Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-08-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views And what exactly is your name? Til 1 was 13, 1 thought my name was Shut Up. — Joe Namath Names are powerful things. My name's Art, his name's Joe — pretty much love taps as names go, but consider the predicament of Mister Beezow Doo-doo Zoppitty Bop -bop -bop. That is the legal name of a 34 -year-old gentleman recently arrested in Olympia, Washington for assaulting a police officer. Mister, er, Doo-doo Zoppitty Bop -bop -bop did not have that name on his original birth certificate; his parents dubbed him Jeffery Wilschke. Evidently Mister Doo- doo, etc. elected for a more exotic name change. People change their names for all sorts of reasons. Back in the 1930s a strapping young Hollywood actor by the name of Marion Morrison decided his handle was a tad effeminate so he changed it — to John Wayne. Canada's own Shania Twain might have languished in anonymity if she'd stuck with her original name — Eileen Regina Edwards. Those name changes are understandable — their owners were looking for box-office clout. But why would a man named Adam Armstrong Arthur Black find it necessary to change his name to Adam West? For a young man in Manchester, England it started out as a Facebook thing. His real name is Adam Armstrong but he posts as Adam West. No biggie — until his girlfriend's stepfather decided to surprise the couple by booking them a couple of airline tickets. The stepfather entered the man's name as Adam West. When Adam Armstrong tried to substitute his real name, to avoid passport complications, the airlines said sure, they'd alter the paperwork — for a $300 fee. Armstrong/West called up the passport office and found he could legally change his name for about half the price. Which is why Adam Armstrong now answers to Adam West. For most of us the problem is not the names we choose, it's the names our parents lumber us with. Frank Zappa named a daughter Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. There's an unfortunate child wandering around the grounds of Neverland Ranch in California dragging the name Prince Michael II/Blanket in his wake. That's what his daddy, Michael Jackson, named him. Marshall McLuhan said that a person's name is a numbing blow from which he never recovers. That's why it's important that parents get it right. Recently a writer in the English newspaper The Guardian offered a few tips on kid -naming - 1) Have you heard the name before? If not, no one else will have. 2) Can you pronounce it without looking it up? 3) Avoid hyphens. 4) Can a child of primary school age say it? If they look confused take it as a strong 'no'. And finally, 5) "Remember that your child's name is for their happiness alone and not to prove to the world how cool and creative you are. That's what Instagram is for." The writer knows whereof she speaks. Her parents named her Phoenicia Hebebe Dobson- Mouawad. No exceptions to exceptions rule The truth about rules is that they either have an exception or are made to be broken, a lesson I learned a little earlier than I should have according to many of my teachers. Rules are great when they're applied to those interested in upholding them. They can be laws or they can be social norms or any set of instructions that are mutually agreed upon at one point. The unfortunate reality is that someone will always think they are better than the rest of the people following the rules and that they can break them because of that. Take, for example, a virtue I've espoused often in this space: shopping local. The shop local movement has long been a tenet that I live my life by as few people know the importance of pumping money into the local economy (aside from those local business owners themselves) than someone whose wage is primarily paid by local advertisers. Unfortunately it was recently proven to me that even this rule of thumb needs to be tempered to be realistically enforced. Sometimes it's worth paying a little more to shop local and make sure those businesses are still around when you really need something and can't leave town (say, in the middle of a four-day snow day when every road in the county is closed). However, when a company stops spending money locally, is no longer offering a competitive rate or stops offering the exemplary service that typically follows from knowing your customers and running into them outside of work on a regular basis, it may be time for a consumer of the business to cut ties and find something else. Without getting into any details, my wife and I found ourselves in exactly that situation recently. We were disenfranchised with the way a "local" company was treating us, found out we could get a better price and better service elsewhere and I had first-hand experience of this company pulling money out of the local economy. We ended up taking our business elsewhere (Goderich, if you must know) and, thus far, it seems to be a good move. For me, this move created something of an awkward situation at home: for years I had been touting the importance of staying with this business, of giving them our business because of my firm stance on shopping local. Now it was time for me to admit that, maybe it wasn't always best to shop local. So, after admitting my error, we started to pursue other options and found, as stated, a much better deal from a company that, if the reports are to be believed, provide better customer service. After having discussed the move with a few people in the community and finding out they have also sought less -than -local solutions to the same business need, I felt that the following needed to be said: Shop local will only work, as I stated above, if every single person commits to the same ideal. Every business owner needs to shop at every other local business. Every service provider needs to be sure that they are contributing to the community and to other businesses and everyone needs to use the services that are provided locally instead of reaching outside the community when possible. It goes beyond that, however. Shopping local isn't enough. We need to hire local, source local and be local. We need diversified businesses that provide different options so that shopping online or hitting up the big box stores isn't an appealing option. This wouldn't be a very good column, however, if I spent the entire time bemoaning how my tendency to shop local failed me and didn't mention the many, many successes I've had by keeping my hard-earned paycheques as local as possible. Everything from auto repairs to yogurt can be found locally (sorry, I don't have any use for zoologists) and usually at a comparable, if not better (and in some cases much better) price than available outside of The Citizen's readership area. I'm not saying you should take my word for that, however. I encourage people to shop around and find out exactly how much things are going to cost them. In this world where $100 can barely fill the bottom of a shopping cart when, in my youth, it could almost fill two, finding the best price is not just smart thinking but a fact of life. When you're out there looking for that best price, however, keep one very important thing in mind: what your time is worth and the worth of the local businesses. Sure, maybe you could save a few bucks buying outside the community, but, when you travel to get these items, are you not spending your valuable time and gas money to get to it? And beyond that, are you not lining the pockets of someone in some other community instead of your neighbour (or worse, helping some CEO of some big box store afford a second or third vacation home)? Keeping those dollars local, as long as it doesn't cost substantially more, is worth more to me than saving a few cents on a litre of gas, a couple dollars on some commercial purchase or a few dollars a month on some necessary service. That said, when those businesses you support stop supporting you, it's time to take care of yourself first and them, well not at all. Maybe they will remember that this small town living only works if we're all pulling the same direction. Final Thought A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity. — Eleanor Roosevelt Shawn ALLoughlin Shawn's Sense Olympic fever J'm not sure if I've ever gone on record with this or not, but anyone who knows me and the kind of entertainment I like to consume knows that I hate the Olympics. I have always hated the Olympics. I don't really know what my problem is with the Olympics — they just haven't caught fire with me over the years. So here we are, embroiled in the mess that is the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil. Over two weeks of sports that, unless they're held under the banner of the almighty Olympics, most people would cross a 400 -series highway to avoid. Seriously. If you had to attend your child's swimming lessons, you'd bring a book. But we must kneel at the altar of the Olympics, because if it's a sport in the Olympics, you better damn -well care about it — and most people don't even have a loved one competing. There's plenty of stuff in the pool, so there's always that to look forward to. Really, the swimming events personify everything that's wrong, in my mind, with the Olympics. Freestyle swimming I don't mind. This is your run-of-the-mill, arm over arm, keep your feet moving, swimming that we all learned in a pool somewhere when we were something like seven years old. But then there's the butterfly, and the breaststroke and the backstroke and the medley relays where one guy has to do one of the above while the other guy has to do another. Why are these skills? And, more importantly, why are they sports? It's minor variations like these that make it possible for someone like Michael Phelps to win nearly 25 (maybe more than 25 by the time these Olympic games are over) medals over three Olympics. Anyone can flourish if you break a sport down this far. Imagine if Major League Baseball decided one day to break baseball down into every aspect of the game and hand out a World Series ring for every one. No doubt even the most rabid baseball fan would get tired of watching the bunting playoffs, or the sacrifice fly championships. The plate discipline finals (seeing who could draw the most walks) would be a complete and utter snooze. That's how I view swimming. Maybe they should create some more track and field events in the swimming mold. I, for one, would watch the backwards 100 -metre dash. And that's just the beginning I can't stand the idea of any synchronized sport. Really, who was the person who pioneered this concept? Like, sure, diving is great, but how great would two people diving at the same time be? Ridiculous. In the Winter Olympics, we have ice dancing. Somehow, dancing's floor -bound equivalent is deemed a hobby, but if you slap skates on these people, it's a sport. Well, not to me it's not. I do my best to avoid the viewing spectacle that is the Olympics in all its forms (don't even get me started on the hours -long opening and closing ceremonies), but in me not wanting to watch the Olympics, we have arrived at the real problem: it's borderline impossible not to do so. Every single channel with a satellite truck broadcasts the Olympics, especially the sports channels. So, like Sunday night for example, when I wanted to watch Sunday Night Baseball, I couldn't because the Olympics are on the five TSN channels I get, and baseball has been bumped to the one that I don't. So, pardon me for not praying at the Olympic altar, even if everyone's trying their hardest to get me to.