In Which Our Author Continues Exploring His Fascination With Names

Hopefully this will be the last post on the topic.  I don't want to get predictable or anything.  It's just that I had my first immunology class today, and it was taught by Professor Hazbun, pronounced "Has-Been."  It's sad because as a researcher, eventually, he's going to peak.  He's going to do his best work, make a breakthrough in our understanding of yeast mitosis which leads to a revolutionary new cure for cancer, and after that people are going to start calling him Hazbun the has-been, because people love obvious nicknames.  If I were he (him?), I think I would have become a Wal-Mart cashier or something.  No one calls a career cashier a has-been.  There are no wash-outs, no grizzled veterans of the aisles, watching the eager new hirees with a bitter nostalgia, remembering the days when they could tell you the exact price of the gallon tubs of mayonnaise and where to find them, right down to the shelf.  Now they're lucky if they can remember the difference between a code 1 and a code 2, and they'll never understand why they have to say "Happy Holidays" and not "Merry Christmas," or why a 16-year-old can't buy a pack of cigarettes.  If he's old enough to fight, he's old enough to smoke.

I got carried away.  I apologize.

Along the same lines, but mixing in my second favorite topic (racism), I have to wonder why people are so intent on making fun of "ghetto" names.  First of all, I hope you don't ever use that word, the internet.  Everyone knows you really mean "black."  But second of all, I don't understand how anyone can make fun of Shaniqua, and then go home and feed little Braylynn Quinn, who may or may not be a boy.  What makes a name "good"?  Names are intensely personal things.  If a parent wants to give their child a name that has meaning to them, for whatever reason, they shouldn't worry about what other people think.

With some exceptions, e.g. a friend of a friend named Ariel Seeman.  That's cruel.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I'm asking you not to make fun of people's names.  It's sometimes racist and always annoying.