Birthday

M. Josh aka fognozzle sent me the following greeting today for my birthday. I have not yet today received quite this level of adulation, nor a shovel-salute from a bevy of topless and tow-haired boys, seen near the end of the video, just before the windows open on the bright and glorious future of the Fatherland.

Editor's aside: it seems to be impossible to use the word Fatherland, translated literally from Vaterland, without conjuring an image of the Nazis. The German word was used to innocuously mean homeland, although some in my country find an uncomfortable connotation in that word in the title of the US Department of suchsame Security. And there does seem to be a parent-gender-role association that colors Fatherland vs. Motherland: that of the stern dad who argues with his fists vs. the mom that coos and suckles at her teat. Although the Russian/Soviet use of Rodina-mat, translated to Motherland, still gives me a sense a hawkish xenophobia. I have to admit I come from a certain hippy-dippy-we-are-all-one background that bristles at the thought of God and the Kindly Ones choosing any particular people and/or country over any other and so may explain my overreaction. Homeland, motherland, fatherland, ancestral home and land of my birth. Creepy.

Well, the video seems long gone so whatever.