It’s quite an honor to share the stage with The 21st Floor , Men Make a Tiger , Pharangula , Science, Reason & Critical Thinking , Skepchick, but something bothers me about that list. I’m misspelled! I’m doomed, I tell you, doooomed.
It’s my family curse. My father gave me a name everyone gets wrong, and then a create a blog with a name no one can pronounce and few can spell. I knew I should have taken my wife’s name when I got married. No one would have ever mangled “Gjerness”.
Also, normally I’d be able to tell my minions to take wing and conquer the voting, but Skeptic Magazine is not making this an internet popularity contest — they actually have a panel of distinguished judges who will evaluate the contributions of the nominees. Doooooomed.
Unless, of course, you run into Chris Franch, Wendy Grassman, Jon Ranson, Simon Sangh, or Richard Waseman on the street, in which case you should grip them in your taloned feet and fly immediately to my castle, where we can shackle them in the oubliette and…convince them…on how to place their vote.
Goad one!
Oaps…
Gjerness — isn’t that like Guinness, only more potent?
It’s that polymorphous “Y” that is the problem in both cases. What the fuck is it? Is it a vowel? Is it a consonant? “Y’s”, how the fuck do they work? “Y’s” are just too damn liberal.
… and then a create a blog with a name no one can pronounce and few can spell.
How is it pronounced?
fer-IN-gyoo-la is how I’ve always pronounced it. Is that incorrect?
anthonyallen, I think it’s fuh-RING-gyoo-la. Pretty close.
I dunno, PZ, they might get the spelling of Gjerness right, but you can bet everyone would mangle the pronunciation.
What’s difficult about TRO•fee SIR•naym?
They spell your blog name wrong, spell your last name wrong . . . Well, you know, PX, some people just can’t be bothered to spell check. . .
Oh, those crazy athiests at Skaptic magazine….
Glen Davidson
No, no, no. It’s spelt “Raymond Luxury Yacht” … But it’s pronounced ‘Author of insanely popular blog Pharyngula’.
A common mistake.
I feel your pain, bro.
And instead of writing “I” in a sentence complaining about it, you write “a”.
Well it is a tad ironic, if still rather trivial.
Glen Davidson
It’s not actually your last name at fault. It’s your middle name. Put a Z anywhere in your name and you’ll get the most…interesting spellings. Many people try to drop the Z completely. Since they can’t do that in your case, they mangle the rest of it in revenge.
I left my taloned feet at the cleaners. Can I be excused?
@marcus #4 — It’s because it’s in a state of quantum superposition, that’s “y”.
You said “Oubliette” <3 <3
@ 5, 6:
It’s frngjl-AH, I tell you.
@ robro 15 Well, obvy dude. “Quantum” explains everything, that’s why I didn’t even bother to mention it.
When we were married, my wife cheerfully changed her last name because people could not correctly spell…Jones.
Go figure…
–W. H. Heydt
Old Used Programmer
I suppose Simon Singh will have a blog post lamenting about misspellings of his name, even by the meticulous PeeZed /s
siessor
All the names are spelled wrong.
I made the first round of consideration, but didn’t make the cut. But now I know why – look at all those awesome blogs I was competing with! Glad I was nominated at all :)
Now that you’ve put a spell on the panel, you can spell them while they take a break from deliberations.
There’s a grain of truth in the way spelt is spelled.
You need to recruit your insect friends, the spelling bees, to set them straight, even though it might sting.
I feel your pain, PZ. Nobody, ever, from hospitals, schools, anything, has ever spelled my full name right on the first go aside from my parents. And my names are some of the most mundane, whitebread names out there.
Has Mike Shermer got a poll for us to crash? :)
Hopefally I’ll get to see Richard Waseman in a couple of weeks. I’ll tell him the peoples want PC Meyers and Pharangula to win!
… and siessor, you may think you were observant there, but you really were not :)
Poor PV Meyers, nobody knows his proper name.
Glen Davidson:
No, it’s in application of a long-established Internet law: any post complaining about typos or orthographic error will contain at least one typo or orthographic error.
Though in PY’s case, he must have accumulated bad karma with the god Tpyos. Maybe he was an English teacher in a previous life?
Congrats PZ, well deserved. I’m also on that list (3menmakeatiger..) and am quite frankly terrified that any moment the judges will realise they’ve made a monumental error in judgement when they realise most of my posts are actually drunken rants directed at no one in particular. Which, come to think of it, is quite an Irish thing, so at least I’m fitting comfortably into my national sterotype *Knocks back a triple distilled whiskey and goes to type more things on the interweb machine..*