NAME THAT BABY!

this baby name wizard is a cool little toy that has definitely not been the cause of hours of lost productivity.

of course, it's a little moot at this point because, truth be told, mrs nice guy and i have looong ago chosen names for our hellchild. DON'T EVEN ASK what they are, people, because i ain't telling. why? we made the seriously grave error of telling the leading candidates to be this baby's grandparents, and they profoundly disapproved of said names.

pater nice guy: Can I make a case for Bob? Dave?
mr nice guy: The more you plead the weirder we'll make it.

mrs nice guy's mother actually ridiculed one of the names in front of friends and family alike at thanksgiving. was mr nice guy saddened or offended by this? FUCK NO. how awesome is it, my friends, that not only is our child going to be the butt of jokes and the receiving end of fists in its early playground years BUT ITS OWN GRANDPARENTS ARE ALREADY MAKING FUN OF ITS NAME. that's right. we picked one out for a boy, one out for a girl (and one for a discosquid, you know, because all signs right now point neither to boy nor girl but to discosquid). the boy's name was better received than the girl's, though, which is ironic because the girl's name is the one we have our hearts set on. perfect for the penisless set.

the problem with the boy's name is that we both like it but neither of us LOVE it. we love the girl's name. we love the discosquid's name. but the boy's name is leaving us the tiniest bit luke warm. perhaps this is the reason: according to the babyname wizard, the boy's name we like has gone from rank of 580 in the 1950s to a spot dangerously nearer the top of the charts (211) in 2003. DAMN! the girl's name is nowhere to be found in the top 1000 during the past century. awesome. but the boy name's increasing trendiness is cause for great alarm. must ... find ... weirder ... name. like for example:

Burt seems to have had a good run in the first half of the last century as a popular name, tapering off in the 1960s and disappearing completely by the '70s. i think we know who to blame this on: Mr. Reynolds, I'm looking at you.

Burley enjoyed some popularity early in the last century but swiftly dropped down to zero by the 1920s. probably because of that infamous 1917 baby murdering and puppy eating spree that a sociopath named Burley Hitler went on. no doubt.

in fact, all names beginning with the letters "Bu" have become seriously unpopular in this country. so maybe we should just name the kid Bulimios and be done with it.

interestingly, the names for mr nice guy's parents BOTH peaked in popularity the decade in which they were born, slaves to the babyname trend that my grandparents were (thank GOD they are not around to be horrified by the name choices the missus and i have concocted). (mrs nice guy's name, for the record, appears nowhere on the charts.) both my name and that of frere nice guy also peaked in the years we were born. WE MUST BREAK THIS CYCLE OF CONFORMIST INSANITY. and we shall. we shall.

got any suggestions of your own?