In any case, this is his Ode (sung to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody):

Is this the bright light?
Is this just allergies?
Caught in the sunlight,
Can’t escape sternu-ta-a-tion.

Open your eyes,
Look up to the skies and sneeze
I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I’m sniffle come, snortle go,
Little high, little low,
Anyway the pollen blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me…

Two days later, we were taking the girls to their art class and going to get groceries. Gameboy, as usual, wanted to stay home and play video games. We figured, he’d just been fed, he’d be in front of the computer or the tv for less than 2 hrs. What could happen?

We found out when we were in the dairy section and a call came from Gramma (who lives next door). He had run from our house barefoot and sans coat. Actually he had been wearing socks, but he took them off so that they wouldn’t get dirty. He just wasn’t going back into the house for shoes or coat because there was a bird in there. Note that we have no pets. Looking at each other in a bemused fashion and giggling occasionally as we checked out and headed home. What could happen, indeed.

Wild speculation as we drove home. A bird that somehow got down the chimney? A goose taking vengeance for disturbing its migration?

We searched the house when we got there. I deliberately tapped doors and walls as I wandered. No bird that we could find. We went and retrieved the boy and he told us about playing games when he looked up and there was a bird sitting on the Rock Band drums. Initially he thought that it was some art project of his sisters, a decoration applied to the drums, so he went back to playing, but then it started hopping around… and he was out of there.

He was telling the story and pointing at the drums when I heard a thunk from the kitchen. I wandered in and there it was looking longingly out the back window. I was getting my camera phone set up when it dove viciously for my head. 8-) Yes, it was probably a sparrow, but… So we opened the front door and herded it from room to room until it found the open door. Sadly, the only picture I got is the following:

Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
The world will rise and move;
Watch it return to rest.
All that flourishes
Will return to their roots.

Returning is peaceful;
It is the flow of nature,
Eternal decay and renewal.
Acceptance brings enlightenment,
Denial brings misery.

Who accepts the way has tolerance;
Who has tolerance has sympathy;
Who has sympathy has generosity;
Who has generosity follows the Dao;
Followers of the Dao
have equilibrium and resilience,
and when death comes, are ready.

— Chapter 16, Dao De Jing

Hopefully it will be useful for someone else…

From the kids’ side, I don’t know. I have yet to hear them (currently 12, 10, 8) curse at all. Even the Mythbusters say “crap”, “hell” is fairly freely used in G rated movies, non-Brits don’t think “bloody” is anything to worry about, etc. When speaking to the kids in academic terms, they say that they know the “‘s’ word” or the “‘f’ word” (not the ‘f’ word I was thinking of though! 8). But, at least within range of my hearing, my kids don’t curse. So, still no results from the learn-by-example side of things.

Having had this success with language substitution, I’ve been considering what other changes I might want to make. Now, having grown up in English-speaking Canada, oaths by the Christian God are nigh unavoidable. Being agnostic, though, that seems inappropriate.

Which oaths do I use, and what would be good substitutes?

Off the top of my head:

• God/Lord knows…
• There but for the grace of God…

Simplest for my own philosophical/political purposes would be to select a female deity, for instance Kuan Yin or Athena, and do a direct substitution. Not being an actual follower of any of them, that doesn’t quite seem right either… but if, say, one spread them out “by Bast and Kali” maybe…? I still haven’t come up with a satisfactory solution, but I dunno, maybe Cthulhu? 8)

In reading to the kids I have what could be called a hypocritical policy. Books that I would be perfectly content for them to read to themselves I will edit for content and language on the fly. My reasoning is this: I’ve read books pretty much completely unsupervised my entire life. The first book I remember reading (this was in grade 1) was Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology”. One of my uncle’s university texts left lying around. I read through the SF/F sections in my school and the public library until at the age of 10 I discovered the joy of owning books. Starting with Blish’s Star Trek novelizations and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern I’ve been merrily buying books ever since. The thing is when you’re a child and reading a book on your own, the material that you’re not quite ready to process just sort of goes over your head. You skim it and move on to the more interesting stuff. I remember more clearly than the events of yesterday, reading Phyllis Eisenstein’s “Sorcerer’s Son” in the lobby of some fitness centre waiting for my mom and asking the receptionist “What does ‘voluptuous’ mean?”. Wisely, and in a fortuitous bit of preparedness, she handed me a dictionary. I looked it up, thanked her and moved quickly on. Since my reading style includes annotations of the “don’t go into the basement!” variety as well as invitations to discussion… an inflected reading of PG material is just different than if a child were to read it to herself. Offered a choice of “The Witches of Karres”, “Another Fine Myth”, and “Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat”; Tiger picked AFM. That went over pretty much as I expected, generally fun. The only thing I felt needed editing out were overly sexual description of Tananda plus offputting referrals to trollops and sluts (I also didn’t make any commentary about Perverts vs Pervects and was not asked). Probably less than 4 sentences modified in total. As an added bonus, one day when the kids were getting on each others nerves and mine, I was able to point Tiger at Airship Entertainment’s webcast of AFM (also available in a dead tree version Myth Adventures Collection: Another Fine Myth).

Reminiscing about this book, I was just remembering that AFM was my gateway recommendation book for friends who liked science fiction but not fantasy. Always start with something funny. 8)

Thumbs up from the kid, but she didn’t want to dive into the… 20-ish direct sequels. Plenty of time for that. Next up, “The Witches of Karres”.

Books mentioned in this post:

* The Wikipedia entry on GoodLife Fitness says that this fitness centre has been around a long time starting in Ontario, so I’d guess that they’ve only fairly recently started up in BC.

It’s not that I object to the process, mind you. Helping shops give me exactly what I want, ‘tis a good thing. It’s the endless cards that’s the problem. It’s the phone book sized stack of cards they want us to lug around that inspires thoughts of destruction and wailing laments. So, what if I only had to carry around one card? How would that work?

What’s I’m thinking is this: a central service issues a number upon request. Ideally, each subscribing business would be able to print up this card (magstrip? bar code? QR code? something else, not RFID, please), or better yet key tags.

Now, I don’t want to create some megalithic database that knows what size my hat is, my favourite cereal brand, and how often I visit The Turks and Caicos. The central service should serve only to issue uniquely identifying numbers and remember only enough about me to reissue a card if I’ve somehow lost mine. The information gathering and storage would lie with the individual retailers.

Some thought might be necessary to prevent the creation of big brother, or we can ask them to sign an agreement that they’ll not share our information with anyone else, etc, etc and trust them…

We ended up keeping our respective names and I go by Ms. versus Mrs. This works well when considering me as an individual and even us as a couple. When kids enter the picture though it gets way less straightforward.

First off is the naming of the children. Hyphenate them even though neither of us are hyphenated? As you can see from above, I’m not fond of the hyphenation solution and neither is my sweetie. So, alternate the kids? First one gets my name the next one gets his or girls get mine and the boys get his or… Yeah, we weren’t into that idea either. So I came up with the compromise of Chinese names with my surname and English names with his, Chinese names as middle names. This works best from an equitability standpoint if, when stating your complete name, you use the entire name versus just first and last which is what it usually degenerates into. Not that I always want them to use the 7 (or 6) syllable versions of their names but when stating their name for posterity like when we donate books to the school it’d be nice to go with whole thing.

So that’s the formal naming situation. What else? There’s occasional surname confusion when meeting with teacher types but they’re used to that with common law marriages and such.

The big one that bugs me is what should my kids’ friends call me? I’m old fashioned in this regard and don’t want them calling me “Carol”, but “Mrs. James”, “Mrs. Wang”, or “Ms. Wang”… none of them seem right. Ma’am’s not right either (I’ve almost gotten used to it from service personnel). I called my mom’s close friends “āyí” (auntie, 阿姨) or Mrs. … as appropriate depending on the language being spoken, but none of those really work for me. The part that pleases me the most is when they say “[name of appropriate offspring]’s mom” but that’s hardly something you can direct them to do, sigh. So, in these instances I exist in a limbo where I don’t tell the kids “call me…” and, now that I think of it, none have ever asked. I would like to have an answer prepared that I was comfortable with, but until inspiration strikes and a good answer comes to me…

LA Without a Map is a rom-com from early in Tennant’s career. It is entirely unremarkable (except for the “he’s so young!” factor) and unnecessary except for fan vid fodder. He owns a funeral home in the apparently small town of Bradford (Wikipedia would seem to indicate that it’s not that small…) that he inherited and is directing a funeral when he sees her from afar. She is an American tourist who is there by chance. He is infatuated at first sight, and she is flirting with the cute guy she will never see again.

Nothing special happens and she goes home. He dreams of being a writer and is frustrated with his inherited obligations and parochial existence. He is a jerk to his long time but boring girlfriend and runs away to LA spurred on by the imagined urgings of a Johnny Depp movie poster.

Armed only with a discarded book of matches he finds the waitress-actress who is flattered by his rash grand gesture and cautiously rewards his psycho-stalker behaviour.

He gracelessly pursues and woos his blonde Hollywood goddess until in a moment of weakness she marries him. We later discover that she was aware that he had no clue who she actually was and that he was in love with a stereotype and a dream but she married him anyways in a rather premature spinster avoidance move.

Totally out of his element and out of his depth, he’s flummoxed by the politics and procedures of her profession. Jealous and flailing he makes one disastrous move after another until she throws him out and eventually they have a confrontation where she ruthlessly and insightfully exposes the actual truth of their relationship. Crushed and in trouble with the law, he goes back England and his funeral home to resume his previous life.

To provide the requisite happy ending, she decides that Hollywood insanity is to blame for their troubles and she moves to the UK to be with him “they make movies here, too, don’t they?” Additionally, his horribly titled novel sells and everything is tied up with a pretty bow.