Thinking up a good name for a blog is bloody difficult. My very first idea for a title for my very first blog was “The Apocalypse Diaries“. That was three-plus years back. Now, “The Apocalypse Diaries” sounds like something you would type when you are fifteen and have just woken up from a dream about the end of the world. To be more precise, a dream involving a post nuclear all-out war scenario with people breathing through cool-looking masks, eating radioactive rats and drinking their own piss to survive. But that is a story for another day.

“The Apocalypse Diaries“? Oh yes, indeed a lovely name. Was i talking about the end of the world? Not really. Something to do with the other meaning – a word from God? Well, no, I’ll be damned if I begin to preach religion, of all things. Well, what was it then? A blog, with loads of seemingly pointless rants. What did it have to do with the Apocalypse? To be honest… nothing quite. A silly name for a blog then? All right, fine.

I am now paying the price for that little act of stupidity. The URL I registered is such that it is not very conducive to a blog-name change. This and the fact that I no longer remember my password forced a URL change. A reasonably re-usable URL, I already had one registered. All I had left to do was search for a new name.

Many bloggers seem to prefer titles with the phrase “My Life” somewhere in it. That is quite ironic, because those who actually have “a life” rarely blog, and those who dont have nothing to blog about. Besides, I see SO many rant-friendly topics, i would not want to limit the scope of this blog to stuff which concerns just me. Isnt it fun to criticize things you dont understand? Spewing vitriol (metaphorically, of course) on something which doesnt concern you one bit is so satisfying, it should be the Eight Sin. The pleasure you get on looking down on people you dont know and probably dont like was just a bit too much for me to deny myself. The conclusion – the phrase “My Life” was definitely NOT going to be in the title of this blog.

My next idea was to look at literature. Maybe i could flick a name off a short story, or maybe a poem. “Neutral Tones” was the only promising one i got. The only reason i liked it was because nobody would really understand what it meant. “Cool name for a blog!” people would exclaim when they came to this page, mouths wide open, wondering at the creativity of the writer. On the flipside, i dont quite know what it means either. What if someone asked me to explain what my title meant? Tricky. Besides, the poem is probably a bit too popular for me to plagiarize without someone noticing.

Next, i looked to music. My current playlist is currently crammed with emo, metalcore and related genres of music. So, i had the following options -

• The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage
• A fever you cant sweat out
• The Second Stage Turbine Blade
• I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love

Honestly, would you use any of these literary gems to title you blog ? Well, thought not. Music – scratched off the list. Then, an idea struck me. An idea so good it should be typed down and framed. An idea so good, it should be a dialogue on Blackadder. An idea so bloody good, it should have an entire civilization dedicated to worshiping it. F-o-r-e-i-g-n-w-o-r-d-s. Foreign words? Indeed!!

You could name your blog anything from “Eat shit, blog-reader” to “I like children. I mean, I like LIKE children” to “Necrophiles of the world – UNITE“, or perhaps even “Hello. I have hemorrhoids, and this is my blog“. Do this in english, you would be considered a freak. An outcast, someone who doesnt conform to society’s standards of “normal”. But do the same thing in a reasonably obscure language, nobody would know! Pure genius!! My choice of language? Latin.

But I dont know Latin. So, I fired Firefox up, went to the Google toolbar, typed in “Totally awesome Latin phrases I can use without knowing Latin” and I waited. And I waited. I then coughed theatrically for a bit, which didnt seem to help pass the time, and I waited some more. A good hour later, i scored a huge victory over the IIIT-H internet connection. It finally yielded, my query was processed and i managed to open the pages which were spat out by the search.

I liked what I saw so much, (link 1) and (link 2) for example. I repeated the query for a dozen different languages. A long, satisfying surf later, it suddenly struck me that the reason I had started on this tangent was my search for a new blog name. Sadly, I didnt find anything good enough. I wanted to do something boring, mundane – browse a random bunch of phrases for a meaningful title. The internet gave me something else – a few hours of fun.

All hail – The Power of the Internet.

< Badrinath.S >

P.S.: Thanks to the internet, I now know almost everything I need to know if I ever go to Rome, Italy.

• You charge how much an hour? (Quantum in ura hora imputas?)
• I’d like to buy some condoms. (Volo comparare nonnulla tegumembra)

If only i knew how to say “Do you do it doggy?”…..

P.P.S.: How did I get the blog name, you ask? Having wasted so much time on something so trivial, I decided to go with the first thing which came to mind. There was an image titled “Rocks and the Sea” or somesuch on my desktop. A part of the image can be seen in the image header of this blog. I finally settled on “The Crashing Waves”. Now, let me think of some deep and meaningful interpretation of it, in case someone ever asks ….