Month: November 2020

by

Armand Hammer

If your last name was Hammer and you were born in modern times, why would you name your child Armand? Isn’t someone sometime going to figure out that you named your child after baking soda? The baking soda company has been around for “over 170 years” so it’s been out there in the public sphere so theoretically one would know about it, and so again, why?

I looked it up and Armand Hammer is not related to the people who started Arm and Hammer baking soda. I thought maybe that’s where Arm and Hammer baking soda came from, the Hammer family and that there was a line of Armands and they made the name for the baking soda as a kind of play on words on their names, but no. That’s not it. The Arm and Hammer baking soda people have no Armands or Hammers in their names. Not even close. So Armand Hammer’s family named him that anyway, in spite of the baking soda. They do call the junior Armand Hammer Armie, so I suppose that’s some improvement, but even Armie Hammer brings up thoughts of Arm and Hammer when you say the name out loud.

Armie Hammer. Armie Hammer.

I said this and it made me think of Arm and Hammer baking soda so I looked up Armie Hammer to see if he was related to the baking soda and found out he is an heir to some rich people, and one guy in particular called Armand Hammer, and they call Armie Armie because he’s the grandson, but he’s not connected to the baking soda. So then I looked up the baking soda and read its history (which is actually pretty interesting and can be read here if you’re so inclined), but it’s not related in any way to Armie or Armand Hammer. “A trusted solution for more than 170 years!”

This is my thought for the day, why anyone would name their child Armand Hammer if they’re not related to the baking soda? I wonder further if children he knew said anything about the baking soda. Probably not. It sounds like his family was kind of a big deal and he seems really well adjusted (and extremely handsome, but that’s an aside unrelated to any of this or his ability to manage his funny name) so I doubt anyone called him baking soda or asked him if he liked sitting with his top open in the back of the refrigerator.

See? I would have been one of those children asking those kinds of questions and maybe he would have gotten it and played along telling me how he kept cold food smelling fresh. But he may have just raised his eyebrows quizzically at me like maybe I was kind of nuts. I’m used to that expression so it wouldn’t have traumatized me to get it in any way. I would have just looked quizzically back at him wondering about his funny name. I might also asked him something about sleeping in barracks, but that would really probably result in a funny expression and likely not to go anywhere, although it’s the more likely question from boys who thought they were clever and making fun of a name that sounds like a military squadron.

by

No. Thank. You.

I know. WordPress probably doesn’t want me to complain about it. But the idiots running it must have migrated from other sites I avoid like the plague. Back when I signed up with it in 2007, the internet and blogging were different animals. I made several across the country friends who were also bloggers. We read one anothers’ blogs. We commented and communicated and discussed. Then Facebook hit and the world was never the same again. First of all, commenting went by the wayside and thumbs up and like became the norm. God, I hate thumbs up and like. Someone writes a blog post about their dog dying. I’m supposed to thumbs up that? Or like it? I don’t fucking think so. But those were the options. Now we get emoticons with little cartoons smiling or crying to represent what could have been actual words, but you know, words are hawrd.

Then of course the greedy capitalists out there pushed “Make money with your blog!” and that was truly the end of life as we knew it. Now the ONLY comments I get are some asshat trying to help me “Make money with your blog!” Gone are the days of interesting blogs about people’s lives. Now it’s all commodification and influencing and puke.

Another big change is this move to make wordpress like Word or Google Docs, both of which are absolutely useless garbage word processors. WordPress wants me to write according to their instructions. In fact, as I type this there is an instruction telling me to “start writing or type / to choose a block.” Go to hell WordPress. Stop telling me how to think. I can actually, believe it or not, think for myself. The other system they used to use for drafting might not have led me through by the nose, but is sure as hell let me think for myself. If I want to think for myself on this crap, good luck. It’s not intuitive. WordPress wants me to do things their way. Good ol’ monoculture, boring ass crap. No. Thank. You.

I finally managed to export all my content off here. This will be the last year my writing is hosted on WordPress. Obviously they hired some 20 year old straight out of Satanford, er, Stanford to run their design team and they have no imagination at all having spent their entire life glued to a screen and regurgitating what everyone else is doing so now WordPress does too. Actually, the whole team (sitting in their open floor plan and meeting in a glass wall conference room and now sitting in their living room staring out the window at the side of the building next door while they commune via Zoom) put together this bullshit that is the modern WordPress.

No. Thank. You.