The reason I ended up writing the LOLCat wedding ceremony is because some friends of mine asked me to officiate at a pirate wedding. They wanted something fun and complete secular, and hey, I was glad to help out. Of course, I had to have a costume.

(Picture courtesy John Schultz.) I managed to rope my mother-in-law into making me a shirt, and as a gift the bride made the vest and pants for me. As you can see, I’m reading from the holy tome “How I Became a Pirate”, by Melinda Long and David Shannon.

I couldn’t find a pirate-themed ceremony, so ended up putting together one of my own. Of course I have to share that ceremony with you, dear Internet.

—

Rogues, scoundrels, roustabouts, privateers, pirates, and even ninjas¹, we have come together on this Saturday to witness the joining of person 1 and person 2.

person 1 and person 2, you are entering into a commitment born of love. Before these witnesses you are joining together, creating a union that involves both joy and responsibility. You must enter into your marriage with no lien on either of your ships or crew, free of other commitments. Bring forward the sword! [Someone brings forward a sword.]

Do you both swear on this sword that there is no reason why your union cannot proceed? [With luck the answer is “no”.]

[To person 1:] What is your full name and rank?
What do you desire? [“This woman’s hand in marriage” or somesuch]
Will you have this woman as your partner? Will you love her, comfort her, and honor her? Will you protect her, no matter who might board your ship and attempt to wrest her from you, as long as you both do love? [Aye.]

[To person 2] What is your full name and rank?
What do you desire? [“This man’s hand in marriage.”]
Will you have this man as your partner? Will you love him, comfort him, and honor him? Will you protect him, no matter who might board your ship and attempt to wrest him from you, as long as you both do love? [Aye.]

[To audience:] A marriage is more than two people. It is also the trusty crew that surrounds them and helps them. person 1 and person 2’s marriage will be blessed by your support. All who would provide that support, say “Arr!” [Arr!]

[Vows go here.]

The rings, please. [Someone brings the rings.]

The ring is the most instantly recognized symbol of marriage. The ring is a circle, indicating the infinity of unbroken love. Like life, it returns back upon itself. Whether the rings are lovingly bought, taken as part of rightful plunder, or stolen from a sunken chest, they symbolize the happiness, wholeness, and love of your marriage. Your exchange of rings shows how your lives are now intertwined.

person 1, place the ring on person 2’s hand and repeat after me:

I give you this ring / as a symbol of our love. / It is a reminder of / our promises / to each other.

person 2, repeat after me:

I wear this ring / as a symbol of our love. / It will remind me / of our promises / to each other.

person 2, place the ring on person 1’s hand and repeat after me:

I give you this ring / as a symbol of our love. / It is a reminder of / our promises / to each other.

person 1, repeat after me:

I wear this ring / as a symbol of our love. / It will remind me / of our promises / to each other.

Bring forward the sword again! [Again with the sword sword.]

When you both jump over this sword, it symbolizes you cutting past ties and moving into the future together. [The couple jumps the sword.]

May your wedding be blessed, and may it be spoken of wherever the Jolly Roger flies. I now pronounce you man and wife. You may both kiss.

I am honored to present person 1 and person 2. Three cheers! Hip hip – [HOORAY!] Hip hip – [HOORAY!] Hip hip – [HOORAY!]

Yo ho ho, me hearties! Drink up!

¹ We had two people dressed as ninjas² at the wedding, one of whom was in the wedding party. (back)

² That is, two ninjas that we could see.

I have reached a milestone in parenting: I have had my first “wait till your father comes home” moment.

I knew things weren’t going well at home yesterday. Thanks to the miracles of Web 2.0, I don’t even have to wait for a phone call to know Eli and Liza are spinning around wildly and creating chaos in their wake. It finally got bad enough that Misty called and asked me to come home early.

That was right before Eli threw both a temper tantrum and a toy at Misty.

At some point in the last few weeks, trolls snuck in and replaced Eli with a changeling, presumably because we haven’t baptized him. He’s been getting angrier, complete with foot stomping and fist clenching. He’s like a mini Bobby Knight, only instead of a chair he threw a squeaky toy at Misty.

When I got home, he’d been sitting in his room for a while. I got to have That Talk, the one I always hated when I was a kid. You know the one: a parent sits down and has you say what you did wrong and then explains why it’s wrong and geez, couldn’t you just paddle me and get it over with?

On the other hand, this is giving me a good break from Zack and Wiki for a while.

A chocolate fudge Pop-Tart iced with raw chocolate chip cookie dough.

Don’t look at me like that — we didn’t actually make this breakfast treat. But if any of you do, you have to post pictures and let us know to what hospital we should send your get well flowers.

Does anyone else have a challenger for bad breakfast food? Other than the Good Morning Burger, I mean.

The past couple of weeks we’ve been dealing with an new onslaught of what seem like extreme emotions from Eli:

Anger when we tell him “no”, usually about treats or tv. The anger comes with stamping feet and a yell that makes me duck my head in shame, because the boy is starting to sound like me.

Sadness over every activity’s end, whether it be computer time or play time with a buddy. The sadness is complete, vocal and seemingly unending. After about three times in the past week of wailing and gnashing of teeth that rivals a funeral procession, I threatened not to plan any future playtime with his friends if every session was going to end with so much grief.

Monday topped it all, though. He requested to watch Elmo in Grouchland, a movie we own but haven’t watched recently. It had rained here most of the night and morning and we weren’t going outside anytime soon, so I said yes to Elmo.

Fifteen minutes into it, Eli came to me on the verge of tears because Elmo had had a fight with Zoey, lost his blankie, was lost himself, Grouchland was scary and Huxley was scary. I promised him that all would turn out well and I finally got him to go back and watch some more. He was back again quickly because the animals Elmo was meeting on his journey were scary. I promised him again that if he would keep watching, all would end well.

We paused for lunch just after my favorite song: Huxley (Mandy Patinkin) singing “Mine!” After lunch, I sat down with him to finish the movie so he wouldn’t be scared. He had some last questions and reservations afterwards though.

“Why did Huxley sing ‘Mine!’?”

“Because he was greedy.”

“What’s greedy?”

“That’s when you don’t want to share with anyone and you want to keep all of your stuff to yourself. Huxley was lonely because he was greedy. No one wanted to be around him because he didn’t know how to share.”

Big tears were welling in Eli’s eyes.

“But that makes me so, so sad that he would be lonely!” he wailed.

With Eli, everything goes back to the human element. Loneliness in Eli’s mind is the equivalent of being shot by a firing squad after being set on fire.

Don’t even get me started on what happens when we have to smash a bug around here.

This past Memorial Day weekend, we drove to Nashville to visit with my a couple of my college roommates and their families. We had a blast even though we were outnumbered by the kids.

This morning we went to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens and played in the water because we hadn’t had enough water in the past two days. Liza got to put a variety of things in her mouth and Eli got to hang with his buddies.

Two notes on Indiana Jones, teacher and archaeologist. One, via Andrew, McSweeney’s looks at why Dr. Jones was denied tenure.

Two, something I didn’t realize until last night. At the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, the government agents tell Indy that top men are examining the ark. “What are their names?” he demands. “Top men,” the agent replies. I always thought he was demanding their names so he could track them down. Instead, he probably wanted their names because he’d know the names of all the top researchers in his field.

I’m late to the party with this one, but it’s still worth talking about: NASA’s Phoenix probe, sent to Mars to examine the history of water on Mars, landed safely on May 25th. Not only have we successfully sent another probe to the red planet, we got a picture of it as it deployed its chute. Normally we have to make do with NASA-generated images, but not this time.

Phil Plait has a whole lot of Phoenix information over at Bad Astronomy. Note especially this entry, where he notes, “Think on this, and think on it carefully: you are seeing a manmade object falling gracefully and with intent to the surface of an alien world, as seen by another manmade object already circling that world, both of them acting robotically, and both of them hundreds of million of kilometers away.”

Or, if you are all about tiny bite-sized parcels of information, you can follow Phoenix on Twitter.

And you know what that means? My very best secret weapon for being trapped in the house:

Fort!

Eli shows Liza how to play inside the fort.

Liza’s verdict: Fort is awesome!

For your Tuesday entertainment, how about the LOLCat panel from ROFLCon? Watch me and a bunch of other people talk about lolcats for nearly an hour!

C’mon, it’s only an hour long. What else are you going to do on your lunch break?