You’ve heard about Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii, right? This is the 9-year-old girl who was made a ward of the court in New Zealand so that a judge could authorize changing her name to something that wouldn’t embarrass her so much. According to the BBC:

“The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child’s parents have shown in choosing this name,” Judge Murfitt wrote.

“It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.”

Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii’s name has now been changed and the custody case resolved, court officials said.

New Zealand does not allow names that would cause offence or that are longer than 100 characters, Registrar-General Brian Clarke said.

It’s intriguing to consider some names that New Zealand considers acceptable:

Violence; Number 16 Bus Shelter; Midnight Chardonnay; Benson and Hedges (twins)

And some that have been deemed unacceptable:

Yeah Detroit; Stallion; Twisty Poi; Keenan Got Lucy; Sex Fruit; Fat Boy; Cinderella Beauty Blossom; Fish and Chips (twins) 

Read the entire BBC article. Be sure to check out the comments because they invited readers to contribute their own bad baby name stories.

While we’re on the subject of mondegreens, this one was overheard on a walk in MRP’s neighborhood.

S. (age 5): Mom! We have to run by this house!
MRP: Okay! We do? Why?
S.: Because the leaves on those bushes are made of halava!
MRP: They are? Oh my goodness. [pause] What’s halava?
S.: It’s like fire! It will burn you! Halava! Run!
MRP [pondering a moment]: Do you mean hot lava?
S.: Yes! Run!

Note to self: Only known volcano in Metrowest Boston area may be located directly around the corner from MRP’s house.

Hat tip to the Rut for this little tidbit, Krodamai, and also Fritinancy.

Well-documented that MRP doesn’t exactly feel all apocalyptic about typos, but something about this one was just, well, annoying.

It’s from the back cover of Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s book, The Dirty Girls Social Club, a light novel about six Latina friends:

Here’s the typo in question:

What we’re missing here is an ñ rather than an n, so that it would say Español rather than Espanol. This flub was an unfortunate effort to imbue the copy with a certain cultural flavor that would invoke the bilingual/bicultural heritage of the protagonists (as the book itself does). Ironic? Annoying? Maybe both.

Overseen at Dominguez Family Restaurant, Minneapolis, Minn.

Excellent refried beans. Not so much with the proofreading, but I doubt that’s affecting business.

I’m just realizing: Grad school could have been so much more fun if only I hadn’t taken it quite as seriously!

Hat tip: xkcd.

Okay, so you’re a smart word nerd and you probably know a lot of big SAT words. But do you know the origin of those words?

Check out Etymologic, which bills itself as “the toughest word game on the web.” Test your skill on questions like this one:

What was the phrase aftermath originally used to describe?

the experience of teenagers after a math exam

medical term for the convalescent period for a burn patient

the grass that grows after mowing a lawn

bombers describing a successful raid

Yeah, the answer is (c). MRP scored a pathetic 4 out of 10 on the first try, and admittedly most of those were educated guesses. Word nerd? Yes. Etymologist? Not so much. You give it a try and report back how you do. (And no fair cheating by referring to the Online Etymology Dictionary, either.)

Yes, this is just the kind of onesie you risk getting as a baby gift when you’re a friend of MRP’s:

I’m sure everyone joins me in saying, “Welcome, Luke!”

So, by now you’ve heard of the New Yorker Barack Obama cover controversy (you can read a pretty good round up and see a video of a New Yorker editor offering an explanation at the Baltimore Sun). Here’s the offending cover:

Here’s what the New Yorker had to say:

“The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that’s the spirit of this cover,” a New Yorker spokesman said in a written statement.

Here’s what the Obama campaign said:

Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman, said: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff tried to explain to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive, and we agree.”

Here’s more from “Rush Limbaugh was Right” by Gary Kamiya:

There is a also glaring lack of consensus among the critics about the very nature of the cartoon. Some find it too bland and safe, while others argue that it’s OK for the New Yorker’s elite readers but too edgy for the masses. Those who find it toothless seem to do so in large part because it’s on the cover of the New Yorker. It’s all about context: If the same illustration appeared on the cover of Time, they would “read” it differently because Time lacks the New Yorker’s arch, self-satisfied, knowing aura.

And here’s a bit from “The New Yorker Draws Fire” by Jack Shafer:

Although every critic of the New Yorker understood the simple satire of the cover, the most fretful of them worried that the illustration would be misread by the ignorant masses who don’t subscribe to the magazine. Los Angeles Times blogger Andrew Malcolm wrote, “That’s the problem with satire. A lot of people won’t get the joke. Or won’t want to. And will use it for non-humorous purposes, which isn’t the New Yorker’s fault.”

As a publications editor, I’ve been in plenty of situations where we have talked ourselves into thinking that some image or story was a good idea, but lived to regret it when the publication hit the light of day. So I tend to think that the New Yorker staff really did believe that this was a good cover, for the reasons they give above, but they will probably regret they used it. Over time, my sense has become that when you have to spend a lot of time explaining what the image or article is doing, it’s probably not doing what you want it to do — unless what you wanted it to do was generate a lot of confused conversation.

What do you think — is it satire or is it out of line?

The scene of the crime: the corner of E. 48th Street and Chicago Ave., Minneapolis, Minn.

It was an endless punctuation nightmare. One storefront sign after another lacking the appropriate possessive apostrophes, all within a block of each other:

Adrian’s got it right 50 percent of the time:

And finally, Pepito’s, which had its own problems: