Thought of the Day: Short-forms of Names

Alright. Everyone seems to have a short-form of their name, whether their name is Alexander or Mo. What I find weird, is when short-forms have little to no resemblance of the original name itself.

The story of how I was named is slightly interesting – moreso if you’re my Grandma, less so if you’re reading this blog. My Dad is a huge Beatles fan, as previously mentioned. His first choice for a name? Prudence. But, as most names have a short-form, my Mom was concerned people would call me Prude. Thanks Mom – I appreciate you looking out for my coolness, even as a baby. Now, this was in the ‘80s, and my Dad I guess had recently seen the movie Ladyhawke. It’s a pretty bitchin’ movie (and stars Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfieffer), and he wanted to name me after a character – Isabeau. But, Mom again was concerned with the short-form potential – “Easy.” (I have since met a girl named Isabeau. People either called her Izzy, or Beau, both of which I really like. Thanks for nothing, Mom.) The third name possibility was Tear, but since my mom wasn’t as concerned with the short-form of that name as the nicknames, I’ll leave it for another blog post.

Back to short-forms. Here are the top ten weirdest shortforms I can think of, weird being that the short-form is often non-related to the actual full name:

1. Edward – Teddy
2. Alexander – Sandy
3. Charlie – Chuck
4. Barbara – Babs
5. Robert – Bob
6. Richard – Dick
7. William – Bill
8. Margaret – Peggy
9. Henry – Hank
10. James – Jim

Thought Of The Day: Body Hair

Body hair is the weirdest thing. Seriously – give it a think for a little bit. We have it in super weird places on our body, and it’s all totally different!

Here are some questions about body hair:

1. Why is it thick in some places, but thin in others?
2. Why is some body hair smoothy smooth, and other hair coarse and gross?
3. Why do men have moustaches and beards, but not women?
4. Why do some women have beards and moustaches and not notice?
5. How does an eyebrow know when it’s long enough and to stop growing?
6. Why does body hair, like eyebrows, just grow one length for a really long time, and then at other times, like when you get old, grow longer than it used to?
7. What would people look like with no eyebrows?
8. What about no eyelashes?
9. Why is body hair different colours on different parts of the same people?
10. Can you run out of eyelashes?

For once, I actually have an answer to a question. I once asked a good friend of mine, John Palen, if he thought you could run out of eyelashes – if they fell out too much, could you one day have no eyelashes? John, being really old, even though he was in university, and also really cool and wise, told me this. He said that he thought eyelashes were kind of like eyebrows. They grow back, but only to a certain length. It really reassured me. Thanks John Palen, wherever you are.

Thought of the Day: Weird Search Terms

On our little bloggy blog we can see the terms that people plug into Google or Bing or whatever the dude they use, that somehow link to our blog. Some of them make us very curious as to what people are really hoping to find. Here are the most intruiging results:

1. Is anyone in “We are the City” married
2. What is the address for What not to Wear
3. What to wear in February party
4. Day after party girls photos
5. All Dressed Ruffles 43 g
6. I had a dream about a red lobster
7. Reasons why video games are good
8. Babysitting shark (this has now been searched for 4 times)
9. Crazy drunks in Cuba
10. Erotic steak photo

Thought of the Day: Alien Questions

Aliens – who isn’t interested in these guys? In fact, I was once so interested in them, that in Grade 12 I threw an Alien Party. No humans allowed. My grandma was in Florida at the time and I had been watering her plants, so we threw the party there. We had all alien food (Jell-o with fruit in it) called Alien Surprise, all alien movies (Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey), and all alien music (B-52’s). It was the best. We turned all the lights out and one person hid in the bathroom while we all hid in the house, then that person had to go walking around in the dark with a bunch of people hiding. It was totally scary. I was also really cool in high school, in case this isn’t clear.

But let’s get back to the subject at hand here. Aliens. Like ghosts, I have a lot of questions about aliens. Not your typical crop-circles, ‘are they out there’ kind of questions, but questions nonetheless. Here are some of them:

1. Do aliens have private parts? In cartoons and stuff it doesn’t look like they do. Maybe they just look different from ours.
2. Do aliens date, or do they mate? Are they more like humans, or animals? Come to think of it, do animals go on dates?
3. Why do we generalize all aliens as one type of being?
4. If aliens did come to Earth, what would they think of it?
5. Do aliens of one species – for example, like we’re all humans – have different races, like we do? If so, how will we be able to tell that they all come from the same planet?
6. Will aliens be the same size as us? What if they’re really huge? How will we communicate? What if they’re really tiny, and we’ve already been walking all over them on the moon and stuff, and rolling over them with our Mars landers and stuff?
7. Will aliens be more animal like or more human like? What if they have to live under water?
8. Can aliens fly?
9. Will aliens hate us?
10. What kind of food do aliens eat?

Thought of the Day: Ghost Questions

I really liked writing about shark facts. The point is, sharks are just impressively awesome, and they deserve to have a blog post, if not several, written about them.

But sharks got me thinking about something I’ve been thinking about for awhile.

Ghosts.

Sharks are to cool as ghosts are to interesting. Which is why I’ve decided to share with you my top ghost questions:

1. If a person is pregnant when they die, and they turn into a ghost (obvi), do they give birth to a baby ghost?
2. Can ghosts get married?
3. Can ghosts get divorced?
4. Is there a separate ghost world, where ghosts go through mid-life (for lack of a better term) crisises’s?
5. Can you choose to become a ghost?
6. At what point do ghosts move on? What if your “unfinished business” is something like “My soul won’t rest until every person in the world is full” – are you honestly just hanging around?
7. What do ghosts do when they’re not haunting people?
8. How long does time feel like to ghosts?
9. If ghosts can fly, or kind of hover, can they go to space?
10. If the answer to #9 is yes, is that what aliens are? Just ghosts who have hovered really high?

And now, some ghost pictures:

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Thought of the Day: Shark Facts

I was babysitting the other night and before bed, this kid wanted to read this book, something like “Sharks and Other Underwater Monsters.” It was crazy! It had a huge list of all these different kinds of sharks, eels, crustaceans, everything underwater that is scary. There were about 200 different kinds of beasts mentioned. And the kid (4 years old) could honestly list about 180 of them just by looking. After he went to sleep, I immediately grabbed that bad boy.

Here are some shark facts I stole from the internet:

• Sharks can smell one drop of blood in a million drops of water
• Sharks have been around for about 400 million years – long before dinosaurs even existed
• Some sharks can unhinge their jaw almost like a snake, allowing them to rip off flesh easier
• There is a kind of shark that can still live after you cut its head off – so it can still bite you
• Some species of sharks were only discovered in the last 20 years, since they live so deep in the ocean
• The Sand Tiger Shark where the babies inside will often eat each other in the womb – these sharks are surprisingly fairly docile once they emerge from the mother’s womb
• There is a species of shark that has a glowing light at the end of its tail – not much is known about this: is it to lure fish to it to eat them? It is a protection system? Is it a defense mechanism?
• When a shark eats food that it can’t digest (like a turtle shell or tin can), it can vomit by thrusting its stomach out its mouth then pulling it back in
• Even though almost equal numbers of men and women spend time in the ocean, no one knows why sharks seem to prefer to attack men. In fact, nearly 90% of shark attacks have happened to men

For more shark facts, you’ll have to use Google them yourself. In the meantime, look at these scary pictures!

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Thought of the Day: Harlem Globe Trotters

The Harlem Globe Trotters

How did they get so cool? Why are they all so old? Who in their right minds would want to play against them? And how are they not talked about more than they are?

I’ve never seen the Trotters in action, but He has before and said it was pretty good, but mostly for kids. How can they be mostly for kids? They’re really cool. I would like to see them for sure.