That extra F

I've blogged before about how parents who give their children stupid names should be up on child abuse charges.

It's a global problem, generally committed by the lumpenproletariat whose imagination, stunted by a childhood diet of smokes and deepfried food, leads them to brand their offspring with the name of whatever pop star, white wine, car model or city happens to be in front of them at the time of birth.

But surely there must be a special ring of Hell set aside for people who, given perfectly reasonable names by their perfectly normal parents, jettison that in favour of some eye-popping nonsense.

I'm not talking about actors and writers assuming stage or pen names. I'm talking about Celtic Tiger eejits who decided to 'rebrand' in order to feed the ravenous monster that is their attention-seeking ego.

That extra F did it for me. Malcontent with being just another Aoife, some balloon off some RTE reality show (another ring in Hell dedicated to anyone involved in making those, I'd have thought) decided she needed an extra F in there 'to be different'.

Note to Aoiffffffe: Adding random letters to your name isn't 'different'; it's illiterate.

Graduates of advanced level Celtic Tiger naming idiocy include people who call themselves 'Puffin', 'Turtle', 'Doodle', 'Vogue' or 'Gavin Lambe-Murphy'.

By no coincidence whatsoever, all of these people can be found on the southside of Dublin 'working' in jobs that don't sound like jobs to people who work 9 to 5.

You know - they're models, or in PR, or they simply consider themselves to be celebs. Some such shit.

These people need to realise that it's not big or clever. It doesn't make you look different, or special. It makes you look like a self-important tool who can't spell and has industrial sized attention issues.

A kid like Rocco Ahern I feel sorry for (in more ways than one.) It's not their fault. But the adults who insist people call them by the name of exotic animals? I simply feel contempt for them.

It's not 2007 anymore. Change your name back to Mary or Padraig or whatever normal name your parents gave you before you copped a double dose of Celtic Tiger delusions, you planks.

Someone in Dell agrees with me

It appears that someone inside Dell agrees with what I wrote about their forthcoming shafting of Limerick, the IDA and Irish customers.

In any case, they've added my post to their media page (see below for screen grab - look at the section named 'Technology News' on the bottom left.)

Let's see how long that stays up before their PR police catch and delete!

Poison Pens 2: Return of the fake blog

Some of you may recall a little storm in the Irish blogosphere (or a tea cup, you decide) earlier this month.

Shane Hegarty at the Irish Times spotted how a PR firm trying to peddle salty snacks had come up with the wheeze of creating a fake blog about Irish celebs.

Shane is not the poison pen here. He is a good journalist and this was good, albeit not earth-shattering, investigation.

Actual Irish bloggers soon stormed the site - justnutsabout - and deluged it in comments ranging from the outraged ("You fakes!") to the surreally hilarious (random lengthy quotes from The Bible.)

The PR bunnies panicked, deleted all the nasty comments, and let the issue die down for a week or so. Then started spinning again. After all, where there's a will (and a retainer cheque) there's a way.

And there's usually also a pet journalist who owes you a favour or a stupid one incapable of doing the basic research, like Shane did, and identifying blatant PR fluff.

Cue The Star, and Kathryn Rogers today. The top half of page thirteen (no linky sadly - their website doesn't work) features a full half-page of breathless puff for - you guessed it - justnutsabout.

The justification for this nonsense? There isn't any, nor any attempt at any. Since there is no linky, I intend to quote extensively from this poison pen:

"HOT Irish model Glenda Gilson has inspired a range of wacky Benda with Glenda goodies. The unofficial gear includes pink Glenda T-shirts, bags, badges, stickers and drinks coasters.
The items all bear the legend: Just been on a benda with Glenda. Limited edition Glenda fan-packs are available for free from the site justnutsabout.com.
'We sent her some fan-packs and she thought it was very funny,' said a spokesman...."

And so on, for another hundred words.

Now, this is pure poison penning. There's no mention that this is a PR website aimed at selling snack products (bad-for-you, salty products, too.) There's no attempt to verify anything with Glenda Gilson, who this PR firm are blatantly piggybacking their site on.

In fact, the entire article is basically ripped from a press release, and illustrated with a file pic of the aforementioned model into which a 'Benda with Glenda' t-shirt has been badly photoshopped.

I hope your journalistic integrity was worth all those salty snacks, Ms Rogers. The Irish Star - justnutsabout press releases.

I'd go posting the entire Koran on the comments section of the fake blog if I could, but the cowards have removed the site's comments facility.