Labral, not only what Mama Tiger said, but any bona fide professor who uses in a professional communication needs to be crushed under somebody's heel.

Just seeing the snippy, unprofessional tone of her email gave me hives, as well as traumatic flashbacks. It also made me very very glad that when I finished my master's I decided that was it, despite my previous plans to go on to PhD level. Thank goodness I came to my senses !(?!?!!?)

Hell yeah, labral, go over her head! You followed the guidebook, and went to her first. She effectively told you to piss up a rope, so now take the second step in the guidebook (I seriously doubt that the second step is "Oh. Well. Let it go, then.")

You go, labral! Most profs are professional, and I consider it our duty to point out the unprofessional slackers for the good of all.

I've only challenged a grade once, and that was a class where pretty much all of us challenged. The university convened a panel to arbitrate from other departments, and the highlight was when an art prof said, very delicately, "I don't know how you do it in English, but in Art, we keep a gradebook where we record what grades the students are getting throughout the semester." This was after my prof said that he kept our grades in his heart, like Mary. Ah, the bliss of Bible-belt colleges.

Holy crap, labral, I'd be pissed too! Definitely check in with your fellow sufferers and then go on to the next step in the process. And take a printout of that mass email, too. Sounds like she received many, many complaints and is trying to disarm y'all by going on the offensive.

JoyWalker, he kept your grades in his heart? Bwah! That has totally made my morning.

And on a completely different subject, can I just rhetorically ask what the freak Gwyneth Paltrow was smoking when she named her baby Apple? Give me a break. If you're going to name your kid after fricking FRUIT, at least go for something unusual, like Kiwi or Kumquat or Persimmon. Apple???

Labral, that professor sounds like the ultimate in dissatisfied with his/her lot in life sourpussitude. If it's important to you, definitely escalate. It sounds as if this person has accumulated two years worth of grudges and slights, and is using the final grade as a pay back. How awful.
Circling back to the cicadas, I believe these are the 17 year cycle, red-eyed cicadas, and all I can say is Thank Goodness that I live in Mass. My sister is in Maryland, and she's dreading them.
Oh, and Apple as a name? I don't get it. Are they sucking up to Steve Jobs? Is the next child going to be named IBM? I'm completely baffled.

Hee, JoyWalker! I have been giggling about Apple for a day as well. Just think of all the cruel ways that poor childs name will be manipulated? The press is already full of cheesy headlines about "The Apple of their Eye" and such. Check out the Gwynneth thread on Fametracker. Full of snark!

That story about the grades is awful. I hate it when profs go on an ego trip like that. Sounds like somebody hurt his / her feelings and now she's taking revenge. Unfortunately it's hard to prove that, but I would certainly take it up with the administration.

I was completely shocked to hear that the school where my boyfriend is doing his MBA does not post a grading system. Most schools have a chart that shows how an A = 80% or above and so on, but not there. There you can get 78% in a class and still end up with a B- because the prof only wants to give 3 A's and 5 B+'s. Bastards.

I had to go look up the poor child's name Apple Blythe Alison Martin because when I heard it on TV this morning, I would have sworn the guy said Apple Blight, which just seemed wrong. But then, so does Apple. Maybe they'll call her Alison.

Apple Blight! Bwah! Oh, that poor, poor child. She'll make some therapist a rich person. some day.

I know! I hate the nouns-as-names trend. If you name your baby Apple, why not Pencil? Shower Curtain? Perhaps Lego? I've always said I want my kids to be the only ones in their classes with their names (I like the name Abeni for a daughter, which means "we asked for her and we received her" in Swahili), but no nouns, no crazy spellings of common names, no making shit up, and especially no punctuation! Gah. How can you take someone seriously whose name is Apple? She pretty much has to go into entertainment.

Worst name story ever: One of my coworkers (14 days left at this job and counting!) used to be a social worker, and she had a client whose daughter's name was Chlamydia. I'm not making this up. My coworker gently asked the woman why she'd chosen that name, and the woman replied she'd heard it in a doctor's office and thought it was pretty. My coworker asked, even more gently, if she knew what it meant, and the woman said no. My coworker, uber-gently, told her what it was, and the woman just shrugged. The worst thing? I guarantee you it's not spelled correctly. "Clamidia", perhaps, or "Klamidia." That poor, poor girl. Maybe she'll wise up when she gets older and go by Lydia.

Chlamydia? I swear, sometimes it borders on child abuse. It really really does.

I think we should call Gwynneths spawn the iBaby.

Maybe Gwyneth is a TAR fan, and she was so taken with Peach's name that she wanted a fruit of her very own.

grading scandal update. At least six people in our group of 29 got 'B's'. Some were already asking how to ask for a grade change, and were told, by the director of the program, to go through our prof first. At least I'm not the only one. Some of the people who got 'B's' however, really shocked me. I've printed out all her emails that have comments about my progress and will most likely appeal to the director of the program.

labral, I don't know what school you go to, but I wonder if this is a consequence of the recent backlash against grade inflation that's been reported in the media. I'm of course not saying that your grade was inflated! but rather that a lot of schools have been getting some flak for giving out a lot of grades at the top end of the spectrum, and now their cracking down. Perhaps the professor fears that she's on some list for giving out too many "A"s in the past, and is overcompensating in an attempt to deflect attention (which is still inappropriate and unprofessional in my opinion).

For those of you who are doing actual work and stuff, I did the necessary research and found that Gwyneth's baby's pimp name is Master Pimp Apple Blythe Alison Skillz.

eta: Hit Pimpafy one more time and I got Sweet Chocolate Apple Blythe Alison Valentine.

1) Good for you, labral. It is completely unacceptable for this woman to so carelessly and unprofessionally mess with people's futures.

2) Apple?!?! What, was Kumquat already taken? For fuck's sake.

Might as well just name the kid Please Kick My Ass. A Lot. Martin.

Apple Martin. That's way too similar to apple martini (yum!). What were they thinking!



I wish! When I worked at a university I was encouraged to go to ALA for professional development. The two times I went I had a great time, even though I probably spent more time sightseeing (both times I was in cities I had never visited before) than my boss would have liked. Now I'm a corporate librarian and conferences are a bit frowned upon.

labral, good luck with the grading debate.

Exactly what I was thinking! Those always remind me of the last TARcon.



What? No electric slide? I thought that was a requirement.

They call me 'cookie dude!'[/Ross Gellar]

So Millionaire didn't call me Saturday, and I'm pissed. I was more pissed off when I tried to qualify again Saturday evening and found out you're only allowed in one potential contestant pool each series, so I can't even call to take the test again this week. Now I have no interest at all and didn't even watch the show yesterday. I may have to tune in Tuesday to see who beat me out of Monday's taping.

Now I have to concentrate all my good vibes efforts on getting a call to take the Jeopardy test next month in NYC.

Hi everyone, I'm diving into this thread so I can get to know you guys before TARcon. Today is actually my 2 year TWOPiversary so I'm not new by any stretch of the imagination.

I recognize a few names, iMissEthan, erinjsnark, and JenEx to be specific. Oh, and I'm TPorter2's daughter for those of you who know her around here.

Anyway, I agree that Gwyneth's choice of names is ridiculous but with her mother's name and her name giving her daughter a normal name would be a bit off.

I was a girl scout and hated selling door to door, I would've loved to hang out at Blockbuster on Friday night and sell them all that way.

HEE!! I swear I said almost the EXACT same thing after I heard her name. The only difference is that in my version "for fuck's sake" was replaced by "Jesus!".

Wow, that professor sucks, labral. Hope you get somewhere with the director of the program.

I never buy things from the seller's parent(s). If a kid wants to sell me something, she can come find me and sell it to me herself. It'sx surprising how many parents are insulted when I say that, even though I usually buy from the kid when they show up.

Tibet was pretty cool, for those who asked. I went there on a short holiday when I was working in India for a longer stint. Crossing the India-China border (and then back) with an American passport and all the documents for entry to both countries was the biggest adventure.

One of my Indian friends arranged the trip. She has a friend who lives in the same community in India as the Dalai Lama, and he came with us. This, of course, made the crossing into China harder, but he was traveling on a Thai passport, so in the end, that worked out okay.

We saw the usual things one sees as a tourist in Tibet, such as the temple complexes in Xigatse. We also traveled around the more remote areas of the country. Because Tibet has such high altitude, it's above the tree line, and only a few, short trees are found anywhere in the country at all. However, it has really interesting geographical features, which I had not expected. For example, there are many incredible canyons. Many of Asia's great rivers start on the Qinghai-Tibetal plain, and with no trees, there is little to prevent soil erosion as the rivers descend towards the distant oceans. We spent a day exploring around Lake Yamdrok, which was a great deal of fun.

Many of the smaller lakes in Tibet have high saline content, and one of the things Tibet exports is salt from these lakes. We got to visit a "salt farm", which is a single-family salt-drying operation, run along the same lines as a barley farm, or a sheep farm, except that the product they "grow" is salt. We spent a night with some distant relatives of our guide, who had a small farm with yaks, and whose main product was barley. In honor of our visit, they had traded a bunch of salted yak milk and yak butter to a neighbor in return for a frozen, slaughtered sheep, out of which they made a huge meal, and several neighboring families came, too, to see the foreigners.

What surprised me most was how different it was from the parts of India that nestle up against its border.

If you have ever driven into Quebec, just south of Quebec City, from northern Maine, you will have some sense of how much a border can matter. In northern Maine, there are old growth pine forests, remote summer cabins, small towns, small saw mills, and not a whole lot of people. The US-Canada border there is just south of the crest of a hill. So you drive for a few hours through more and more remote Maine, and cross the border. Then you drive over the top of the hill, and the whole world has changed. The forest is replaced by farms that have been cultivated for hundreds of years. The population density increases substantially. There are towns everywhere, and not far off is one of the great cities of French-speaking North America. It's very different than say the US-Canada border at the Peace Arch, where the biggest difference between Blaine and White Rock is whether the speed limit is given in MPH or km/h.

Tibet and India were like that. Except for the Tibetan exile communities, the Indian hill towns are populated mostly with Hindus, and their architecture reflects both the old Indian traditions and the influence of the British Raj. On the Indian side of the border, you see people farming with water buffalo. In Tibet, yak are far more common.

Mack Master Sorcha Skillz signing out.

What I found funny about the Girl Scouts this year is that I think they were following me around. I go a few years without ever seeing any, and this year they were everywhere - at the Metro, the library, at Giant, then at the Metro again. I was good, I only bought cookies at two of the sightings. The other two times I just screamed and ran away.

Stupid Millionaire. Well, I'm not watching it anymore - its on my boycott list. Back to wishing good Jeopardy thoughts.

I'm was a few days behind in reading the posts on this forum, and I just got caught up. So this is the first chance I had to check out my pimp name. Using my real name, I got "Delicious Karla Gates", and with my screen name for posting, I got "Crazy Eyes Cat Rockefeller." Both are pretty good, but I definitely like the second one better. Maybe I'll just go by Crazy Eyes for short.

Hey, maybe we're sisters, Bubbacat. I'm Diamondtrim S. Rockefeller.

Hi, I'm houself and I'm a reality TV junkie. Can't wait for the Race to start.

labral keep goin' up the chain of command. That is so wrong.

TV Guide.com said that Gwenyth had a very long labor. I have very, very long labors and my kids are still not named after fruit. I have no idea what my parents excuse for naming me was....

Hope I'm welcome anyway.

Hey, that's cool, Babalu! And our screen names are similar, too. Coincidence? Maybe not. Can we get the Rockefeller's money to go along with the name? Now, that would be cool.

myothervoice, that's the same issue I have. Corporations have no respect for the masters of information. They think you can just "look it up."

Apple. Fer cryin' out loud. I'm still not over it. Speaking of which, who here has been to Baby's Named a Bad Bad Thing? Kept us entertained most of the afternoon at work, in that laughing-so-hard-I'm-gonna-throw-up way.

Gwynneth always struck me as someone who enjoyed being strange, though I'm not sure that's her default persona. Anyway, Apple isn't even a good pet name, let alone a kid name. Some of the weird names rock stars gave their kids in the 70s were better than that.

Speaking of names, I don't like my pimp names. Not for my pseudonym and not for my real name. And I give my pets people names. Although I did have a cat called Rabbit, whom I nicknamed Bunny. When I did my porn name, which is your first pet's name and the name of the street you grew up on, I was Purple Nose Rural Route One, which didn't work. But when I used the name of the first pet I had an an adult and the street we lived on then, I became Bunny Jones. That worked.

And labral, there is no nice name for your professor. What a jerk.

I figured out the reasoning behind Apple. Since the daddy's a musician, maybe its a homage to the Beatles. Not that there can be any reason to do that to your child.

Well then I guess it's a good thing the daddy isn't a fan of Megadeath or something equally horrid. Mind you, Megadeath Martin has a nicer ring to it then Apple Martin.

Hi everyone. It's been a while since I posted here. I have been lurking around the survivor boards since the last season of TAR.
I am so happy that TAR will be here in a few months. I've been going through withdrawl.





I think that they were drinking a few too many Apple Martin(i)'s when they decided to name their kid. I feel real sorry for the baby, she is going to be tortured once she reaches school age.

I go by my mother's standards from when we named my dog. Can you yell that name on the street? Like, my father wanted to name the dog "Janna of the Jungle" and I wanted "Princess" (I was seven. Now I just call my man friends "princess"). She said no, as she didn't want to be in her robe yelling for either of those to come in. So I came up with PJ, a great name for a dog.

Ditto with "Apple." You want to be at the park, and yelling, "Apple Martin! You get over here right now. We're late for our Bikram yoga with Rocco & Lourdes! No brown rice cakes for you tonight!"

Yup, my kids will be Bob & Mary. If there's more, then it's Bob II and Mary II.

JenEx, that site is hilarious. I'm almost sad that I leave work in a few minutes. Oh well, I can look forward to goofing off tomorrow as I read the rest of the site.

Well, that's why my kids are David and Rachel. Both names that have definitely stood the test of time, and it's kinda hard to mangle either one too badly.

Of course, I have a cousin last name Ball, who had a baby she named after two dear family friends. So the poor child was named Bracken Waxy Ball. I shit you not. (He died of a heart defect a few hours after birth, but I've always claimed he chose that route rather than go through life saddled with that name!)

I just tinkled thanks to that baby's name site. Oh. my. goodness.

(why are my posts like these always at the top of a thread?)

I know I've told the story of a friend whose lover (right before she dumped him) got her a dog as a surprise. So she named the dog "Surprise." And of course he got loose and ran from the house a lot, so she'd have to go find him. This was most fun late at night, when the neighbors would look out their windows to see a middle-aged woman wandering around, looking perplexed, calling "Surprise, Surprise." I always maintained she was lucky no one called the police on her, or had her sanity tested.

JenEx - I just saved that site to my favorites AND sent a link to my work e-mail. Thanks.

Bubbacat - as a charter member of "this boat is sinking fast but I refuse to get off" Lex Is Hot fan club, I think it must be more than mere coincidence. And I'm named after my CAT, Babalu. You picked an excellent time to discover a new sister since I'm moving to Hawai'i soon!

Holy Mackerel there, that baby site made me laugh quite loudly. And since my husband is putting the kids to bed while I'm ostensibly working, not a good thing.
Also, Bracken Waxy Ball? There are no words. Other than Q tip and DeBrox, of course.
So nice to see such an active Meet Market! How many more days until July 6th?

Bracken Waxy Ball is kind of disturbing. I don't even know anyone with super weird names or spellings that I can think of. The closest one I can think of is my friend Andy. Everyone assumes his name is Andrew or Anderson or something like that, but it says Andy on his birth certificate.

I've never actually had a pet, so I can't officially do my porn star name, but if I use the name of my boyfriend's dog, I get Jasmine Albert. That definitely works.

I love that part. They're right, though, it's like these people forget that a little person is going to be attached to those "creative" attempts at a name, and then will be forced to get a job where other people will have to use that name in talking to them or referring to them. I guess there's always changing your name, but that's such a hassle!

I can only hope that the vast majority of those entries were drunk, childless people messing around with the other posters.

My aunt and uncle almost named their youngest child Ben - a nurse stopped them. Now, what might be wrong with the name Ben? It's a good name...unless your last name is Gay.

When I was in grade school, there was a girl with the name Sarah Helena Irene Townshend. Needless to say, she probably went through life without ever having anything monogramed.

My porn name would be Jacob Wargrave, which would be okay, except for the whole wrong gender altogether thing.

When I was 10 or so, I went to camp with a girl named April Mae June and I thought it was the silliest name ever, but over the years I've come to realize that it's refreshingly normal, especially compared to the names on that site. Yeesh.

I have the same problem, jennblevins. My porn name would be Copper Laurens, which seems to work better for a girl. Or maybe it's a good drag queen name.

I went to high school with Merry Christmas Trees. And I SWEAR to you -- I even carried the page from the phone book for years to prove it -- that there used to be a man who lived in Homestead, Florida named -- get this -- Pud Fudphucker.

I can't remember the name of the first street I lived on, to come up with my porn name. I'll have to ask my mom. I just won't explain why to her.

I went to school with a girl named Rhoda Carr, which isn't awful, but isn't very kind, either.
Porn name: Clementine Bonad. It's better than many of the baby names at that very scary site. And do I need new glasses, or was the type very very small over there?

Want to trade porn names, swimmerboy? I remember reading a YA book with a main character named Copper, which I thought was a cool name and so much better than having the same name as about half the girls in my grade.

In other weird name news, I went to high school with a girl named Willow whose last name was something both tree-related and hyphenated -- Arbor-Hale IIRC. She was very nice (and willowy of body, actually) ... unlike her older brother, Thorn, whose name pretty much described his personality.

Yo. All rise, Bishop Don E. Flava inna house. (Or should that be "hizzouse"? I always get that confused).

When JudyZwas pregnant with The Boy, we needed to come up with something to call him or, at the time, "it". You can only go so long with "the baby", "flipper", "the newt", "fetus" and so on. We had actual boy and girl names already picked out, which we eventually used (well, the boy one at least), but it didn't seem right to use them pre-delivery.

We happened to be visiting the British Museum and saw an exhibit on the burial ship of an ancient East Anglian king. Thereafter, The Boy was known as Eorpwald Wuffinga until he finally emerged.

The scary part is how many people thought that we were actually going to call him that. We had friends actively trying to convince us not to name our child Eorpwald. Which, of course, only made us act all the more serious about it. We also told them out second child was going to be either Egcric or Wuffa. They totally bought it. What kind of a freak did they think I was?

(Don't feel you have to answer that. Yes, Rachel, I'm looking at you.)

pre-natal names ... my oldest nephew was called woodger in the womb. I'm not sure how to spell it, but its pronounced 'wood-ger'. His little brother was called 'doodle'. They still have those as nicknames. Paul will say "I'm a woodger and marky's a doodle" (they are 7 and 4).

I went to school with a girl named Scooter Humble. I have mixed memories of her..I loved her car, but she got all catty when I started dating the guy she liked. It was wierd.

Those bad baby names are...well, bad.

Those baby names were hilarious or should that be Hylaryoo'os. I went to school with a girl named Echo Anger. Honestly, if that's not child abuse, I don't know what is!