Posts from: December 2004
While New Year’s Eve is celebrated around the world, the Scots have a rich heritage of revelry to celebrate this night. They even take an extra holiday on January 2, as well as New Year’s Day, to recover from the annual celebration of Hogmanay.
There are many theories about the derivation of the word “Hogmanay”. The Scandinavian word for the feast preceding Yule was “Hoggo-nott” while the Flemish words (many have come into Scots) “hoog min dag” means “great love day”. Hogmanay could also be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon, Haleg monath, Holy Month, or the Gaelic, oge maidne, new morning. But the most likely source seems to be the French. “Homme est né” or “Man is born” while in France the last day of the year when gifts were exchanged was “aguillaneuf” while in Normandy presents given at that time were “hoguignetes”. Take your pick!
In Scotland a similar practice to that in Normandy was recorded, rather disapprovingly, by the Church.
“It is ordinary among some Plebians in the South of Scotland, to go about from door to door upon New Year`s Eve, crying Hagmane.”
Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 1693.
An integral part of the Hogmanay partying, which continues very much today, is to welcome friends and strangers, with warm hospitality and of course a kiss to wish everyone a Guid New Year. The underlying belief is to clear out the vestiges of the old year, have a clean break and welcome in a young, New Year on a happy note.
A guid New Year to ane an ‘a’ and mony may ye see!
Affected countries had no warning of Sunday’s devastating sea wave that killed tens of thousands of people unnecessarily because tsunamis are so rare in the area they are not tracked.
An early warning system operated by NOAA to raise the alarm of tsunamis and save lives already covers much of the Pacific, according to a report by Reuters news agency.
Sunday’s wall of water that hit coasts in Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and other countries was spotted by U.S. seismologists.
However, they said they had no way to warn local governments even though the tsunami hit shore up to two-and-a-half hours after the mega-quake off the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.
“We tried to do what we could,” said Charles McCreery, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Honolulu centre. “We don’t have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world.” [emphasis added]
For more information concerning this natural disaster, visit The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami weblog , or SEA-EAT blog.
InterAction.org is a coalition of more than 160 US-based private relief, international development and refugee assistance organizations and has an extensive index of suitable organizations for your disaster response contributions.
Overheard by our spies (they’re everywhere!) near San Francisco Civic Center yesterday, man speaking to woman: “I know three different people in San Francisco named Unique. How can any of them be unique if others have the same name?”
As children, we learned how little elves work at a sweatshop in the middle of gnome-man’s land making toys for girls and boys. We were told it’s at the North Pole, and it’s called Santa’s Workshop. And we were told how Santa delivers those presents to children all around the world on Christmas Eve. In a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. Landing on rooftops and climbing down chimneys in the middle of the night.
Nothing in that story could mess with a kid’s head. But it’s been a closely guarded secret how Santa keeps track of all the little boys and girls—who’s naughty and nice—without confusing their names. Now, his secret is out of the big red bag. We might as well admit it. Years ago, the elves at Wordlab helped Santa set up a computer program to generate Secret Christmas Names for kids.
My therapist says I’ll be all right; now I know it wasn’t my father, but Santa, who wrote “To: Lucky Hot-Fairy” on my presents.
A new Lo: Wal-Mart, whose prices are so low that a good portion of their employees receive food stamps to make ends meet, has come up with an additional way to make you feel good about shopping there. The mega retailer recently unveiled its new house brand of low-end electronic goods, named…wait for it…iLo.
And just in case anyone that buys an iLo TV or DVD player needs reminding what kind of low-rent consumers they have become, the aspirational iLo logo is prominently displayed on each and every device.
On the other end of the consumer electronic spectrum, Samsung just developed the world’s largest HDTV, a 102-inch plasma behemoth. That’s an eight-and-a-half foot diagonal picture folks, big enough for a life-size head-to-shoe representation of Shaquille O’Neal, even if those shoes are 17-inch pumps.
[Comments for this post have been closed. To post a comment and read many more, please see the original posting of this post on Snark Hunting: http://www.snarkhunting.com/2004/12/wal-mart-ilo-house-brand-name-logo/.]
Gillette wants to penetrate the hot women’s shaver market.
Upon hearing Gillette’s plans to launch a battery-powered Venus Vibrance, some might not think it’s a razor the company’s talking about. Though, we trust Gillette did its market research on this product name before planning to spend $40 million promoting it. The new Venus Vibrance, similar to the men’s M3Power razor, sends vibrations to the skin which raises the hair for a closer shave.
Thanks to Adrants for the latest buzz.
Mike Morgan, is having a blog-identity crisis. His weblog is suffering with the insufferable name I-Tach.
Being a lurker around Wordlab from time to time, Mike turned to our massive archives for fresh ideas and found a short list of names he thinks might work. And he was nice enough to give credit to Wordlab for these ideas; so we’re giving him space here to bring his problem to the attention of those best equiped to give him the free naming and branding input he desperately needs.
November 29, 2004
Your Input, Please: Blog Identity Crisis
I’m stuck and seek your wise counsel, dear readers…
A couple months ago, I wanted to start a blog. I didn’t think I’d be able to write enough interesting content to maintain a “general interest” blog. I didn’t think my life was interesting enough (and I have a tough time opening up emotionally) to write a “diary blog”. And a “link blog”, well, that’s just plain boring. So when I started the I-Tach Weblog, my idea was for it to be “specialty blog” centered around emergency department nursing — E.D. war stories, nursing tips and tricks, E.D. and nursing humor, et cetera and so on.
Well, guess what? My ocean of unique E.D. knowledge turned out to be more like a wading pool of knowledge. I shot that wad quickly. [Insert hokey, overdone 'frown' smiley here]
Instead, I found myself writing political and current events commentary, offering a tutorial on making the world’s best fake fart noise, posting humorous stuff I’ve found, and even starting to talk about a few personal items such as my adoption or our family dog getting hit by a car earlier this month.
So now I’m stuck and need your help.
December 14, 2004
Your Input, Please: New Blog Name
Thanks to your input, I’m currently rewriting the template and style for the blog. I’ll also be changing the name… I think “I-Tach” is funny as Hell, but I’ve slowly realized that it’s pretty much an inside joke, lost on most visitors.
Call me a lemming, but I like blogs with titles that make me grin. So I stopped by one of my favorite-but-only-occasionally-visited sites, WordLab, in search of inspiration. As a writer and famous-in-my-own-mind funny guy, several phrases caught my eye. Some have the potential to be a nifty blog name, some are simply punny.
So here are the phrases that I jotted down to use as inspiration for a name…
The Babble Belt
Textual Relations
Birth of a Notion
Blarney Rubble
Peanut Buddha and Jesus
Peek-A-Buddha
Capital Punmanship
Carmel Knowledge
Consummate Confessional
Cup and Chaucer
Devastating the Obvious
Flying Chaucer
English as a Fecund Language
Just Say Know
Just a Flash in the Pants
New World Odor
Grump Up The Volume
Leaves of Crass
Duct Tape and Cover
Lingo Weenie
Jack Of All Tirades
Know Way, Know How
A Norse is a Norse (of course, of course)
What do y’all think? I see potential in a couple of these, others are just too funny to let go unpublicized. Do you have another name suggestion? The name I’m working with during the redesign is A Cacophany of Miscellany, which I think is a pretty good fit with the [Fill In Your Opinion of My Writing Here] I post.
Then again, I may throw all this to the wind and go out on a limb naming it Mike Morgan in anticipation of my inevitable fame and fortune!
If you’ve got any good blog name ideas for Mike, just wander over to his weblog and add your two cents worth there.
As good as the The Big List is at Wordlab, Mike and others like him who are really stuck for a great blog name might also want to try the Band & Song Name Generator. This tool from the Musician’s Friend can be a very creative blog name regurgitator when put to the task. Here are a few more suggestions worthy of consideration:
Pleasurable Blog
Victoria’s Secretions
Red Flour
Frozen Boyfriend
Land of the Blog
Blog of the Impossible
Blog of the Tangerine
Resisting Blog
Nurse King of the Pleasurable Drool
Nipple of the Farting Earth
Eighth of the Blog
Goggles Blog
Filthy Blog
Nice Blog
Blog Flab
Blog Raspberry
Nurse Parakeet
Malignant Nurse
Rubber Nurse
Screaming Nurse
Blog Juniper
Social Blog
Blog Defaulted
Blog Mistress
Wet Nurse
Thanks to web sifter extraordinaire John Walkenbach for figgering this creative application would be great for generating blog names.
Ford Focker: Jalopnik points to a very interesting post at The LA Car Blog: “Ford wants you to name their next car.” And there’s a lot more about naming and branding cars if you follow the links. This one’s a Humdinga.
Originally posted by Abnu to our sister site, Wordlab.
Season’s Greetings: As with anything addressing religion, you’ve got to be careful not to offend anyone—and, if you do, not to leave anyone out.
Companies that specialize in commercializing holy days and holidays alike, and are sensitive to consumer needs, have gone to great lengths with the language to find the right balance. American Greetings, Hallmark, and niche-marketers like the MixedBlessing Company, all have figured out how best to extend greetings with multicultural cards during this season some call Chrismukkah. “The essence of these cards is not about interfaith households as much as it is about friends and family members of different faiths acknowledging the different holidays that they all celebrate,” said Shalanda Stanley, a Hallmark product manager, in an interview with ABC News.
So, in the true spirit of the celebrations that are most important to our three regular readers this holiday season, and with the kind permission of social commentator, wordsmith and syndicated cartoonist, Andy Singer, we wish you all a Happy Hanukwanzmas.
Posted: December 31st, 2004 |
Category: Uncategorized