The USS Quad Damage

Most people get riled up over normal, important things. Things like politics, interest rates, or the menace of those bloody P-plate drivers (L-plate drivers if you're a P-plater yourself). I, however, have a much different system of values. My personal number one most biggest issue is names.

Although this is something I've taken issue with for a long time now, the last few days have really made me give it much thought. I'm not sure if anybody has noticed, but I always call people by their whole given first name, never by a shortened form or a nickname. Certainly not by their last name. I feel like a terrible, terrible person if I do otherwise. It's just too hard for me to do it. The only exceptions I can think of is tim, rather than timothy, and, sometimes, Harpo instead of Harpreet. In tim's case, tim is often used as a whole first name, so it doesn't bother me saying that. With Harpreet, well... I just plain hate Harpreet, so he should just be grateful I'm not calling him far nastier things!

Far more "important" to me is what others call me. Please, just call me nathan, and not any of the following. Perhaps another day I'll tell the (not) interesting stories behind some of those.

Nath, nathaniel, Nathen, Nathy, Nathy My Baby OW, Partridge, Parto, Part-Of-A-Bridge (insults in primary school weren't very clever), Brady, Laut, SUNNY, MICHAEL, or TODD.

I'm sure there are many more, but they don't come to mind. My issues with names even extends to bloody ICQ. I am a little bit lazy when sending messages when it comes to grammar, punctuation and the like, but almost without fail do I capitalise the first letter of a person's name if I type it. Hell, I even have everybody on my contact list renamed to their first name rather than the handle they use. I don't even know what half you guys use as your nicks.

I've gone and changed Camel to nathan on the site now, since for a while now it's kind of bothered me not using my name (yes, I am really that messed up). At least, I've tried to change the name. Sometimes my posts are by Camel, sometimes they're by nathan. Gah.

It's taken a long time now, but finally my name turns up in a search engine. Sure, only because my full name shows in my blogger profile, but still, I'm proud to note that I am ranked only second to some dead guy with my name. I think it's about time, since Paulo's name pops up all over the place in Google,

Of course, in addition to nathan, I would most certainly enjoy being called "teacher", but that is, uh, well, never mind. Ew.