Pied Piper "Well done that man and congratulations."

Thankyou, PP. She got a diamond on her finger.. and I got a diamond (of a lady) on my arm.

My younger daughter got married last year and we used the interent to distribute the 400 pictures taken of her day to relatives around the world.. you are right it is a great medium for that sort of application. Similarly my "diamond" is in USA at present.. skype provides a cheap solution for video/audio communication.

To housing... yes but depending on what it costs, if you can rent the cardboard box out for $50 a week it might still be a good investment.

“She got a diamond on her finger.. and I got a diamond (of a lady) on my arm.”

So cool Col, are you going to have a big wedding or more subdued type event? I am truly trying to restrain myself from asking a ton of questions.

I don’t understand skype yet – my parents keep telling me to use it though.

“To housing... yes but depending on what it costs, if you can rent the cardboard box out for $50 a week it might still be a good investment.”

Well yeah, if you added a tarp over it you’d get top dollar. I logged in to a “homeless” site recently – just because I found the concept pretty bizarre, there wasn’t many messages.

And I bought some makeup today; the lady goes “Did you choose a brush for it?” and I go “this one” holding it up for her to see, she replies “oh good that is one of the cheaper ones”.

Tomorrow I'm going down there with a tin cup and I'm just going to stand around making money all day.

These are deep waters you find yourself in, E Knox. I haven't read all of the foregoing but I'm sure there's good advice in there. Has anyone mentioned the words "hegemony" or “bourgeois”? Our society is arguably in stasis due to these. You might want to read Fredric Jameson’s essay “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” if you want to jump in the deep end. It talks of a culture that has no history and no trajectory. The notion of “class” is also anachronistic as far as any subtlety is concerned. Wealth is now the sole determinant of class. If an ignorant person garners sufficient wealth he may purchase the semblance of a higher station in life. This is where the concept of the bourgeois class comes in handy; the bourgeoisie today comprises virtually all society; that is, those who have garnered sufficient wealth or trappings to assert their ascendant status, and those who are as yet merely aspirational. There is a cohort of scum out there who refuse to play the game, and there are those who possess only “cultural capital” (another good levelling concept), but these have a hard time competing with opinionated philistines with big houses, three cars and a boat. Society doesn’t “function” or “change” in any meaningful way. Values come in and out of fashion and are commodified accordingly, that is all. Macro change is pegged to the ebb and flow of the economy; and micro change (micro indeed) is the illusory by-product of patronage. In short, human culture has devolved into pure economics.

Pied Piper thank you for asking.. it will be low key about 20 people, this being my third and her second marriage…. in the reception centre we usually go dancing.

All our children (we have 2 each) will be there and each of our eldest children will be the witnesses.

If you pass your email address through Graham Young he will pass it to me and I will be happy to send you some pics or answer questions

Skype is good.. although I find it suffers if windows explorer is running (some incompatibility) so I just shut IE down and dedicate the PC to skype audio and video… oh the other things… the image you receive is often crude because it depends on how good a camera the other person is using and the sound quality can suffer from cheap microphones etc.

Squeers.. what an analytically bland existence you must have..

It is a good job humanity is based on free choice and diversity.

An entire population of folk all reflecting you’re your less-than-rosy outlook would likely decide suicide, before having children, was the only reasonable solution.

On the contrary, Col, my life is analytically and philosophically rich … but not naïve. Nor was suicide something I ever entertained the notion of, not before or since my six happy children were born—the last two are seven months old now and delightful. I am only cynical about our society (and the plight of the world) under capitalism. Master Knox was asking about society, was he not, and I thought a touch or realism was called for—and of course if he scratches beneath superficial conventions he might get better marks? There is a vast body of literature to back up my précis btw, that makes a mockery of the kind of Panglossian world view you of which you appear to be enamoured.
Of course if you want to discuss humanity’s being “based on free choice and diversity” (extraordinary fantasy!), that pendulous bubble might also be easily burst. Which is not to say that I deny the possibility outright, but that these free determinists are rare plants indeed, hardly “diverse”, and certainly not to be found among those (such as yourself?) who credulously subscribe to libertarian delusions.

“…my six happy children were born—the last two are seven months old now and delightful.”

My goodness. We must start talking straight away. Ages, genders (Identical twins?)… how do you keep them all busy? How do you reduce being too busy yourself? Casual household or firm with flexible rules?

Ummm… values you teach them, can one plan if their children will be a “have” or a “have not”? Beyond education but values enforced in the home.