We know them all so well, we just use numbers...

A man goes into a bar, and while he's sipping his beer he hears someone yell out, "44!"

Half the patrons burst into laughter.

After a while he hears someone else yell out, "72!" This time there's even more laughter.

So he waves the bartender over and asks, "What's going on with the numbers?"

"Well," says the bartender, "this place has been around for a long time, and most of the people here are regulars. They love to tell jokes, but after this many years we know them all by heart. So we gave each joke a number, to save time. Now, instead of telling the whole joke, you just call out a number and everybody knows what joke you're making."

"Oh," says the man, "can I try?"

"Sure, go ahead."

So, he yells out "102!" and the place is dead quiet save for a few groans. Confused, he looks at the bartender, who's just shaking his head. "Okay," he asks, "Now what happened?"

"Well," says the bartender, "some people just can't tell a joke."

That came to mind in the buildup to this conversation, while we were all waiting to find out what Steve from the UK was going to come out with. If you're an evangelist or a would-be evangelist, this is precisely the problem with trying to talk to former Christians: former Christians already know, and former Christians disagree.

It really shouldn't be a surprise. I mean, as former Christians, we all had plenty of opportunity to hear those arguments; we may even have used them ourselves. And, of course, if we still found them convincing... well, we'd still be Christians, wouldn't we?

Illness Dreams

So, yeah: I was sick last night. Maybe still today, too -- at least, it feels a bit like I got run over by a truck, and I am not tracking well at all. Apparently it's that time of year again.

Interesting dreams, though. I was in a place, a ruin -- maybe a derelict and partly-collapse shopping mall, since there were ledges or balconies around the outside and a shallow pool in the center that might once have been an ice rink. And I was trying to venture down into it, in search of something: answers, I think. About what had happened to me, maybe. Because there were some horrible things guarding the lower ledges. They were big, misshapen, and terribly strong... but I had some sort of shadow-whip-tentacle thing, and when I dropped from the crumbled edge of one ledge to the next balcony down, I cut right through two of them with it. I remember it being easy to call up, easy to use, and... hard to put away. But I managed, and I went past the corpse-chunks, and further down and around until I was able to sneak up to a door. Neither of the guards had time to sound an alarm.

Someone had come out of the door -- a woman in a cowl, not obviously like the others, but pale and vaguely unhealthy looking -- which was why it was open. She didn't see me slip inside and join the small group of huddled figures, and I kept the shadow-whip-tentacle-thing, um, restrained? potential? unmanifest? ...so as not to draw attention. I remember that requiring some concentration.

I think the next step would have been to go deeper in -- we were in kind of a small anteroom or access way, with the far end blocked by a door. But, perhaps unfortunately, I woke up at that point. Back in the real world, it was just a little after midnight.

It was kind of a cool dream, both on its own merits and because it ties in directly with my current writing project. I'm not making any progress on that writing project, mind you, but apparently some part of my brain is at least thinking about it.

Music for the Beginning of School...

It's the End of the World:

(Well, it is!)

Marked, Part II: The Price Of Buying

Andrus remained still and didn't resist as the rough-calloused hand gripped his wrist. Another hand drew back the sleeve of his robe, revealing the mark on his hand. Old Melissa had already extended her arm, showing the same mark -- the glyph that showed they were loyal citizens and worshipers of the Great Beast that had come from the sea. The guards bore their marks on their foreheads, but then the guards were expected to display a devotion well beyond that of humble citizens.

"Citizen," said the trade inspector, standing behind the guard and looking down at the marks.

"Trade inspector," acknowledged Andrus. "Everything is in order, I hope."

"It seems so," said the trade inspector. He wore a blank leather mask that showed only his eyes, as all the inspectors did, but his voice was young and male, and his build was tall and sturdy beneath his robes. "You might give some thought to shortening your sleeves."

"I'll speak with my wife about it, honored." Andrus kept his face blank and his voice level. As the guard released his arm, he extended it and dropped the silver coin into old Melissa's palm.

She poured the sage and saffron into a small cloth bag, then tied it closed and handed it back to Andrus. "A pleasure selling to you," she said.

"A pleasure buying from you," he returned automatically.

The trade inspector had moved on, his guards moving in a miniature swarm with him at the center. Andrus stood, looked after them for a moment, and then offered old Melissa a smile. "Until the coming," he said quietly.

"Let it be soon," she answered, and returned to tucking her meager wares back into a woven basket. "Be safe."

"And you as well." Andrus glanced at Avilius, but the boy's expression had gone blank with the arrival of the trade inspector. He touched the boy's shoulder, tugging it in the direction of old Melissa, and Avilius managed a smile. "It was good to see you."

"Come and see me again," she answered him. "Such handsome company is its own reward, even if you need no trade."

Becoming A Parent Is The End Of The World

I've been seeing articles about this study floating around on Facebook recently: It turns out parenthood is worse than divorce, unemployment — even the death of a partner.

I LOVE being a parent, but I still agree with this. Becoming a parent wasn't an existential crisis of sad, and it was scary only in places, but it was draining ways that I find somewhat difficult to describe. Like, not just tired-all-the-time draining, though there was a fair amount of that; it's also your-time-is-never-your-own draining, and your-schedule-is-completely-at-the-mercy-of-someone-too-young-to-negotiate-with draining.

And there are all sorts of secondary effects that you either don't expect, or expect intellectually and then are surprised by how hard they hit you when they actually happen. We couldn't really afford daycare, so even with help from nearby family members my wife wound up dropping back to part time so that she could do most of the taking-care-of-the-kids -- and that added some stress, both in terms of "we have less income" and in terms of "How do I get back to full-time employment and is that even possible anymore?" (She did, but it was a gorram miracle -- a ton of effort that only panned out because of a startling stroke of luck -- and she only managed it this time last year.) Firstborn is now nine, and secondborn is five; and I haven't completed a writing project longer than maybe ten pages in over a decade, and I haven't attended martial arts classes (which I used to do regularly) in about six years.

If you need to have your surroundings clear of clutter for your piece of mind, it's going to be a constant struggle (at least, it has been for us). A lot of projects that would have been no big deal before having children become nearly impossible with kids around. (We had a renovation project in our kitchen that, I kid you not, has been in progress for two years now. We've given up; it's going to have to get fixed some other way. Only, "some other way" means "in a way that costs money", and we're only just now starting to have that again.) We're starting to get to the point where we can semi-reliably keep up with laundry and sorting toys and making sure things are put away again, but it's taken us over five years -- basically until the point where Secondborn is old enough to be ready for Kindergarten -- to get there.

So, no: the results of this study don't surprise me at all.

Straight Outta...

Yes, I've been playing with the Straight Outta Compton meme generator. Forgive me.

To Become A Werewolf

This is a strange little piece of my childhood that I finally managed to relocate.