Quote of the Week

"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils."
- Woodrow Wilson



Friday, May 31, 2013

Kayne West's Greatest Moment

So I have this old desk calendar someone gave me at work. Since I use Outlook and Google Calendar extensively, the only use I have for the desk calendar is as a scratch pad. The back of each page is pretty much blank, so it works great for jotting down numbers or a quick note for myself. I try to be as paper-less as much as possible, and being able to reuse things like this help out.

It’s a trivia calendar and the page shown in the photo cracked me up. I remember the Hurricane Katrina benefit concert when Kanye West let the world know that George Bush doesn’t care about black people. In fact, I remember it very well. By chance, I actually saw it happen live on TV.
With no intention of actually watching the concert on TV, I stumbled across it while flipping through the channels. The ONLY reason I stopped, was because I saw Kanye West standing next to Mike Myers. I thought “now that’s an interesting paring, I must watch this.” I made a great decision.
Within seconds of me placing the remote on the coffee table, Kanye said those magical, now infamous words. I truly believe is was his greatest moment in the spotlight. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”



That caught me off guard and I was a little shocked that, out of the blue, someone would say something like that on live TV. Don’t get me wrong, I can see someone saying something like that. People say stuff like that that about all kinds of politicians on your Sunday morning talk shows and the 24 hours news channels all the time. But not during a Red Cross disaster relief fundraiser being televised nationally on live TV. Out of the blue.  With no warning. I was caught off guard and was shocked. but not nearly as shocked a Mike Myers.

I will never forget Mike Myers’ reaction when West uttered that sentence. Now that was must see TV. If there was a hole nearby, that poor man would have crawled into it. He couldn’t believe what was happening. He tried to gain his composure and get the show back on the road, but Kayne West continued, well, continued to be Kayne West.

I laughed so hard at this, I kind of feel bad about laughing so hard. I was almost expecting there to be a wavy fade from that image on the TV to seeing Mike Myers lying in bed, awaking from a bad dream. Like in a Wayne’s World sketch with Dana Carvey at his side.

All these years later, when I think about this I break out in laughter.  But now days the laughter stops pretty quickly. Because I remember that West has breed a Kardashian. There may be no hope for mankind.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Being a Twit on Twitter Again

The three people who read this may have noticed I'm back to being active on this blog. The past few months got to be a little hectic for me and this got pushed to the side. Life has seemed to get back to normal for me and I'm trying to improve my schedule to allow more time to work on this.

The past few weeks I have been jotting down some ideas for posts and improvements to the site in general. Then some weird coincidences happened this last weekend.

Friday I met a good friend of mine who was in town visiting. She does the blogging social media branding marketing type thing for a living. She mentioned that she hasn't seen anything new from me and suggested I get back into it because she thought it was pretty good. I took that with a grain of salt because we were drinking a beer at a local establishment and she know I cry easy when my feelings are hurt. But then the next I ran into another friend who asked about this. So, I figure I better get back at it.

I paid attention to my social media guru friend's advice and I'm going to follow her suggestions before I forget them. One of her suggestions is to have a Twitter account to accompany this blog. So tonight, after trying to log into the Twitter account I haven't used in years, I created a new one.

Follow me @shane_lien if you're into that.

More posts are in the works, along with some improvements to the look and function of this site. Thanks for checking this out.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Are Canada’s $100 polymer bills really maple-scented? | CTV British Columbia News

Are Canada’s $100 polymer bills really maple-scented? | CTV British Columbia News

I saw a headline on Drudge for a similar story and my first thought was it must be from The Onion. Turns out it was on the Daily Mail, so I had to google it. I have more faith in The Onion. Sure enough, here's the story from British Columbia.

This could be a cool theme for the Great White North's currency. Back bacon $50. Hockey puck $20.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Memorial Day

"Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."– General Colin Powell

The American Military Cemetery - Bayeux, France

It's Memorial Day. That solemn U.S. holiday to honor our Soldiers, Sailors, Airman and Marines who lost their lives in battle. Over the decades it has become the "unofficial start to summer" and the beginning of grilling season for those pansies who can't light charcoal while wearing a winter jacket. It's that long weekend break from the graduation open houses. And it has also become a "Thank a Vet and Post a Patriotic Picture on Facebook Day", which I am (in part) guilty of.

Today I posted the above quote from General Powell and the very moving photo. To me, that summed up nicely what this day is really all about. Those marble headstones across our nation's cemeteries and the marble crosses and Stars of David in France. Today is about what lays under the marble markers. Our Soldiers, Sailors, Airman and Marines who lost their lives in battle.

I thought the above picture was perfect. The perfectly align crosses in the perfectly manicured grounds calmly and quietly embraced in a fog. Haunting and peaceful at the same time. It is almost ironic how those perfectly aligned crosses mark where under that perfectly manicured ground lay many mangled bodies of our youth. Young Soldiers who died a death far from the peaceful, quiet, organized character of their final resting place. Many of them died a death in loud, confusing unorganized horror that is war. On the beaches of Normandy and battlefields of Europe filled with shouts, screams, explosions, chaos, confusion, anger, pain and fear.

The quote on the other hand, while very solemn and well meant, is not entirely accurate. Let's be honest, at the end of war, we pretty much always end up with more foreign land than a cemetery. The United States very rarely leaves. I'm not going to claim we are an Imperial Nation who takes over for it's best interests, like an anti-war protester. I don't feel that way. If that were the case, we would have a lot more territories besides a few islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific.

But we have a Naval base in Communist Cuba that's a leftover from the Spanish American War. Bases in Germany and Japan from World War II and tens of thousands of troops on the Korean Peninsula. Not to mention the Middle East. Like I said, we rarely leave.

While we are not an imperial nation, we are kind of the world's police force. I always thought that was a role more suited for the United Nations, but they are more like the world's mall security. If they see trouble they give a warning, then call the real police if trouble continues.

While I still really like General Powell's quote, I wish is was more accurate. I wish we weren't the world's police. It would really reduce the number of white marble markers I think about on this day. But just like the stronger and wealthier people need to take care of the less fortunate, so do the stronger and wealthier nations.