Aubrey O'Day

[Phoebe]

I cannot bring myself to post this outside the forum for babblings, yet I can't sully the musics thread with it either. Somewhere back a few years ago, we had one of those sliding doors situations and somebody got on the wrong bus or the wrong train or whatever, and now we are in this wrong alternate future and are supposed to be somewhere else in the Multiverse. Do you really think you were designed for a world in which not only all the terrible things happen that happen on a daily basis, but in which the lead singer of Danity Kane fell into an illicit love with the scion of our current ruler and wrote a song about it for posterity? Does the existence of this thing and its contents not render everything about your existence somehow lesser and wrong and aesthetically displeasing? This is The Rock Bottom from which I resolve to go forward against the tides in a better direction. This world is too gross for me. I can't go live as a nun because family/kids and not Catholic, but... I will be some other kind of nun in my mind. I will lead a better life; I will fix it as best I can. People are dying senseless deaths and experiencing pointless suffering wtf, this world is hell and the sick icing of "humor" that proves it today is this:

https://genius.com/Aubrey-oday-djt-lyrics

[Kyle]

When did the song come out?

[Phoebe]

No idea. I don't even know if it's a real song. All I know is that I live in a world where this is in the news. Because there are shows called Celebrity Apprentice, and our president is a reality TV star. I hope it's something Vanessa made up, in a way.

[Zen]

Well, it appears that the it is on came out on August 13, 2013. There are news articles that suggest she had an affair with Donald Jr., while he was married, and that the relationship started near the end of taping for the Celebrity Apprentice. So... NOT the old man, the younger DJT. EDIT: And Donny boy did end up separated from his wife and she has filed for divorce it appears...

[Phoebe]

2013 was a bad year too.

[Kyle]

A work acquaintance calls him DJ TJ. I like that. It has a great mouth feel.

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

Never for the life understood why parents willingly inflict TJ DJ PJ CJ MJ BJ EJ J-Dub G-Dub or most of the others in this genre - all those above being actual people who then continued to call themselves these things as adults. I carve a legit exception for JJ, JR, and BB. Sorry if this attaches cruelly to anyone here. I can't lie about this, just like I could not lie about the undesirability of naming a girl Dixon. I'm sorry.

[mimekiller]

A trivial news story really wrecked your day eh? sad.

[mimekiller]

Now IF and WHEN we actually see 100 percent proof positive pictures of Trumps dick I will join you in rending garments and cursing a cruel and malevolent God

[Mike]

[Phoebe]

For me it will always be some kind of deep 1970s thing that goes along with sending your children to school in homemade polyester overalls with a giant animal applique on the front and a brightly striped turtleneck, but then evoking that same feeling and aesthetic of childhood when addressing a 50 year old by first initials. DJ and his ilk are the little siblings of Molly Ringwald later on in an 80s movie; PJ is actually in the Family Circle cartoon I believe, and that's where s/he needs to stay, in those footed onesies.

[Kyle]

Nick names are nick names. Who cares.

[Phoebe]

I care, because nobody should have to be nicknamed after a Family Circle cartoon. Low blow! The cartoon is one of three major loci of discontent here; another is that people often do not get to choose their nicknames, especially when a toddler is saddled with one of these initial things, and CeeJay or whatever is a sad way for a name to end up. Many have to go through an effort to change it toward adulthood; whole thing is bad. My husband's family nearly drove me nutty because they knew what we were going to name our son and were already calling him by one of these two-letter nicknames, which I loathed in fullness such that it would have caused actual conflict, so we thwarted them by picking a totally different middle name. I'm sure you can guess the original middle name in question, so you can see why I'm annoyed I didn't get to use it just so I wouldn't have to become the Sisyphus against Bad Initials.

[Tahlvin]

My first name is the same as my dad's first name, James (we have different middle names). When I was growing up, we went by the same nickname, Jim. When people would call the house and ask for Jim, everyone would ask whether they wanted "Big Jim" or "Little Jim", up until the point where I was actually taller than my dad, and then they would ask "Old Jim" or "Young Jim." When I went to college, I just started introducing myself as 'James', and that's all people know me as now, except for some family or people from high school that I never really kept in touch with. Nicknames aren't permanent if you don't want them to be.

As for family giving your children a nickname you don't want, I feel for you, but we never let it happen. In part, we gave our kids first names that did not really have established nicknames (like Jim for James, or Peggy for Margaret, etc.). And we always referred to them in conversation by their first names, not initials or other nicknames. And if someone tried using a nickname, we and the child just would not respond to that nickname, forcing them to get the idea that the proper first name had to be used. It helped that we lived hundreds of miles away from immediate family, and didn't see or talk to them but once every few weeks, so it was easy for my wife and I to habit-form our kids to only responding to the name we wanted them to respond to. But it worked.

Of course, now one of our kids is transgender and has changed his name, so we're having to acclimate family to calling him by his chosen name and pronoun. Not an easy task.

[Phoebe]

Heh, your story reminds me of a time I worked with an older woman who shared my name, and there was Big Phoebe and Little Phoebe and both of us hated that with elemental force and would snap at the guys who said it. Didn't stop anyone; it was another day and age. Leering was de rigeur; Rush Limbaugh was broadcast In The Office so all could hear. She taught me a lot about how to deal with workplace harassment and being a BOSS, Big Phoebe did. Thanks lady, will never forget.

[Kyle]

I can't tell sometimes if you're actually unraveling, Phoebe, or if this is a bit that you do. I suspect it's in the middle- it's a bit that also has truth under it so you do get some form of release or satisfaction from it. But it seems like you're under constant anxiety or worry about stuff. That has to make you unhappy.

[Zen]

My grandmother had a similar distaste for nicknames to Phoebe's distaste for initial based nicknames, but she never seemed too upset about my preference for Marty over Martin or my brother's preference for Jim over James. (My sister's name doesn't really have a shortened version so I suspect she liked that.) However, she ALWAYS called my father by his full middle name, which was the name he went by in his youth, though he generally went by his first name, James or Jim, as an adult. My mother used a shortened version of his middle name, "Del" but my grandmother would NEVER call him anything other than Delmus... EVER! I think it might have had something to do with the fact that her brother, whose first and middle names were "Martin Vanburren" and was a Junior, and was known to the majority of the extremely small southern town where he was the postmaster of the local post office as "Bunny". She just thought that was a horribly undignified name for a grown man. She was probably right, but what the heck. If he didn't mind?

(For the record, my great grandfather was NOT named after the president... he was named after the doctor who delivered him... who was named after the president...)

(Oh, and my brother Jim also had a different middle name than my father and, when he was old enough that their voices sounded just about the same on the phone, my dad would take advantage of that when he was expecting a call from work and was going to be out at night. He'd tell my brother what to tell them, which he said was always the same thing, just basically hand holding and telling them to go ahead and run the numbers... he was an accountant... and would go ahead and take my mom out bowling or to dinner or whatever. After all, nobody was lying. They asked for Jim. My brother answered truthfully that they were talking to him. He told them what they wanted to hear... Everybody goes home happy.)

[Phoebe]

Dude if I knew anyone named Delmus, especially a family member, I would never stop saying it. Delmus, who even knew that was a name?! Perfect.

Kyle, I'm dealing with externals, but they're just externals. I never unravel. I'm extremely happy. I tell my kids, never grieve for me, my life has been and is a profoundly happy one. I mean, I may claw my own flesh off slowly but the show must go on! Really, you know the OCD thing. I whack-a-moled mine for a while and it manifests as a subspecies of trichotillomania. Mittens, baby. I don't know why you think I'm doing a "bit"; it seems possibly kindred to other times when you've thought I was being purposefully rude or insincere? Not at all. Whatever is wrong with me is unintended, natural wickedness, not artifice. I'm truly kidding around, you know, but honestly don't like initial names - it's not like I hunt down parents who curse their offspring to a life of being called an alternative name for pajamas. But would I if I could? Maybe. Maybe someone needs to.

[Kyle]

I’m not really judging what works for you. I’m confident that you can handle everything and have energy to spare on us knuckleheads on this site.