Author: Joey deVilla

The barbecue was nice, the company of best man Eldon was good, but I’m ready to get married now, thank you very much.

And by “bleaching clamshells,” I’m not speaking euphemistically (a la this not-safe-for-work scene from Bridesmaids) this, but literally. They’re table decorations, and a few of them were looking a bit grungy.

Well, the wedding is this Saturday.

The big stuff’s been dealt with: the venue was secured months ago, and we’ve had all the relevant conversations with major service providers: the catering people, the hotel’s event planner, the videographer, the photographer, the DJ, and the rabbi.

Yes, neither of us is Jewish, and yes, a rabbi is officiating. I have an explanation, but I’ll save that for an entry I’ll post sometime after the wedding.

Weather these days is a little harder to predict, and even more so here in Accordion Bay, where the Gulf winds can make the sky change in very short order. After a cool spell, things are warming up here and the days are already beginning to follow their summer pattern: sunny in the morning, clouding over in the late afternoon with maybe a little waterworks, and then clearing up at night. Ours is a brunch wedding, with the really formal stuff done by noon, the reception done by four, and the rest of the afternoon and early evening dedicated Jimmy Buffett-ing it up at the beachside bar as we toast the sunset.

Click the photo to watch the episode (while it lasts on YouTube).

While getting the last of the things to bring to the wedding packed into boxes, I’ve had that classic Star Trek episode, Amok Time, playing on one of my screens. That’s the one where we learn that Vulcans mate once every seven years (not unlike a few fans of the show), where Spock’s wedding is undone by his bride, who’d much rather be with some other guy, and where he nearly kills his friend Captain Kirk in a fit of hormonal rage (and hey, we’ve all been there before, am I right, guys?). It’s in tribute to the upcoming wedding, the passing of Leonard Nimoy, and the fact that I’ve had conversations in which Theodore Sturgeon, who wrote the episode, come up no less than four times.

I hope that your present situation is better than this cat’s.

All memes and no life makes Jack a twisted boy.

Found via Trish Thornton.

And do we really need science to explain it?

I saw this frame while looking around the local discount stores for some last-minute wedding decorations.

It’s a popular belief that the Southern US is a hotbed of cousin marriage, but you may not know that the United States is the only western nation with restrictions on marrying your cousin. Marriages between first cousins are legal through Canada, Mexico, and Europe, and it’s estimated that 1 in 5 couples worldwide are first cousins. The world is Shelbyville, it seems.

The taboo against cousin marriage has more of a basis in culture than genetics. It’s said that the risk of genetic defects in children of cousins is smaller than generally assumed: at most, 2% higher than the population-wide risk of birth defects, which is 2% – 3%. If those low risks still scare you, genetic screening can help those few at-risk cousin couples avoid it.

The real problem with getting involved with your cousin isn’t genetics, but social. As this article in Slate puts it: