There are plenty of ways to screw up naming your child, from misspelling to unnecessary punctuation. For the less creative, there’s now a web site to help you get a head start on ruining your child’s life. Take a look at a real sampling of its suggestions, seen in bold.

Starting with the boys, you may have heard of a fish with this name, but how about a son called Wanda? If you’re hoping for many grandchildren, Phertol is a good choice. Maybe you’re a Pearl Jam fan? Ten is a fine name for an album or a son, and as a bonus, it’s three better than Seven. Other three letter wonders include Pin, Ped, and the delicious Pez. Ultimately, however, every boy gets mocked in some way relating to the male anatomy. Why not make it easy for the other kids, with a name like Smalle or Wack? One way or another, you’ll have to decide. You can’t just Punt.

How about names for a girl? Iron is a strong, powerful name, and it’s not just for a man. If you’re a fan of Bob Marley, you might opt to name your daughter Rasta. Your future sweetheart could be the life of the party, if you name her Keg. Perhaps you’d prefer your girl to sound like a prescription drug? Go ahead and name her Thanarnal. If you’ve got money to spend on costly vowels, Beeeasud may be for you, but if not, Phr is a fine choice. Of course, if you want your daughter to be able to support you with her lottery winnings, Wncash is the way to go. One way or another though, if you pick a name this way, it’s extremely the other kids will laugh at your young lady – Haha.

Once again, all of these suggestions are real, pulled right from the site. You can try it out yourself, and see just what sorts of awful “names” you can find.

In addition to being vulgar slang for penis, “tool” is also widely accepted to mean someone ignorant of being used, someone who is an unwitting pawn. How fitting.

Panspermia Theorists Say India’s Red Rain Contains Life Not Seen on Earth [Link]

Panspermia theorists also state that India is no longer part of Earth.

Johnson & Johnson Recalls Hip Implants [Link]

Readers left wondering how exactly a hip implant can be ‘recalled’.

Wife Runs Into Mistress at Mine [Link]

“Soooo…how do you know Yonni?”

Recently, anti-virus software maker McAfee agreed to be bought by microprocessing hardware maker Intel. Following this news, McAfee sent an incredibly content-less email to customers, describing how this partnership was going to improve network security, cure cancer, and help us attain world peace so that beauty pageant contestants will finally be satisfied. If you recently murdered a puppy or something, you can punish yourself by reading the email in its entirety. Most people won’t get past the third paragraph, and I don’t think I’ve yet managed to finish the whole thing, so nobody spoil the ending for me.

McAfee’s email got me recognizing a pattern of bullshit communiques from various corporations, and I found a couple worth sharing. First, American Express recently emailed to let me know that they don’t use the words “today” or “tomorrow” in a literal sense:

Apparently, American Express wants to connect with cardmembers on Facebook and Twitter. Meanwhile, cardmembers want a serious credit card company, one which doesn’t try to connect with them on Facebook and Twitter.

Second is a letter from part of the healthcare industry, so you know it’s going to be good. Or bad. Whichever.

Earlier this year, the state of Massachusetts was negotiating with my HMO, who wanted to raise insurance rates. For a couple of months, a state-mandated reduced rate was temporarily charged, which seems like a nice “screw you” for them trying to jack up the prices. Ultimately, however, a compromise was reached and prices are now up 6.4% from last year. The spin for this?

• We know the uncertainty over rates has made it hard for you to plan and budget. Although rates are now going up, we now have certainty regarding rates for the remainder of your plan year.

Ah, yes. Thanks so much for pointing out that silver lining. I have to go collect change by the highway off-ramp so I can pay my bills now, but I’ll take with me that good “certainty” feeling.

Update (September 3, 2010): Shortly after posting this, I checked my mail, and found that I’d received a second identical copy of the letter from the HMO. So in addition to corporate BS, they’ve got lousy bureaucracy too.

After a recent trade with Texas, Jarrod Saltalamacchia was added to the Boston Red Sox roster. While reading a RedSox.com article about the new addition, I spotted a confusing picture:

What on earth kind of a bat is he holding? Or, where is the rest of his bat? What the hell is going on? After staring at this for quite awhile, I finally watched the video it was linking to, and saw this frame:

Apparently, it’s a Photoshop disaster from removing the score overlay from the video.

While he has yet to reach his potential in the big leagues (and he played just three games with the Sox before being sidelined with a bizarre leg infection), Saltalamacchia does hold one record: longest last name in baseball history, at 14 letters. The record was previously held by 5 players who had 13-letter last names, including the ridiculously-named Tim Spooneybarger. Take a moment to chuckle at his ridiculous jersey:

180° worth of name

If you haven’t heard Cee-Lo’s new single ‘Fuck You’, you will. To get in on this catchy-ass song and its deliciously vulgar chorus before it completely blows up, just have a listen. The preview video is simple, but stands on its own quite well. As you might expect given the name, the song is obviously NSFW – Not Safe For Work.

That’s quite a chorus.

If you’ve already heard the song, however, you know it’s also NSFW in a different way – Not Safe For Whites, at least those of us who don’t want to toss out the N-word. After much thought, I’ve hit upon a solution for the “golddigger problem”:

• Oh shit, she’s a gold lover.
  Just thought you should know, brother.

Use it when you inevitably find yourself singing this song in the car, belting it out in the shower, or serenading the mailman while flipping a magnificent double bird.

My poor television, which does nothing but what is asked of it, is often subjected to hysterical rantings about the nincompoopery that is modern advertising. The most recent ad to have me scattering flecks of spittle into the air is AT&T’s ‘Ballet’, which can currently be viewed via YouTube¹. It shows the same woman in two parallel universes, one where she’s on AT&T’s faster network and the other where she’s on a different, ever-so-slightly slower network. As she walks outside, she downloads something to her phone. When her download finishes, she puts away her phone, dropping her ballet shoes in the process.

In the AT&T universe where her download finished faster, a pair of ballet producers take notice of the woman. She joins them, auditions, and gets a part. How very fortunate that she had that AT&T phone!

On the left is the AT&T universe. On the right is a depressing world of unfulfilled promise and crushing despair.

In the non-AT&T universe, the ballet producers pass our protagonist by without noticing her, leaving her to continue her sad and unfulfilling existence. Ultimately, she watches someone else perform in the ballet and contemplates taking her own life.

Of course, the two outcomes have no real relation to AT&T or its supposedly faster network. They’re simple chance. If the producers had left their office 5 seconds later, AT&T’s network would have had the woman dropping her slippers too early, while the slow network would have led to the fulfillment of all her dreams.

Here’s a tip for the thousands of advertising executives out there among my faithful readers: if the meaning of your ad depends on a coin flip, you probably don’t have a very good ad. Also, a follow-up tip, a quick look at the numbers says that you probably don’t have a very good ad anyway.

The most galling bit is that it would be so easy to fix this dreck. Instead of a chance meeting on the street caused by dropped ballet slippers, the woman could be downloading directions to a ballet audition. The faster AT&T network would get her the directions sooner, so she could set off and get the part. The slower network could delay her enough that by the time she got to the audition, the part has gone to someone else. Everything else could remain the same, and the entire premise would no longer revolve around happenstance.

AT&T advertisers, you’re welcome to this idea free of charge. It’s all yours, because avoiding the mental drain caused by your brainlessness is worth far more than money.

Footnotes:

1. I’ve also archived the commercial in all its 720p wretchedness here.   ↩

Near the entrance of a nearby K-8, there is a display showing the fundraising efforts the school did to assist Haiti. This sign is a testament to the fine charity efforts of the school’s students, who raised over $3600 to help erect new buildings in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The sign is also evidence of the obliviousness of every single adult who has entered the school since the sign was first hung.

“Almost there…so close…so close! Yes! YES! YES!!! WE DID IT!”¹

I do wish I also had picture from before the fundraising efforts had climaxed. Either way though, wow indeed.²

Footnotes:

1. If you really want to make this caption creepy and disgusting, add the word “kids” anywhere you like.   ↩

2. This sign was first spotted by one Ms. Steciuk, who happens to be celebrating a birthday today. Happy birthday!    ↩

On the face of it, a recent soft news piece gives an account of a maladroit marriage proposal and a lost engagement ring. After dating his girlfriend Stacey Scanlon for more than a year, Matt Cawley planned to propose to her this past Monday. His proposal was set to occur on a jetty at Bass River Beach, but things fell apart when the $9000 diamond ring he planned to give her was lost just before he proposed. Several hours of searching turned up nothing, and the dejected couple headed home empty-ring-fingered.

That’s certainly an unfortunate story. But what exactly happened? According to Cawley, he’d tied the ring to a sand dollar and left it on the beach. Shortly after, on an early morning walk, he pointed the sand dollar out to Scanlon. When she picked it up, the ring’s weight pulled the knot apart and the ring fell into the rocks, never to be seen again. Or seen at all, actually.

Scanlon said she wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of the ring, which was set with a diamond passed down from a relative of Cawley’s, before it slid down through the jetty.

So a man wishes to marry his girlfriend, but the engagement ring is sadly lost just before his proposal. In fact, the girlfriend never even sees the ring before it’s swept into the sea. Instead of a tale of tragedy, this sounds more like a clever man hoodwinking his girlfriend. To prudent spenders everywhere, this may well be worthy of applause. After all, going into debt by spending thousands of dollars on an overpriced hunk of rock is a bad way to begin a marriage. Of course, the benefits to the marriage obtained by avoiding debt are probably cancelled out if you get them by starting your new life together with a massive lie.

It’s possible there’s even more going on here. The story indicates the diamond was passed down from a relative, so there’s no paper trail on this ring. Further, upon giving up after hours of searching, Cawley’s cousin just happened to drive by in time to picked up the couple. But the most damning piece of evidence, indicating that perhaps this is a massive fraud, wherein an entire family conspires against both an unsuspecting girlfriend and an industry which seeks to indemnify against loss?

Only later did the couple find out that, unbeknownst to them, Cawley’s mother had insured the ring in full.

How convenient.

Many people have quit jobs in their lives and some have quit with aplomb. For my money though, I’ve never heard a better quitting story than Steven Slater’s. I’ve pieced together the best parts of the story from several other reports. Here’s the timeline as I understand it:

After their flight from Pittsburgh landed at JFK, an unnamed passenger struck 38-year-old JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater in the head while unloading his luggage from the overhead compartment, before the plane had stopped taxiing. Slater demanded an apology, but the passenger refused. An argument ensued, with the passenger ultimately suggesting that Slater “fuck off”.

At this point, Slater got on the plane’s PA system and used it to vent his frustrations. As part of his verbal onslaught, he is reported to have said “To the passenger who called me a motherfucker, fuck you. I’ve been in the business 28 years¹. I’ve had it. That’s it”.

Slater then proceeded to activate the plane’s inflatable emergency slide. He grabbed two beers from the galley, then slid down the chute to freedom and unemployment, to perhaps be followed by jail time.

That may be the pinnacle of the story, but it doesn’t end there. However, after sliding down, Slater reportedly returned to pick up his bag – it’s not clear from where exactly it was retrieved. After getting his bag, he rode the AirTrain, creating another spectacle at the Terminal Five stop by removing his company tie and flinging it off the train, much to the amusement of his fellow passengers.

Slater made his way to his car and drove to his home in Belle Harbor, Queens. Jetblue officials, presumably not yet believing that what they’d witnessed was real, waited 25 minutes before notifying Port Authority Police of the incident. This wait enabled Slater to make his ridiculous getaway.

Shortly after, police collected Slater from his home station and returned him to the Port Authority police station at JFK airport for questioning. He was reported to have been calm, as he was questioned and ultimately charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief.

It’s just too good. Fed up with his job, the man activated the emergency chute, then grabbed two beers and slid down the chute! Can you picture it? I can. Can you stop laughing? I can not.

Footnotes:

1. Was he a flight attendant at the age of 10? Has he been lying about his age? Is he just bad at math? We may never know.   ↩