Assorted Flotsam

• Hey! I think I may have discovered what ever happened to Jimmie "J.J." Walker.

Apparently, whatever he's doing involves driving a minivan in Virginia. Dy-no-sad!

• Saw this at an airport during some recent travels:

Yeah, shorts, flip-flops, and a classic blue blazer. I'm thinking: semi-formal clam bake?

• In other news, I've been on Sensa for the last 5 weeks and lost 7.5 pounds.

I am LOVING it. No work at all, all natural, and I'm losing weight. It's nothing short of revolutionary. It really does curb my appetite. Freaky! And best of all for the people around me, I am not a huge crank-monster like I usually am when trying to lose weight. Huzzah!

• Finally, I am seeing this ad for McDonald's which takes place in someone's home. It is a person calling a family together for dinner and then providing McNuggets. And you see them gathering excitedly and opening the tiny boxes and dipping sauces. Now, I have eaten a lot of McDonald's in my time but I can't remember ever taking it home. Either I ate it in the McDonald's or I ate it in the car. Let's face it, that stuff congeals pretty quickly. For me, fast food only works while it's hot. Once things start to cool... ugh.
  Am I wrong? Am I missing an important bonding experience with my family?
  

"Say my name, say my name" --Destiny's Child

So, yeah, Sean Combs has changed his name again. This time for just one week. Do I care? Aside from the general absurdity of changing your name for one week, mmmnotsomuch.

On a more personal note, I know people that have changed their names for various reasons. Some of them legal even.


I have a distant relative who, in his 50s, decided that he no longer wanted to be known by his given name: Sol. He changed his name to David because he said it was a name people trusted. Forget that multiple heads already swiveled when the name David was called in our family. Most everyone made the effort to call him David. But I know one relative, let's call him Joe, who insisted on continuing to call this guy Sol or Sol-David.


I have another distant relative who changed her name in her twenties from something very ordinary to something truly strange sounding. I won't tell you what because even though there's probably still three or four Sols in the world, I'm pretty sure there's only one of these. Suffice to say it went from something like "Sue" to something like "Elbownee" because it translated to "unique form" in Urdu. Joe insists that this woman is Sue and will always be Sue no matter what she wants to be called.

Now, if someone wants to change their name to Butthead, maybe I have a problem with it. But these changes? I can honor. Am I wrong? Is Joe wrong?

Which leads us to the question du jour: If someone asks you to call them something else besides what you've always known them as, what do you do?