Posts Tagged on Frederick's Timelog

Disturbing and unacceptable violence

January 17, 2012 by Frederick | 0 comments

This kind of violence on a defenceless victim should be condemned and strictly prosecuted. The Chicago police and prosecutors have a responsibility to bring those involved to justice.

Dramatic.

October 27, 2011 by Frederick | Comments Off

Neat-o.

Good Life, eh?

August 4, 2011 by Frederick | Comments Off

I was at a Passport Canada office today, waiting for essentially two hours for my two minutes of attention. (Seriously, it took that long to get from C360 to C364… and all I really did was fill out my address and sign a slip…)

Anyways. That’s not the point of this post.

When I used to work for my local municipality, one of the regulations was that the radio equipment could only be set on certain approved stations. This made sense, because hundreds of patrons (many of them families and young kids) certainly would have objected to hip hop music riddled with vulgar and offensive lyrics.

I thought Passport Canada, a federal government agency, would have similar rules. And I think they do follow them. It’s just that radios are sometimes lax with how family-friendly their songs are.

Good Life by OneRepublic is one of my favourite songs. Compared with some things I experimented with a few years ago, it’s actually not so far a departure from my old classical preferences. Except, of course, the part about the B.S. that don’t work now.

I enjoy this song. A lot. Really. And this is hardly profanity.

But does it really belong in a public waiting room where hundreds of English-speaking patrons come and go?

Mongolian orphan delivers heartfelt performance

May 30, 2011 by Frederick | 1 Comment

This is a clip from a China’s Got Talent, also known as “中国达人秀”. For those of you who don’t speak/read Chinese, that’s okay—I’ll summarize the boy’s backstory (and the song is in some Mongolian dialect anyways, so few in the audience actually know the lyrics).

Major take-aways (Mandarin speakers skip my notes):

This boy comes from the Mongolian plains.
The boy’s dream is, translated literally, to invent a (figurative?) ink of which drops can turn the ground into vast plains of greenery.
When asked what he’s singing, he responded that the title of the song is (and I paraphrase), Mother in My Dreams. (the song has a distinct ethnic feel)
“Then, where is your mom?”
“Mom is in heaven.” (audience gasps)
“And your dad?”
“Dad also died, in a car accident.” (more gasps)

In the middle of the performance, one of the people on stage reflects, “this song… we don’t need to know the words, because you should feel what he’s singing.”
He’s a little off-tune when asked to sing a cappella but soon finds his key. In an emotional moment, this is understandable.

Lipdub

November 4, 2010 by Frederick | Comments Off

By now, this is old news, but this was such a great video, I had to share it.

Google “Search Stories”

July 23, 2010 by Frederick | 2 Comments

Google has been posting “Search Stories” videos on its YouTube channel since November 2009 and they’re really quite touching. The original search story was “Parisian Love“, about a man who apparently finds love in Paris while studying abroad.