Darkoshi

"Violent Femmes 40th Anniversary with the Milwaukee Symphony" was playing on PBS. I don't know much about the band other than the name. So when I tuned in to the channel, I was surprised to see that all the people playing music appeared to be guys. From the name, I always assumed it was a girl band.

I browsed through a Goodwill store. The music CDs were the first thing to catch my eye; I looked through some of them. I don't really want CDs as that requires me ripping the music to MP3 files, and leaves me with a physical CD left over taking up space. But it reminds me of the old days, looking at CDs in stores and taking a chance on some, buying them, never knowing for sure how much I was going to like the music until I got home to listen to it.

One of the CDs that caught my eye was in a foreign language. It looked like Finnish to me, but I wasn't sure. The name on it was Yva plus a last name that I don't remember. It may have started with B. The back side had a picture of someone (presumably Yva the singer) in a blue and white outfit, similar to a traditional Bavarian style dirndl.
Another CD had music from RiverDance.

I didn't end up getting any CDs. I browsed the rest of the store, intending to possibly stop by the CD rack again afterward if I hadn't talked myself out of it by then. But then as I walked by the registers in the direction of both the entrance and the CDs (I'm not sure anymore which I was headed for), the lone cashier there said 'goodbye' or 'have a nice day' or something like that to me. Then when I thought of the CDs, it seemed awkward to stay and look at them again when {goodbyes had already been made}. I stopped in the sunshine of the open doorway and checked my phone messages, mentally debating it. Decided to leave.

At home I looked up this singer Yva. I only found an English singer and a Lithuanian group by that name.
Maybe it was this album by the Lithuanian group Yva, but I don't think so. I think the CD I looked at had only 1 person on it, not 3. And I remember there being a last name along with the Yva. It seemed like an older album. I don't remember what was on the front of the CD. Oh well. I probably wouldn't have liked the music anyway.

..

I came across this name website:
https://www.nameuc.com/talon-name-meaning-origin-popularity/

It has a different pretty image for each name. They are fairly obviously generated by an AI/LLM/whatever it is called for images. A while later I realized the text of the site must have also been generated by a LLM too. (It sounds quite similar to the answers I got when I asked an LLM questions about names.) That indicates to me that the data listed for the names on that site is not very trustworthy. If it hadn't been for the novel pretty name pictures, I might not have noticed/realized that. Many of the other name sites I've come across this last year or more have been similar, I suppose, just without the images. Sigh. How are we going to filter the junk data from the accurate data?

..

Apparently the aurora was visible even near here in South Carolina on Friday night. I didn't read/hear about it until this morning when the sun was already starting to rise. I never imagined an aurora could/would be visible this far south. I remember seeing the crescent moon in the sky earlier while I was out shopping. The sky was normal, not ablaze with colors.

From my daily notes today:

That woodpecker is intermittently pecking on the sunroom windows again. It goes from one spot to another, not angrily pecking, just a peck peck here and a peck peck there. Here a peck, there a peck, everywhere a peck peck.

I plan to hang up some strips of what they call "bird scare tape" to see if that will deter the woodpecker. This pecking noise isn't very loud or bothersome (unlike the rapid banging on the other side of the house which sometimes wakes me up), but the pecking itself is damaging my window screens. Today I managed to take a video of the bird when it flew to a nearby tree.

.

Last night in bed, I tried to remember names of stuffed animals I had as a child. It bothers me that I can't remember some of their names anymore. I may have written the names down long ago when I remembered them better, but I don't remember where.

The name "Buttercup" came to me as a possibility for the bunny with the wind-up lullabye music box. I don't think that's the right name though, as the rabbit was pink, not yellow. It doesn't feel right either.

Then I imagined Westley from The Princess Bride saying the following (I turned the light back on to write it down as it amused me):
"Oh Princess Buttercup, you're my cup of butter in the morning, my cup of butter in the evening; multiple cups of butter at night! Oh how I love your cups of butter more than a cup of tea!"

All this time, and I never knew the Princess Bride movie was based on an actual book. I thought the book part of it was just part of the movie! Have any of you read the book? If so, how does it compare to the movie?

As well as some other chocolates, Qiao got me this Dark Filled Heart for Valentine's Day. It's a "dark chocolate heart filled with dark chocolate truffles" in a nice black box.

Another good name to call it would have been "Heart of Darkness".

I object to the current trend of referring to a certain kind of person as a "Karen". Karen is a common name. Just because a few people with that name have done objectionable things, is no reason to besmirch everyone else who happens to have the same name by associating them with that particular group of people. The same would be the case for referring negatively to any other group of people by any other common (or maybe even uncommon) name.

Besides being a common English name, Karen is also the name of an ethnic group of people from Mynamar.

I've known several people named Karen and it bothers me to think how they would feel reading these things. Imagine your name being used in place of "Karen". How would it make you feel? Please don't do it. Find a better word or phrase if you must.

Brought on by this:
https://twitter.com/Steve_R_Walker/status/1286400379266228227

Artemis - as a boy's name (also used as girl's name Artemis), is a variant of Artemas (Greek), and the meaning of Artemis is "follower of the goddess Artemis".

Quentin - the meaning of Quentin is "fifth".

Sherlock - meaning is "bright hair". My hair isn't bright, but it's a neat name. If I took that name, people might start nicknaming me "Shirley" though. And while Sherlock is neat, Shirley would be ewww for me. Calling oneself Sherlock would probably be seen as pretentious though, sort of like changing your name to Einstein.

Sherwood - meaning is "luminous wood". Doesn't sound as nice as Sherlock, but sort of cool too, in a Robin Hood way. But it sounds too much like, "Sure would!". People might start joking, "Oh yeah? You sure would what?". Actually, might be good for a last name.

Sherwind - meaning is "bright friend". Haven't come across that name before, at least not spelled like that. Variant of Sherwin / Sherwinn / Sherwen / Sherwyn, etc.

2 more names I might potentially consider for myself:

Kyle - I've always liked this name. It's even sort of the name of me in one of my fantasies (I never decided if it was my character's real name, or if the character only said it was his name because he didn't want to disclose his real name). But the original meaning ("narrow, straight") is unappealing.

Galen - This name sort of makes me think of Druids and Rangers and such. It's meaning is "healer; tranquil", which is okay, I suppose.

And I gave Finnish a plus because they have non-gender-specific pronouns for people.

What's in a Name
Finland, for instance, maintains strict, nonoverlapping rolls of official boys’ and girls’ names and will not recognize births unless parents select a name from the appropriate list.