Eponymous

It's weird. I woke up with a word popping into my head.

Allow me to set the scene first.

My girlfriend has convinced me that we'll sleep better without cats in the bed. I was very reluctant to embrace this idea. Cats are warm and snuggly. But if it came down to having either a cat in my bed or my girlfriend, the girlfriend wins. Fortunately, she is warm and snuggly, too. In our old apartment, you had to walk through a small sun room to get to the bedroom. So, it was very easy to shut a door and let the cats reign over the living room and kitchen. In our new apartment, our bedroom is right off the living room with no buffer zone. Our cats, for the most part, have been pretty good at leaving us alone. Except this week. Oona has been scratching at the door in the middle of the night. I know she knows this is inappropriate behavior on her part because I'll open the door and she'll hide under a chair. There is a consequence for waking me up before my alarm goes off. Kitty jail. Which is my office at the other end of the apartment. As jail goes, it's pretty cushy. There's food, kitty litter, a workout area, cigarettes. I might have to resort to water-boarding if she keeps waking me up.

This morning, Oona is scratching at the door at 5am and I can feel myself being pulled from a dream. In the dream, I'm in a cluttered backyard telling a kid that everyone and everything dies. He points to a cardboard chessboard with plastic men scattered on top of it. "Yep, that will eventually die. The board will rot and the pieces will melt." He points to a wooden hand mirror on a rustic mission table. "The glass might stick around a long time, but the wood and the mirror itself will fade away." That's when I hear a scratching sound and just before I open my eyes, the word "eponymous" pops into my head.

I have heard the word before, or, at least read it. But I have never uttered it out loud or written the word until now. I wasn't even sure what it meant and had to look it up.

ep·on·y·mous /əˈpɒnəməs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-pon-uh-muhs] –adjective

giving one's name to a tribe, place, etc.: Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome.

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[Origin: 1840–50; <>epnymos giving name. See ep-, -onym, -ous]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

With the exception of this blog, I don't feel like I have ever given my name to something so fully to be considered eponymous. Not to the point of almost being synonymous, as Steve Jobs and Apple or Gandhi and India. It sure has me thinking. What will I give myself to that will last beyond my years of shuffling around on this dirtball?



THE RETURN OF THE MAGNIFICENT ROBOWRITERS!

Itching to write? Looking to generate ideas for writing projects? Craving honest, useful feedback on your written work? Want to hear your words out loud and not just in your head? Our focus is short works intended for performance, such as comedy sketches, short one acts and scenes. We meet tonight at 6:30pm at the Uptown Writer's Space (a jazz club once owned by Al Capone), 4802 North Broadway at Lawrence. Between The Green Mill and Crew (a gay sports bar with great food).


THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"Clear Channel has forbidden its radio stations to play cuts from Bruce Springsteen's new album allegedly because of what?"

45% logically picked "Bruce's anti-war stance."
- Granted, some artists are more vocal than others, but if they did that they'd be down to playing the same five songs over and over. Oh, wait, they already do that.

27% chose "Bruce didn't play a free gig for them."
- No evidence that this was the case, even though they were hoping he'd spice up their boring ol' holiday office party.

10% decided it was "Bruce's lack of boobs."
- He's 58. He might very well have boobs at his age.

18% accurately pegged "Bruce's age."

According to Roger Friedman of Fox News (yeah, I know), Clear Channel has sent an edict to its rock stations not to play tracks from Springsteen's new album "Magic." Clear Channel, according to Friedman, seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius. In spite of Clear Channel's stranglehold on The Boss, "Magic" is the No. 1 album in America. Suck on that, Clear Channel! Thank God for Chicago's WXRT, or we'd never hear tracks from it! Here's a recent picture of Bruce. You can see a nipple on his left man boob.