stick it to your mama, charles dirk

This morning was going okay. I put a favourite skirt to use, made the earlier train, enjoyed a delicious breakfast of yoghurt and muesli and fresh peach, breached my no-coffee rule and experienced a glorious kick-in-the-pants-kind-of-wake-up. I listened, for the first time, to an album of a local Brooklyn band that I happened upon in NYC and was quietly reliving that splendid week, all the whilst finding the motivation to actually do some work.

Life was yelling SUCCESS at Tegan. The pink sheen of happiness was slick across my cheeks, and my ponytail, I must tell you, was particularly curly and buoyant.

It was around Track 6, and I guess while I was being so motivated to work, that I discovered a blog entry on brisbanetimes on one of my favourite topics: names.

Swoon. Flip. Chuck. Do not give your child a name that happens to be a verb.

Good advice, Sam de Brito, very well observed.

Avoid, at all costs, sexually suggestive names like Randy, Pansy and Cherry.

Yes, de Brito, you are right on the mark.

Chardonnay? Moon Unit? Scatman?

I laughed and clapped my hands in glee. I forgot about my motivation to do work and scrolled eagerly onwards to read the comments about ridiculous, terrible names people have come across.

Someone once knew a person called Fanny Gravy. Hilarious.

There was a journalist named Paris Lord. Ludicrous.

And then there was one comment that really touched me – you know, right on my red centre.

“Crappy Aussie names,” it began, “such as Noleen, Narelle...” and I was scoffing and thinking of a particular girl from school and knowing all my friends would be laughing, and this is where the story climaxes, because right there beside Narelle – Narelle with the idiotic fringe - was "Tegan".

I experienced a moment of confusion and re-read the sentence. I was correct the first time.

So I continued on, furious and wounded, as this ill-thought-out comment went on to list more names reminding me of people whom I dislike and openly ridicule, and to proclaim listed names as “just so white trash”.

And just as I was getting all worked up and not feeling quite as successful as I was one bowl of muesli ago and feeling more and more like white trash with THAT'S MY NAME, BITCH repeating over and over in my head, I decided that I could do something about it. That I could respond with my own blog post.

But then after a few moments thinking about what exact words I would use to rip this fool to shreds, I realised that, no, given that I am “a little poet”, not to mention a “beautiful girl”, I need not feel so passionately disposed to pettily defend my name’s honour to a twat named Charles Dirk.

Pretentious git.