Pittsburgh Subway Transit by pittsburgh2050 on Flickr.
Still a very soft spot in my heart for this project we did a few years back. Just stumbled across the old posters in our flickr stream. I love this vision of actual mass transit in Pittsburgh, SO HARD.
Yeah, yeah, I know. But John- you really don’t want to know how close we came, in reality, to naming the dog after you. As in, you could measure the closeness in milliliters of beer. Not even sips. It was really close.
You can call our new dog “Winnie” for short, in case you have something against using the full “Winston Severus Barnes” every time you address, or refer to, him in conversation.
Winston.
Thank you for all your dog name ideas.
They were fantastic. Some of them were horrible. You know who you are. (In case you don’t know who you are, or if you don’t know who someone else is, I recapped everyone’s responses below. All you have to do is go to the bottom of this post and then you can read what everyone suggested, and then you can make fun of people’s fantastic and horrible ideas or you can just not make a big deal out of something like this that really doesn’t matter - your choice. But I digress.) A few thoughts…
First of all: The Informer? This was the name of my high school newspaper, for which I was the art editor for a few short months until my ahem disciplinary standing threatened to undermine my ahem chance of graduating and I was compelled to step aside and yield the reigns to some junior who didn’t have a clue about anything going on in the world. I don’t remember who it was. He’s probably CEO of Northrup Drummond by now, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I just can’t name my pet The Informer, and I wanted you to understand why.
Second: Moltz? Jason & Beth, I don’t know how you could possibly have known this, but Moltz was already our number one candidate. Amazing.
Pablo. Well, I’ve already had a dog named Pablo. He was a wonderful Dalmatian and I miss him, may he rest in peace.
Basil Davies-Campbell. Hot DAMN is that a distinguished-sounding name. It’s going on the list, Steph. Hot damn.
Oliver: This was our original first choice! How did you know? But we can’t use it because my ex has a dog named Wallie, and if we named ours Olliver, we’d call him Ollie for short and well that would just be very uncomfortable for the children. Think of the children.
Winston: Yes, yes, yes. He even looks like a Winston, doesn’t he? And somewhere, I already have a corncob pipe he can inherit to complete the look. Winston’s going on the list.
Good lord do I love Wokka but I had a difficult time selling it to anyone else on the naming committee. Stupid committees.
“We named the dog ‘Indiana’.”
Satan’s Hammer & Vermeer. I like them both. Maybe together as a single name? C’mere, Satan’s Hammer & Vermeer. Here boy.
Buckminster!
Bailey, I don’t understand why you suggest Andrew. Please respond.
Jason, I understand why you suggest Jason. In fact, “Jason Permenter AKA Jasper” is now on the list.
Fr. G. Of course.
There were also thoughts and comments about many of the other names here, but I can’t go into them all because I need to get some work done today. That said, I present to you, without further ado, our current list of finalists. Here they are:
Sir Harvalot, AKA Harvey
Bernard (nickname: Bernie)
Chester, but his friends call him Chesty
Wrigley
Moltz
Basil Davies-Campbell
Charlie
Sullivan, AKA Sully
Winston (nickname: Winnie)
Jason Permenter, AKA Jasper
openareas answered: Boozehound.
joeks answered: Max
jburdeezy answered: Bernard the Faithful.
sniffyjenkins said: SNOWFLAKE THE DESTROYER
monkeyfrog said: Emil. Clennon. Francios Le Scowl. Sinclair. Frank. Fluffy LaRoue.
kellydeal said: I vote: THUNDERBOLT BEAUREGARD THE FIRST. Or Freckles.
do-over said: He strikes me as a Clarence.
journo-geekery answered: Jehosephat.
faneffingtastic answered: The Informer
anthonycloskey answered: Abominable (Abby), Yeti, Dyson, Zinc, and +1 for Freckles
atsween answered: I said, “Moltz.” Beth said, “They’re not naming their dog Moltz.” So then we came up with Art, Robin, Pablo, Sam, Ripley, Fozzie, and Angus.
spratt said: Basil Davies-Campbell. He looks British.
sandboxdiaries answered: Pippin or Oliver! Winston!
mathcat345 answered: Boomer! Buster! (Good names to draw out Boooomer!) [White] Fang! Wokka! He’s adorable!
redcloud answered: Nick Furry. Dragons-bane. Barktholomew. Marcellus Wallace. Shia LeWoof. Indiana.
angelablack said: Beezlebub. Satan’s Hammer. Buttmunch. Fargo. Vermeer. Anal Leakage.
petitchou answered: Northrop
pocketcontents said: Snacks
pomvox answered: Bo Diddly
chrisereneta answered: Stuart. Dan. Gary. Greg. Barring those, Aurelio. Or Jean-Claude. Jonah.
steelopus said: Diaper.
emersunn answered: Matthew McConaughey
calebsexton answered: Falcor
williamdawson said: Fr. G - just needs a collar.
goodjon answered: Van Slyke, Honus,Clemente, Warhol, Bradshaw
bailey answered: Andrew
jasonpermenter answered: Jason. Duh.
vmarinelli answered: SNUGGLEBUNNY-FOO FOO!!! (Too femme?)
natebishop answered: Ernesto. Or possibly Buckminster.
copycatr said: Dibbles. Jake Ruffly. Munches. Slim. Archibald Q Farthington. Little Jesus. Speckles. Specklz. Zpeklz. Puppy Lump. Dr. Pepper. Pepper, CPA. Pepper, ACE. Ace. Ace Pupply, Fart Detective. Feller. Fently. Puff Daddy. Optimus Prime. Jimmy Pee Dance.
lefauxfrog answered: Winston.
incorrigiblerobot answered: “Mister. Do not call this dog ‘Lifesaver’. Call him ‘Shithead’.” “Right. Shithead.”
TL; DR
If you’re interested in confining what you hear from me to my professional babblings, you can henceforth follow @gbarnes on Twitter. The signal-to-noise ratio will be very clean.
If you would like to receive my un-edited stream of often nonsensical, joyously contextless, whole-life mishmash, that’s @texburgher.
If you’re interested in what all this self-important jibber jabber means, here’s the deal:
I used to think I knew how this stuff worked. You had your “real” account, then, if you were so inclined, you had your fake/fun accounts. Texburgher has been my “real” account, and it’s been a largely unfiltered jumble of all things personal, professional, profane, and pathetic since its inception. That made, and still makes, the most sense to me. People are messy, I’m a person, and there you have it.
Now, of course there have been fake accounts. I’ve had so many anonymous accounts for fun, you’d be as embarrassed to learn about them all as I’d be to list them. None of them purported to be me, though. They were their own things - mostly fictitious characters - and none of them ever really felt precious.
And this has all been fine, perfectly fine, with two tiny exceptions.
The first exception occurred at a conference in 2010, when a friend introduced me to someone I respected and followed online - but who didn’t follow or, as far as I knew, know me at all.
“This is my friend Geoff,” my friend said. “He’s texburgher on Twitter,” and the guy I was being introduced to gave me a surprised look as we shook hands, and he said, “I didn’t realize that was a real person! I thought it was just a joke account.”
Ouch and fair enough. My avatar is a chess piece. My Twitter stream tilted pretty heavily toward poop jokes and puns. But still, “just a joke account,” was surprising and a little hard to hear.
The second exception unfurled slowly, over the course of the last few months. Late last year, I was able to get my hands on the twitter handle, “gbarnes”. I didn’t even know I wanted it until my ADD told me I did, and once I got it, I didn’t know what to do with it. But it was close to my name, and that comment about being perceived as a joke account was still clanging around in my otherwise vacant head from time to time, so I uploaded a picture of my real self as the avatar, followed a handful of my closest peeps online, and went for a proverbial bike-ride.
And I don’t think I would have come back, except that I’ve recently been writing regular posts for the Elliance blog, and every now and then I’d want to share what I’d written there, but something about sharing those on my big ole joke account felt off - off, in this case, meaning something between embarrassment and betrayal. And that wasn’t at all what I had expected to feel.
So I’ve been rethinking how I present myself online, and I’ve decided to try something remarkably uncomfortable: I’m going to use @gbarnes as a professional-leaning account, and let @texburgher continue being my social media id. The notion of this kind of bifurcation clashes with my sense of authenticity and my beliefs about what it means to present oneself honestly, and I’m not entirely sure why, so that discomfort and lack of understanding is driving the experiment.
My hope is that I’ll settle pretty quickly into a comfortable pattern of directing the right outburst to the right Twitter account without having to think about it for any measurable amount of time. If I do, wow - I’ll have surprised myself. If I don’t, if the whole idea turns out to have been dumb, and embarrassingly over-thought, and humiliatingly and publicly attached to my monstrous ego- well, maybe then I’ll finally realize my dream of selling everything, including my children, and moving to a cabin in the Vermont woods and living off of blueberries and hemp cheese, and really, finally, making peace with my inner child, that little snit.
This Puppy Again
This puppy needs a name. The kids have suggested names like Buttercup, Snowball, Malfoy, Feather, and Buttcheeks - all fantastic ideas (hi, kids!) - but I feel like our vision is somewhat narrower than I would like.
“How do people come up with ideas when they don’t have any of their own,” I keep asking myself. And you know the answer. The answer is, “Why not crowdsource it?” and everyone at the meeting nods in wizened agreement.
SO. What in the world should we call this (male) puppy?
Seeing the boys around the fire pit last night, I had one of those flashes parents occasionally have, wherein they see their kids, not as academic challenges or impossible appetites or addiction risks or spiritual teachers or creative muses, but as people entirely separate from the parents, roasting marshmallows and enjoying the world.
There’s no way Jack was more surprised than I was when he speared a crayfish with a sharpened stick. No way. (Taken with instagram)
My wife’s bourgeoning practice now has a blog. Which she’s writing. Which I love. I mean, I know I married the woman, but her outlook is uplifting and inspiring and if I can get a tiny bit more of it by reading her posts while I’m at work, well, more power to us both.
So, this was delivered to my inbox on March 15th:
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find that it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882); Philosopher, Poet, Author, Essayist
And it spoke to me! Since then, every time I feel myself sluggishly procrastinating or resisting tasks that will get me closer to my goals, I reflect on this quote. And I specifically think of a huge face that is made of the earth and protruding from it (like the Nome King in Return to Oz- a movie that I was obsessed with as a child) and I imagine myself grabbing a huge beard of moss.
P.S. I don’t know if moss is the world’s scary beard, but that picture is this post’s scary image.
