A Taibhse Sighting

Yesterday was spent setting up Marshcast Studio 1 in the house.

Marshcast Studio 1

Tonight is the first round of auditions/interviews. I initially thought there might be many more interested people calling me about this project, but this is Delaware, land of the apathetic, unmotivated, and insipid.

What is most troubling about Delawareans is their general lack of common courtesy. I directly sent information and offers to four specific people who have never even had the decency to return or acknowledge the note. It’s one of my pet peeves. Tell me “no” but have enough respect for me to tell me something.

Anyway, screw them.

One of my first shows cast members will be a friend of mine who I have known for 18 years. I’ll refrain from saying his name right now because I think he is coming up with a stage name. Why? I couldn’t tell you. I guess he just wants to say things and not jeopardize his current job of collecting unemployment. We’ll figure that out later.

Of the others stopping by this evening I am most interested to meet a 22-year old girl whose name is Taibhse.
That is not a spelling error. Apparently its Gaelic and means Ghost…and Ghost is the name she uses.

Huh?

It’s further defined as a dead person returning to ask the living for a favor. I am curious to see if the person who shows up is in the flesh or “living” up to her defined name.

I’m laying 2-1 odds that she doesn’t even appear later. I had this interesting conversation over the phone which sort of leads me to believe that this evening she’ll end up located wherever the winds blow her.

Let’s talk about names for a minute. Now I am someone with an unusual name, Marshal Manlove. It’s certainly unique and that was my parent’s intention when naming me. The original spelling of my last name was Manluff and it bastardized into a spelling that meant that I had to fight off idiots and bullies all throughout my school years.

Which of my ancestors made that curse inducing decision is unclear. But it is clear that if there are ever times in my life when I do something stupid, I blame it on that particular branch of the family tree.
Even these days someone will snicker when they hear my name the first time. They do it in a very muffled way though now. Because of all of the grief I got in my younger years I hit the gym hard, learned how to fight and am now 6-1 and 250 pounds of an ex-bullied, angry man with not too much left to lose these days.

To make matters a little more difficult, Marshal is usually spelled with a double “L.” So not only do I have some asswipe on the other end of a phone snicker at my name (whose ass I cannot kick for doing so because he is cowardly laughing across the country) I have to spell Marshal for him also.

I do also have to spell Manlove to people sometimes. That is because whoever is asking is dealing with the poor genes that they inherited.

So why would a parent give someone a name that absolutely no one could spell? For the rest of our lives we have to go through that same ordeal over and over again until the attitude we develop over it as a result turns off the people to whom we are talking.

A couple of years ago I heard the best one ever though. At least, perhaps, until Ghost who clearly has thrown in the towel over the name spelling thing.
If you had heard someone say their name that sounded like "Ladasha," isn’t that pretty much how you would spell it? Sounds rather simple, don’t you think?

Not so fast, Skippy. This poor girl’s mother spelled her name like this…

La-A

That’s right. She put a freaking “dash” in the middle to separate the La and the A.

I kid you not, and I now I am seeing many more names with apostrophes in there these days. It’s only a matter of time before parents start using any old symbol on the keyboard to create a “unique” name. We’ll see * in place of star; “@” inserted into a name like K@erina, or “&” placed in a name like M&y.

And we will all have to stand in front of these people with a straight face so that we don’t offend them and create a monster like me when we hear their names and try to spell them.

However, I will not hold back my laughter if anyone uses a “:” in a name.

So it’s day one of yet another new chapter as the aforementioned auditions take place. They will go on as American Idol is airing so I will most likely not have any commentary about that show this week. It’s probably just as well though since any more opinions would get a little repetitive. Baseball season starts tomorrow with the two best matchups on the calendar featuring the Yankees-Tigers and the Giants-Dodgers.

I’m taking off for Opening Day to celebrate what should be a national holiday anyway.

Who am I kidding? I have no place else to go!

Done.