This is a subject I feel quite strongly about: the silly names some people give to their children. With a nephew having been born recently, I had this discussion with my mom, and also with a few other people, and I decided I'd devote an entry to the subject.
Even though it is happening over here too, I think the worst country in the world in this matter, is the US, so that's what I'll concentrate on. What right do people have to call their newborn children names like "Apple Blossom", "Joy Hope Eden", "Summer Breeze", or whatever. These kids have a decade and a half of school ahead of them where they are confronted with the meanest elements in society: other children. Even though not everyone with a silly name will get picked on over it, sending young Christmas to school with that name is a potential risk.
I myself have been teased with my name, Sietse, for a couple of years, most notably in groups 6 thru 8, which corresponds with 4th to 6th grade. It rhymes with pizza, so there were a couple of kids calling me that constantly. I wasn't a happy camper in those days anyways, so I couldn't understand the humor behind it. Also my parents made no effort to teach me to ride a bicycle until I was a second grader, while most kids learn to bike in their kindergarten days. My name also rhymes with the Dutch word for 'riding a bicycle' which is 'fietsen', and in the months they did try everybody started calling me 'Sietse kan niet fietsen', which means 'Sietse can't ride bicycles'. My first 'nickname', that some sixth graders came up with, while I was in kindergarten, by the way, was 'Ziet ze vliegen', which means 'Is crazy', or 'Sees things that aren't there.' I didn't hate that one, as I simply didn't know what it meant. My name wasn't even that uncommon, so how must kids feel that do have a silly name and get teased over it.
Even though I didn't like my name at all in those days, I do see a lot of bright sides about it now. The fact that I do this blog in English, for one. I know a lot of names of which I can't explain the pronunciation, but in my case, I only have to say that it rhymes with pizza. Not only does it explain in a good way how to say my name, also I've noticed that it tends to stick with people right away.
Anyways, I'm thinking about composing a list of all the silly names I have come across in the yellow column. Anybody who thinks I should not do that?
Tonight one of the most repulsive aspects of the European quest for unity is on: the Eurovision Song Contest. This is a song contest where European nations compete against eachother. It is also the greatest evidence that composers shouldn't try to write songs for competitions. From what I've heard on the radio these past few weeks, there's nothing even remotely interesting about the songs competing tonight. Also it pits against eachother people singing in English, who previously haven't even spoken English before.
The poor quality is one thing. Another thing people often complain about, is the fact that certain countries always vote for their neighboring countries, esp. in Eastern Europe. In fact, the president of the Dutch TV station that are associated with the contest declared on the news yesterday, his tears flowing freely, that it's not fair (the Dutch entrant lost to ten Eastern European nations in the preliminary round), that a commission should be set up to look into it, and that in two years time there should be a song contest for Western Europe alone.
Another thing about it that irritates me, is that there is a certain group of people who know every last detail about every edition in the five-decade history of the contest, upto the color of the nail polish of the Polish entrant in 1963. And these people don't know just when to shut up. It's like those baseball stat fanatics in America.
I must also warn America. Apparently NBC has bought the rights to stage a similar show in the US (Probably cities or states competing against one another). It'll bring out the worst in America's song writers for sure.
Anyways, I'm not watching it. I've watched it twice in the 1990's, and that's about all I can take.
Another entry filed under 'despair'. It's about Dutch book translations in children's literature. You see, my sister's pregnant (with a boy who will most likely be called Najib), and my mom has started creating a library of books to read for when he gets to a reading age, and now I am reading some of the books she intends to buy (in the library) or that she's already bought to help her decide whether or not they're suitable. Most of them are translated, and I have a problem with these translations. It certainly won't affect Najib in any way, but I'm pretty sensitive toward these matters.
I've been reading 'The Chronicles of Narnia' recently, which was written by the English author CS Lewis. It's set in London and in a few other worlds, most notably a place called Narnia. You'd expect the book to be full of English names for characters and places, but some translator thought it necessary to come up with Dutch names for a good portion of these. There is an English-language map of Narnia on the inside cover, and looking at it, I can only conclude that the translator didn't know what she thought she was doing. Plus, if a Dutch kid reads the book in Dutch, and then makes some friends on the web who speak English (Dutch kids at 10-12 should normally be very capable of this, I would have been for sure), he can't even discuss the book in a comprehensible way.
Yet, if you think that's bad, there's always Harry Potter. A grand total of three characters have not had their names translated from the English language: Harry Potter, Hagrid, and Lord Voldemort. This inspired me to create a little quiz. I will give the Dutch and English names for a few characters and places, and you may try to find out which is which. I won't make it too difficult, and should anyone say in a comment, that they want me to, I'll post the correct answers in a comment of my own. There are no prizes if you get them all correctly, unless you want to make the unwise mistake of giving me your home address.
Here goes:
Dutch:
1 Hermelien Griffel
2 Ligusterlaan
3 Marcel Lubbermans
4 Perkamentus
5 Ron Wemel
6 Zweinstein
English:
A Dumbledor
B Ron Weasley
C Neville Longbottom
D Hermione Grainger
E Hogwarts
F Privet Lane
There is one more reason why I have my doubts, whether Narnia is suitable. Najib's father is from a Muslim background, and if I were a Muslim I might feel offended by the book.
One of my neighbors, a man by the name of Rinus (don't worry, no one else who knows him will ever read this) , is a bit weird... He hears sounds at night that to him resemble someone continuously opening and closing curtains. And... He has come to blame me for it. As if I have nothing better to do when I'm asleep. Last Thursday he even left a letter at my front door in which he accused me of doing it, and he said he had checked four times that night, whether my lights were on. And on one occasion they were.
***
I have this habit, that when I wake up in the middle of the night, and don't feel tired I turn on my light for 30 minutes or so, to read or to write down good ideas that I come up with. Some of my best ideas come to me like that. One thing I don't do is opening and closing curtains. In fact I never hear that sound myself, and earlier on (he's been bothering the neighborhood about this for the past four years) he admitted he doesn't know from which direction the sound's coming. Now that he's seen my light on in the middle of the night, he just knows it's me doing it, and he does not stand to reason about it.
***
I wonder what he might do now. We have an olive tree growing very closely to his fence, and I'm sure that when it gets too high for his liking, he'll get a court order for us to axe it. I also sometimes leave some old bread in the backyard for the sparrows, and he's indicated before he doesn't like birds, so he might try and do something about that. If he decides to make some noise himself, I could care less, frankly, but his other neighbors might think differently.
OK, although I have written an entry two weeks ago, in which I called football a sport for losers. However, I am sportsfan enough to watch the Super Bowl, and if at all possible I want to catch it realtime, so yes I watch last night. Actually this morning (it ended 3.58 by my watch), but everything I do before I go to sleep I consider last night even if it's 9 AM. Even though football is a crappy game, the Super Bowl is an awe-inspiring event.
Of course before the game The Star-Spangled Banner was performed, by Billy Joel no less, an artist at least six of whose songs would rank among my alltime top 100. I perfectly understand that. The single most important one-day sports event in the world, and it's an all-American affair, you play the national anthem. However... As I told you all two weeks ago, I also tried to watch one of those conference championships, and even before that game someone sang the national anthem. Also, up until the world series of 2005 I used to listen to Major League Baseball on AFN pretty often. And every time the national anthem was performed, two even when the Bluejays or the Expos (peace be with them) were involved. When I attended a Northern League game between the Edmonton Cracker-Cats (what the hell is a cracker-cat!?) and the Winnipeg Goldeyes (a goldeye is a salmon) someone sang O Canada. A couple of years ago I even saw an interview in a documentary with a guy who was attending his son's little league game, and even there the national anthem was heard, probably from a CD or something like that.
One of the German commentators (no analogue station in the Netherlands covered the Super Bowl this year) said, just after Billy Joel had finished, that it was a heart-warming display of patriotism. I think it's a sell-out! In fact with all the patriotic emotions involved in singing the American national anthem, I think it's the cheapest national anthem in the world, with O Canada following in its footsteps! How the hell can a national anthem played before every bleeding baseball game, and what do I know? semi-important football, basketball, and Canadian checkers (I mean hockey! aargh) games have any real value left.
I admit that we in the rest of the world also have sports games where national anthems are played, but at least those are games between teams representing their country. I can safely state that no baseball club in the Netherlands play the Wilhelmusbefore the first pitch. In fact I have been taught that the best way to express my respect toward my national anthem is to sing it only in important events.
Also, I really don't care about America's anthem, although I know stanzas 1, 2 and 4 by heart, so for all I care, sing it wherever you can, sing it when you're drunk for the love of God, but let me just say that it is the cheapest national anthem in the world!
And I'm not talking about soccer! I'm talking about what we non-Americans call American football. I've tried to watch the Indianapolis v New England game last night, and let me describe what it looked like to me: picture a parking lot, flanked by two walls. Then picture two teams of four kids, one team in white t-shirts, and one team in blue t-shirts. At some point one of the kids stand up from the floor and throws a tennis ball real hard at one of the two walls and sits down again. At another point three kids each from both teams run at each other and when they touch they fall down, and sit back down again. And again they sit down and nothing happens...
What is it about 22 men wearing protective devices that render them less recognizable than sheeted KKK members, who from time to time move for twenty seconds and then do nothing for at least three minutes that Americans call sport... Besides, the sport apparently needs cheerleaders. A sport that cannot rely on itself alone to keep spectators from leaving... What's the value of that!? American sports fans and athletes are also very full of their handling sports... If they were so good at it why does it take all these incomplete passes, before anything remotely interesting happens?
Football fans of America, try rugby! It's an oval ball, and two 40-minute halves not laced with beer commercials. The players don't need protective clothing, the kickers aren't the wimps they are in your brand of football, there's no forward passing, so teams must work out intelligent strategies to get the ball across that line... Or better yet, try soccer!
Good news for Henry Winkler! Yesterday I finally saw a version of the ole Scrooge story that was actually worse than 'An American Christmas Carroll': Tori Spelling's 'Carol Christmas'. I also wonder what this obsession with certain actors and actresses is. Do they think "Gee, I'm a bad actor, so I can easily play a bad character", or something along those lines? Besides, even in the two episodes of BH 90210 (or was it Melrose Place), that I've actually seen, I saw Ms. Spelling play a far more evil vilain than in that flick I came across yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I love the vast majority of Scrooge movies, but there are a few... bah, humbug.
Why is it that even after all this time, people around me, and on the radio, etc., keep singing "You were working as a cocktail in a waitress's bar", when the song "Don't You Want Me", by the Human League is played... It got old since the eighties!!!
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Blogthings
You are Sandusky, OH
Loser! You are boring, have no sense of adventure, no sense of humor, you have no friends, in fact you're no good to this world. You are definitely Sandusky, OH!
Famous Sandusky, Ohio, residents: probably a few hockey players, but no one worth a second glance
* Soraya
