Dinnertable History With The Boys

"So what would a hundred be scared of? A trillion!" And that would be Younger Son, expounding over his chicken and sweet corn soup and green salad. He was busily explaining what he thought it might take to frighten a hundred... errr... somethings. I figured it was time to weigh in.

"Depends on the hundred," I said. "I mean -- what if they were a hundred Spartans?"

Well, I got puzzled looks from both boys, so I launched into a thumbnail version of Thermopylae: three hundred Spartans (backed up by a lazy few thousand Athenians, admittedly) parking their arses in a narrow pass, holding off a hundred thousand or so Persians.

"So did they win?" said Elder Son. As if that was the point, given that we were discussing "scared".

"Depends on what you mean by 'win'," I told him. And I explained that even though the Spartans were slaughtered, it took the Persians several days to manage it, and they took drastic losses, and in the meantime, the Athenians evacuated their city, and set up for the decisive sea battle at Salamis. "So the Spartans all got killed, but they held the pass long enough to make sure the Persians couldn't achieve their victory."

There's a pause as both boys digest this. And then Younger Son lifts his chin, and nods gravely. "So -- basically, the Germans won," he says, with the absolute confidence of an oracle.

Once I picked myself up off the floor and managed to get my breathing back under control, I tried to do the rational thing. I explained that there weren't any Germans as such for two thousand-odd years afterwards. And, questioned by Elder Son, I explain a bit about the Persian Empire, and Xerxes, and imperial ambitions, and the first invasion of the Greek states by the Persians.... and somewhere in the middle, Elder Son wants to know about the Big Wooden Horse.

Right.

I change tracks, and deliver a thumbnail sketch of Homer's account of the ten year siege, and then outline Oddyseus' Cunning Plan. And I mention that they've found the remains of a big, walled city in the place where Troy was supposed to be, and that it was burned at roughly the right time (and other times!), so perhaps there was something to Homer's account after all.

"Did they find the remains of a Big Wooden Horse?" asked Natalie... of all people.

"Not after three thousand years and all that arson," I said.

"Why didn't they just rebuild the horse?" asked Younger Son.

I thought about it. "Who? And why would they rebuild it?"

Immediately, an all-too-familiar expression of fiendish glee swept over his face. I knew I shouldn't have asked. "Because it was big!" he said, and after that, dinner-table history was dead.

That's the Younger Son all over. Why would you rebuild the famed Wooden Horse? Because it was big.

Maybe he's right. Maybe the Germans did win after all, and I just didn't notice. That would probably explain a lot.

Two Bloglinks In A Row? Yeah... But You Really Need To See This.

A talking piano. No, really. It's a piano. It can only make the range of noises a piano makes. Except that some SuperNerd has done a frequency analysis on the voice of a child, and then rigged a mechanical device to play the keys of the piano so it returns those proper frequencies.

The freakin' piano talks. And it is deeply, deeply bloody unnerving.

Is It Still Schadenfreude If The Idiot Deserved It?

You want a decent chuckle? Check out this link. Yeah, sure, it hooks to "The Sun" in England, which is almost as reliable as a Swiss Cheese condom... but the article in question includes some very telling, very entertaining CCTV footage.

Seems a couple of lads went out on a tear in Swansea. They got pissed, and started harassing passers-by. Eventually, they ran across a pair of very dodgy-looking transvestites, and decided that the "girls" would make good targets.

Bad move. The "transvestites" were professional cage fighters, out for a bucks' night.

Heh.

Sweeeeeet.

Slogging Along

No, I don't have much to report. Frankly, I'm not even up to date with the news. It feels like I'm wading through knee-deep mud -- something I did for fun as a kid, as I recall.

Everybody in the house saving yours truly has been sick of late. Even the Iron Immune System himself, Elder Son. Admittedly, for him it was two days of sore throat and one day of general tiredness and cough... whereas it knocked his brother and sister down for a week apiece. And of course, his mother has now been a sack of fertilizer for a couple days.

I hate times like that. I'd almost rather be sick myself.

Last night, as I sat up trying to work, the coughing started from Younger Son. Okay, he's not sick any more, but we suspect him of asthma. Once he gets any kind of cough, it lingers like... no, I'm in a bad mood. The simile I was considering would only get me smacked. So I'll just say this: Younger Son gets a cough, it sticks around like something deeply unwanted that simply refuses to go away.

Right. I got up, got my torch, and started the medications. A puff of this. A puff of that. Half an hour later - no effect. So it's up again, and this time he gets a dose of cough suppressant.

About the time the cough suppressant starts to work on Younger Son, the Mau-Mau starts to cry in her bedroom. Fucking great. I get up, and I start the interrogation process. The Mau-Mau is only four, and she sleeps like a brick would, if brick's weren't such goddam tetchy and irritable things. Even when she's crying, she's still asleep. But she can cry loudly, and if I don't do something she'll wake up Natalie, who is exhausted after delivering babies over the weekend and coming down with this stupid fucking cold.

After a while, the Mau-Mau reveals that she has 'aches'. Yeah, fine. Ever heard of 'growing pains'? Well, the research is long since in: they're real. I'm not interested in arguing with anyone on it, because I grew up with 'em myself, and I recall the sleepless nights. Elder Son used to get 'em something fierce, and now, apparently, the Mau-Mau is in the same boat.

I'm too tired to fuck around with placebos. She gets a dose of painkillers.

About the time the drugs start to work on the Mau-Mau, the fucking dog starts barking. Why? He never barks at night! What's up his goddam arse?

So I grab the torch and head out the back door. Oh... it's started to rain. And the goddam kids have left the poor bastard chained to the back deck for the last four hours. Better let him off the hook.

Let's see: that's Younger Son, the Mau-Mau, and the dog. Elder Son? Quiet. Natalie? Ahhh, yes.... better fetch the cough meds upstairs for her.

Plod, plod, plod.

This morning, Natalie wasn't up to much so the breakfast bullshit fell to me. Okay, fine. But of course, I'll be back down the hill to Scottsdale before eleven to collect Elder Son... we've got a day of home learning to do. And meanwhile, the Mau-Mau is stretched out on the couch, coughing wetly.

Plod, plod, plod.

Canadians: So Much Weirder Than We Give Them Credit

In Australia, it would be too embarrassing to mention -- and almost certainly illegal.

...but in Canada, they advertise it on the side of bus stops. O, Canada!

Boring Stuff

Yeah, well, I'm up to my eyebrows. Got an Iaido grading coming up, which calls for regular practice and plenty of it. And the ju-jitsu students are going to grade shortly, so I'm working hard with them, too.

Meanwhile, the primary school has asked me to do a few sessions of an introductory martial arts course for the kids there. I never say no to the local primary school if I can help it, so that's going on.

At the same time, the end-of-winter sniffles have arrived, and all three kids of gone down like tin ducks in sideshow alley. Even Elder Son, he of the titanium-plated immune system, is currently lying on the couch reading Calvin and Hobbes, and sniffling.

In the same vein, we hit the end-of-month patch with the Satellite "broadband" deal, and ran out of bandwidth. As usual. It's clicked over today, which is nice - but for some reason, the uplink seems to be a bit sketchy. It was running okay, and then it just randomly throttled back, and I started getting "site not found" bullshit warnings. Possibly Natalie's machine is busy downloading some goddam epic Microsoft update, or something like that. I dunno. I just know it makes working via the 'Net a painful process.

And -- surprise, surprise! -- the National Broadband Network probably won't fucking help. K-Rudd is proving ever more incompetent. He doesn't even know how to deliver a bribe properly. The two areas getting NBN first are North-West Tassie, and North-East Tassie, where I live. Not too coincidentally, both are quite marginal seats.

So, here comes the payoff for our electoral support, right?

Wrong. So far, it looks as though the so-called NBN "roll-out" is going to be restricted to places like Scottsdale, which have ALREADY F--KING GOT ADSL. So if you live, like, ten km outside Scottsdale, there will be no goddam change. Business as usual: shitty, expensive, unreliable, high-maintenance satellite, or even-more-expensive Next-G which doesn't work because of the poor coverage and the hilly terrain. Or dial-up. Yeah, wow... that's a good one, eh?

Thank you, Mr Rudd. Why don't you drop by sometime? If you're going to blow smoke up my arse, you might as well do it in person, eh?

All right. I've gotta get back to it. I've got two off-colour kids lying around the place, a monster pile of laundry to do, a Spanish lesson to put together for the afternoon, a flyer to write and print for the afternoon's martial arts class, and I still haven't written any goddam fiction since Monday.

This sucks.

Moments Of Beauty