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Ada: “I am going to make this a chicken sandwich. Chicken is going in the sandwich. He is in my big car.”

Rodger: “Does chicken want to be eaten?”

Ada: “Nooooo.”

Rodger: “Then perhaps chicken shouldn’t go in the sandwich.”

Ada: “Chicken has to go in the sandwich, because it’s a chicken sandwich.”

Ada then stuffs the toy chicken—the same toy chicken, I note that went to hospital with her when she was seriously ill at 7 months—into the cushions making up the sandwich, ordering him to “push your head in!”, throws a towel over it so the sandwich will cook, and then announces:

“Chicken is making a terrible fuss!”

Rodger: “Is that because chicken doesn’t want to be eaten?”

Ada: “Yes. Now you must eat the chicken sandwich.”

Fortunately I had already been designated a triceratops, so no chicken for me.

I’m far too sentimental to have given her any of this cooking and eating my toys. I blame her mother.

Oystercatcher off Miramar

I was pretty pleased with this one; we went up to give Ada a promised-but-missed trip up to the Massey Memorial. On the way back to the car I managed to get an action shot of an Oystercatcher. Getting a moderately in-focus shot of a bird in flight has been a holy grail of mine for quite some time.

“Daddy, when you shave you look like a woman. When mans shave, they look like women.”

I guess I’ve been wearing stubble and short beards more than I realised lately.

Ada also undertook a first today; we carefully counted out sixteen dollars of fifty cent pieces from Pig[1], put them in a drawstring bag, carried them into town. From there Ada went into Unity Books and chose “The Nickle-Nackle Tree” as the very first book she bought with her own money, after first considering a number of other possibilities.

She wants to commemorate this by putting her name on the receipt and keeping it somewhere safe.

[1] Pig is, these days, generally stuffed with small change rather than delicious pretend lemon.

Once more, I watch the unabated erosion of public rights in the States; this time, parody is under attack. Heaven forbid someone use the form to ask awkward questions about a second-rate romance, sorry, Great American Novel. Copyright has become an absurdly over-broad control mechanism which less resembles a social contract to encourage and reward creativity than it does a modern feudalism. And in a delicious piece of doublethink, the foundation set up to cream money from a long-dead author’s work claims the suppression of a piece by a currently-living writer represents a win for authors’ rights.

Also in the “doublethink till you hurt” section of the news is the latest blather from so-called free-trade talks in Canada. Free trade in this case does not, apparently, include the United States lessening subsidies or protection on anything Latin American nations want to export (agricultural products being one example).

And then there’s the delightful irony of Cuba being banned because it’s not democratic enough. As opposed, presumably, to Fujimori’s Peru, or any of the nastier right-wing regimes of Central America which receive US backing. Of course, as the Canadian Prime Minister points out, democracy doesn’t include a right to protest, and, given the structure of the talks, it apparently doesn’t involve any representatives who aren’t wildly in favour of the whole idea; of course, the only non-governmental organisations present are large companies looking for cheap Latin American labour, not anyone who might ask awkward questions about human rights, and the like. Oh, and light of a desire to conduct the talks in an environment of democratic freedom being supported, best to make sure the conference is held in 18th century walled fort manned by riot police with bullets and gas.

Still, as George Bush points out, trade brings freedom. After all, look at the glorious history of the southern US cotton trade, or how wonderfully peaceful and democratic China has become since gaing WTO backing from the US. Handed those pilots back and stopped killing or enslaving political dissidents right away!