ast September, Hurricane Durian struck, or maybe it was Dorian. Well, maybe they
should name them after vegetables and fruit. It would stop people from
complaining about which sex to use. Hurricane Lettuce, Tropical Storm Celery.
Twister banana. Great Flood Honeysuckle.
Why is this fad of naming storms so incredibly annoying? It's not because I'm an H.W. Fowler-style curmudgeon. I think rather it's because the magnificence of nature derives from its inhuman quality. Naming it deprives the storm of its natural inhuman unpredictability and turns it into a Disney cartoon character. It turns the untamed beauty of nature into Clippy. And I suppose that's why people do it.
You just know sooner or later they'll sneak in brand names, then commercials: “Tropical Storm Tropicana® one hundred percent pure squeezed orange juice.” “Winter Storm Planters Peanuts, Caution May Contain Nuts.” “Thunderstorm Debilify. May cause drowsiness, dyspraxia, or loss of motor control. Do not use when driving or operating machinery. May cause uncontrollable vomiting, seizures, brain tumors, hives, nausea, halitosis, hair loss, and death. See your doctor if you get any of these symptoms. Ask your doctor about Debilify today!”
Thunderstorm Binky
Or maybe they could use historical figures so the kids can learn some history. “Heavy Wind Ulysses S. Grant, Who Was The 18th President Of The United States.” “Rainstorm Thucydides, A Famous Historian (460–400 BC), Who Wrote History of the Peloponnesian War Recounting the Fifth-Century BC War Between Sparta and Athens, Which Lasted Until the Year 411 BC.”
Or give them some science: “Thunderstorm Chlorine, Which Has a Melting Point of −101.5°C a Boiling Point of −34.04°C And Has the Third Highest Electronegativity On The Pauling Scale, Behind Only Oxygen And Fluorine.”
The drawback, though, is that this would bring us right back to naming hurricanes after women. Indeed, women's names are everywhere. Several elements are named after women: fleurine, chloreen, molly-bdenum, ida-ine, beryl-lium, ruth-enium, auntie-mony, and xena-on.
Only a few are guys' names: al-uminum, he-lium, bro-mine. But the worst of all is man-ganese. No doubt feminists will demand that we change them to shelium, sis-mine, and personganese. Chemical structures are already named after women: ester, ethyl, poly, crystal.
My biggest pet peeve, and I admit I have quite a menagerie here, is this business of ending lines in computer languages with semicolons. Make computer languages friendlier. Instead of terminating each line with a semicolon, send it off happily with a smiley. For instance;
k++ :-)
fprintf(stderr, "Unrecoverable error\n") :-)
exit (EXIT_FAILURE) :-(
Hopefully by now you're getting my point. We're programmed by the very structure of our brains to see faces and people in places and words where they don't exist, even in punctuation marks. We're also programmed to be annoyed by it, because we instinctively know the writer is trying to manipulate us, as in those Twitter posts where 👏 the 👏 writer 👏 puts 👏 a 👏 clap 👏 emoji 👏 be👏tween 👏 every 👏 word. Please 👏 stop 👏 it 👏 is 👏 annoying. Saying something with emotion does not make it true.
The idea that changing the language will make it less sexist is doomed to failure because it's based on a falsehood. It will never end. As soon as all the hes and mans are removed, the next thing to be offended by, whatever it is, will stand out like a sore thumb.
Maybe, you might say, naming storms is a remnant of our primordial drive to personify nature. This might be why people increasingly see climate and plastics as if they're moral issues. Are plastic straws really a moral problem? Are they a problem at all? And why are Hunter, Bentley, Justin, Braxton, Nevaeh, Brock, and Kayden such annoying names?
Count your blessings, or as actor Teri Garr joked, pay somebody to count them for you. One guy in New Jersey named his kids Adolf Hitler, Joycelynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler. The state declared that those names were evidence of abuse or neglect, so they seized the children. They later denied that was the reason, no doubt to avoid an appeal and almost certain legal defeat. But then what do we do about Frank Zappa's children Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmed Emuukha Rodan, and Diva Muffin? When the state makes it illegal to offend, there's no logical end point.
What if somebody named their kid Spam Risk or Telly Marketer, after those two guys who keep calling us on our cell phones? They may be wonderful human beings, but Mr. Risk sounds like a ramblin', gamblin' man. Giving a child that name would indeed be abuse, as Mister Spamuel Judas Risk would certainly have difficulty making friends, and calling up his girlfriend would be frustrating, as she'd keep hanging up on him.
My theory is that people viscerally dislike fakeness. That's why I'm so Get-Off-My-Lawn-y about this fad of saying ‘y'all’, which invariably signals that a smug lecture by a very stupid person is coming.
There's a symmetry law in there: the amount of personification remains constant. If you personify a windstorm, it turns the storm ever so slightly into an agent. When we personify nature we automatically blur the distinction between things and people and diminish the uniqueness of both.
The Chinese give their children baby names with repeated syllables like Bing Bing and Ting Ting. In one tear-jerker movie from Taiwan a little kid named Bing Bing becomes an orphan; before she died, his mother made a tape recording in which she tells him to be good. Bing Bing plays it over and over until his sister accidentally erases it. Everybody cries. The end.
What was the moral? Some would say it's not to wallow in emotions. Others would say it's a reminder to make backups. My take: give a kid an annoying baby name, and see what happens?
There. Five minutes and not a single mention of coronavirus, toilet paper, or agonizing lingering death by asphyxiation. If you're interested, here are some clues about how we might cure that. Of course, it's too late now: even if researchers were allowed into the lab, they can't get supplies. We'll just move on until the next storm comes. We'll call it Virus Binky, then waste time fighting over whether the name is racist. It gives us a sense of control, but the feeling is a lie.
mar 22 2020, 5:50 am
