My Band Name For Today

I have been informed that The Band "RöckDöts" would more correctly be called "Die RöckDöts" instead of "Der RöckDöts". Even better, sez I, as it works out to a bilingual pun.

Today's English band name Du Jour (Seeing as how English is the De facto lingua franca, per se--vis-à-vis other argots) is:

• Die RöckDöts

[Many thanks to the evil doctor Rainer Buchty for helping me add gender to my rock band. I need a 3 sided coin to help me randomly add gender to nouns in other languages . ]

Faster Than A Speeding Mullet...
--Your Band Names For Today:

• Dustless Pepperdyne
• Cradle Cap
• Blank Baby Book
• Diacritical
• Der RöckDöts
  

4 years and I haven't named a band "Diacritical" yet? I should turn in my umlaut-encrusted badge!

While we're on a diacritical rant about bands with diaereses (sounds like a liver condition), I would be remiss if I didn't point you toward this article about the heavy metal umlaut, and this even more interesting screencast about the history of the article about the heavy metal umlaut. Whew! [I should caution that the screencast includes info on wiki vandalism with examples that some will find offensive]


Blank Baby Book is dedicated to me. As the third and final child, one of my most precious treasures is my barely-begun and quickly-abandoned baby book with my name in it (and little else). It would be fun to post it as a website. People could fill it in with made-up details.

Another favorite pseudo-possession: My baby pictures and graduation pictures, which are on the same roll of film. They both occupy the first few exposures of a still-undeveloped roll of 110 film in my mom's junk drawer.

Also, ask me about the time they forgot me in a car during a family picnic when I was a new baby. The excuse I get is that they "just weren't used to having another child in the family after so many years".

Bitter?

I barely new 'er, (as they say).

• Polecrab
  
• The Chin Straps
• Chanel 9 SuperDoppler Weather Action Team
  
• MetaHog
  
• Psychotropic Hayride

I was searching for photos of the recently blogged upon Wang Freestyle (from Wang Labs), and came upon this headline: "CHINA'S WANG CLINCHES WOMEN'S FREESTYLE GOLD".

I assume it's a talking about the upcoming Olympics.

But I refuse to click on it, just in case.

• Fighter Monkey
• Government Cheese Flavor
• The Cat's Laptop
• Disbandment
• Jizya

Jizya. You heard me. Jizya (links to wikipedia article). Jizya goes on the list of words that don't mean what I think they mean.

If I ever decide to shut down this blog, the last post will be titled "Disbandment", for obvious reasons.

Longtime readers will know I'm obsessed with selling a screenplay for a Lifetime Movie for Women. This month I'm pitching a new UNTITLED LIFETIME MOVIE FOR WOMEN PROJECT:

Slug Line:

A baby-kidnapper's ultimatum forces a woman to choose between curing her terminal disease and saving her teenage daughter from an abusive serial killer boyfriend, in the process discovering the man she loves is harboring a dark secret! Judith Light, Tori Spelling and Dean Cain star.

Remind me and I'll post a scan of the cat's laptop (with permission of the author).

• Intercostal Clavicle
• Sonic Vomit Ray
  
• The Fur Flowers
• Pernicious Anemia
• Matrix of Leadership

I have stumbled upon a website that surely is the reason the web exists in the first place. It is better than the website of personal anecdotes from the people who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome:

http://www.chichesterinc.com/

Today's honorary top band name, The Fur Flowers, is based upon a page from this site:

http://www.chichesterinc.com/FurFlowers.htm

Here is the original email exchange that put me onto the site:

___________________
From: [a friend]
Sent: Wednesday, April 30,
To: Wynkoop, Mark

I was trying to see what a "llama rug" in the classifieds looked like. And I stumbled into this. Which is really kinda freaky:

http://www.chichesterinc.com/

_____________________________________________
From: Wynkoop, Mark
Sent: Wednesday, April 30,
To: [a friend]

This is the best website in the history of the universe. It is the greatest site there ever was or will be.

___________________
From: [a friend]
Sent: Wednesday, April 30,
To: Wynkoop, Mark

No, it's not. If it were, there would be PICTURES of the diamondback rattlesnake gall bladders.

• Translation Relay
• Tactical Chiller*
  
• Skip the Wig Homer
• Mother Father Chinese Dentist!
• Don Stroud's Scar

*Tactical Chiller would be a good name for a hard-edged urban rap album. As opposed to hard-edged suburban rap, I suppose.

"Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind" refers to the original problem of the "Translation Relay". School children on this side of the Atlantic are familiar with the "telephone game", where a simple phrase is whispered ear-to-ear down a line of a dozen or more people. The resulting phrase is then compared to the original, and the differences are often hilarious.

Beacuse I mentioned the Simpson's reference to the telephone game a few posts ago ("Purple monkey dishwasher") it reminded me of a couple of the original Translation Relay stories.

One account (certainly apocryphal) was turned into an early 80's Saturday Night Live sketch. Guest host Ed Asner plays a Nuclear Power plant technician at his retirement party. He leaves his co-workers the following advice: "Remember, you can't put too much water in the reactor."

In the months that follow, half of the technicians interpret this as "it is impossible to over-fill the reactor" while the other half translate it as "Don't supply the reactor with too much water." This leads, of course, to a hilarious meltdown. It is an understatement to say American comedy programs have a tenacious grasp of nuclear protocols.

An even more famous Translation Relay gaffe (and certainly just as spurious) comes from the supposed translation of the common phrase "out of sight, out of mind" into Russian and back into English:

ENGLISH: "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind"

RUSSIAN TRANSLATION: "С глаз долой, из сердца вон"

TRANSLATION BACK FROM RUSSIAN: "Danger! Invisible Maniac!!"

I'm sure there are any number of sports pep talks, devotional messages, motivational posters or business analogies to be drawn from this little anecdote. I'll leave the personal application for you to decide.
I'm sure my paranoid schizophrenic readers have already taken this message to heart anyway.

• Chain of Being
• Wire Hedgehog
• Low Key Presbyterian
  
• The Therapy Dogs
• Click-a-Billy

Green Llama crony Paxton writes: "Some guy said 'clickability'. I thought of the name "Click-a-billy". Sort of like Rock-a-billy. Feel free to use this and gloat its usage to Kyle."

--Paxton


"Wire Hedgehog" is The Evil Doctor Rainer Buchty's term for a circuit board that has been "repaired" by patching dozens of wires into it. It does start to look like a spaghetti monster after a while. Below is a picture of a prototyping breadboard with wires streaming out of it so that you get the idea:

I noticed on that old post that Wikipedia pulled the original Xenu Plane photograph (a Douglas DC-8 painted into outer space). I took it as a chance to Photoshop a new one. Enjoy.

I must again quell the rumor that Rainer Buchty and I are in fact the same person. It is simply not true. I again direct you to this handy table that will help you distinguish between me and the Evil Doctor Rainer Buchty.

And when I say "carless", I mean careless. Just a sloppy Frodoian slip. And when I say "Frodoian" slip...aw, never mind.

• The Grilled Cheetah
• Slash n' Char
• al Carbon Footprint
• CAFE Standard Café (and Drive-Thru)
• Chez Guevara
• Malaria King
• Montezuma's Repast
• Tie: Bandana Republic/Hair Net Republic
• 'Skeeters
• Cargo Cult Coffee Klatch
• Trenchmouth
• Dengue Fever Disco and Aid Station
• The Pander Express
  

C'mon. Give it up for Chez Guevara! That's freaking hilarious. To me.

"Pander Express" is my term for companies that try to cash in on my liberal guilt. That carcass has already been stripped, enviro-bistros