Clearing the air!

Please don't be fooled into thinking I'll be writing two new blogs a day. While I do have a multitude of pent up, irrelevant and, at times, tedious stories to tell, this enthusiasm and fervor will quickly diminish into a state of complete apathy and the blog will end up floating around in the part of cyberspace where blogs go to die. 

The reason for Saturday's double header is that I have a few things that I feel urgently need addressing. The first one being, what the hell is a lipsty??? The reason I pose this question is that according to the gatekeepers of the predictive text dictionary at Nokia, a lipsty exists yet Kirsty does not. To add more fuel to my fire, my phone won't even allow me to save Kirsty in the predictive text dictionary. This being both time consuming, frustrating and a potential RSI risk. A mere slip up on the part of a Nokia employee or GROSS MISCONDUCT!!! YOU BE THE JUDGE.

While we're on the topic of names, another thing that needs to be addressed is how to create funny nicknames. This is topical because in the past fortnight one of my students has started referring to me as 'fried chicken' a favorite 'delicacy' (if you will) in Taiwan. The reason being? My blonde, curly hair.  While I find the link tenuous (my hair isn't greasy, stinky and immersed in a deep fat fryer) I also find the resulting nickname suitably unfunny (is that a word? who cares!). Nicknames have to be:

- contextual (derived from a funny incident, like my nickname K-Lo - for being kicked out of a computing class when I was 19 for spinning on my chair singing 'My Love Don't Cost a Thing' at the top of my lungs).

- a play on words - usually the person's name (like my high school friend, Matty Moore, who I dubbed 'Matty Morphosis'. Hilarious, if I may say so myself.   

- based on a positive physical feature (like everyone's 6ft4" friend called Shorty) 

If my student's English ability were greater (or my 'nickname' Chinese better) I would be able to explain this concept to her, since I can't, you must endure the lecture instead. Please think twice before you create an embarrassingly lame nickname for your friend or colleague. 

Finally, before I sign off and resume my weekend as my alter ego, 'Regular Citizen Without a Blog, Nothing To See Here, Move Along In An Orderly Fashion,' what do you do when someone tells you something they think is funny but it's not? I have always taken this to be the reason I'm here on Earth. To work out a suitable way to deal with people who repeatedly tell you anecdotes that they find hilarious and you find embarrassingly awkward and particularly unfunny. These situations are possibly the only thing worse than being granted the gift of a lame nickname. 

Unfortunately, over the years that I've been studying such people, (I fancy myself as an Anthropologist of socially awkward people), I've never been able to perfect my fake laugh. This regularly results in mutual embarrassment for the story-telling inept person and I. Unfortunately, now I find myself in a situation where I'm exposed to this kind of person on a regular basis (too regular - I deserve a community service award for my tolerance) and I have this overwhelming feeling that it is my moral and social obligation to find a way to make the rants stop. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. 

Remember: If you get into a sticky situation today, just think, "what would Oprah do in this situation?" and people in glasshouses shouldn't call the kettle Peter or Paul...or whatever.