OK, feeling extremely low today for a few reasons, which I won't go in to, so I decided to randomly browse the internet to find interesting and weird things in an effort to cheer myself up.
I stumbled (can you actually stumble virtually?) on a website by someone called Zyra and learnt or, should I say (as I can't guarantee the accuracy in some of these claims), inwardly digested the following titbits:
? On 'Real Names': The misconception of a Real Name being what someone was unfortunate enough to have bestowed upon them when they were born has various attached problems to do with freedom and self-determination. It is a fundamental right of a person to change their name, and it is good manners for others to respect that. It is important for an individual to be in control of their own life, and one aspect of that is that they are in control of what their Real Name is. Another aspect of the rights of naming is this: The only person entitled to give a name to you is yourself. Ok, when you're just born there is a convenience for your parents to give you a temporary name until you're abilities of reasoning develop enough to think up a name for yourself, but ultimately YOU DECIDE. And then, that is your Real Name. You can change it again as many times as you like, and at any point the current answer to "What is the Real Name? is whatever you stated most recently. Another point about naming of persons. You don't have to be 'FIRST NAME' space 'LAST NAME'. You can be 'UNIQUE IDENTIFIER'. This can sometimes make form-filling a bit messy on computerised forms, but that is a result of inflexible thinking on the part of the people specifying the forms. My advice on that is, if you're called GANDALF for example and you encounter a form with first-name/last-name, put "GANDALF" in one or other of the spaces and put a single non-alphanumeric character in the other. This fools all but the most stubborn of forms. Unique identifier format is popular in adventure contexts and stage-names and has historical precedents. For example: Voltaire, Plato, Cher, Geronimo, Elvira, Hercules, Shiva, Pocahontas, Tutankhamun, Arvind.
Hmm, this actually struck a small chord inside me as I was born and named Julie by my parents. As I grew up my dad started to call me Jools and I found out a few years ago that I actually prefer this. It suits me better, I 'feel' like a Jools, I don't feel like a Julie. So during the move to Canada I made a conscious decision that this is what I would prefer to be called and introduced myself as such. This carried on when we returned to the UK but I still have to stop and think when people and friends I knew before Canada (including family) call me Julie now. It doesn't feel right. It sounds alien. It's not my Real Name any longer...
? Lightning versus Lottery Win: You are about 40-50 times more likely to win the lottery than you are to be killed by lightning, assuming such things as that you always buy one lottery ticket per week and that you are out in thunderstorms only as much as average!
Perhaps I really should buy a lottery ticket?
? A Fine Toothcomb?: You often hear it; "They searched the whole place with a fine toothcomb", or "Even after going through all the stuff with a fine toothcomb the evidence still wasn't found" etc. But, has anyone stopped to ask, "What IS a FINE TOOTH-COMB?"! Rather like "every which way but loose" it seems ok at first, but on closer inspection doesn't really make any sense. Even though there exists such a thing as a hair brush and a comb and a tooth brush, so there might be such a thing as a tooth-comb, of which the higher grade ones would be of the type "fine toothcomb", it really doesn't work, as there is no such thing as a fine tooth-comb. What the term really means is a FINE-TOOTH COMB, ie a comb on which the teeth are fine. This makes sense as it would be a comb which would have very narrow slits, thus preventing any objects of significant size from slipping through. However, you still hear people say it "fine toothcomb", when it should be "fine-tooth comb"!
? Viking Helmets: They did not have horns on them!
And so endeths the session on semi-interesting things for today. I'm off now to go and knit a scarf.
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