Dave Dribin and I took the time to take some pictures before it goes away forever. Oh yeah, and we ate lunch.
14:54 <@seano> first wesley willis dies
14:55 <@seano> then, rock n roll mcdonalds
Archive of entries posted on 15th July 2004
Rock and Roll is dead
Exurb
Reading the paper this morning, I also learned a new word (for me): exurb.
Exurbs are rural communities that, due to proximity, are becoming suburbs of a major urban area. Exurbs tend to be populated by people that work in the city and bring their capital home to spend on local services. Exurbs are commonly viewed as the only rural communities which are benefiting from the rural exodus. These communities tend to be highly competitive.
I wonder if Huntly, IL falls in this definition.
Millennium Park and a sad comment
Today the Chicago Tribune had a special section on Millennium Park. Millennium Park officially opens Friday after many years of budget overruns and delays. (Where’s Daniel Burnham when we need him?)
On the front page was the article Chicago finds `bean’ meets taste test. This article was about the new sculpture named “Cloud Gate” that was unvieled for the opening of the park this week. I have to agree the concept and the actual execution of the sculpture is awesome, at least from the pictures in the paper. Unfortunately, the only image I could find online is the artist’s concept that you see on the left. As I’ve got my camera with me today, I’ll have to try to get a real picture.
In any case, the thing that really bothered me about the article was a comment that the journalist got from a man on the street. What’s worse is that the Tribune deceided to make it a highlight burb. I will do the same, although probably not for the same reason. I’m doing it to show how stupid it is.
“Look at how vivid it is. It looks like a high-definition TV. It’s very cool.” — John Horan of Chicago
I’m a big fan of technology, I own many toys and an HDTV and stuff like that. I also will admit to watching more TV than I probably should. However, I think its really sad that the only thing he could compare the mirrored sculpture to was the sharp image displayed on a TV. We have such a wide vocabulary available to us. Thanks to science we’ve seen the birth and death of stars, the destructive and awesome power of splitting the atom. And all he could find to say about a beautiful work of art was “Its cool, its like my TV.”
I don’t know what it should be compared to, but I think this comment, and the Tribune’s highlighting of it really says something.
[ Update 7/16: On the radio this morning, they said the park is 4 years late and 3 times over budget. Fun! ]
Dinah’s name
Many people ask about how we came up with Dinah Aeryn for the name of our daughter. We get a lot of “Is Dinah a family name?” Strangely, no one really asks us about Aeryn. Must be because its a middle name. Anyway, I warn you, its a tale of monster geekery. However, this geekery was perpetrated by my wife as well as me.
We had the name of Aeryn even before we were expecting. (The name is pronounced like the more common “Erin.”) Aeryn caught our attention thanks to the science fiction television show Farscape, specifically the character of ex-Peacekeeper Officer Aeryn Sun. Mostly what attracted us to the name was the spelling. We thought it was pretty. It doesn’t hurt that the character that brought us to that name is a tough positive ass-kicking female role model. Although, maybe she’s too quick to jump to violence.
My beautiful and charming wife, however, would not stand for having Aeryn as a first name, which I was lobbying for. Her reasoning: I have a first cousin named Erin, and the phonetic similarity would cause much confusion among people, specifically my grandparents. I think its silly, but as part of a marriage, and certainly as one half of a parenting team, one must compromise. Sarah said Aeryn would be a good second name, and I protested some, but eventually gave in.
So, how did we get to a first name? She was one of three Sarahs in her grade school class, and she didn’t like it. Also, we know about 10,000 people named Jason that we talk to quite often. Sarah was looking for something that was an older name and was less common now. She had proposed names such as Eleanor (“Gee, I think you’re swell” or “Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been.”) and Audrey. (Audrey was the name of my Grandma, my Dad’s mom. For some reason, it just didn’t work. A long story, maybe, for another time.) Those are two I remember, but there were more. I vetoed a lot of them. Nothing really worked.
I’m a comics geek, I’m 29 and I’m still collecting. And when I say collecting I mean “I’m reading for the story and just not throwing them away.” One afternoon, I was sitting in the family room reading comics while Sarah was watching tv. I started to read the latest Birds of Prey from DC comics. (As an aside, I’d like to link to a DC page about BoP directly, however, DC’s web page sucks ass. That’s okay, Marvel‘s sucks ass too.)
One of the main characters of Birds of Prey is the Black Canary. The current Black Canary is actually the second one, but I guess that doesn’t really matter to this story. In any case, her civilian name is Dinah Laurel Lance. On the second or third page of that particular issue, Oracle (Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl) had called her Dinah. I stopped and thought of the last time I heard that name. The only other Dinahs I could think of was was the late Dinah Shore (some thanks go to Adam Sandler) and, of course, the old campfire song of “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”
I turned to Sarah and said “Hey, what about Dinah as a first name.” Sarah said she needed a few minutes to think about it. As time went on, she become more and more attached to the name. I think after just 10 minutes, it was set.
We both felt good about it, but waited to tell people until it was closer, or at least the baby was here. As I said a few times, “Nothing is set in stone until we see her and make sure she looks like a Dinah Aeryn.”
I’m not one to believe in signs or anything, but there was a weird occurrence that I want to commit to the web for all eternity: About the same time we found out that we were to have a baby girl and we were deciding on the name, the rock band Live was getting a lot of air play with their single Heaven.
The lyrics to Heaven contain the following: I don’t need no one to tell me about heaven / I look at my daughter, and I believe. For some reason, these lyrics really resonated with me. (With how I feel now, I think I was already falling in love with my daughter, even though I hadn’t seen her. I definitely know that I’ve only been this enamored with one other person.) I decided that I needed to have this song, so I set about going to buy the CD.
I got to the story to buy the record and went to the Ls to look for the Live CDs. I knew the name of the song, but never took the time to look at/for the name of the album. Once I saw the name of the album, I figured it was a sign that Sarah and I were on the right track.
The name of the album is Birds of Pray. I loved the homonym of “pray” instead of “prey,” especially considering the lyrics in Heaven. And I figured, while not exactly the same as the comic where we got Dinah’s name, it was close enough. Close enough to give me chills.
In any case, this is the tale of geekiness that got my daughter her name.