Tag: freedom

weird baby names, some banned

cowboy making hand gesturesIn America, you’re free to name your baby whatever you want.  For the most part, freedom is good; we don’t want tyranny.  But some countries’ governments feel it is their duty to protect people from stupidity.  A debate on whether that is good or not is beyond the scope of this article.

I started thinking about this because New Zealand just banned a number of baby names, including 18 that have been used in the U.S. (and some are popular).  Some of them make sense for other countries, like King, Princess, Duke, Baron, Majesty, etc.  Some are to prevent religious confusion or controversy, like Christ and Lucifer.  Someone cross-referenced their list with the U.S. Social Security Administration’s database and found that 46 boys in the U.S. are named Christ, and 8 are named Lucifer.  I just don’t know why someone would choose to name their child Lucifer.  Seems kind of forboding toward evil…  (That’s like naming your child “Important Evil Genius“, except even worse.)

Sweden has similar bans, although they extend it to names such as Superman and Metallica.  U.S. celebrities are becoming known for giving their children weird names.  A few examples:

Moxie CrimeFighter — child of Penn Jillette
Kal-El — son of Nicolas Cage
Pilot Inspektor — son of Jason Lee
Moon Unit, Diva Thin Muffin, and Dweezil — children of Frank Zappa
Pirate — child of Jonathan and Deven Davis
Tabooger — child of Dan Cortese
Tu Morrow — child of Rob Morrow

Having named a child now, part of the process process for us was trying to pick a name that people won’t make fun of too much.  Obviously you can’t stop all teasing and bullying, but some of those above are just asking for it.  Tabooger?  Guess what his childhood nickname will be…  And Tu Morrow?  Imagine the awkwardness when everyone he/she meets has a short pause upon learning the name, realizing it’s supposed to be funny but it’s not and then you don’t know how to respond to that.

On a related note, you can go to the Social Security website to see how popular your name has been in America the past few decades.

the special days of February, pt 1

Now we will continue our tradition of looking at the special days and holidays of each month.  This month we will look at February (of course).  As usual, this is not a complete list, because those can be found elsewhere, but I guarantee you will not find another list like this one.  See, we add our own unique commentary and humorous analysis to the holidays, to make it more fun.  Feel free to share the link with your friends — just right-click on the name of this post, and select “Copy Link Location” (or whatever sounds closest) to get the link.  Some of these holidays you will want to observe, and it’s even more fun if you get your friends “in the know” about them.  Now, let’s get started with the month-long celebrations and observances :

  • Creative Romance Month — Of course it’s this month, because of Valentine’s Day.  Your wife / girlfriend will appreciate you using some creativity, well, as long as it includes a dozen roses, some chocolate, and a card with mushy stuff written in it.  But other than that, be creative.
  • American Heart Month — Just by parsing the title, this is for people who have a heart (i.e., humans, not cyborgs) and who are American.  So for our international readers, I reckon you’re left out.  Sorry…  Oh, and BTW, I’ve heard that beans are good for your heart…
  • Great American Pie Month — This is what I’m talkin’ about!  For the whole month, eat pies.  I’m not sure what pies are American, but I reckon anything made here is fine.
  • National Cherry Month — I’m not much on eating plain cherries, but put them on a cherry cheesecake or a cherry cream cheese pie, and it’s on.  And it happens to be American Pie Month, too.
  • National Weddings Month — Shouldn’t this be in June?
  • National Snack Food Month — This is another good one.  And there are a lot of options for this one.  Let’s see, Oreos, ice cream sandwiches, Cheetos, Doritos, King Dons, Twinkies, nachos, bean dip, popcorn, etc.  And remember, this applies to the whole month.
  • National Wild Bird Feeding Month — I don’t make it a habit to feed birds, but sometimes after a meal when there’s some leftover bread that isn’t going to be eaten, I’ll toss it out in the field behind my house.  I know that God feeds the little birds, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help.

Now we’ll look at the holidays and observances that are for individual days :

  • 1 National Freedom Day — Is this like Independence Day?  It seems ambiguous to me, but I wouldn’t mind another holiday like that, because that would mean more grilling burgers and hot dogs.
  • 2 Ground Hog Day — I don’t put much faith in whether a groundhog sees his shadow, but that sure was a funny movie.
  • 5 Disaster Day — I’m surprised this one is on here.  I think natural disasters are awesome, but most people seem to not see the beauty of them.
  • 6 Lame Duck Day — Uhh… WHAT?!?
  • 7 Wave All you Fingers at Your Neighbor Day — Your neighbors probably won’t know about this, so they probably wouldn’t understand.
  • 7 Send a Card to a Friend Day – I bet this was created by a card company.  But I have to wonder — why is it just a week before Valentine’s Day?
  • 8 Kite Flying Day — This is a neat idea, but why is it in the middle of winter?  Somebody should think these things through.

I’m going to split this up into two posts, so it won’t be so long.  It will be continued tomorrow.  (There should be a link at the top of this post to the next one after it’s available.)