Baps To Basics

Yesterday was the baptism to my cousin’s third child, Elizabeth. I am the Godfather. It’s funny, because I only saw her one other time in my life about two weeks ago, but now if something horrible happens to my cousin’s family this thing is going to live at my house. (I say “thing” to be funny; she’s one of the best looking babies I’ve ever seen, not to mention she seems to have a fantastic disposition.) I really haven’t mentally prepared myself to take on more responsibility for this girl – is it because we’ve just had a lot going on lately? Or is it mostly because she’s an infant? My wife has one on the way, due August 15th, that we were going to name “Elizabeth” if it’s a girl. (We don’t know the sex.) That name’s out the window. My cousin’s other child is named Patrick, which is the name we’ve selected if we have a boy. Are we that unoriginal, or is originality overrated to begin with?

The naming process seems simple, but it’s secretly tedious. You don’t really want something trendy, and in light of George Carlin’s routine about soft names (“soft name; soft person”), you don’t want something douche-y.

But we also don’t want to be negatively influenced by outside sources, especially with something we’ve liked all along. What a dilemma! After all this consideration, we want a name that’s not too extreme while staying original, so we’ve decided to go with masculine handle, “Milquetoast.”

During my search ...

I saw this ad and wanted to punch my monitor:

“hey im looking for a weight bench whit weights and dumbells to buy if u think u have 1 in good conditions (not old and rusted)can contact me at rolyrv07@hotmail.com im looking to buy now so plz contact me A.S.A.P thnak you”

He was apparently too busy to stop and re-read the sentence he just wrote out to thousands of people. If I wanted to give away what this guy was willing to pay for I still wouldn’t tell him. If you ask me why I'm offended by it, I really can't tell you. It's not that I don't get the basic message of the post, but I'm still offended that he couldn't take an extra 30 seconds to make it clear for everyone else. Maybe it's the self-centered/instant gratificationess of it. I think our ability to communicate in so many different ways is actually devolving us from communicating in a unified, competent way. Everyone’s in such a hurry to text each other back and forth that they don’t really say anything worth noting. Text message conversations consist primarily of abbreviated salutations and location notices. (“wht r u up 2?” and “nuthin – com ovr l8r”) I saw my niece’s phone the other day and her friend’s opening text read, “i am starving.” That’s considered a conversation piece now.

Ah, what a day.

Amazing. All my life I've never taken a vacation day when it rained, and today that streak remains alive and healthy! What a great day to play a sport that has you move around 20 acres of a land. Land that could have been soaked by rain if there wasn't so much of this sunshine!

Not.