The Most Ridiculous Baby Name Book Ever: Part I

Let's talk about names. Specifically, let's talk about stupid names, and the crazy people who like them.

I think most people are aware that baby names are Serious Bizness. A literal one, actually, if you care to google "baby name consultant." It's also well-established at this point that celebrities are crazy (everyone decided we don't like Blue Ivy's name, right? We're all in agreement here?), and that parents seem to increasingly want unique names--or unique spellings of names--to make their baby stand out.

This isn't about that. Not really. It's not really about sticking 'Y' into random spots it doesn't belong ("Magnyfye Beard," anyone?), and it's not about using real words for names even when it sounds stupid ("If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone"), because that's been going on forever: you can thank the Puritans for these lovely examples (although think of the nickname potential of the second!).

No, this is about the names that are so far out there that the only way you could come up with them is if you were drunk. Or insane. And then you gathered them all in a book of lists to to help 1) other crazy people like yourself or 2) easily-fooled people who will believe you when you say that yes, Blaze (or Ophelia, or Fluffy) is an "over-the-top girl name to avoid", why not use Olga (or Queen, or Treece) from the "names for future architects" list?

If you are, indeed, looking for that crazy, you have found it in 40,001 Best Baby Names.

I own quite a few name books, ostensibly because I wanted to have them on hand when I was in creative writing classes, mostly because I took naming my Pokemon team seriously. Most books follow a similar format. They give you names, tell you what country/language it came from, and usually include any relevant history, like that Jezebel might not have the best connotations, or that Gwyneth Paltrow used Apple as her daughter's name. Sometimes they even have lists on the side, collections of virtue names or  mythological name.

This has that. Kinda. It also has sheer ridiculousness and is apparently based on the author's opinions, which is how you end up with a list for each sex of "names that give you a leg up in life" without any explanation. Why, does everyone automatically love a Celeste? Have Merits been statistically shown to be high earners? Does a Gus get better gas mileage than Ambrose (from the "burdensome boy names" list)?

I don't know. There are 75 lists, and while some are what you'd expect (the "top XX of [decade] is required, by law, to be in every name book ever),  many are just there on the page, BAM, waiting to take you by surprise.

"Why," you might ask upon reading it, "why is Adelaide on the 'scary/creepy' list? Why can't a teacher be expected to pronounce Aisha, Seth, Camilla, or Artemus? Exactly how will naming my son Britt, Gus, or London make him popular?

"Why is Gavin or Justine a 'comfy name', and how do you know that my child will 'like having' it? Will giving her the name Liberty, Harmony, or Rain really make my daughter 'feel weird'? How will I know far enough in advance if my child will be an 'eccentric' to name her/him Galatea, Echo, LaRue, or Webb? If I don't name him Shiloh or Jan-Erik does that mean I don't think my son is 'handsome'?"

And at that point, you will stop asking questions either because your brain broke or because you turned it into a game and decided to spam your friends' Facebook pages ("Hey Aileen, congrats, you share your name with a death-row inmate!").

(I think it's fairly obvious what I did. And yes, there are two lists for "bad-to-the-bone death-row names," because combing the sexes into a single list just wouldn't be enough.)

It's so ridiculous that you have to wonder what was going through the author's mind when she wrote it. She never gives you any clue as to what her criteria for a "powerful" name is, so good luck figuring out why Elizabeth, Greta, Pace, Pilar, and Wiley (or Angus, Jon, Lamar, Nash, and Quentin) are sharing the spotlight.


Part II, The Lists Get Weirder: Afrodytee is Much Easier to Pronounce than Aphrodite
Part III, We Finally Reach the Name Listings: Meashley, Yu-crazy

Resolutions That I Have Not Completely Failed At Yet

In school, my sisters and I had an easy and fun way of doing new year's resolutions. My mother would come up with a basic craft project during which we would write down a minimum of three resolutions--writing them on petals pasted to a flower, or branches on a palm tree, that sort of thing. The next year when we started our new ones, she would pull out the old craft so we could see how we did.

I always ended up with 5-15 resolutions, and probably had an 80% sucess rate, which I think is pretty amazing. I am a resolutions goddess.

This might have had less to do with my willpower and more because the majority looked like this:

• I will beat Pokemon Sapphire
• I will buy the next Harry Potter book
• I will beat Pokemon Emerald
• I will begin seige of the evil colouring demon, Paint Shop Pro 9 [Yes that is word-for-word what I wrote.]

The ones that didn't get completed looked like this:

• I will learn how to sew
• I will write at least one snail-mail letter a month
• I will save up enough money to fly my best friend from Germany to Hawaii to visit

If I listed all of them from my middle/high school years (which is where these came from), you would discover several truths about me:

• I played a lot of video games
• I really liked drawing
• I really hated drawing digitally (and liked the whole British insert-u-everywhere thing)
• I thought that an 8th grader would totally make enough money babysitting to fly her quickly-fading best friend across the world.

Now that I am older and by default wiser, I choose realistic things that I can accomplish. I resolve this year to:

• Eat vegetables
• Read something older than I am
• Write at least one snail-mail letter a month [Older and wiser. That means it has a chance of happening this time, right?]
• Not die
• Beat Pokemon Pearl because I started it in 2007 and that's just sort of sad

Originally, I had another one on there: be more organized. Not just to actually put my clothes in the laundry basket for once, but to schedule things so I would do my homework before three in the morning, and then schedule in times for the fun stuff I like but never do, like drawing and writing.

It failed miserably, which you may have noticed because it's taken me three solid weeks to write this post. So we're going to pretend it didn't happen.

[Insert Obligatory New Years Title]

Hello, and welcome back to your irregularly-scheduled programming, the Unnatural Commonplace show! Here's your host, Kayt O and her Amazing Technicolor Socks!

It's a new year, and I thought that at 12:01 AM on January 1st, this meant I was done with all the traditions for a while. Done with opening St. Nicolaus Day presents (Dec 6th). Done with the Christmas Eve presents and dinner. Done with Christmas, and with our traditional Boxing Day tea party and presents. And with New Year's Eve, where we did not get presents but we did get those little explodey firecrackers you throw on the sidewalk and then step on all the unexploded ones the new morning and scare the bejeebers out of your dog, which is almost as good.

But noooo, apparently there was one more tradition left over and it was horrible. My family, who appear to be very sane people if you don't look too closely, thinks that to start a year off right, you should go hiking.

Have you heard that what you do on the first day of a new year is apparently how you will spend the rest of the year? That is a great argument for sleeping the day away and watching a Phineas and Ferb marathon. You'll spend the rest of the year well-rested and in a good mood!

Instead, my family wants you to spend the rest of the year slipping on dead and decomposing organic matter and getting rained on while trying to figure out if these marked trees indicate you're on a real path or if you are lost and surrounded by the remains of a beaver picnic. Also, I am pretty sure that's a really deep metaphor for life. One in which you did not get enough sleep or watch Disney cartoons, obviously.

So, here's to a new year, full of fun, blog posts that I actually remember to write, and sleep.

And at least five colors of tiger-striped socks.

Blog Makeover

This blog isn't empty, but posting has obviously slowed down a bit recently.

Reason being, as much as I love the current coffee-stained layout, I feel that it would be more visually appealing and would be easier to read with a new one. This month has been fairly busy, so it's likely the entire month will be a sort of hiatus dedicated to letting me implement a new layout and work on writing interesting posts.

Feedback on both posts and layout is, of course, very welcome.

Kato's First Haunted House

Let it be said up front that I don't do scary. I love surprises and roller coasters, but I'm a total wimp when it comes to traditionally-scary stuff like blood and scary movies. I'm so much of a wimp that I a) can't even look at someone else's paper cut and b)had to stop watching Ghost Rider in the first ten minutes.

But it happened the the first-ever haunted house on campus took place in the boy's dorm, and Lee-sister needed someone to go with because she had friends who were taking part. It took place in the boys' dorm, you had had to go into the suites of rooms, then back out again. At some points it might have been the intention that you were so scared you would run out. I'm not entirely sure.

*Silent creepy man points into first suite*
Me: Lee, I can't see. Can you see?
Lee: I think that's the point.
Girl in creepy makeup: *Silently walks right into me trying to stare me down
Me: Nice mascara.
Girl: *Looks askance*

Girl in next suite: SCREEEEEAAAAAAM
Lee and Me: Our ears are bleeding, if that was your goal.

Strobe light: FLICKER FLICKER FLICKER FLICKER FLICKER

Guide to next floor carrying lamp: *Walks quickly*
Me: There is a real fear that I will slip and kill myself because I cannot see the stairs anymore, Mr. Quickfeet. Do you want another exhibit, huh? Do you?

Fake blood on the closed-in maze walls that is not dry: We like your fancy coat!
Me: Crap.

Man with chainsaw: *chases*
Lee and Me: *walks*
Man with chainsaw: Man, they weren't even scared.

Chainsaw Man gave up after ten feet of rrrrrwwwwww-ing two inches from our backs, and his comment made everything worth it.

It was a well-put-together event, and I'm pretty sure that people who have normal brains reacted the way they were supposed to because I heard a lot of screaming and giggling and at least once group just screamed and ran down the hallway without even getting to the parts where they actually try to scare you.

And that's how I learned that Kayt > haunted houses.

How I Almost Blew Up My Car, But Not Really

Technically, I didn't have a "first car," in the sense that the Roadrunner belonged to my parents and was mainly designated the "college car"--i.e., for use by the children in college. On the other hand, I was the only kid in college, and watching my sister drive it when I was home on breaks was an exercise in self-restraint because my precious is in the hands of another.

The Roadrunner, so named because of its pathetically wimpy "meep meep"-sounding horn, was a 2002 Toyota Corolla. Prior to its acquisition, I was of the strong opinion that I would prefer to drive a minivan (which I learned to drive in) for the rest of my life. That went out the window when I discovered the tighter turn radius made a three-point turn into no more than two points.

The Roadrunner was awesome. My school was an 11-hour drive from home, more than 1300 miles round-trip, and I could get nearly 40 mpg on the freeway for most of that. Gas milage, quickness, room for friends...it had only one downside: it ate oil faster than college students eat, well, anything. It didn't leak, but I was having to put in two quarts a month, at least, and made sure I did about a week or so before one of the breaks my freshman year.

Something that doesn't seem related, but really is: I can be very forgetful. For most things, I keep a planner and so life doesn't generally go awry, because the planner keeps track of definite things AND things that are only a possibility AND how to do everything associated with them.

So it's once again time to trek home. Over 600 miles, but I make it. The car is used for normal around-town trips, and it's several days later that I notice it's starting to smell funky. Dangerously funky, in a burned kind of way. I'm afraid that driving five miles from the craft store will be time enough for the engine to blow up and kill me.

Ready to duck and cover if this somehow sets off an explosion, I open the hood.

And discover the oil cap sitting on top of the engine while everything surrounding it is covered in a fine layer of black.

I've been driving around for two weeks without a cap on the oil.

Despite the fact that ten more minutes driving home will probably not do that much more harm, all things considered (re: 11-hour drive home), this calls for a minor freak out in the craft store parking lot the involves lots and lots of paper towels from the store's bathroom and calling my dad on the phone, because dads fix everything.

When I was reassured that so long as the car had enough oil (it did, though it ate it like a speed demon soon after) and I'd cleaned up what I could (there were not enough paper towels in the world), then the smell would linger but it was just the excess oil burning off and was harmless. Yes, harmless. Yes, that means no harm. It's safe to drive and will absolutely not blow up, Kayto, you are fine and stop being a wimp.

And that's when I started checking every gauge on my car obsessively forever after.

The moral of the story is obvious: even if your car is awesome, it will still find ways to mess with you because cars are like cats that way. They even start with the same two letters.

Also like some cats, the Roadrunner came to an untimely, crunchy end, but that's a different story.

Is this the real life?

♫ Is this just fantasy? Too much homework to escape from realityyyy. ♪

And that's why, in a nutshell, I completely disappeared for a couple weeks. For the week and a half before my fall break, I had something due every day, and a couple things sprung on me at the last second (note to professors: assigning four essays two days before they're due is not going to garner you the best-written results, especially if it's midterm season. Just sayin').

Luckily that's over now so I can continue to furnish you with videos made by people of questionable sanity because it's time for Friday Ephemera!


Sit through the entire thing. I promise it's worth it.

And then you have two variations of the same thing:



Personally, the second is my favorite, because nothing can beat the sight of "pikachu" riding the "pidgey" near the end.

It wasn't intentional, but these all ended up being about Pokemon, which admittedly has some epic (interpret as you will) fan videos. Are there any I've missed?