Of Home Improvement and Fathers

The day after our wedding, my dad fell from a hotel balcony onto his head. He fractured several vertebrae, and is now paralyzed below the chest. Elizabeth and I didn't find out until we got back from our honeymoon. Our families, after much deliberation and prayer, had decided to keep the news from us during our honeymoon, since the danger of him dying had at that time passed, and they didn't want our honeymoon to be cut short or tempered by worry. They took us off of all the church e-mail lists, which were abuzz with prayer requests and updates. We are very thankful for their decision. It was a hard one for them to make, but it was the right one. My dad's injury prevented him from traveling home to California for several months after the accident, and so during that time he and my mother stayed here in Washington. Elizabeth and I were able to see my parents, visiting them in the hospital, and later on the rehab facility as often as we could. Elizabeth and I were thankful to be able to spend so much time with my parents, despite the circumstances that had effected their proximity. My dad taught me everything I know about home improvement growing up. Not only did he show me how to work all the tools in the garage, he also showed me how to use the ones at work, since I worked under him for a few years in college. Our roof was leaking the other day. The water was coming through the ceiling in the living room and dripping all over the coffee table over night. In the morning, I put a bowl under it, and then headed off to work. Thankfully, it didn't rain much that day. That evening, I went up into the crawl space, but I couldn't see any obvious leaks. I called my in-laws, and my father-in-law went up there to have a look. Scott knows a lot more about leaky roofs than I do (we didn't get much moss on our roof in California). He and I went to the hardware store and got some roof patch (tar, basically) and after sweeping the moss and pine needles off of the area above the leak, we applied the patch. The next day while I was at work, he and my mother-in-law came over and swept the rest of the moss off of the whole roof! Without being asked! They're awesome. Today, thanks to Scott lending me some tools, I was able to get a few things done around the house that I've been meaning to do. We have two cats: Bow is a tuxedo cat who's been Elizabeth's, and Zoe, a grayish black kitten is the daughter of Elizabeth's sister Katherine's cat Sam. I installed two cat doors, one so that the cats can get from the kitchen into the garage, and the other so that they can get from the garage outside. This will enable us to put the litter box in the garage. I also installed a doorknob on our bedroom door. Zoe has a habit of clawing at doors, and without a doorknob, we've been having to wedge it shut with a hamper to keep her out (and even sometimes that doesn't work). I have a no-cats-in-the-bedroom policy (it's because I'm mean and I hate them). The third father I wish to mention is someone who is also helping to improve our home: our heavenly Father has given Elizabeth and me a child, due in June, which brings us to the fourth father of this post: me! I know that there will be challenges ahead that I am not prepared for. Thankfully, I have two sets of wise parents, and a heavenly Father who holds me in His hand. He knows how, He is able, and (wonder of wonders) He cares enough about me, his child, to help me grow into the husband and father that He designed me to be.

Harris Double Wedding Video

I've uploaded the wedding video and posted it to the Harris Double Wedding site. Enjoy!

On Profanity

Note: in my discussion of the concepts underlying profanity, I mention things that are profane. If you're a child, or you can't handle that, stop reading. A recent story at Ars Technica about the an appeal in a case of the FCC vs. foul-mouthed celebrities on television sparked a discussion of profanity and censorship, to which I contributed. The "rule" in question is the de facto prohibition on broadcasting the "seven deadly words"on the limited community resource known as the broadcast spectrum. The article critically mentions the solicitations of complaints, not only from those who witnessed the alleged profanity in question in its full context, but those who merely heard about it, and were members of the relevant community concerned about the use of the public resource. Again, here is the article, and my comments are below:

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I can understand (and in part, support) those who complain even though they themselves did not witness the broadcast profanity. If the rule becomes subjective, then the subjectivity of the rule (in stead of the rule itself) will become the new line against which those who produce content and wish to call attention to said content will push. This includes celebrities, who are their own brand, calling attention to themselves for being 'uninhibited' (the kids these days think that's hip). The argument is that allowing some profanity and saying "that's OK" is a slippery slope to all profanity falling within that category. The reason profanity is profanity is that (with the original linguistic intent) it evokes an image that is intended to repulse the listener (i.e., it is profane). The word "fuck", for example, doesn't merely denote sex: it denotes sex of a most detestable kind: forced and devoid of love (and therefore by its very nature, an insult to the true intent of sexual love). The same can be said of "shit". Shit isn't just excrement, it's a forced confrontation with excrement: it's thrown into your face, or you are thrown into it. In other words, "shit" is an insult to human dignity (though admittedly, not as much so as "fuck", which associates marital bliss with sadistic rape). These words have, in some quarters of our collective culture (but certainly not all), undergone a change in meaning because of over-use. When a teenage girl says that she is "majorly depressed", she is likely to be merely sad, but she is using exaggerating language because she does not think that others will give her "anguish" the attention and respect that at the moment she feels it deserves unless she oversells it. Gradually, though more rapidly in communities that tend to over-express (such as the young and the marginalized) terms of extremity become watered down, until eventually they have no meaning at all, and new words must be invented to fill the voids of extremity. The process of the erosion of words so that they mean less than they did originally (or, equivalently, less to some than others) is an unfortunate aspect of the evolution of words because it makes language less reliable and less useful. There are other linguistic evolutionary processes that are beneficial (such as specialization and connotation), but the watering down of terms is not one of them, and I believe it should be resisted. If those who use the word "fuck" for shock value suddenly discovered that the term had become watered down to meaninglessness, the next logical place for them to reach would be to shout "sadistic rape!" every time they chipped a nail. I do not wish it to be necessary to explain the meaning of that term to my kindergartener.

Flikr Mosaic

Thanks, beck. The Rules: If you want to play too, type your answer to each of the questions below into a Flickr search. Using only the first page, choose your favorite image, then copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker (3 columns, 4 rows). The questions: 1. What is your first name? 2. What is your favorite food? 3. What high school did you attend? 4. What is your favorite color? 5. Who is your celebrity crush? 6. Favorite drink? 7. Dream vacation? 8. Favorite dessert? 9. What do you want to be when you grow up? 10. What do you love most in life? 11. One word to describe you. 12. Your Flickr name. My mosaic: Note: I don't have a Flikr name, so I used what I would use if I had an account (with a space in it, because it didn't return any results the first time). Also, I don't really have a celebrity crush, so I got creative.

Wedding Pictures

Before the first look Black vs. white: it was a draw Daddy's girls Sisters Mini-me The party The Zwicker family The Harris family The wedding parties First kiss! Thirty-somethingth kiss Toast from Scott Blessing from Dave Josh's Best Man toast Cara's Maid of Honor toast: "I always beat Liz sparring, but she always beat me in wrestling. ...Good luck with that, Tim!" Swingin' Prayin' Moms We're so happy to be married to each other!