The aftermath of the canoe trip

One of the odder things about the moving house Phil and Georgia do that we'll be seeing in three years time should the reprints still be a going concern is that Geo seems to be determined to rid Phil all of the useless possessions he no longer needs. While on the surface, this looks as if she's simply another person trying to get a man-child to cut it with the Peter Pan bullshit and live in Big Boy Town, you'll notice that most of the crap she wants to get rid of is of the camping variety. This is because we're dealing with someone who, after hearing his story of how and why he spent three days on the Island Of Totally Unnecessary Hardship, came to the immediate realization that her outdoorsy boyfriend is hopelessly inept as well as being panicky and stupid when he's not in his natural environment. The cure to this is to sell off his camping equipment and to make damned sure that they spend all their vacations on a beach as part of a large tour group so he doesn't wander off and kill himself.

The other end result is that the next time we see the Pattersons in the woods, it's seventeen years later and Phil is thousands of miles away and Elly makes damned sure that they don't paddle so far that they can't see the cabin they rented. It took her that long to trust John out in the wilds because, well, it takes her a long time to get over anything. Now that it's been twenty nine years after Phil tried to kill himself and John playing Daniel Boob, perhaps Elly will finally have gotten to the point where she can admit that he can be trusted again.

On Chekov's allergy and refugees in war zones.

For those of you who've been paying attention to Stone Soup, the most recent development is that Holly has suddenly become horribly allergic to chocolate. While one might think that Val has merely been handed another means in which not to argue in any sort of good faith and rant about war, famine, cancer and other things that a middle school student can do very little about as a means of saying "Your argument is invalid because I am not affected negatively by your plight but might have to mildly inconvenience myself if I address it," I should think that we're in for a rather harsher means of ritualistic castigation of someone whose primary crime is pointing out how stupid and short-sighted her mother can be.

This is because I'm pretty sure that Val's wedding cake is going to be chocolate because she wants to break with tradition. If I'm right, there will be Holly not being able to enjoy herself and there Val will be getting her bowels in an uproar because people like her interfering mother, naive husband and inexperienced sister want to coddle Holly instead of reminding her that she's got to sacrifice for the greater good. The idea of Holly having a special cake so that she doesn't feel left out doesn't appeal to Val's sense of fairness because doing so might inconvenience her to a slight degree. It's like how in the Foobiverse, cooperation means mindless obedience to Elly. The general idea is that some arrogant nitwit on a power trip thrives on the misery of her children.