The birthday dilemna. To vlog, or not to vlog: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to vlog the slings and arrows of birthday rights, or to take arms against a sea of public enquiry, and by opposing stay mute? To be quiet: to let strangers in; no more; and by being quiet to say we are mute. The gifts and the thousand birth acclamations that life is heir to, ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. To be quiet, to let strangers in; To be quiet: perchance to receive: ay, there’s the rub; for in that silence of birth what gifts may come when we have shuffled off this date of import, must give us pause: there’s the respect that makes calamity of so many years; for who would bear the hollowness and shallowness of presents, the acquaintance’s guess, the proud man’s selfishness, the pangs of gifts of despised love, the law’s restriction, the insolence of office workers and the spurns that parents merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his birthday make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary card, but that the dread of something instead of a birthday, the undiscover’d day from whose bourn no commercialism returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those birthdays we have than fly to others that we know not of? Thus commercialism does make consumers of us all; and thus the native hue of celebration is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and gifts of great pith and moment with this regard their usefulness turn awry, and lose the name of value. – Cheap you now! The fair Birthday! Nymph, in thy orisons be all my non-birthdays be remember’d.
So what did you do on 27th September 2005?
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