Author Archives: Arto

May 24 2013
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Funny Names In The News

Jaydip on Ping Pong, Amb on Zod, and More Funny Names in the News

Big news in Funny Names in the News this week – our time has come and gone and the next generation is already taking over. 18-year-old Eesha Khare from Saratoga, California has invented a thingymajig that can charge batteries in less than a minute. She won all sorts of top prizes for her gadget at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, AZ last week. Oddly, I was not invited, in spite of my impressive ability to describe fancy modern stuff with helpful terms like thingie. Funny names were favored at the fair in general, as second place went to Romanian wunderkid Lonut Budisteanu. Way to go, children!

This is what life is all about.

This is what life is all about.

Our blog’s official unofficial sponsor HankyBook lauched a Kickstarter campaign this week to help ramp up production. This is relevant to a funny names blog because the site was co-founded by Yancey Strickler and Perry Chen, and those are great names. And also because I in my dictatorial capacity this week have decided to include it. Anyway, go check it out and spread the word on this to all your tree-loving, environment appreciating friends!

Our Excited Correspondent Amb is excited this week, folks! That’s because there’s another Superman movie coming out (I swear I just saw one and Kevin Spacey was the evil guy) and it features a character by the name of General Zod. That’s purty cool. Zod! Zod on to the trailer here.

This place has shot straight to my list of places I need to visit before too long.

This place has shot straight to my list of places I need to visit before too long.

On to exciting ping pong news from the Middle East – I know you were waiting for this one, dear reader. Evidently, Dubai is going ping pong crazy. Or so I’m told in this article by Jaydip Sengupta, the nation’s number one ping pong correspondent. Special mention for the sport for its unquestionably funny name.

For the second week in a row we must bring you some sad news, this time of the passing of “one of Toledo’s top divorce lawyers”, Melvin G. Nusbaum. It’s a shame I was not familiar with the distinguished Mr. Nusbaum until today as I’m sure he could’ve merited a mention on our blog in happier circumstances.

More sports news now, as apparently there’s a football player named Jalen Dingle out there. That is all. Dingle.

Big happenings also took place in college sports this week, at the much ballyhooed NCAA III Outdoor Track and Field Championships on Thursday. Calvin College’s Nicole Michmerhuizen took home the national title in the women’s 10000 m race, a great accomplishment for sure. Hopefully they don’t carve the winner’s names into the medals, as that seems like an impossible task for the carverman. The men’s race in the same distance saw the delicious sounding Matt Vander Roest come in second.

That’s it for this week, see you Monday for more regularly scheduled funny name goodness!

Dingle.

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May 13 2013
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Ludwig Binswanger

The moment I heard the name Ludwig Binswanger is the moment I knew he would appear on these pages. Binswanger was a prominent psychiatrist in the early 20th century, bumping shoulders and comparing mustaches with people like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. He frequently defeated each of them in comparisons of whose name is funnier, to their considerable annoyance.

He lost the mustache comparison contests though.

He lost the mustache comparison contests though.

Mr. Ludwig Binswanger was born in Switzerland in 1881, the year that Billy the Kid was killed, the Cincinnati Reds played their first ever game, and Kansas banned alcohol. It was generally a bad year.

But with Binswanger’s birth, the world had hope again. He was a pioneer of what is called existential psychology, a “method of therapy that operates on the belief that inner conflict within a person is due to that individual’s confrontation with the givens of existence…such as the inevitability of death…existential isolation, and finally meaninglessness.”

Since Binswanger’s time, a fine therapist by the name of Woody Allen has helped most of us deal with these issues, but  in the early 1900s it was all new, and someone in Europe with a mustache and a serious look on their face had to take care of that.

Mr. Allen boxing a kangaroo as part of his approach healing all our psychological wounds with absurdity.

Mr. Allen boxing a kangaroo as part of his approach healing all our psychological wounds with absurdity.

This is where my expertise on psychology ends (just about where it begins), so I will not attempt to go any deeper on his beliefs or theories.

For those of you who do like words of more than two syllables, I leave you with this quote from Encyclopedia Britannica about Mr. Binswanger’s life’s work.

Diagnosing certain psychic abnormalities (e.g., elation fixation, eccentricity, and mannerism) to be the effect of the patient’s distorted self-image and his inadequate relation to the world, [Binswanger] developed a form of psychoanalysis to establish the patient’s consciousness of self as a total person, uniquely existing in and communicating with the concrete world as it is.

Sounds fancy, and I’m sure it is. All I know is, Ludwig Binswanger was a great man with a wonderful name and a mustache. That’s good enough for me.

 

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May 10 2013
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A Boneheaded Dinosaur Appears in Today’s Funny Names in the News

Hello there Funny Name Enthusiasts (FNEs)! Welcome to this week’s recap of Funny Names in the News (FNITN) and Collection of Awkwardly Collected Acronyms (CACA).  Hope you enjoy the show!

The good news is this suit will likely also end up in a museum one day. It's kind of special.

The good news is this suit will likely also end up in a museum one day. It’s kind of special.

Firstly, exciting news from Canada, land of exciting news. Our Exciting News Correspondent Amb has had her ear firmly planted on the telephone receiver of…excitement, and by way of that clumsy analogy she has come to learn of the discovery of a “boneheaded” dinosaur in Canada – and here’s the part that caught me by surprise – she’s not talking about Don Cherry.

No, this is an actual dinosaur fossil, found on the ranch of cattle farmer Roy Audet. Appropriately enough the species was named after Mr. Audet, whose ranch is located in the world’s SCUBA diving capital of Milk River, Alberta.*

This week’s most gripping political news is brought to us by Dave, the Surgeon General of Funny Name Bloggers, who tells us that a man in Maryland known for his “toilet protests” is running for the position of Lt. Governor in that lovely state. Even better, his name is Duane “Shorty” Davis. Also considering runs are Attorney General Douglas Gansler, and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger III. We wish luck to the toilet man, but he’s up against some pretty funnily named opposition here.

Our Singing Persons Correspondent Amb has been busy watching people singing, and tells me that sorta rhyming named actress Michell Chamuel has been particularly delightful with some of her Cyndi Lauper renditions. Two

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, his main squeeze Kay, and... uhhh, a red guy with creepy gloves.

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, his main squeeze Kay, and… uhhh, a red guy with creepy gloves.

good names like that meeting can only result in perfectly adequate reality television type business, and a good deal of amusement. Go here and Amb will tell you all about it.

You may not have known this about me, readers, but I’m a huge fan of Eastern Texas poetry. You probably didn’t know this because it just happened as I read this article about Gwendolyn Zepeda, Houston’s first Poet Laureate. We can only commend the city of Houston on their fine choice.

Thank you for reading another recap of Funny Names in the News. See you next week!

*Please do not arrange a SCUBA diving trip to Milk River, Alberta based entirely on my recommendation and then write in to complain. You are stupid, live with it. But while you’re up there, do stop by at Delicia Bakery at 113 Main St. I’m told the muffins are to die for.**

**I am in no way angling for a job writing for one of those in-flight magazines here.

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Apr 29 2013
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Elon Musk – The Man Behind Everything

This blog was started by three young gentlemen, whom you could call enterprising if you really wanted to. I mean, who would stop you? You can say whatever you want around here. One of our founders is particularly enterprising, but even Dr. Dave would have to admit that a young man named Elon Musk fits that description better than any of us. And even better, his name is Elon Musk.

Not that kind of musk.

Not that kind of musk.

Elon grew up in South Africa during a time when travel out of the country was restricted for most citizens. In spite of this, he managed to tour most of Africa, 18 of the American States, the Middle East, much of Europe, and possibly Narnia and Oz before he turned 18, although I have no confirmation of the latter two. He left the country to pursue an enterprising life in North America, moving to his mother’s native land of Canada at the age of 18. He attended college there for two years before moving south of the border to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a dual major in Business and Physics, as you do.

Elon planned to go to graduate school in Stanford after this, but at this point he just couldn’t wait to get started on all that enterprising business. He and his equally well named brother Kimbal Musk started an internet startup called Zip2 which they promptly sold to Altavista for more than $300 million. Ah, the all American success story.

How did he decide to spend his fortune? Well, if I was him I would definitely have started a cologne company. I mean, what better name for a manly scent product than MUSK could there be?

Elon went another way. He decided to continue pursuing his passions, which include the three “most important problems that would most affect the future of humanity”. These three fields of interest did not include beer pong, making cologne or writing a blog about people with funny names. Instead, they were the internet, clean energy, and space exploration. Hey, those things are cool too.

After his first internet company, Musk and his colleagues got involved with another online entity, which later became known as PayPal. You could say he was somewhat successful with that one.

Elon Musk, looking cool in front of the friggin' car he made.

Elon Musk, looking cool in front of the friggin’ car he made.

With the conquering of the internet now out of the way, Elon decided to go for the whole energy thing since no one else seemed to be bothering with genius innovations in that area. He co-founded Tesla Motors, the electric car company. In fact, Musk himself directly oversaw the development of the company’s Tesla Roadster car and acts as their head product designer. About a year ago, Tesla was valued at about $1 billion. Meanwhile, according to an ad website, funnynamesblog.com is valued at $48. Hey, I think that’s pretty good!

At this point Musk was feeling kinda bored and didn’t have enough on his plate, so he initiated SolarCity, and still sits on that company’s board. More of that clean energy thing, SolarCity is the largest provider of solar systems in the United States. So I guess you could say that went pretty well also. Even better, his amusingly named cousin Lyndon Rive is the company’s cofounder.

An artist's representation of Musk's space exploration plan.

An artist’s representation of Musk’s space exploration plan.

So what’s the deal with the space exploration, I’m sure you’re asking. I’m getting there. Musk also founded a company called SpaceX (he must have an army of assistants filing all this paperwork). SpaceX, to put it in plain English, makes space rockets. That, of course, is awesome. Musk hopes to send humans to Mars in the next 10-20 years, although he did not specify which ones and what he wants them to do there. All the same, we’ll be waiting for whatever his next venture is, and probably buying a share or two in it just to be safe. Or maybe we’ll just keep writing blogs about funny named people. Yeah, that seems good too.

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Apr 26 2013
7 Comments
funny names, Uncategorized

Sandal Scandal, Funny Names at the NFL Draft Update and Reindeer-Herring Entertainment, It’s Funny Names in the News!

Hey, hey, hey! Its Friday again and that means it’s another knee-slapping edition of Funny Names in the News! I won’t reveal why I will be slapping you in the knee, just saying….watch out.

Bless you.

Bless you.

You may have noticed we missed last week’s FNITN due to myself being on a “business trip” to New York City instead of telling tales of funny names – but I’m back! Coinciding with my appearance in that little town over yonder was the start of the Tribeca Film Festival, that eccentric display of independent, obscure and delightful movies about herring and such.

Of course, our marvelous culture correspondent Amb also spotted the start of the festival and zeroed in on a particular film in the program this year : Aatsinki : The Story of Arctic Cowboys, a film about “a family of reindeer herders in Finnish Lapland as they give tourists sleigh rides and battle the elements.” This qualifies in my book as a funny-named film. Especially since as a Finn, I cannot make sense of that title and it definitely sounds funny to me. Thanks Amb!

Next, this week’s edition of our award-winning coverage of Questionable Footwear Naming Decisions, we bring you a tale of the Target Sandal Scandal. You see, the distinguished shopping chain Target has a new line of sandals, and they’ve named it Orina. You don’t have to know Spanish to figure out that this means something you don’t want to step into, but inevitably will most Wednesdays in the men’s room of the local Irish pub. And you don’t want to be wearing sandals when that happens.

The FCC has not given us any grief for our irreverent content so far, and I think I know why. Their current chairman Julius Genachowski has a very funny name, and is apparently fairly lenient, letting David “Big Papi” Ortiz off the hook for using a -*gasp*- expletive during a live broadcast of a Boston Red Sox game this week. I think they’re finally catching on to the fact that no one cared about Janet Jackson’s not-actually-exposed nipple and no one definitely cares about a guy named Big Papi saying a naughty word. Way to go, Julius!

I'm just attaching this picture here because I'm super hungry.

I’m just attaching this picture here because I’m super hungry.

This week’s Excellent Reportage of Funny Names by a Person with a Funny Name Award is hereby granted to Dave Dildine for his fun little piece on strange road names in the D.C. area. Check it out here. Liz, I’m thinking you’ll get a kick out of English Muffin Way, which does sound a delicious route to take, no matter how you slice it.

The NFL draft began last night, as you well know. Here’s Funny Names Blog’s Senior Sports Correspondent Mark Sackler with the big news on which funny names went to which teams this time around :

Cordarrelle Patterson. Minnesota drafted his belt and bow tie 29th. I think they got him, too.

Cordarrelle Patterson. Minnesota drafted his belt and bow tie 29th. I think they got him, too.

Well Arto, the first round is history.  As anticipated Barkevious Mingo, a defensive end from LSU,  was the first of our funniest name nominees to be drafted, going at #6 to the Cleveland Browns.   Star Lotulelei, a defensive tackle from Utah, was the next funny name nominee to come off the board, going to Carolina at #14.   We reported originally that Monti Te’o would probably be a late first round pick, but he didn’t get chosen.  Somebody early in today’s 2nd round will pick him up and get his mock girl friend as a bonus.  Still to be chosen from our funniest names roster are also Cornellius “Tank” Carradine, Blidi Wreh-Wilson and Bacarri Rambo.  They should all go in the 2nd and 3rd rounds today.  All but one of our honorable mention names went in the first round as well.  Only Darius Slay remains from that group.  It’s also worth noting that while University of Tennessee wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson didn’t quite make the funny name cut, he certainly deserves some sort of recognition for the funniest overall combined look and name.

Be sure to vote in the poll for your favorite funny name in the 2013 draft class below – vote as many times as you like, and check back next week for the winner :

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