Vi Red Fixes The World Part 2- Names

Some idiot once came up with the immortal line “What’s in a name?…”. Its alright for him, he had an incredibly cool name. Shakespeare. But generations of parents down the ages have been using his eloquence to justify some horrible atrocities against newborns the world over. And this edition of world-fixing is aimed squarely at them. Parents, It is absolutely not alright to name your kid after the first god that pops into your head when he’s born. “Oh look he’s so cute.” “Why don’t we name him after an elephant headed man who had a habit of riding rats?”

Its true that this is a topic particularly close to my heart as I no longer hold the name I was born with. I was originally named after the aforementioned elephant man. I didn’t think much of it, being far more concerned with the mass accumulation of GI Joes back then. Then I popped along to school and realized that roughly half the other kids’ parents had had the same idea as mine and there was a veritable army of elephant men in that classroom. There’s no excuse for such lethargy and lack of effort. Its not like we popped along unexpectedly is it? Nine months is plenty of time to think up one nice sounding name and have a wee check whether everyone else in the neighborhood is naming their kid the same thing or not. It wasn’t until I became old enough to read that I realized why the guy I was named after had an elephant’s head. Turns out one day, his dad had gotten a bit angry and decide to lop his original head clean off. What kind of message is that supposed to send to a young kid eh? No more father-son walks for me after that.

But I was one of the lucky few who had parents nice enough to realize when they’d stuck their kid with a stinker and help him out. I won’t say that life has radically become different for me or that my success rate with the ladies has shot up, but I like my name now. And goddamnit, that ought to be reason enough. Plus there’s the added benefit of being able to be in the same room as my father unaccompanied. In every other aspect of life we carefully consider and weigh options taking into account our tastes and societal acceptance and a zillion other factors, which makes the carelessness with which we tag an individual with a meaningless epithet for the entire duration of his life on earth, horrifying. Why is it that a man will spend more time deciding what to call his johnson than the being that it spews forth?

The obvious solution to this problem is to let the kids pick their own names. But as with most obvious solutions, it comes with an obvious drawback. Little kids aren’t very good at the whole naming thing. In fact they’re not very good at anything apart from sitting there and looking cute. But I digress, the point is that one person called Lady Gaga is plenty. Maybe we could let kids pick their own names but only when they got a bit older. But how old is old enough? And are they going to like it twenty years down the line? After all, no decent self-respecting 30 year old is going to want to be called Ash Ketchum.

After pondering all these conundrums, I have come up with the one true solution. The Vi Red solution. A name for every age. That’s right. Now, hold your skepticism for a minute and think about it. Our identity changes all the time and since a name is just an artificial construct whose entire raison d’être is to reflect that identity, shouldn’t a person’s name change over time as well? People are always looking for ways to express their individuality and personality. Well here’s the ultimate platform – your own name. You see, the flaw in Shakespeare’s logic is that there is nothing else in the world by the name “rose”. The pink petals defines the word. Imagine if it had been used to refer to a horrible man-eating flower before the pretty pink one. Wouldn’t smell so sweet then would it, ‘ol Bill?

Even if you disregard all the high concepts, just imagine how much fun it would be as a twelve year old if your teacher was forced to call out stuff like “Captain Planet” and “Fred Flintstone” during roll call everyday. And when you get a little older and start tuning into your inner emo, you could call yourself Raven or something equally pretentious. And when you’re middle-aged and stuck in a dead end job and a passionless life, maybe you could even name yourself after your boss reflecting the lily-livered sycophant that you have become. A name for every age.

Postscript: At this point, I would like to introduce you to the former dictator of Zaire and the living embodiment of my ideals, Mr. Mobutu. Born the son of a cook, Joseph Désiré Mobutu rose to become the ruler of the African nation of Zaire. And when he did, he decided to change his name to “Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga” which for those of you who don’t understand Swahili, translates to “The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.”

Vi Red Fixes The World Part 1- The Weekend

Those two wonderful days of overcompensation. The two days of the week when anything is possible. That DIY defenstrator you’ve been working on all these years, that girl you’ve been meaning to flirt with, that book you’ve been meaning to finish. Anything can be accomplished on those two days when the hard labour sentence that is life is temporarily commuted. And yet so little actually gets done. Why is that? Is it because you just can’t seem to work out the exact angle of upchuck to cause maximum blood splatter, or because the girl is an impossible half-dike or because that book is one of the literary masterpieces of the century and is going to need a lot more time? No, no and most definitely not- Twilight’s already been written. But I digress, the point I was trying to make was that despite the fact that you wait the entire week with bated breath for the weekend so that you can realize the full potential of your awesomeness, you just end up spending forty eight hours watching cats on youtube or worse, the IPL.

I have decided to apply my extraordinarily well developed scientific deduction capabilities to solve this conundrum. Let us examine the average weekend of an average person. Now, I know that a control group that only includes me and a couple of my mates is not very objective, but Mrs. Swami from next door had a dentist’s appointment and my cat’s never been the same since I tested the defenstrator on him, so I guess the three of us will have to do.

The problem, as stated to me by a friend is as follows: On friday evening, the infinite expanse of two full days stretches before you, inviting you to have a little fun before you get down to the hard graft. Only an idiot would refuse. Now, Saturdays are kinda fuzzy because most of the day is spent recovering from friday. And then you promptly decide to spend most of the night getting just as, if not even more hammered. Before you know it, you’re waking up on Sunday afternoon with only half a day left until you’re marched off to the metaphorical prison camps again. You know you can’t do your best work in such a short span of time, so you decide to sod it all and get piss-drunk once again. After all, there’s always next weekend.

So what is the solution to this madness? Simple. Have two weekends. You see, life doesn’t really exist on the weekdays. You think you’re alive, but its actually just a state of suspended animation akin to the Matrix where you eat your toast, rush to work or school, do what you’re told, return home to a TV dinner with Karan Johar or your favorite saas/bahu and rinse and repeat five times over. Its at 5′o clock on friday evenings that you stop being an engineer or a student and start being you. Unless you’re a pimp. Or a prostitute. In which case your work week’s only just begun. But I digress again. Two days aren’t enough to assert your pop-culture defined individuality and freedom and let loose and wind down and all that jazz, and still be productive. You need another weekend for that. So I propose the creation of said second weekend. Tuesday and Wednesday will do nicely methinks. Now there is almost no chance that you will while away this second weekend as well, because there is no culture of stasis associated with it (yet). Come on, who gets drunk on a Wednesday night? Or takes a Thursday morning stroll in the park? As for all the work time lost, I’m sure that if everyone stopped checking their Facebook updates from work, you could compensate quite easily.

So with this newfound time on your hands, there’s nothing stopping you from writing the next New York Times bestseller, except, maybe the fact that you’re crap at writing. But hey, it didn’t stop Stephanie Meyer, so don’t let it get in your way either.

Note: If you do not know what defenestrated means, look it up. It might just be the single most awesome word in the english language.