Happy birthday, Woody

Today marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, that most American of song writers and quintessential champion of the working man.

Everyone will be hearing “This Land is Your Land” this weekend; it’s undoubtedly Woody’s most famous work. Plus—it’s easy to play on the guitar and makes a rousing sing-along.

But I have a couple of others for your exploration. Both are on my pod for the gym, and I expect I’ve startled more than one person on a nearby treadmill by singing some of the lyrics.

Here’s U2 and “Jesus Christ”.

And here’s John Mellencamp singing “Do Re Mi”. No, no—not that Do Re Mi. The one about how California isn’t all that much of a Goldeneh Medina unless you show up with your own gold.

Both of these songs are painfully accurate today—they could be anthems for any “occupy” protest. I wonder what Woody would have made of the auto/bank/mortgage/offshoring economy we live in today?

Well, no, I don’t wonder at all. I know.

So I’ll leave you with “I Ain’t Got No Home”, sung by Springsteen. Crank up the volume and let it flow right on through you.

Facebook yoga

Here’s a quintessentially California story: a contract yoga teacher was sacked from her job at Facebook because she “glared” at an employee who was texting during a yoga class.

Completely California because it’s got yoga and texting in the same sentence. Very Silicon Valley in that the texter—whose feelings were apparently hurt by the “confrontation”—prevailed.

Of course, instructor Alice Van Ness had been warned by her employer (the vendor of yoga services to Facebook) that she couldn’t ban mobile phones in the class. But you can understand her being skeptical of that because, well…yoga is the antithesis of multi-tasking, and you can’t really be fully in the moment if your little thumbs are click-click-clicking on your little device about your little thoughts to your little friends.

And, seriously—if the outside world can’t get along without you for a 50-minute period, then either you’ve organized things pretty badly, or you’re the Pope.

(Even Mark Zuckerberg’s then-fiancée negotiated with him for uninterrupted blocks of quality time before they got married. And he’s the bleeding CEO of the company.)

Well, it’s an ill wind...Following all the publicity, Van Ness has found another job where she can enforce the cellphone ban. And we’ll hope the little FB princess doesn’t take it into her head to sue Van Ness for damaging her fragile, vapid psyche by expecting her to behave with a modicum of courtesy.

Music between the ears

You know that annoying, really grating feeling when you can’t get a song out of your head? Well, let me share what’s been bouncing around my cranium for the past couple of weeks:

New Tricks is a BBC show about three retired Metropolitan Police geezers working for a female superintendent to solve cold cases. It’s actually much better than the theme song.

No need to thank me; it's good to share.

(Hey—it could be worse. I could have reminded you of “It’s a Small World”.)

Bus stop memorial, Pt. 2

I drove past the bus stop at California and Escuela in Mountain View yesterday. That’s where residents had erected a memorial to a man who was killed by a speeding car on 21 June.

That was more than three weeks ago, so I was surprised to find that not only was the bench still a memorial, but the floral and stuffed animal tributes had multiplied.

Says something about Bill Ware that people think it’s more important to remember his life than to sit down to wait for the bus.

It's a small, small world

If you’re looking for an example of the concept of chalk and cheese, I give you a recent extravaganza performed for newly-fledged North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The chalk/cheese juxtaposition comes from a bunch of (unlicensed & unauthorized) Disney characters, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Snow White’s dwarfs.

Dunno how to interpret the Disney display. I do know that about ten years ago Kim’s eldest brother, Kim Jong Nam, was eliminated from the succession of the Dear Leader after being caught by Japanese authorities using a Dominican Republic passport in an attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland. (And I swear I’m not making that up.)

Frankly, the video doesn’t look to me as though anyone’s having much fun, but perhaps the Kim dynasty is looking to turn the last bastion of Stalinism into yet another Happiest Place on Earth?

(And Disney legal folks, if that phrase about happiness is your trademark, please just consider its appearance here fair use. Okay, thanks, bye.)

Twenty-nine ways

Here's something I found interesting, from Laughing Squid:

Here's what I particularly like about this list:

1. The number 29 is odd, inasmuch as it's not a "set" number, like five, or 20. Like the writer listed as many ways as he thought were legitimate, and didn't truncate or pad them to fit some mystic number.

2. The graphics/animation reinforce the individual instructions.

Good advice, delivered well. See--the Internet isn't a complete time suck.