Nameless

Well, damn! This isn't boding so well.

I had half a dozen paragraphs and then I hit PUBLISH POST (at least, I THINK I did) but all I got was the first paragraph and now, frankly, I'm sick of the whole thing.

Y'know, I've been working with computerized typesetting equipment since 1973, and desktop publishing since 1993, and my stomach still hurts when something messes up like this. "Something" messes up. Well, in the Olden Days, it really could be the equipment. These days, though, it seems as if Operator Error is the only way to mess up.

I chatted about my art car and its name, and my "bien" name and all that, and now it's apparently lost in space. Because of me.

Damned technology!

Let's try again.

Oh. But first ... let me complain about there having to be a title. Jeeze.

And now I see that the times are way off. It's 10:20, not 7:something. Sigh. And why should the draft be one typeface and my actual entry another?

God. Is this what Andy Rooney feels like?

Okay. I'll try to recapture the joy and beauty of my original, mostly-lost entry ...

I don't like to name things. I never have. That's why I'm whining about "having" to name each entry here. Goodness! I'm not that organized. How do I know what I'm going to be yammering about? Plus, what? you think I'm going to stick to one topic? Who do you think I am?

I drive an art car, though, and the people at shows always want names for the cars. Well, I've referred to all my cars as My Car, but art car organizers won't accept that. Therefore, my current car is named bien5. The bien is phonetic for my initials, BN, and the 5 indicates that it's the fifth car I've painted. I can live with that, but I still call it My Car.

Now, my buddy Sonny Fenwick, who's been nagging me to blog, has The Bubble Truck. He has outfittied a big truck with bubble-making gear and, yes, it makes sense to name it The Bubble Truck. http://www.bubbletruck.com/.

My car, however, is a mish of West African symbols and grandma's quilt and paisley and that healing hand or Hindu hand or Cherokee hand or whatever it is. I'm redoing that hand for the art car show in Louisville on August 1 and 2. http://www.kentuckyarts.org/

Anyway, what would YOU name that car?

Now, after I painted my current car, I painted two trucks and a golf cart for a local nursery, and I'm going to be painting Mark's car in July. Would my next car therefore be bien6 or bien9. See? and that's just one reason I don't like to name things.

I have a friend who named her cat Inlieu because, fed up with men, Liz decided to give her affection and attention to the cat. I'm happy to report that the cat lasted longer than its name.

I guess I think names are like tattoos -- they're just too permanent. What if and what if and what if?

One day, maybe a decade ago, I realized that my dinner plates were the same ones I'd bought twenty years ago. Yes. That means they're thirty years old now. And I still like them. So I guess I could have gotten a tattoo after all ...

My cat, whom I love, is named Mittens. Yes, yes. Of course she has the extra toes and yes, her feet are white while the rest of her is sort of grey, else why would someone have named her Mittens? She was a stray (and possibly astray, too, because she showed up at Bob's house with a couple of kittens). He named her Mittens. I never would have been so trite, but I then I also would have left her unnamed until the neighbors started hearing me call for her. "Hey, My Cat! Come on! My Cat! My Cat!"

Ah ... and in the lost entry, I also cried about the lack of Smart Quotes here with Mister Google. Dang. It's actually painful to me, as a typographer, to see inch marks instead of quotes, foot marks for apostrophes. My queenery for an en dash!