A few days back, I shared a short story I wrote about a very sad childhood experience I had in Viet Nam. I wrote it prior to returning to my home country for the first time in 35 years, ending with contemplation about how I’d handle helping ease some of the poverty I would experience there. Specifically, it was the street children because it was street children survival brutality that I had been exposed to as a child that one day of The Pho Incident story.
street
Wish Your Facebook Friend a Happy Birthday with a Song to Make It More Meaningful
On Facebook, you can opt to have your birthday show up as a notification on your Facebook friends’ Home Page on the day it is your birthday. Most people then just usually write something short, and frankly, a little meaningless from how generic it often is.
The person whose birthday it is, then, gets like a ton of notifications of these greetings. They may or may not go through them all, as most are the same old plain “Happy birthday!” variation. But what do you expect of mostly shallow “friendships” that come with most of most people’s Facebook “friends”?
However, some people go through all the comments so they don’t miss something they may want to respond to, or should acknowledge to avoid embarrassment of not having read it when someone took the time to write it… and asks about it later.
What I’m proposing is that if you want to be a little more genuine, and break the person’s routine scroll through all the relatively meaningless wishes a bit, add a little song link, like from YouTube. A lot of songs can be found there.
If I Knew You Were Coming I’d’ve Baked a Cake
For all the people who came to visit my site. 🙂
What a delightful little ditty! And one with a double contraction at that! I mean, how many double contraction songs do you know of?
But as delightful as Eileen Barton’s version of the song might be, what might be even MORE delightful is this 1969 Sesame Street skit of the song with Ernie and Cookie Monster…
Happy 70th Birthday Bob Dylan! (and my Top 10 Dylan Songs)
Bob Dylan
Happy 70th Birthday, Bob Dylan!
Ah, you were so much older then, you’re younger than that now… and may you stay forever young no matter how much the times, they are a’changin’, you rolling stone you!
Man, can you believe the Bob is 70???
I sure can’t… mostly because my main association with him is through his music, and that’s mostly timeless, never aging, so the icon seems that way to me.
For Bob’s 70th, Rolling Stone magazine did a huge number of features this month on him:
- The 10 Greatest Dylan Songs
- 20 Overlooked Classics
- 10 Best Bootlegs
- Quiz: Do You Know Your Dylan?
- Photos: The Evolution of Dylan
- Dylan’s First Rolling Stone Interview
Me, I did a meme tribute on Facebook to share one of my favourite Top 10 Bob Dylan songs each day leading to his birthday today. Here is my list, which was generally presented in no particular order except for the last two being my favourite two Dylan songs. It gets too hard to separate the order of the others for me.
Why Chinese Mothers are NOT Superior (aka Why Chinese Fathers are Not Needed)
Amy Chua with daughters Louisa and Sophia
Yale Law Professor Amy Chua recently released a memoir called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Talk about cheesy titles. Essentially, it was about the so-called “Chinese” method of raising children that was very strict, and why it was superior, as her Wall Street Journal essay (Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, Amy Chua in WSJ, Jan 8 2011).
Essentially, it’s how one clever woman is playing the race card in on offense, in a sly way to keep tension from building while generating debate and getting her lots of money and attention. This book would be nothing but for the hype generated by these racial insinuations.
If you want the details on the no sleepover, no dates, trashing your children, threatening to burn your children’s toys, forcing them to take either piano or violin and not settling for As in school, you can read the WSJ link above or the multitude of other related articles like this one from Canada’s Globe & Mail (Why Chinese Parenting is Best, G&M Jan 11 2011).
Note again the racial insinuation in the title.
That’s because its supposed “self-deprecating” nature that was in good jest, according to Amy, is all hear say and not backed up by anything but her opinion. She is presenting an argument on what isn’t “visible”, concentrating on what is, which is the successful products of the method. But how many have been failed by the method and had their lives ruined, and who will never be known?
Digital Citizen 