I was born today in 1975, during detente...

[pseydtonne]

"Mon cher Dante,
c'est a ton tour
de te laisser
parler d'amour"

-Quebec's version of "Happy birthday" as written by Gilles Vignault

Ron just showed up with the Girl Scout cookies I ordered. That's the great thing about those cookies -- they remind me it's time for my birthday.

I received a copy of the Goth Birthday tune today. It's a good thing I had to learn the Song of the Volga Boatmen back in grade school so that I can hum along to this:



Happy birthday
Happy birthday
Gloom and doom and dark despair
People dying everywhere

On your birthday
Happy birthday
May the candles on your cake
Burn like cities in your wake

On your birthday
Happy birthday
We love Dante, yes we do
For a dollar, so can you!

On your birthday
Happy birthday
When you reach the age you are
Your demise cannot be far

On your birthday
Happy birthday
Just remember that each breath
Brings you closer to your death

There is one thing you must learn,
First you pillage, THEN you burn!
Happy birthday,
Happy birthday.

Hear the women wail and weep
Kill 'em all, but save the sheep!
Happy birthday,
Happy birthday.

May your deeds with sheep and yaks
Equal those with sword and axe,
On your birthday,
Happy birthday!

That ought to annoy my coworkers.

I found a bunch of good stuff about my birthday besides the obvious ones -- last day of winter, when the swallows come back to Capistrano (which I'd like to see first-hand someday), Bruce Willis's birthday. Some of the events are cool:

03/19/1894: Moms Mabley born.

03/19/1930: Ornette Coleman born.

03/19/1957: Elvis buys Graceland.

03/19/1979: Congressional telecasting begins (C-SPAN premiers).

03/19/1987: Televangelist Jim Bakker resigns his ministry. He later went to prison for mail fraud, although his sentence was commuted from 45 years to 8.

Some have questionable moral implications:

03/19/1928: First broadcast of Amos 'n' Andy. On the one hand, it's two white guys pretending to be black. On the other hand, it started the first wave of radio sales. When production of a TV version of the show began, they hired black actors. The original (white) cast stuck around for the first season to "teach" the black actors how to play black. The black actors finally told the honkies to fuck off.

03/19/1931: Nevada legalizes gambling.

Some aren't:

03/19/1905: Albert Speer born.

03/19/1906: Adolf Eichmann born.

03/19/1935: first Harlem riot.

However, the announcement that Jane "Keep them fingers in the till" Swift has bowed out of the running for governor is on the good side. My opinion of Swift is like my opinion of Thatcher: yeah it's important for women to take positions of power, but this specific person? Sheesh. Swift wasn't elected, so it's not so bad. However, her insistence that she get her way and commute daily from North Adams on my tax money suggests delusional behavior.

Then again, what kind of state doesn't have a governor's mansion? "Well, we expect all of our governors to be in the old boys' network and live within commuting distance." Buy a small house in Somerville and plop the guv in it. That would be keeeen -- folks like us bothering the governor, asking her to keep her trash off the sidewalk, seeing those two Mormons hassle her on their way to the T.

When I was a kid, I loathed Thatcher. Any time she spoke I wanted to claw my ears off. It was as if someone had plugged into my hate receptors. Ten years after she resigned, she spoke in support of letting Augusto Pinochet stay in hiding in Britain. I was 24, but that bile in my throat was as fresh as ever. I couldn't believe this person was human, just as I couldn't believe when she imposed a 500-pound poll tax. (I'm sure the Bushes dream of something like that, but that pesky Bill o' Rights gets in the way.) Most Britons remember where they were when she announced her resignation in 1990 the way Americans remember where they were when Kennedy was shot or the Challenger blew up.

By the way, check out this for the full list, or put in your own birth date as mmdd.htm for your specs.

Then again, you may instead agree with Drew.

-three to its power, ps/d

Comments

Harlem Riot?

[(Anonymous)]

Dante,

So you wouldn't give me a membership referral because you only had one, and I told you to give it to Maggie instead. Yet she's still posting anonymously. So what gives? Either let your girl into the clubhouse, or open up to your fellow philosopher. Now, time for the critique. I'm overcoming my aversion to anonymous posting because:

1. My boss is in France, and
2. You said something even more ridiculous than usual, as follows:

"Some aren't [of questionable moral implications, ergo, are undoubtedly evil]:
"03/19/1905: Albert Speer born.
"03/19/1906: Adolf Eichmann born.
"03/19/1935: first Harlem riot."

It looks to me here like you're putting the Harlem riot on the same level as Nazis.

So what sparked the Harlem riot? It was a response and a rebellion against the beating of a Black kid (actually, dark-skinned Puerto Rican) by cops. If you were talking about the beating of that kid as a historical tragedy on par with Eichmann, then maybe I could understand it. But those kind of beatings happened every day in Harlem in the 1930s; they happen pretty regularly in Harlem today. So what was exceptional about the date was not the beating, but the riot.

Would you compare the Warsaw Ghetto uprising to the birth of Adolf Eichmann? Of course not. You and every other humane person would call it a triumphant expression of human defiance confronted by overwhelming oppression. How come we'll call it that when a ghetto full of my people (white Jews) engages in a futile act of insurrection, but when a ghetto full of Black people or Palestinians does the same, it's called tragedy or terrorism?

I know you're not a racist. But it still amazes me when this kind of unconscious accomodation to racism slips into the speech of even the most well-meaning person.

To hell with unconscious White American Racism,

The Workers' Joe