Please.  I’m begging you.  DO NOT name your poor, little girls Renesmee.

Maybe it’s the fact that I have a lot of friends who are pregnant with their first child or just that I’ve seen a rash of bizarrely spelled baby names, but I really feel the need to make a heartfelt appeal here.

Years ago, I remember seeing an article in a Star Wars fan magazine (yes, I went through a SW phase) about a man naming his daughter Padme Amidala.  Of course it was next to a picture of a guy who had a full-color Star Wars poster tattooed over his entire back, so the girl’s name was hardly the worst choice on the spread.  But why name your child after a poorly written character in a b-grade prequel?

Because there is nothing sacred anymore.  You realize these kids are going to grow up with these names, right?  Will get teased and mispronounced for years?  But surely, the odds of someone naming their child after a supernatural, vampire-human hybrid are small.  Or perhaps not.

Why am I concerned about little Renesmees popping up all over the country?

• More Parents Naming Their Children After Twilight Characters?
• People Are Naming Their Poor Children After Twilight Characters
• Did you name your baby Bella?

And if that’s not bad enough, apparently I should prepared to meet a whole slew of Neytiris and Toruks in the coming years.

• Rise of Avatar kiddies
• An ‘Avatar’ Boom in Baby Names?

This article manages to hit all my baby naming hot buttons, simultaneously.  Naming your children afterTwilight characters AND naming your kids after celebrities.

• Isabella passes Emma as top baby name for US girls; Jacob leads boys for 11th straight year

Here’s another one…

• Name Your Baby After a Movie Character
• Named your baby “Miley?” Join the celebrity trend

Not to mention the names celebrities come up with for their own children!  Should you really be mimicking these nitwits?

• 50 craziest celebrity baby names

Sometimes real life is even scarier than fiction:

I have a friend that I met in college who has a daughter named Patience.  When I found out she had a little girl and was told the name I remember thinking, “wow, that’s unique, but I kind of like it.”  Then I saw it spelled.

Pa’shence.

A little part of me died inside.

My friend, I have to add this, in the unlikely event that you ever read this.  Your daughter is lucky to have you for a mother.  She is a smart, beautiful, credit to your parenting abilities.  But seriously, an apostrophe?!  And I’m not even going to talk about the spelling.

If only that was an isolated incident.  Let me give a shout out to a great blog that chronicles the horrifically spelled and the bizarrely constructed - The Bad Baby Names Blog.

But the most damning evidence that the problem has surpassed endemic proportions can be found on the pages hospital birth announcements.  These are names given to the progeny of ordinary people, people who might be living in a town near you.

• Sapheryn Leona
• Jennavecea Rachelle Linn
• Starmer Nevaeh
• Lynaiah Marnisha
• Olivehia Hope
• Serenity HunnyGirl Judy-Saleisiana (I don’t even know where to start with this one)
• Chevelle Ryder
• Paityn Kamaleianuhea
• Ratana Cassidy Jayma
• Ra’shad James (who somehow wound up with a twin named Michael Alexander, go figure)
• Slaidyn Jaice
• Brady Cayabyab
• Maleena Sensamilia Ta’Ufo’Ou
• Keyon Armani’ Gene (not sure what the random apostrophe is about)
• Paramour Ninabella (Are the parents relatives of Stephanie Meyer?)
• Zedricjeff
• Veronika Zeimele

And if the actual names people are giving their children haven’t got you quivering in fear, take a gander at these truly surreal conversations between moms and moms-to-be about spelling variations.

• do you like the name kirra for a girl?
• Girls name! (Only in the last post does someone point out that none of the spellings in the poll are actually correct.)

So please parents, think before you name.  Consider spelling your child’s name in a way that at least acknowledges the existence of phonetics.  And above all, hold off on the punctuation.

The latest is Redbox, the popular line of DVD rental kiosks.

red·box - verb, to rent a film on DVD from a Redbox kiosk; movies rented for $1 a day; to redbox something usually implies that the quality of the movie being rented is less than stellar.

So visit a Redbox kiosk near you and pick up your favorite guilty pleasure or film you’re not willing to pay $4 bucks to rent.  Redbox it tonight.

Forget the housing crisis, the pending economic collapse of Greece, and our own recession.

No the biggest problem we face is a shortage of Banana Peppers.

Many Subway restaurants (as I discovered today) have temporarily replaced their banana peppers with pepperoncini.  Why?  There’s a national shortage.  According to one of the workers at the Subway in High Ridge it’s because of earthquakes in Argentina.  By which I think he meant Chile.  But really – in a world where food is grown all around the globe – how is it possible to truly run out of something?

And why does that mean I have to go with out banana peppers on my Cold Cut Combo?!

It’s a travesty.

“strand sl coolbeam“

I kid you not.  It’s both awesome and weird simultaneously.  Awesome ’cause it’s Google.  And I’m the 3rd hit.  Right after the manufacturer’s site.  Weird because according to the internet I’m an expert on these lights.  Talk about pressure.

Great post on how the latest, “flashiest” (yes, I know I made a pun) web phenom isn’t always something to imitate.  Personally, I hate Flash intros.  Back when I had dial-up (yes, it still exists) they were the bane of my existence.  Think of how annoying they are on DSL/Broadband/etc. – but at least they load.  Half the time, I couldn’t even get to the SKIP INTRO option, because that also loaded as part of the Flash intro.

NOTE: He really could have dialed down the use of the f-word.  Come on, man, it’s just not necessary.  You made your point the first time you said it.  

http://angryaussie.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/should-your-website-have-a-flash-intro/

It would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so sad.  I really wanted to be there.  I was even 5 min. early after getting lost in the middle of a wheat field and having to backtrack.  But unfortunately, I arrived at the church early for the end of the wedding.  

Then I thought I’d just follow the bridal party to the actual reception so I could at least congratulate her and Jacob give them their wedding gift and maybe have a few laughs at my expense to soften the blow.  But such was not be.

After apparently following the 5 cars that were NOT going to the reception, I almost ran out of gas and had to admit defeat.  All in all, I had a very nice, long drive through rural Illinois, Christina and Jacob did get married (always the most important thing at a wedding), and I headed back to St. Louis to work on lighting at the church.

Not exactly what I expected to post about the wedding, but there it is.  :)

On a somewhat related note, I’m still editing photos from the last batch I took at First Free, I hope to get those up soon – things have been hectic.

I’ll be around church snapping away again on Sunday.  We’re in week two of the new sermon series and I don’t want to put off photographing it until the last week like I did with “The Buck Stops Here” (our last series).  So look for a new crop of photos to pop up on Flickr next week.

@ Christina’s wedding

I’m attending a friend’s wedding this weekend and I can’t help but bring the camera.  It’s going to be so much fun.  She’s going to be a gorgeous bride!  Those photos will be up soon, too.

@ the Inner Harbor

These are late in coming, I had a file corruption issue to work through before I could post any, so next week will also see the best shots from the Inner Harbor and the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Take a look.