aware has yet to do anything about that fun piece of work, although it has caught oodles and oodles of other nasty bugs in my registry lately.

I mention the out there-ness of the page names I'm finding in the browsers and the constant need to clean out my system to the oldest brother (because he, at least, would have enough common sense to cover his tracks and not download anything) and he goes "Yeah, you should see some of the freaky stuff they look at". And I just gape at him. "Wait...you *see* them doing this and do nothing??" Lots of stammering from his side of the room.

I mean, I'm not going to say what they're doing is wrong. When I was their age I spent a good amount of time sneaking down to my folk's illegal box and watching soft porn when they weren't looking. It's a curiousity thing. As natural as, well, something natural. But the stuff you can find on Skinemax Cinemax and...whatever the hell the name of that other channel was, doesn't compare to the cornucopia of perversion available to them on the web. And so I find myself possibly having to invest in some Nanny webware, because if my folks knew that they were viewing they'd freak out (yeah, the parental units are completely computer naive), *and*, worst of all, I'm going to have to formally sit them down and talk to them about what's out there on the web.

Heh. Most of my annoyance stems from the fact that they're using *my* computer and messing it up royally. I now know why they needed me to pull out my PC in the first place - they fucked theirs up by doing the same thing they're doing now. And the fact that I have to talk to them at all. I think, when I was around their age and we finally had web access, I never really thought about the online porn angle. I think it was the Catholic guilt acting up. That and the fact that we had dial-up at the time, d/ling took forever and a half, and you paid AOL per the hour. The modern generation and the Internet. It's having all sorts of effects on them that could not possibly have been forseen. Makes me want to write another paper on the subject.