what's in a name?

As many of my previous posts might attest, I'm interested in onomastic issues. (That's "onomastic," as in "the study of names" - not "onanistic." Sheesh.) Here's a trend: creating nicknames not from the first part of names but from the latter part, regardless of whether those syllables are accented. The two trend-bearers here are Drew from Andrew and, probably, Topher from Christopher (most notably in Topher Grace, the actor, and Dave Eggers' brother (referenced in this Onion interview among other places, if you're curious). But there are others: I recall hearing of someone named Frederick who called himself Rick - and the Irish Liam for William may be the historically oldest of these. But I wonder if there's anything to this (perhaps rather small) trend - other than just people's need to have distinctive names.

I, however, don't plan on calling myself "Frey" (pronounced "free") anytime soon...

The Issue That Will Not Go Away

This article analyzes the Edison/Mitofsky evaluation of exit-polling discrepancies...which, despite the headlines, appears not to have explained away the differences between exit polls and elections results. And here's Christopher Hitchens, explaining, again, why there's something rotten in Ohio. Hitchens can be an annoyance, and his rightward slide in the last decade is somewhat bewildering - but he's always been eloquent, and his conclusion here gets directly to the real point, whatever actually happened: "Americans should cease to be treated like serfs or extras when they present themselves to exercise their franchise" - and, I would add, they should not be dismissed or ridiculed when they demand that a clearly unaccountable system be fixed.

Yeah? I got one for ya: self-indulgent bloggers! Waddaya think of that, wise guy?

I've been trying to figure out why some things are annoying. This one was spurred on by being irked at this guy I always see around town who's constantly juggling and always wears a derby hat and a long black coat, along with his black plastic glasses, long hair, and Jesus beard. Anyway, the specific types of annoyances under examination are: jugglers, unicyclists, and free-range harmonica players (particularly when they play their horrifying version of "blues": Mr. Kurtz would feel just dandy in comparison).

My theory is that my annoyance comes from these guys' (almost always guys) combination of extreme look-at-me-ism with the activities' amateur-day-at-the-circus feel (circuses are intrinsically creepy, of course). The look-at-me bit is that, essentially, these guys are demanding my attention, creating a distraction in my visual atmosphere - but they're not doing anything to earn that attention. For all the interest in their activities, they might as well be merely jumping up and down and waving their arms in the air shouting.

And I do think the boring unoriginality of the performances themselves (and just how can one be original juggling things?) is the key factor. Some guy wandering around pretending to be soulful on his hideous harmonica is annoying; some guy trying to play Bartók on the harmonica is at least unusual. Similarly, a unicyclist is annoying - what, we're supposed to thrill at his stunning feats of balance? - but if instead of riding around in broken circles like a drunken bumblebee, he'd mounted his cycle on a platform over a cello and replaced the bicycle chain with the horsehair from a cello bow in order to create a drone on the cello, while playing a melody on a series of tuned bicycle bells mounted on his handlebars and percussion on the unicycle itself - well, that would be interesting.

Now, it occurred to me that perhaps there's something therapeutic for these folks in publicly doing their thing: for all I know, for instance, Juggling Guy has some sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and if it weren't for his juggling, he'd be slashing his flesh with razors or trying to rip out his own tongue. (Man, I've got to get my neighbor to stop playing those Nine Inch Nails records all day long.)

On second thought, there shall be no amateur public harmonica performances, period.

(NB: I have, from some residual sense of decency, omitted any discussion of mimes. As Oz said, "Nobody deserves a mime." Except perhaps those harmonica guys.)

three unmeshable things

* Are you curious about trend-hopping parents and the names they give their future-Springer-fodder kids? Or do you just want to know how many dopes out there misspell "Micheal" and "Jonathon"? Here's a graphically cool site that'll let you know. (Bonus: enter in "Willow" and "Xander," observe the timeline, and guess which TV show had a measurable impact on naming during the last decade.)

* Was George Lucas right?

* And finally: robot monkeys! (sort of...) Now if only they'd dress 'em up in pirate outfits...

silence please! poets at work!

First, you folks rock! I love the poems! I'll stop using exclamation marks real soon!

So, here's my measly little contribution:

A stitch in time might save mine,
as a cloud knits a cliff to the sky,
a needle threads the voice
through the turntable's whirry
spiral in ever closer orbits.

But if the air's blue current
erodes the spilling canyons
and leaps the voice's ridges
I skip
gripped by time and falling
untethered, unthreaded, unwound.

- and here are lessons learned:

Positive: the arbitrary collection of words did make me put ideas together I wouldn't otherwise have been likely to have come up with.

Negative: if you're writing a ten-line poem in ten minutes, do not treat the poem like an old-movie valise overstuffed with concepts and imagery.

poets' coroner

I found someone else's poetry assignment handout on the floor of one of the classrooms I teach in. Because I'm not in the "creative writing" world (by the way: I hate that phrase, "creative writing"...), for all I know this is the most boring dead-common thing in the universe, but...I found it pretty intriguing. It's adapted from an exercise by Rita Dove in The Practice of Poetry (ed. Robin Behn and Chase Twichell - what a great name: "Chase Twichell"):

Write a ten-line poem that includes a common phrase (between the devil and the deep blue sea, someday my prince will come, etc.) that you've changed in some way, as well as five or more of the following words:

cliff, needle, voice, whir, blackberry, cloud, mother, lick

You have ten minutes.

What's cool about this is there are at least three key factors: the altered proverb, the list of words (not, most likely, related to the proverb), and the rather brief time limit, which forces the writer not to belabor the point and go with looser, draftier verbal associations.

Anyway, I'm curious what folks can come up with, if you're willing to toss the results in the comments area. After a while, I'll post what I came up with (while rigorously resisting the strong urge to edit it...).

(Yes, that is a completely unmotivated bad pun in the title line.)

"as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it"

Here's some useful perspective on the Ward Churchill controversy.

We appear unable to take any degree of harsh criticism, or accept any reality that's unpleasant to us (such as that much of the rest of the world hates us...and not "for our freedoms" or from envy, but because of our actions against them and support of dictatorships).

more of the year that was

Here's what looks to be (I've only glanced at it so far) an interesting and far-ranging list of one person's 2004. Damn - makes me nostalgic for the days when I had more time to consume music...

so sad

Tinky Winky, like the rest of the Teletubbies, aged less than gracefully...