How not to get your name stolen

So I’m currently reading a captivating piece of academic literature: Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing (William Irwin, Open Court, 2000). As much as I would love to describe some of the thoughts contained therein – the book contains various essays by philosophers, along the lines of “Making Something out of Nothing: Seinfeld, Sophistry, and the Tao” and “George’s Failed Quest for Happiness: An Aristotelian Analysis” – it’s really one page that concerns me for this post. I was reading Mark Conrad’s contribution, “Plato or Nietzsche: Time, Essence, and Eternal Recurrence in Seinfeld,” when I spotted this, in an explanation of how humor is different from normal conversation:

If I say, “Mary is bright, and she’s pretty,” I am saying the same thing as “Mary is pretty, and she’s bright.” If I have omitted saying who Mary is, which Mary I am referring to, I can always go back and tack on that information. “I mean Mary Stevens.” “Oh, that Mary!” you reply. The situation has been fixed; the confusion evaporates.

Try fixing a joke after you’ve already told it poorly. It’s easier to sum up Nietzsche’s philosophy in 25 words or less.

I’ve emphasized the name “Mary Stevens” because it happens that I went to high school with a girl named Mary Stevens, and so of course I had to share with her how philosopher Mark Conrad thinks she’s pretty and bright. Then, however, I got to thinking about what I am going to call “stolen names.”

How much would it suck to have your name snatched up by popular culture? It’s one thing if your name is “Bill Smith” or (forgive me) “Mary Stevens.” These are fairly generic, and liable to be used as decoy names in Math textbook word problems and essays about Seinfeld. You would never avoid naming your child “Mary” just because there’s a chance that some academic may use it in illustrating a hypothetical situation.

It’s another thing altogether be unfortunate enough to be christened with a name such as, say, “Harry Potter,” and have that name be appropriated by a children’s book author and paraded around on advertisements and movie posters for a decade or more. To wit, consider the probability of a boy being born in Great Britain in about 1990, with black hair, green eyes, poor eyesight, and named Harry Potter. The chances aren’t bad! And what’s the result? Years of teasing, resulting in an identity crisis, which can only lead to something terrible, like Capgras delusion.

I mean, look at this. I wanted to find some examples of the real-life Harry Potters out there on the Internet who were robbed of their individualities, so you could look into their sad, defeated eyes. I did a Google search for “Harry Potter,” but excluding the terms “book”, “movie”, “Rowling,” “wizard,” “Order of the Phoenix,” “owl,” “Prisoner of Azkaban,” and “Emma Watson.” After all that, still no non-Harry Potter results! There are people out there, normal people named Harry Potter, and they deserve to be found on Google!

If I were a famous author, I would make sure to name significant characters after people I despise, thereby robbing my enemies of their unique personalities forever.

The only solution for this problem is for all authors to name their characters as obscurely as possible. Examples can be found here. Take note of these real personal names; this is how to do it right: Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K (born in Kansas in 2003), Yahoo (a Mexican boy born in 2007, and named after where his parents met), and Depressed Cupboard Cheesecake (born in Kent, England, before 1988; no word on the sex of that child).

Terrible diseases

Okay, so I was reading Dinosaur Comics (no, I am not afraid to cite my source for this information), and today’s comic mentions some terrible diseases. These include dacryorrhea, a condition that causes you to cry all the time, and fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, which causes all your soft connective tissue turns into bone. (Apparently, a typical precursor for this disease is small big toes. Why?) However, the worst of the three, in my opinion, is Capgras delusion.

True, it’s hard for a disease to be worse than one that turns you into a living statue by middle age, but I think it’s because Capgras is psychological that makes it the most terrifying. People with Capgras delusion become convinced that their closest friends and relatives are not who they say they are, but are impostors who both look and act the same as the originals.

Not only does that score high on the Weirdness criterion for terrible diseases, but it’s also really up there in regard to the Turns Your Life Into an Episode of the Twilight Zone factor as well.

I did a little more research into this field, and discovered two more strange disorders. The first is Alice in Wonderland syndrome, which sounds like it could describe any number of bizarre delusions. It turns out that it covers a range of disorienting sensory mutations; the most prominent symptom is a “metamorphosis” of the body, wherein parts of one’s body, especially the hands and head, seem to grow or shrink. The second major symptom is altered visual perception, so that, for instance, dogs appear very small like rats, or hallways seem infinitely long. Other symptoms can include a feeling that the ground is porous or spongy under one’s feet, and distorted perception of time. It is basically like tripping on acid all the time. But without the quasi-religious transcendental experiences.

The last horrible affliction I’ll describe jumped out at me because of its name: Impossible syndrome. How would you like to hear that from a doctor? “I’m sorry, sir, but you have Impossible Syndrome.” (He could also call it Chondrodysplasia situs inversus imperforate anus polydactyly. Maybe that would be worse.) Luckily for you, only one case of Impossible syndrome has ever been reported – a premature and stillborn infant with an impossibly extensive range of sickening deformations.

Thank you, The Man

The Man gave me a job today. And am I excited! Between answering questions like “How did you deal with a situation that required you to complete a job quickly, but efficiently?” (thank you, BSing skills I acquired from high school) and driving myself to some shady, side-door Babcock Boulevard drug testing facility, the manager gave me some advice. Apparently cashiers for The Man get down on themselves since they are constantly rejected by customers who don’t want The Man’s credit card. I must not let this get to me, because it is a percentages game.

Well, The Man, you know what? I am ready. I am ready to peddle your plastic money cards. I am ready to arrange your big-deal merchandise in people’s carts “like a puzzle.” I am psychologically resilient. My sense of self-worth is not tied to my summer job. Thank you, The Man, for giving me this opportunity. You will not regret it.

However, my readers (am I to assume I have these? I don’t want to get ahead of myself, after all): keep an eye on me. I encourage you to monitor my posting for signs of decreased self-esteem that may be linked to dealing with rude customers and denied credit account pitches.

By the way, I have a Twitter account. So basically you now have all the tools you need to stalk me. If I start getting anonymous letters and phone calls at 2 am that go straight to the dial tone, I swear, I will make my twitterings private! You will no longer have the great honor of knowing what I’m doing all the time. This is your only warning.

Duquesne slide-show

I’m finished with my freshman year of college in four days. In commemoration, here’s a slide-show of pictures I’ve taken this year.

Ad multos annos

Today is the traditional anniversary for the founding of Rome. If the recognized authorities on the subject can be trusted, the city was established on 21 April 753 BC. That means that this is year 2761 AUC – ab urbe condita: “from the city having been founded.” Interestingly (at least to me), Rome’s special distinction as Urbs, that is, “The City,” comes from the early Latin word urvus, which denotes a furrow cut by a plow.

The story behind the plow business starts with Romulus and Remus. They have an entire early history involving being abandoned bastard god-children raised by a she-wolf, but I’ll focus on the city-founding part. Each had a different idea for where their city ought to be located. They determined that the best way to decide was to prophecy using vultures. Romulus saw six more than Remus and won the contest, so he started digging a furrow to mark the outskirts of the city, but Remus wasn’t happy about being an inferior bird-watcher, and started jumping over the boundaries to mock his brother.

Romulus decided the best way to handle this situation was to crush his brother’s skull with a spade and name the city Roma after himself (this is also what happens when you line-jump in grade-school dodge ball). You’d think two kids who grew up suckling the same wolf’s milk would have been more mutually attached, but who am I to judge? This is apparently the best way to found a city if you want to take over the world.

Duquesne’s sculptural masterpieces

Perhaps you didn’t know this, but Duquesne University is host to what I would personally assess as the finest of campus sculpture in the city of Pittsburgh. To illustrate what I mean, I have planned a special post of some select pieces so you can get to know the artistic inheritance afforded to us Bluffites.

FR. J. STRUB, C.S.SP.

First, we have a statue of Father Joseph Strub. I’m going to go ahead and simplify his life story (but please, feel free to read the entire epic tale on Wikipedia!) – essentially the history is that he got kicked out of Germany, was talked into founding a college in Pittsburgh, left before the first building went up because the bishop didn’t like Germans, went to Arkansas where a drought and tornado destroyed his church, and died in Duquesne’s Old Main in 1890.

Duquesne has commemorated his role as founder by fashioning this fine representation of him out of… something. I’ve touched the thing in an attempt to identify the material, and the most I can come up with is that it resembles a sort of plastic, or maybe lots of chewing gum stuck together and shellacked. In any case, the Smithsonian Institution is of the opinion that it “needs treatment.” Whatever that means.

BOY READING

This is strange. I would have been able to guess that someone donated this even before seeing the plaque there, because I don’t understand what this has to do with a university, and even more specifically, Duquesne University. I don’t see many little kids reading with their dogs on Assumption Commons.

It’s also a difficult to make a guess about what this is supposed to represent. The joy of reading? Cool with me, but you would think a university would want something more along the lines of “The Awesome Power of Reading” or “God Giving Adam the Ability to Read” instead of this three-dimensional Norman Rockwell painting.

MARY PAPPERT

I think this is by the same artist. He must have been a fan of putting his work in strange and completely inappropriate places, because joyful little Mary Pappert is prancing around in the Bayer Rotunda (science building and lecture hall) instead of where she belongs.

Another bonus is what’s on that book she’s holding:

Veritas! Not a big reader – but I guess that’s all there is to know, right?

John Edwards drops out

Here’s the truth – I have no opinion on the presidential race, election politics, politics in general. I was having a brief discussion earlier today with Joseph, wherein we agreed that politicians are completely insincere – I mean, really, who can pretend that they’re really “in it” for the public good?

That the realm of politics belongs almost solely to certain prestigious and/or wealthy families of this country, and that even on the most local level it’s a profession rather than a vocation: both these facts serve to alienate me completely from the entire process (oh, and the Electoral College; not really the image of a real democracy, you know). I hope it’s not because I’m an apathetic teenager, but I can’t pretend that I have much faith in the business of elections in the first place. Don’t get me wrong – don’t believe in not voting, it’s just that I can’t get really jazzed up about it. That’s why I registered as an independent voter. I care about specific issues, but not about specific candidates or specific parties.

Anyway, that Edwards business – interesting, I suppose. The Democratic nomination will end up going either to a woman or a minority, both exciting options insofar as one thinks that says something about our country. (But wait, I forgot Mike Gravel! Or do you agree with me that just the idea of a “President Gravel” begs for four years of bad late-night puns and worse political cartoons? Actually, a better question… have you even ever heard of Mike Gravel?)

Apollonia

Saint Apollonia was a martyr in Alexandria; she was tortured by having all her teeth ripped out or shattered. After that completely horrible ordeal, she was presented with either renouncing Christ or being burned alive – she chose to jump into the fire. Whoever decides which saint gets to be the patron of so-and-so had a pretty sick sense of humor – Apollonia is commonly shown holding her own teeth in pliers and is prayed to for tooth problems.

I was thinking about Apollonia when I went to the dentist today (because my suffering was completely comparable to ancient Roman torture). The dentist injected three shots of novocaine – I didn’t feel anything at all. In fact, I didn’t regain feeling in the lower leftmost fourth of my face until five hours later. Then I noticed that I had been chewing my tongue up since attempting to eat my dinner in half bites.

The worst part of “the dentist” is smelling your enamel burn as they shear down the sides of your filling (is that enamel, or whatever they make fillings out of?). I’m aware some people aren’t prone to cavities, such as G. Staltari, who achieved his first serious tooth decay during his freshman year at the University of the Holy Ghost. My brother, on the other hand, had TEN cavities a few months ago; he must have been trying for a record.

Introduction

So this is my new weblog.

Of course the first thing my steadily strengthening set of returning readers will want to know is how I chose such an awesome name for this Internet publication. Indubitably the catchiness of “Extra-Strength Schrenk” is astounding and is therefore completely typical of my propensity for being clever, but I must give credit where it is due: I consulted one of those automatic name maker things. This one was a band name generator.

This generator gave me some excellent selections to choose from. Here were the highlights:

• Schrenk Mango (I don’t like the saccharine implications here)
• Loony Schrenk and the Skintight Head (This sounds like a Neo-Nazi band)
• Flushing Schrenk and the Fiction (And this sounds too much like I’m circling the drain)
• Doped Rubber and the Rabbit (I wonder how they come up with the ones that don’t have “Schrenk” in the title? Doped rubber? What’s that, polymer infused with heroin?)
• Schrenk Potent and the Sound (This just doesn’t make any sense)
• Rubber Schrenk and the Fierce Pizza (Though I like the idea of fierce pizza being a part of this blog, but I’m not much for the rubber again)
• Dubious Schrenk (No)
• Elegant Counselor (Sounds like a bad Chinese translation of the Keirsey Temperaments)
• Heart Cheddar (Cholesterol?)
• Schrenk of the Prowling (This is too creepy)
• Extra-Strength Schrenk
• Schrenk of the Air (Indian nickname)
• Leopard of the Schrenk Crocodile (I’m really confused by this one)
• Eloquent Sleet (File this one with “Heart Cheddar”)
• Hallucination of the Flavored Schrenk (Hmm…)

Even though I ended up with “Extra-Strength Schrenk”, don’t be surprised if I rename this blog “Hallucination of the Flavored Schrenk” in about a week. It’s really been growing on me.