Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 02:35:03 -0500
Reply-To: joel walker <uncajoel@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: joel walker <uncajoel@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Subject: Re: Names
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reply-type=original
one of them said ...
> You name children born to you. Nothing drives me crazy worse
> than
> people inserting their cars names instead of just the van or the
> truck. Also
> annoying is overly using she or her in a description about a
> vehicle.
and then a different one said ...
>None of these requirements, or customs, if you will, apply to motor
>vehicles.
>That's why not.
but all you not-gonna-name-MY-bus folks forget one important thing ...
humans, by their very nature, have languages. and languages are
nothing but name-calling. we name things to shorten/quicken
descriptions.
we say "call the ambulance" ...
instead of "call the big ugly red and white truck that has the
paramedics in it!!!"
but even that long 'description' has shortcuts in it. what's a truck?
what's a paramedic?
what's red? what's ugly? what's white? what's "call"??
and we've been doing it for a very very long time. and we get worse
and worse each generation ... it wasn't that long ago (well, ok, maybe
2500 years) that abbreviations crept into the languages ... SPQR. it
got a LOT worse in WWI cause the germans hated typing all those really
really loooooooong names of people and offices. and all the
countries/languages picked up on it and are running like crazy into
the future, trying to see who can change their whole language into
nothing but abbreviations. :( FBI, FEMA, COLA, CIA, USDA, and so on.
and it's gotten worse with cell phones ...
don't believe me? check out the 'language' people use texting each
other.
so it's up to you whether you want to force a name on an object or
not, but you're doing it already for lots of other stuff, so why not a
bus? ;)
but then, perhaps you prefer the older way of describing things
..."honey, have you seen my
filthy-old-fishing-shirt-that-i-won't-let-you-throw-out-cause-it-belonged-to-my-grandfather"??
it's just as valid, but takes a bit longer. ;)
have fun, everybody.
Big-fat-ugly-bearded-fellow-what-drives-vanagons-and-writes-terrbull-pomes-on-the-vanagon-bus-list.
:)