"Have a Blessed Day"

One of the people I've followed for years on Twitter posted this:

“Guy @ CVS just handed me my receipt and said ‘Have a blessed day.’ It took restraint not to smile and tell him, ‘Satan and I curse you.’”

That actually had shocked me some, leading me to reply:

“It troubles me a little why such an innocuous statement would cause such a – and thankfully you kept it internal – reaction.”

And it's true: why would such a reaction be one to that statement? I can understand "blessed" can be - for lack of a better phrase - controversial to some people, but still, it's not an overtly proselytizing word. I think it surprises me even more because I know the guy to have been a worker in a number of luxury-class hotels, and so sensitivity to foreign-to-one's-own viewpoints should be the reaction, I think.

I still haven't received a response, but his internal reaction almost seethes with an underlying contempt of Christianity that I fear that the wrong day at the wrong time would have the next person to say such a thing get an earful of unnecessary and somewhat ireful comments.

Still waiting on an answer.

Seriously, #DumpStoli? WHY?!

It wasn't until I was on my Twitter feed today that I'd noticed Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) had changed his avatar to behold his latest - and might I say very misguided - crusade, one called #DmupStoli.

Searching that hashtag, I came upon his original blog posting, which explained his rationale.

And I disagree with most of it, because the nature of it is simply, at least with the Stoli part of the crusade, that all bars and people should drop it purely on that because Stoli is Russian one should drop it.

WTF? I mean, the #DumpSochi part, I can understand. Russia, having agreed to be internationally welcoming by virtue of agreeing to host another Olympics has made an implicit communication with the world that it would accept all people in the spirit of harmony and international union. Recently legalizing effective discrimination against any amount of people, GLBT members included, goes against that spirit.

Going against any number of private companies just because they come from a country which decided to enact certain legislation makes about as much sense in my eyes as Boston as a whole effectively refusing to allow Tamerlan Tsarnaev a burial within Massachusetts. That was another bit of ire at the backhanded twofaceness the United States can have.

Imagine if there were somewhere in the United States that still refused to bury someone in a specific place just because that person were, say, Jewish, Black, or Japanese? That was what happened to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and what's now happening because Stolichnaya happens to be a Russian company. Not a Russian government company. A Russian company.

Don't refuse something based on its proximity to something "society" seems to dislike or that someone says shouldn't be.

I say one questions separately Russia the country and Tamerlan Tsarnaev's actions as what are reprehensible, and treat Russian vodka the private, unaffiliated company product and Tamerlan Tsarnaev the human being as private, unaffiliated company products undeserving of prosecution and a human being deserving a proper burial like any human being should.

I've thus decided - not that he would give two shits because he's so high on himself and his ego that he doesn't care what a person thinks anyway - to unsubscribe to Dan Savage's podcast. His decision to discriminate against a series of products just because they happen to be of a country - and not for a country - that discriminates is as unjust and backward as the people who thought Jewish people, Black people, and Japanese people were not human beings and thus exploitable and worthy of abuse.

I say #DropDanSavage, if that's how he's going to be.

#RASP - Rant Around Several Paragraphs #2 - The Birthday Song

So, there has been much talk about he copyright on the birthday song. I'm going to leave that be, because obviously my take on it is the song is public domain and one should be able to use it freely.

No, the point of this post is the singing of the song.

So, we all know the first few lines: “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday…”

And that's where I pause.

What's the next word in the third line? Is it "dear" or the person's name? There are different opinions on this, certainly, but I'm addressing mine here on this, providing examples of course.

Let's use my name, Kristopha. Should it be October 24 and people have gathered to regale me with gifts and song, in my opinion the third line should go "Happy birthday Kristopha…"

This is because my name has three syllables, the second syllable having the emphasis and not the first or third. Should they have elected to use the shortened form of my name, Kris, the verse would go "Happy birthday, dear Kris", with the "Kris" part drawn out into two "syllables" (Kri-is), just so the post "happy birthday" element maintains three beats and the second of three beats has the emphasis.

So, what about names with emphasis on the other-than-second syllable? For this, we'll use my sister's name, Melonie.

We pronounce her name /'mε l^ ni:/, and so the third line, in my estimation, should be "Happy birthday, dear Melonie". Æsthetically, this pleases my ear, and I think others would agree.

When people in South Africa were singing the Happy Birthday song for Nelson Mandela, it seems a lot of them sang "Happy birthday, dear Madiba", which sounds wrong to me. Since the word/title Madiba has second-syllable emphasis and is a three-syllable word, the line should be "Happy birthday Madiba".

If they'd decided to use his Xhosa name, Rolihlahla, which has emphasis on the second syllable and has four syllables, I'd think it would have the dear: "Happy Birthday, dear Rolihlahla".

If it were my Nigerian cousin-in-law, whose full name is Adetunji (emphasis on the third syllable), there'd be no dear: "Happy birthday Adetunji". It sounds a bit stuffy to call him Adetunji, though, so most of us call him just Tunji (where there would be a dear).

My opinion on any name greater than four syllables is the person would usually have a shorter nickname or an abbreviated name that should fit into these cases.

All that said, I have one more gripe to grapple with: the additional stanzas beyond "How old are you now?". Traditionally in Jamaica, at least, there is a third stanza which goes, "May the Dear Lord bless you." I don't mind this stanza, and it's a nice touch to me but only if multiple people (being more than three) all continue the song through that stanza without pausing.

At my niece's first birthday party, people were pretty much ready to quit singing after the "How old are you now" stanza, but my Dad insisted on singing the Dear-Lord-bless-you stanza too. He was the only one who had continued on to singing it, and the rest of us grudgingly continued on to sing that one. It was just awkward, so my take is one should have some social maturity to gauge pauses and empathize with a group (this coming from someone - me - who is generally socially anxious and awkward anyway!).

That way you don't become the bully who commandeered a nice tradition into a sing-that-stanza-or-burn-in-Hell session.