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In the latest of wacky-Chinese-oppression news, it appears that a man was recently arrested due to a joke he made on Twitter.  The joke, which was decidedly not very funny, made reference to the next installment of the Final Destination movie franchise being about the Great Hall of the People collapsing on government officials.  Chinese authorities then tracked the man down and arrested him for “spreading terrorist information.”

The whole thing would be hilariously funny if it weren’t for the fact that these people are serious.  It proves that the government is so paranoid about people saying anything against them that they don’t even comprehend the nature of humor.  Or maybe they were actually so gullible as to think this was indeed some sort of terrorist threat? 

In addition to the arrest, they also cleared out any and all who had complaints about the government that they wanted to be addressed, rounded them up and sending them from the city.  All this to demonstrate the great new changes that a fresh set of government recruits will bring to China?

This is, quite obviously, a horrible way to go about things.  Not just because of the human rights issues involved, but also due to the simple fact that if a government is seen as humorless, they’re not seen as human by their citizen population.  If they’re not human, they will be considered less than the citizenry and thus not the leaders that the people desire. 

It also shows them as unwilling to address the complaints that people have and, essentially, makes them out to be a useless body.  And in the international community, it marks government officials as over reactive and somewhat incompetent.  After all, do you really respect the person who takes a simple joke so seriously as to arrest people over it?  Or do you roll your eyes and just think of them as a perhaps a little bit slow in the head?

So, the new Chinese officials are already starting off looking like fools in the eyes of the public.  If China doesn’t get away from this sort of juvenile behavior, they risk creating more serious problems for the future.  Some have organized an online petition to have the “joker” released, and what the Chinese government chooses to do now may very well affect them for some time to come as well as defining the role they see for themselves in the progress of the country.  Are they actually going to try to change China for the better, or just stick to the paranoia that has often characterized the past?

We have a few friends that have whole broods of kids—from four to seven—and usually I am good with our one and only. I have written before about how much it hurts that I medically cannot have other children, but that my little girl was a surprise in and of herself when I expected a life with either no children or adopted kids, so I’m incredibly grateful for the gift of her.

We are a family on a budget, so just the three of us makes it easier to live healthfully, and though we can’t afford all of the classes we used to pay for for her, we do at least scrape together enough for her music class—and taking one child to co-op classes works well.

That said, I long for family days like my friends have—like the family on Dan in Real Life has—where everyone gets together for a weekend or even a week at a cabin somewhere and has a talent show, a crossword challenge, family meals... Everyone “gets” everyone and traditions are forged and memories are made. My friends with big families have such experiences year-round!

Sometimes I wish I had a whole clan of kids, a boisterous family taking up every inch of space and rollicking around with our pets—maybe on a farm, with some chickens and a cow, even! Of course, I would never be able to work and we’d be even more broke than we are now, forget affording groceries. And physically, I can’t have it; it would have to be through adoption, an idea I still toy with. Perhaps someday when my novels take off and we have a big, nice place of our own, we could fulfill such a dream…

Of course, part of me just wishes my sisters would have kids I could kidnap when I want them, and we could have annual retreats—or more frequent ones, of course—without me having to give up my jobs. I love to write, though this year has been leaner than most and has made me realize that I could share some of this excess time with a few more kiddos running around…

Then again, my daughter’s been an only child for seven years now—a year longer than I was before my two sisters were born—and she’s pretty used to this lifestyle. Every once in a while, she, too, wishes for siblings—but I do think that she prefers having my attention all to herself.

A little while ago, I was bellyachin’, as we say in the Midwest, about how I grew up without much of a culture. That sentence alone pretty much negates the whole idea, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking about it more and more, and I am coming to realize that I have a pretty solid culture beneath me—and it’s not all as negative as I think it is, either.

And you can add to that all of the traditions my little trio of a family has developed, many of them unconsciously, too. Today we are beginning our new “just the three of us” tradition of decorating our home, playing music, and having our own little holiday party the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I am so excited about the music, tinsel and treats—but most of all, I want some punch. I normally only make it on Valentine’s Day, so I’m pretty stoked that we’ll get it again this year.

Here are a couple of other traditions that my family enjoys. What about your family? Share your traditions in your own post or the comments below.

Birthdays. For my husband’s birthday, we always make chocolate éclair cake; if we have money, we go to a gaming place like Dave & Buster’s, too. On my daughter’s birthday morning, we fill her room with balloons before she wakes up; sometimes I make a tent for her to climb through, too. Then she gets to be queen for the day and choose what we do. On my birthday, we always make or buy soft pretzels and potato soup—carbs on carbs, my favorite! I also get a new journal for my next year.

Halloween. We dress up several times in the month and attend various parties and festivities, but Halloween night is ours! We trick-or-treat, then make a bonfire, tell fortunes with homemade bean runes, and have a wonderful night outside.

Advents. I make my daughter a Valentine, Halloween, and Christmas advent/countdown calendar every year. I fill them with scraps of paper saying what we will do—make a craft, read a book, etc.—or with small treats like candy kisses.

New Year’s. My husband saves a few fireworks for us to set off if we can, and my daughter stays up as late as she can; this may be the first year she makes it to midnight! Last year I think we had to wake her up. We pull those poppers in the house and get them all over the fan, and after she goes to bed my husband and I snuggle by the tree and sometimes watch It’s a Wonderful Life or the ball drop. We also tend to do silly things like dye our hair or paint each other’s toenails on New Year’s Eve. Then on New Year’s Day, we always say we’ll get Dim Sum, then we can’t find a place or don’t have money and make sandwiches instead.

My daughter and I borrowed the movie Aliens in the Attic from a friend recently, and I have to admit that the movie has some seriously funny parts. That said, it also has some seriously problematic moments—and much of it is pure groan-inducing humor, so you know your kids will love it.

It’s not as violent as I had expected, which is good—the worst bodily damage that I saw was an instance of fingernails being broken off. A tool boyfriend in the movie gets hurt quite a bit, which is just plain funny—when he falls and smacks himself in the face due to being controlled by  a remote, it’s not too painful looking. There are a couple of instances of crotch humor when he gets hurt, however, so use your own judgment when viewing with kids.

There are some themes in the movie that I just didn’t like, like the stereotypical girl with the loser boyfriend who’s using her; the big brother who saves the day; the product of divorce kids; and the little girl scared of bugs. We’ve seen all of this before and it’s just overdone. Plus, it’s mostly the boys who save the world from the aliens, which I didn’t enjoy, either; not only where there four boys to two girls in the movie (five if you include the idiot manipulative boyfriend), the girls were barely even included aside from use for humor. This alienates a whole half of your audience, by the way, Hollywood.

Then after a whole battle around some super daft parents who don’t get what’s going on, nothing is explained to them. They have no idea about the battle or that there were even aliens on the planet at all, which makes the ending less satisfying. Why make the kids go through all that trouble—and indeed, get into trouble in the process—without getting some kind of recognition at the end? I’m not saying that’s how life should be, but it would have given the movie more warmth and closure, making more satisfying in the end.

All of this said, there were some parts where I just laughed out loud—hard, but not long, perhaps out of embarrassment, perhaps because the humor was so cringe-worthy. But the movie was only made for fun, right? So I suppose mission accomplished, even if my brain hurt for a little while after watching it.