Nomenology

Just a quickie on the name and address I chose for this little slice o' the net.

I spent a lot of time running down different possible names and/or URLs for this place. From funny to serious to flat out dorky, I kicked 'em all around, and finally settled on "dontpunt" and "Rattlin' Blog", which I think pretty much cover all the bases.

"dontpunt" is a tip of the hat to one of the most effectively worded and concise pieces of encouragement and advice I got when I was on the verge of backing down from this whole plan. A certain poster on The Victors board, quoting or paraphrasing a certain other poster's previous statement, simply replied "Don't punt from the 38 yard line of life".

Its a light-hearted and personally relevant interpretation of the one serious message I might hope to get across with these pages. To Nike, it's "Just Do It". To Horace, it was "Carpe diem". To Daniel Negreanu and his ilk, it'd be "All in."

However you call it, it just means to put yourself out there on the difficult path if there's something of worth on the other end of it.

"Rattlin' Blog", for those who don't know, is a play on the name of a popular Irish polka/drinking song. As a song, "Rattlin' Bog" is a fun one with a ton of variations in actual lyrics, but regardless of how you sing it, before you're done you're tongue's blasting a thousand miles a second about microscopic things on increasingly larger things until you reach the tree in the hole and the hole in the bog and the bog down in the valley-o.

I wanted to use something that would be a tip to the fact that the main focus is going to be travels in Ireland, with a slant towards my particular interest in Irish music, but wasn't really comfortable making this be an overtly "Irish blog" with all the contrite and stereotypical baubles and such that most Americans associate with the place. Although, I was sorely tempted (and surprised) when I saw that, as of this writing, slainte.blogspot.com was available!

In addition to being an obvious candidate for a play on 'blog', another interesting note on that title is that as both a song (i.e. music with words) and a tune (referring to it being an instrumental melody commonly played in quick, up tempo traditional sessions), it's one of very few that has crossed the boundary of my experiences in the two main areas of traditional Irish music. I've pounded my glass on the table trying to keep up with the lyrics belted out by Micheal O'Brien at The Old Shillelagh and I've tweedled and deedled the tune on a tin whistle in a lively session at The Grafton. While it might all be lumped together as "Irish music" to most, its surprisingly rare that a tune can make its way into both settings.

If you don't believe me, find yourself a local trad session and ask them if they'll play "Danny Boy" for you.