Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Jennifer Garner: Some of That, Hold the Chips

As I passed through the den on my way to do battle with the ominous Dark Load of Sith in the laundry room, I passed my beautiful wife stretched out upon the sofa, whereupon she was soaking up some primetime television. "Doesn't she have a great body?" she asked. By she, she meant Jennifer Garner, and by she, I mean my esteemed spouse, or at least we did until the pronouns began straying from their antecedents.

I cast the slightest glance at the television set, and she (Jennifer Garner she, star of television's Alias, not Heather she) was slinking, sashaying, and I think I caught a glimpse of some provocative undulation across a room in an expensive strapless dress.

As a student of some famous tacticians, from Sun Tzu to Machiavelli, I immediately hearkened back to the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar of the Calamari, who once said, "It's a trap!" For although we men, and by "we men" I mean some men who are not happily married like we are, honey, we men sometimes have been known to appraise the aesthetic value of women and occasionally might even think about sitting on rocks and listening to birds singing madrigals with one (and dismiss it out of hand, of course), it's always bad to be called on it, immediately, and out of any context we can use as a defense in future discussions (not arguments, of course). I might even have frozen for a second or two, speechless, while Jennifer Garner wiggled across the screen into some clandestine meeting with either a really good guy or a really bad guy.

Unfortunately, I was not so much leering as running an algorithm to sort appropriate responses. "She's okay," I offered, unsure what question my wife had really asked. Of course, within every object-oriented male, when running the examineChick(object chick) method (sorry, but within Existentialist object-oriented males, all parameters are of type object), compares a woman to a static set of attributes, and the method returns a static value. For Jennifer Garner, I got back a SOME_OF_THAT response. (Contrast with my wife, who returns ALL_OF_THAT+BAG_OF_CHIPS+MEDIUM_DRINK+SMALL_SUNDAE.) Perhaps it's the coastal body type, perhaps it's the way the eyes crinkle, but some attributes within Jennifer Garner did not meet the specification. Sorry, Garner, now stop calling and hanging up without leaving a message.

"Look at those shoulders," she (Heather she, not Jennifer Garner she) said. Of course, she (Heather she, not Jennifer Garner she) was comparing her (Heather her, not Jennifer Garner her) shoulders to those in the white strapless dress. Both women have subtly muscular, but distinctly feminine, shoulders. All Heather wanted was for me to appraise Jennifer Garner's shoulders.

Unfortunately, as I indicated, guys don't throw out a Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) document to indicate the nature of the methods available; the methods are by nature private. If only she had known she could ask if I like Jennifer Garner's shoulders, I could have answered more quickly, without worrying about the ramifications or consquences or the dreaded marriage crash.

"They're okay," I repeated since it didn't seem to get me into any trouble the last time. And before I could get into trouble, I fled into the comfortable confines of the laundry room.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:40 PM