Asymptomatic

When we used to travel as kids, the entertainment in the car consisted of counting cows out the window, playing the "I'm going on a trip" memory game, looking at the maps stuffed into the pocket in back of the driver's seat, and as a special treat, those "magic ink" puzzle books. But what we most often did in family car trips was sing songs.

It's a very unusual idea now to think of singing songs in the car, since the advent of in-car DVD players, MP3 players, and the GameBoy, but for little kids who don't have the toys or aren't interested in those things, some interaction with the family via singing in the car can be fun.

This morning, the kids woke me up by playing a CD of kids songs and nursery rhymes far too loud. Some of these songs were songs we used to sing in the car on our long-ish trip from home to the Bay. There were many songs that we sang that were not on their CD, and quite a few nursery rhymes that I didn't know anyone had put a tune to....

Are shops still closing early on Sunday in your area? Most do here. This is due to a set of colonial laws, the Blue Laws, that were meant to restrict certain forms of commercial business on the holy day. But that was back in the days with the Quakers and Puritans, when each colony was essentially the same religion, seeking freedom from persecution in their home country.

With so many people observing so many religions in this country these days, and everyone intermingled, there isn't a good reason to employ these Blue Laws to cause businesses to close early or entirely on Sunday. Not that a retail worker wants to give up that early closing time on the weekend, but it's fairly easy to believe that a business that is open normally on Sunday is going to do more business than one that's not.

In this 200-year climate change to homogenized religious beliefs, we've started to see some change in the way businesses run. I wonder if the same thing can be said of Memorial Day pool openings....

Steve is a primordial dragon-creature risen from the depths of the ocean by nuclear reactor leakage who calls his supper to him by using ESP to make them feel great.

Ken suggested I try out Steve's story, another book by Christopher Moore. This story is a bit more smooth than Fluke. You can still feel the author's familiarity with biology in his writing. I wonder if he has studied in that field. I digress.

There are many characters in the story besides Steve. Theo is the Cove's constable, who is in the pocket of the local sheriff due to his affinity to marijuana. Molly is an ex-post-apocalypse movie star who partly thinks she's Kendra of the Outland. Val is the treating local psychologist, who is having a moral dilemma over her blanket treatment of patients with pharmaceuticals. There's Catfish, a blues man who is on the run from Steve, and a biologist named Gabe (and his intelligent but overlooked dog) who is running to find out why all of his rats have suddenly run away from the water. ...

During the summer when I was 12, my parents decided that it would be a good idea to get me out of their hair while they dug up the back yard to get at the sewer system. So on that week, they sent me on a special trip to Camp Sandy Hill.

Camp Sandy Hill is a Christian camp. They do things that regular camps do, but with a Christian spirit and other Christian activities mixed in. There are regular prayer times, and all of the camp songs are about Jesus or God or the bounty of God or how God smote someone bad or raised up soemone who was good or maybe Noah. You get the idea.

I wouldn't actually be staying at the camp. I would be part of a group of hikers taking backpacks across many miles of the Appalachian Trail. As a former scout, camping wasn't unknown to me, although this would be my first time out in the wilderness with only a backpack for supplies and feet for transportation. more

I see that my highschool is still being draconian with its ideas on free speech. I suppose their policy is to do as they say, but not as they do. For me, there is a deeper story than what is currently taking place with this "Bible Club".

One of the rights of passage at Downingtown High School in the years leading up to my graduation was experiencing spirit week. I'm sure that most schools have these weeks, where for some reason the student body is encouraged to show its pride in the school by participating in various strange school-hour activities, usually culminating in the homecoming parade, dance, bonfire, football game, etc.

Some of the activities included "Blue and Gold Day", where you wear your school colors on your clothes or in body paint. There were also odd ones like "Pajama Day". These days were voted on by student council and approved by the "spirit commissioner" and faculty.

My senior year included an day-long spirit event called "Rent an Underclassman Day". The premise is basically this: You buy a ticket from the student council that has a blank for your name and that of an underclassman. With both names filled out and signed, the ticket is returned to student council, and you become registered. On Rent an Underclassman Day, the underclassman (who has agreed to all of this) can be ordered to perform some services for you, like carrying your books to class (which is a big deal in the quarter-mile long hallways of my high school, where you locker is at one end and your books weigh 80 lbs.) wearing humiliating costumes, all in the name of fun and, of course, school spirit.

In the years when my mom was in school, this day was not called "Rent an Underclassman Day". In fact, only a year or two prior to my graduation, it was still known by the name that my mom called it in her day, "Slave Day".

Sadly for everyone involved, I was an altruistic teenager, and also editor of my school newspaper. more