Archive for April, 2006
The following are names that, when applied to a baby GIRL, the authors consider cool. I think it merely shows the authors were either running out of ideas or perhaps sniffing glue while writing this chapter.
Can you imagine a little girl named…
– Barry
– Allen
– Gary
– Howard
– Lawrence
– Randolph
– Sherman
Who would name their daughter “Howard”? That’s just asking for trauma and therapy…
Also, they have a small list of names that come from video games as something that people may be naming their kids in another generation or so. Among the usual suspects (Sephiroth, Squall, Selphie, Rinoa, Samus, Quistis, Cloud, Jak, Link, etc) are some surprising picks.
To wit:
– Crash
– Goemon (I have no idea what game he’s from; I first thought of Lupin III when I saw it)
– Alucard (Dracula backwards! What a great idea for a boy’s name!)
– Lara (ick)
– Munch (no, no, no!)
– Parappa
– Maximo (as soon as kids learn the term ‘gluteus maximus’, guess what little Maximo’s name will become?)
– Spyro
– Klonoa
While my name is not uncommon, it’s not in the top 100 “cool” girls’ names, which suits me fine. Ev’s name is number 28 on the boys’ list, though. Ah well.
Posted in 
I bought 37 books last weekend — for less than fifteen bucks. The Friends Of The Library had their biannual (biennial? Twice-yearly, anyhow) book sale, and I bought as many books as I could carry. Among the stuff I picked up were:
– Teach Yourself To Read Hebrew
– Going Abroad (A comprehensive guide to answering the call of nature anywhere in the world, from using the ubiquitous squat toilet to the bidet. A must for travelers, wherever they, er, go.)
– Cool Names For Babies (including a good number of which that I argue with, of course)
– Dover’s Say It In: Finnish
– Home Birth, A Nursing Mother’s Companion, and How Weaning Happens (for research and giving my father apoplexy)
– The War Of Independence, from the Miracle Series: The Key To Hebrew! (other entries include Hassidic Tales, Trees And Flowers Of Israel, and The Capture Of Eichmann)
– A paperback copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology, because I didn’t have one
– a Toledo tourist guide (Spain, not Ohio)
– isiXhosa 3, which is a language-learning book. It’s primarily in two languages that I cannot immediately identify — it may be Afrikaans — with some English. I bought it because A) it was half-price and B) it includes a passage that is translated as “The giraffe is a beautiful animal. It eats green leaves.”
– a copy of the 1968 Webster’s Student Dictionary. Unlike student dictionaries of today, this one is actually useful… I realized, as I was poking through the reference books, that I don’t have an English dictionary here. Oops.
– Laulan Ja Soitan, a children’s songbook in Finnish. I would estimate that it was intended for kids from 4th to 6/7th grades, possibly even 8th. It has songs from other countries, including one that is supposed to be Eskimo in origin… And I have no idea if it is or not, because the lyrics have all been translated into Finnish!
– Musiikkia Oppimaan, another Finnish kid’s songbook. It looks like it’s intended for first graders and up, since it covers everything from ‘these are the instruments in an orchestra’ to ‘this is how you conduct and why the beat is important’ to ‘this is how you read music’. It’s really cool, and now I know what the Finnish for ‘tuba’ is. (Tuuba.)
A few weeks ago, I woke up and needed a drink of water. As I was on my way to the kitchen, a commercial came on. This was really unremarkable, except for the fact that if you had asked me what had been said two seconds after one of the sappy-voiced little girls had finished speaking, I’d have told you that she said, and I quote, “Let’s make a buttery witch!”
Alas, the real commercial is not nearly as interesting. It’s for a Skydancers playset that involves bubbles; the girl suggests that she and her compatriot make a bubbly wish.
Personally, I find the idea of a buttery witch far more entertaining.
Balticon 40 — featuring Neil Gaiman and Tamara Siler Jones, as well as a whole bunch of other people and stuff. Cool.
‘Cause I wanna sign up with Valleyschwag and get kickass stickers with which to decorate my laptop/scooter/whatever.
Okay, so Mac (from Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends) just used ‘Oh my stars and garters!’. That’s the second time in the last couple of months that I’ve heard someone use that exclamation on TV. Normally it’s not something that _anyone_ knows/has heard, let alone the most recent generation of cartoon-watchers…
Polaris School Best selling apparel
*Giggle* They know enough about Polaris to know that its mascot is a wolf (I think, technically, we were Timber Wolves, but I’m not 100% certain about that), but they have no idea that we have no teams whatsoever. (At least as far as I know — that may have changed, but I doubt it.)
Making Light: “Fanfic”: force of nature
I don’t know about those quotation marks, but the post is great, so I don’t care.
…also, I want to write. *Pokes brain* work, darn you!
Is there anyone out there that has _any_ idea what this means?
Compensation: Hi-Speed Binary Compensation
I suppose it could mean that you get broadband instead of money, but still… It’s really rather weird.
This is from an ad for a salesperson in a “high-end boutique”… clienteling
“Clienteling” is NOT A WORD, DAMMIT.