Please stop making Facebook accounts for your babies and sending friend requests to all of your friends “friends.” You are freaking me the fuck out with your poor judgment and obvious disconnect to the real world (you know, the one where any idiot can have a kid).
Turn up the sound, sit back (for 8 minutes), and watch this:
I hate listening to Royksopp, but I like it used in videos.
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This brought back a flood of Japan memories. It’s funny how my memory has become compartmentalized by country. I have a set of memories that affects things I do every day. They pop up when I’m driving, cooking, or buying something at the store. I remember doing the same thing in different settings years ago. I can remember details like what it smelled like that day or the looks on people’s faces*. For the most part, these memories are very private and I feel like an island – but then I remember I can talk to Nam about most of it, and I don’t feel so alone.
What about the babies? They are going to grow up knowing at least two very different lands and languages. That is just their starting point – I can only dream of what the future holds for them.
* As I was writing this, I flashed back to driving in Bordeaux almost 15 years ago in a rented Opel Vectra (turbo gasoil) and almost t-boning a young guy in an VW Golf because I went on the wrong green light. It was such a bad mistake, the guy would have been totally justified in getting angry about it, but he saw I had realized my mistake and instead just nodded and gestured in acknowledgment.
A classic Kids in the Hall sketch. Alouette is actually a pretty morbid song by modern standards: Alouette, gentille Alouette
Alouette, je te plumerai
Je te plumerai…
Translation: Little skylark, lovely little skylark
Little lark, I will pluck your feathers off
I’ll pluck the feathers off your…
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At least there’s no equivalent song about the ortolan.
This article was making the rounds a while ago, but I forgot to link to it: The Case for Working With Your Hands
There are a huge number of people who can’t use their education in a useful or sustainable manner, and unfortunately, many of them can’t do anything with their hands, either. I don’t really know of a country where this isn’t true.
Okay, if you’re a normal person, you had enough of Michael Jackson news approximately 2.4 hours after his death. It took me considerable time to ignore every single headline with his name in it the past week, but I ended up reading one article and it turned out to be fascinating: LINK
That is all.