humor

On Names

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Naming a thing gives it power.
Before my daughter was born, my wife and I spent a prodigious amount of time trying to decide on boys and girls names (at the time we didn’t know the sex of our yet to be born child) because we wanted to make sure that whatever we decided upon was right.
Moving backwards, before we got my dog, we also spent a lot of time deciding on the name because again, we wanted to make sure it was right.
Hell, when we got our car after our daughter was born, we batted around a number of names for it before we settled on “Murray.” One because Murray the Matrix has a nice sing-song ring to it and two because we used to live on Murray St. Due to the reasons I mentioned it, just seemed right.
All of that being said, I would like to point out that the Russian energy company Gazprom just made a 2.5 billion dollar investment in Nigera and the joint company is being called Nigaz. You don’t need be to a corporate branding guru to know that someone should have spent more a little more time thinking this one through. Nigaz? Really? For all the times that I mentioned the word right above, this name is just plain wrong.
Via Ben who said, “First rung on the ‘probably not the best name for a company’ ladder”

ramblings

Pet Names

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I’ve listed below the 10 most common dog and cat names based on a recent analysis of VPI’s 450,000 insured pets:
Dogs: Max, Molly, Buddy, Bella, Lucy, Maggie, Daisy, Jake, Bailey & Rocky.
Cats: Max, Chloe, Lucy, Tigger, Tigger, Smokey, Oliver, Bella, Sophie & Princess.
Two things of note: 1) Max wins for both and 2) human names are more popular for dogs than cats which I find a little odd.

music

Let My Paltrow Go…

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Apple Paltrow has a new brother named Moses, just in time for Passover. Along with sister Apple, all Moses needs is for a few of his meshuganeh and movie rock star relatives to hang out together to form a family charoset ensemble.
Via Jessie

politics

Playing Politics

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I just learned that Lipson, among other things, is a ward (an electoral district represented by one or more councillors) in the city of Plymouth, England. I would love to be Councillor Lipson of Lipson at some point in the future. I probably would have to become a UK citizen though so I’ll really have to think about this one.

ramblings

How Apropos

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In an inspired bit of hiring, James Glasscock has been named VP/VOD for the Playboy Entertainment Group. Reporting to Ned Nalle, Pres/Programming, James will manage all aspects of the Company’s video-on-demand business and liaise with Playboy’s distribution partners with the goal of implementing distribution, and optimizing revenue and subscriber satisfaction, specifically related to VOD and SVOD product.

I can’t think of a better man for the job, especially due to the fact that his brother Richard is already employed by Trojan.

Via Jessie

music

How Led Zep Got Their Name

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In trying to prove my theory that Maroon 5’s name is actually a subtle homage to Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing’s call signal during the Death Star attack stage of “Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope” (“…Red Leader, this is Red 5…”), I came across this simple and well worded explanation as to how Led Zeppelin, aka the greatest rock band eh-VER, got its name:

Keith Moon and John Entwistle of the Who were hanging out with Richard Cole (The Yardbirds road manager) one night at the disco “Salvation” in New York. Moon and Entwistle were burnt out on the whole scene with The Who and were talking about the desire to form a band with Jimmy Page and Steve Winwood. And Entwistle said “Yeah. We’ll call it Lead Zeppelin. Because it will go over like a fucking Lead Balloon.” Laughter followed and Cole told Jimmy about the discussion later. So when the time came to change the band’s name from The New Yardbirds they finally settled on “Led Zeppelin” after short stints as “Mad Dogs” and “Whoopee Cushion”. They changed the spelling of lead to “Led” so that people wouldn’t mispronounce the groups name as “Lead Zeppelin”.

If I ever form a band, I was going to name it Red 5. Now I can’t do that because of stupid Maroon 5. Now I have to go with my backup name – Field Order 15. This is the formal name for General Sherman’s order to give all freed blacks 40 acres and a mule, which in my opinion, while great sounding (Land to a former slave? Great!) added insult to injury. The mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse, is a sterile animal and can’t reproduce. Its used as a work animal and let’s face it, freed blacks in 1865 were used to working. So in reality, Sherman would have been much better off giving a plow to the freed slave to push instead of a mule. At least that way the field will get plowed and something might grow instead of just having a sterile animal sitting around, doing nothing except waiting to be fed by a freed slave that probably has no money for food. But that’s just my opinion.

ramblings

Best. Names. EVER.

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My parents came over for dinner tonight. Among other things, we discussed how Jermaine Jackson gave his kids some awesome names. After checking with Google, we learned he has two sons with the following names: Jaafar and Jermajesty, ages 8 and 4. ‘Nuff said.