Everyday Stupidities

I've never really had a thing for my name. The first name, Brian, is okay and all, but the middle name I hate with a passion and the last name is uninspiring. (No, if you don't know them already, I'm not telling you. For the sake of this post, I will admit that my middle initial is P.) 'Brian' was the "in" name when I was hatched in the late 1960's, so there's plenty of us, many of which have the same middle name. My mother once said that my middle name came from her father's name, but even he didn't go by it – everyone called him "PJ" or "Barney". What surprises me to no end is that while I never put my middle name on anything I don't have to, nearly everything official has the word or the initial on it. I once rejected business cards at a previous job because whomever ordered them put my middle initial on them. Another of those incidents I haven't quite let go of was when I was in high school and the seniors came to the office to sign this sheet exactly as we wanted our diplomas to read, so of course I just put the first and last names. I got to the big ceremony, waited my turn, and my full freaking name was called. And printed on the diploma. Seems my mother had my father, who taught at the high school, go "correct" the name, claiming it would help me in the future. Er, I've never been sure how that worked; it only meant that I would never display the document proudly. My college diploma was printed exactly as I requested it so five years later I felt better, since that document has a little more clout in the world of work, but for different reasons I don't display that proudly. (Sorry, S.Kathleen.)

What surprises me is how many people totally bone my first name. At my call center gig, the phone picks up automatically when a call comes in, and so I hear a beep followed by my pre-recorded shpeal, "Thank you for calling [business], my name is Brian; may I have your name and phone number, please?" Not that I give a rat's ass about their name, it's the number that matters, but I have to ask to keep the Crimson Quality Assurance folks happy (and technically I've only asked that one time, when the greeting was recorded in July 2005). Anyhow, I tried to be as clear as possible when I said my name. And when I subsequently have to answer the question, "What was your name again?", as well. Yet people still blow it. I no longer correct them, it's easier to be 'Brad' for the next five minutes. I can handle being 'Ryan' but oddly that mistake hardly ever is committed. I kinda like the name 'Brett' so it's a change of routine for me. I know I've been 'Mike' and 'Fred' on at least one occasion, leaving me to wonder how they derived those. But the misappellations that intregue me the most are where they flat out made up a name. Seriously, I've been "Bran" and "Bryn" and some other interesting things, and I'm pretty sure I'm neither roughage nor Welsh. Hearing made up names like that makes me think of that episode of The Simpsons where they go to KrustyLand and Bart finds all this personalized merchandize in the gift shop for "Bort", and after Bart asks "who the hell names their kid 'Bort'?" two people named Bort discuss the matter. I can see my former coworker Brehden ("like in braidin' your hair" he would tell people on the phone) getting those confusions, or any of the customer service people with invented black names like LaQuanisha that transfer customers to me, but as for the simple and popular Irish-origin name Brian? Get the peanut butter out of your ears, folks. I swore at age 15 that I would change my name legally to Mushroom M. Mandrake (picture THAT when you hear my canned shpeal!) but, alas, I never got around to it.

The picture above is representative of how my cold has not improved much after a week. Yes, it's gotten past the ass-kicking stage where I can't move, but I still wind up with a cruddy taste in my mouth from breathing through it all night and enough thick snot in my head to drown someone, either crusted up and ready for removal or still in its gooey liquid form behind the crust plugs in great volume. The first thing I do when I get out of bed is get into the shower to let the hot water loosen things up, and I wind up sounding just like my sainted grandfather (Barney) when he'd erudicate the crap in his lungs on upward in the morning... it was a routine with him. Though with me it's hock, choke, gag, snort, cough, ptui! half a dozen times in hopes of clearing out the pipes enough to breathe and depressurize my inner ears. I haven't been able to get the cruddy taste out of my mouth today, and here it is 9:26pm. I may have contracted strep in the last 48 hours, because that's what the back of my throat and up toward the nasal passages feels like, but as mentioned in a previous blog entry this no longer phases me. I've given up on the Zicam, I just ran out of Quasi-Quil this morning (I've been taking it in the morning so I can stay awake during the day), and I go back to work tomorrow so hopefully things will work out tonight. I only get dry coughs late at night, when there's almost nothing in my throat, and those annoy me greatly. But I am still alive and have improved enough that I don't feel so much like death anymore. Still waiting for someone to invent a way to turn phlegm into a smooth, evenly-spreadable non-germy organic wallpaper paste.