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| Fame of de Name Game |
| ________________________________________________ |
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This issue marks the jpt grand initiation of an eccentric institution for which there is scarce demand, no real need, little point, and an enormous budget and growth potential :
the Pete Branch Memorial Name Repository
Complete information is available at the PBMNR Vestibule link, below. Our opening exhibits are most generously provided by Mssrs. Mr. Entman Figma, the Admiral Benbow, and the Field Marshal Fibes.
Name-listers either create or collect existing names according to their own preferences and purposes, generally pursuing names that to them are in some way amusing. While speculators sometimes compile unusual real-people names into books for the market, the practicing namist does his thing by his own standards, and might or might not care whether his specimens have adorned real people.
It is rightly observed that the funniest names are inevitably those "real" ones that the burdened have toted through their workaday, occasioning constant incredulity. Yet, the inventors of contrived names find their own purpose and humor in their private art. In a recent interview, the Field Marshal Fibes reflected on the essence of the naming practice that in 1978, as a graduate student in one of the noble sciences, he founded:
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| "Slip From the Path" |
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Field Marshal Fibes in grad student days
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"I must emphasize a prominent aspect of the name-listing that gave it legs in grad school among my peers: the fact that a person with a precious lot of serious work to do and not much time to do it would be compiling lists of silly names or any names. It was a living conceptual performance. (Like The Dangling I enacted.) Superfluous busy-work. In a light spirit of exaggeration, somewhat allegorically, I likened it to some inevitable |
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institutional aspects of our own (or any) research programs-- righteously self-justifying, obsessed, detached from life's grander schemes. I feel that several fellow students couldn't have helped but appreciate those ironies. This playful, mildly intellectual aura lent the names a vitality or charisma. ... I note that among my complex of reactions to a professional school into which, years later, I matriculated with new ambitions, this history of name-cookery eventually repeated, and again peers were amused. And certainly at some point I had to question whether the detachment might in fact originate inside myself. I think my conclusion is that there's 'detachment' or space inside & between everyone and everything, and I happen to have been exploring it in my own way. --By the way, I did graduate from both schools; the result is intense, perpetual pride.
"One or two practicalists have thrust forth from the crowd to assert that anybody can sit around and make up names! Yes, indeed, anybody can-- and so my secretly sought-after inquiry will always be raised, 'Why on earth would anybody do this, on and on and on...?' It is THE QUESTION; it is THE POINT. A couple of partial answers occur. 1) To me, the image of a sentient blighter bent over the page, intent at such work as this, is a giggle. Onlookers befuddled, stuck with their irrelevant speculations. If I must be the one to bring this into our reality, so be it, I shall do my duty. There must be humor, and humor can be invented out of very thin air. Of course, funnybones vary. 2) A full answer might involve some elements of, 'Why NOT make names? It's a doable thing, not dangerous like mountain-climbing, and it seems to irritate some great thinkers, which is fascinating. Take an objective look at the whole spectrum of human pastimes. Then, measuring against some high percentage of them, try to prove that namestakeage is somehow worse, more foolish, less constructive, ultimately less okay.' It's only after this question is romanced that we begin to consider this-or-that merit of this-or-that name, and actually get down into issues like technique and skill and all that jazz. Discussion of the qualities of the names is pretty much ancillary. "
Fibes is an inventor of names, as in addition to his quiet rebellion against received definitions of legitimacy, he relishes the act of creation and arrangement of the things he has created. But there are those who assail the alleged artificiality and triviality of faking names, believing that a name that has not been worn is not a name. By way of introduction to the realm of the name-slingers and their wars, we are pleased to present a listing of real-life nombres y apodos that was actually prepared in indignant response to the Fibes collection now housed in the Repository. The compiler of this well-struck list does not hesitate in asserting his own hard purpose and P.O.V. Like any free-namesman driven by a passion, he has the right to his reasons.
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PBMNR Vestibule
(the REPOSITORY) |
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Angry Counterstrike:
a slate of Real Names! |
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