Baby Names

so Aiden and Jayden are the top baby names of 2008? Man, you know our culture is not doing well when Britney Spears' baby inspires that kind of response.

so Vladimir Putin is Time's Man of the Year. Are you kidding me?

But you know what, I think they just did it to get press. I'm not going to link to it. It's such a stupid pick, a dictator who squelches dissent, has journalists and political opponents killed, puts a lackey in power, etc etc, there's no way it could be a serious pick. But if they chose Al Gore or Ban Ki-Moon or somebody, would they get as much reaction? No.

Then again, check out their 1938 pick. (Apparently the covers floating around with him on them are fake, as he wasn't on the cover that year.)

so this is a rapper named Drama. He's been on the front page of Myspace and stuff, and the picture always makes me laugh - he looks like Jamie Kennedy pretending to be a rapper.

And what's up with the beard? It looks ridiculous. Plus the guy is named Drama, which is a terrible rap name. Why not name yourself MC Desperate Housewives or something. And his music is pretty boring and generic.

so I'm watching college football on ESPN, and the stadium for Troy University is called "Movie Gallery Veterans Stadium." This is an example of naming rights gone wrong. It sounds like there are veterans of the movie gallery, and it's pretty damn lame to match the two together. I don't think there's a Movie Gallery Day national holiday, for example.

so I just read that Mattel apologized to China for giving them bad publicity. Are you kidding me? Chinese companies made tons of toys with high lead levels, forcing Mattel to recall them, and Mattel apologizes? That's ludicrous. Here's the apology.

"Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people and all of our customers who received the toys."

Obviously the Chinese got angry at Mattel, and Mattel caved. What a bunch of babies. A Chinese official added this.

"You cannot recall 10,000 products just because one is substandard. This is unacceptable," he said.

I'm glad they take a lot of precautions there. Mattel said the flaws were their fault, which I believe about as much as when somebody in a scandal resigns from a job to be with their family.

I thought this was pretty lame of Mattel to do, and I emailed them about it. You should do the same! corporate.communications(at)mattel.com

so this video has been super popular at work ever since Appalachian State beat Michigan in football. It's ridiculous and terrible.



You can just tell it was created by some committee of dumb administrators, and lo and behold, it was. The school newspaper reports on the video, saying it was made for a state tour by, you guessed it, a committee. It was on VH1 and elsewhere, and got even more hits after the big win.

A university spokesman is trying to distance the school from the video, saying the video was created for a tour through the state by the university, and that "somebody probably picked the video up from the Internet when it was linked to the Appalachian Family Caravan Web site and is now using it for purposes other than for what it was created." The spokesman thinks "the video will not directly hurt the way Appalachian is viewed and hopes people who know the university understand the video was taken out of context."

Good luck with that, considering how much we've been laughing at it, and one alum said "I sincerely hope this is some kind of joke video. If not, ASU will never again see a dime of my money."

For those unfamiliar, ASU is in Boone, NC, and is kind of a hippie school.