The other night I had the opportunity to buy the $300 superdeluxe edition of the new NIN album, Ghosts I-IV. I had my credit card details entered and everything:

Deluxe edition plus a four-LP set on 180-gram vinyl, which is packaged in a fabric slipcase. Two limited-edition Giclee prints are included; package is numbered and signed by Trent Reznor. Limited to a run of 2500, and one piece per customer.

Ultimately several things put me off. I paid $100 for a limited edition Icky Thump album and it was disappointing. I also felt it was too high a price, which I potentially couldn’t get back if I needed to (Icky Thump limited edition still remains on sale, and people are undercutting the official price).

Sadly it sold out within 24 hours and now I’m left with a yearning sadness deep within me. Curse you frugality.

One of my pet peeves is the terrible “unique” baby names people give their children, ensuring a lifetime of confusion and taunts.

As much as I dislike linking to news.com.au (for reasons I am sure to go into in another ranty post), they have a story online that discusses the issue (and an unlikely cause, but hey, they need to make tenuous links to create news):

Parents are shunning traditional spellings for versions such as Alex-Zander, Cam’ron, Emma-Lee, Ozkah, Thaillah and Ameleiyah.

…

“The use of a ‘y’ instead of an ‘i’ has hit epidemic proportions, as has the use of ‘k’ over ‘c’ like in the names Jaykob and Lynkon, double letters like Siimon and Chriss and hyphens like Emma-Lee,” said Mr McCrindle, of private research agency McCrindle Research. The trend was due to the phonetic spelling in email and text messaging.

I honestly would love to have a discussion with one of these parents as to why they are doing this to their kids. I had it bad enough growing up with a hyphenated last name, let alone some crazy first name. It’s just selfishness in my opinion – but could it also be a sign of a hard-wired Lake Wobegon effect?

The best bit is of course an interview with said parent:

Jacquelene and Ashley Wilkinson named their daughters Briarna, born on February 15, and Maddisen, 16 months, in the hope of influencing their nicknames.

“We wanted conservative, girly names for our children. I don’t like some of the more out-there names people are giving their kids,” Ms Wilkinson, from Bulleen said.

“We liked the sound of the name Brianna, but I didn’t want her be an ‘Anna’ because we like the nickname ‘Bree’, so we decided on Briarna.”

Ms Wilkinson had wanted to call her first daughter Madison, but a friend wasn’t so sure.

“She said, ‘God I hate names that rhyme. They must get so teased at school’ off-handedly once and I thought, ‘Oh no, what am I doing with Madison Wilkinson?’ But I’ve loved the name forever and didn’t want to give it up, so my husband and I were on the internet one night and saw the spelling Maddisen, and knew that was it.”