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Friday, August 26, 2005

Fruiting Bodies


Years and years ago I worked with a girl who was having some fungus problems at home in the bathroom. it was a major ongoing saga about her battle against the forces of dry rot, and each day we would get an update on her fruiting bodies.

At first I thought it was a term she had made up, then I thought for a while that it was specific to dry rot, but of course it is the general term for the 'fruit' of any fungus plant. For some random reason the forces of nostalgia forced the phrase back into my mind today.

And today I found that there is a company selling fungus-based products called Fruiting Bodies. Its a good name for a fungus-related company, but a great name for a band!

Anyway, Fruiting Bodies would have been good for a late 80's "Madchester" band, with at least one member who does nothing but dance in their videos.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Godlack


Another one from Iain M. Banks.

I was just looking at his website and can't believe that The Algebraist is his 21st novel and his 10th SF book. I didn't realise he had been going that long. His Wasp Factory is still one of the most remarkable first novels ever and one of the few books to absolutely gross me out. (The spoon incident. If you have read it you know what I am talking about) At the time I was grateful to learn that I had not been totally desensitized by increasingly explicit mainstream films, books and television.

Anyway, I was interested by this passage in The Algebraist:
Some had faith, religious belief, even in this prodigiously, rampantly physically self-sufficient age, even in the midst of this universal, abundant clarity of godlessness and godlack, but such people seemed, in his experience, no less prone to despair, and their faith a liability even in its renunciation, just one more thing to lose and mourn.
As far as I know "godlack" is a totally new word, and for some reason I was reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins' invented words "inscape" and "instress", the way a new word is just dropped into the writing in such a way that it defines itself and appears just right. And, of course, its a great name for a band!

The book does raise some questions about what sort of religion, if any, could take hold in a galaxy where thousands of species interact, all bringing their own single-planet, species-specific religions which are often nullified by the very existance of all the other species - some of them billions of years older. Banks comes up with a very plausible (and Matrix-ish) concept called 'the Truth'.

Religion is only an incidental aspect of the book (so far anyway - I haven't finished it yet) but is typical of how challenging SF can be: to imagine how particular aspects of life would be different in another setting.

Probably because of the similarity of subject with Faithless my first thought was that Godlack could be a dance band, but it could also be the name of a band with goth tendancies who want a mildly contentious name. (Although I imagine that for some more committed religious types the name would be more than just mildly contentious)

Lung-Vomit



I am about two thirds of the way through reading Iain M. Banks' latest book The Algebraist at the moment.

In common with most of his SF books, it was a bit slow to start with as Banks is happy to throw in loads of invented items, places, names and titles up front and then explain them as necessary later on. Being set in a different culture in a different solar system everything is... different... and it can take a while to get familiar with the circumstances of the story.

However, once you get over that hump his books are thought-provoking and entertaining with some amazing and awe-inspiring ideas. Just about every page contains some alien name which could make a reasonable band name. For example:

  • The Archimandrite Luseferous

  • The Shrievalty Ocula

  • The Complectors

  • Formal War


There is a whole festival's worth of band names in just this passage alone:
Floating, drifting around the room were bobfruits, flossballs, chandelier-gumbushes and wobbling breezetrays loaded with sweetmeats, mood balloons, narcopastes and party-suppositories. The guests helped themselves, eating, ingesting, snorting, rubbing and inserting away as appropriate.

But the name which leapt off page 280 was in this passage:
He wondered if he could sneeze with the gillfluid inside him. Would it come splattering up out of him, some ghastly lung-vomit, ejected, left drooped over the side of the gascraft like some pale blue mass of seaweed, leaving him to gasp and choke and die?

Lung-vomit, what a great name for a band!

It does not take a lot of imagination to see Lung-vomit being a heavy metal band. Possibly a death metal band. From Norway. Its a genre with bands called Cradle of Filth, Anthrax, Biohazard, Doomsword, Sadistic Intent, Carcass, and Dead Brain Cells. "Lung-vomit" would fit right in amongst that lot.

To be honest, its a bit of a surprise to find that nobody has used the name already!

Monday, August 22, 2005

Three Beautiful Things



Well... someone called Clare left a comment here the other day, and I checked out her blog. Or should I say 'blogs' as she has more than one.

One is called Tunbridge Wells Tells which is a great idea, and worth checking out by anyone interested in setting up something for their area.

Another one is called Three Beautiful Things where, every day, she puts up a list of three things which have given her pleasure. (And if Paris Hilton did the same thing we would end up with an online telephone directory. Boom Boom!) OK, maybe the idea is a bit 'girly' for me, but... what a great name for a band!

I'm showing some atrocious gender-based prejudices here, but Three Beautiful Things would be a great name for a girl band or at the very least a band with a female singer. If the band was a trio then all the better.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Superflex November



This evening I was watching the BBC documentary series Coast which, this week, covered the coast from Berwick-on-Tweed to Whitby. I thought it was fascinating but ultimately unsatisfying as it would jump to something else as soon as it started getting interesting.

It was fascinating and a bit depressing to see the old pictures of places when they had thriving coal or shipbuilding industry or were important ports, compared to the totally sedate modern life. The scale of the decline in heavy industry is quite scary.

Apparently Sunderland was, at one point, the biggest ship-building town in the world, but the last ship to be built there was the Superflex November in 1989. Sad for British industry but... what a great name for a band!

I tracked down the Superflex November. It is now called the M/F Mercandia IV and carries passengers and cars between Helsingør and Helsingborg.



Given the circumstances of the name and what it stands for Superflex November should be the name for a band formed by one or more members of the band British Sea Power if they split up or embark on a side project. Bear in mind that their first album was called The Decline of British Sea Power. However, it would work for a dance/techno sort of band. (Techno?? I'm showing my age there.)

Weep you girls



I was looking at a page of graffiti from Pompeii and found it quite fascinating.

It probably loses something in the translation from latin. Some of the writings are describing very earthy acts but using formal-sounding language. For example: (From the House of the Centenary, in the atrium)
My lusty son, with how many women have you had sexual relations?


Here are a few which caught the eye:
Two friends were here. While they were, they had bad service in every way from a guy named Epaphroditus. They threw him out and spent 105 and half sestertii most agreeably on whores.

Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here

Antiochus hung out here with his girlfriend Cithera.

Restitutus has deceived many girls.

Restitutus says: “Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your hairy privates"
Restitutas seemed to get around a bit!

Its funny how some of it is little different to what you might find on walls today. There is a lot of "X loves Y" and "A did such-and-such to B" in there. A lot of bragging about sexual adventures, but the ancient Roman graffiti actually seems to be more explicit and obscene than modern graffiti through its very frankness.

You might think that "My lusty son" from the first quote would make a good name for a band, and you might be right, but if you want a great name for a band you want this piece of writing from the bar/brothel of Innulus and Papilio:
Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!
Weep You Girls would be a gay band. Something like the Scissor Sisters. The name is perfect because its roots are in a quote from someone giving up girls and turning to men, but the name on its own is quite innocent and innocuous. There would also be a bit of intellectual cachet in having taken the name from an ancient Roman scribble.

Fishy Chef


Tonight I was watching Match of the Day. While I was waiting for the important bit (the Newcastle v. West Ham game, so I could see if Konchesky really deserved to be sent off. He didn't!) I was watching the Charlton v. Fulham game.

It seemed to me that the commentator kept talking about a 'fishy chef'. I wondered what he was taking about but also thought it sounded like a great name for a band.

It turns out that Charlton have a Bulgarian player called Radostin Kishishev - known to the Charlton faithful as 'Kish' - and either the commentator was saying it wrong or I was hearing it wrong.

I think I prefer 'fishy chef'. I can just see Fishy Chef as one of the new slew of British guitar bands like Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and the Departure. Lets face it, if the Kaiser Chiefs can name themselves after a South African football team with a single letter changed, then Fishy Chef can name themselves after a Bulgarian footballer pronounced badly!

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Chad Jam




A local website called Crawley News has undergone a name and address change and now calls itself Crawley Informer. The change was discussed in this post which mentioned a local newspaper in the Midlands called the Alfreton Chad.

That name really tickled me, and I thought it would be a great name for a band, but while I was looking around for a vaguely amusing picture to illustrate this I came across this page which is all about chads - as made famous by the US elections in 2000. All our favourite familiar terms are there, like hanging chads and pregnant chads, but there was one phrase new to me which I thought would make an even better name for a band than Alfreton Chad: chad jam.

It really is worth looking at the section titled The Risk Of Chad Jam. The voting machines are designed to cope with chad jams, but there is a support brace in it which can cause a problem for only for certain positions on the voting card. As it happens, those positions were occupied by Al Gore and Pat Buchanan in the 2000 Florida election! Anyway, any site which can have a photo caption of "Pregnant chad resulting from punching into a firmly packed chad jam." has got to be worth looking at for that alone. Sheer poetry!

Unfortunately Chad Jam will be forever assumed to be ripping off Pearl Jam, so they will never be taken seriously.

Wanker's Cramp



When my doctor diagnosed me with tennis elbow my less charitable workmates decided it was something called 'wankers' cramp' instead. Lovely people. Its an uncharitable thing to say, but what a great name for a band!

You might suspect them of being a punk band, but I think Wankers cramp would actually be a folk band, albeit one of the modern, earthy, punky folk bands. It has the same sort of feel to it as 'Fiddlers Dram' or 'Stealers Wheel' or something like that, but with an extra twist. If they had the mindset to use this as a band name, its a safe bet they would have an album track called Vinegar Strokes

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Man Points



Man points is something which the winner of this year's Big Brother, Anthony Hutton, kept talking about. Its a phrase and a concept which looks like it is going to take off, so it would be a great name for a band.

Any band who called themselves Man Points would have to be a bit laddish but ironic or a very ironic girl band.

Wrinkly Ninjas



There is an advert on the TV at the moment for Orange pre-pay mobile phones, which features an old wise man who gets knocked off a boat while nobody is looking. When one of the other blokes notices he has gone he says "He's vanished like a wrinkly ninja."

Its a great line which has really captured the imagination. Just search the internet and see how many people are using it as a tagline on various forum and bulletin boards. But more than that, its a great name for a band!

The Wrinkly Ninjas would be a fun band. Possibly an upbeat indie sort of band. Probably another Franz Ferdinand clone band.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

KYC



I was looking at the internet job sites today and saw a job for a "KYC Manager". I didn't have a clue what it meant. I asked my colleagues. None of them had a clue what it meant.

So I looked it up on the invaluable Acronym Finder website and found that it means "Know Your Customer".

I assumed it was some sort of American business theory jargon, but it turns out to be a fairly official term in the US in the export and financial sectors.

For the export sector it appears to be aimed at making sure exporters know their customer and are not sending our goods which could end up in places where they should not be exported, especially if it is has military possibilities.

For the financial sector it is more to do with avoiding money-laundering and fraud.

Some people were worried when these initiatives were brought in, especially on the financial side. I think it was the requirements for banks to analyse trends and historical behaviour so they can identify potentially fraudulent transactions when they happen and possible infringements of privacy which would be needed to do that.

Its all above my head anyway. Every time I look there is a new regulation or management system to come to terms with, whether it is Sarbane-Oxley or CMMI. I just thought that KYC had a nice ring to it and would make a great name for a band.

The initials are just obscure enough that everyone will have their own idea of what they stand for.

I think that KYC would be a thinking-person's rock band. Like REM maybe.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Spite Wall



I came across this phrase in one of the many supplements in today's Observer. It was in the property section, and was concerning the old manor house in Shepton Mallet which has a 30-foot wall which was built in the 19th century to stop a newly-built property being able to over look the garden.

Apparently this sort of thing was quite common in the past. One definition of a spite wall is that it is a wall which serves no other useful purpose than to be be the expression of the builder's ill will and malice. There were cases where walls were built to stop poor people taking a shortcut through a wealthy street, or in a famous case in Miami one hotel built a tall wall to cut off afternoon sun from the neighbouring hotel's swimming pool.

Another famous case of a spite wall is also from America. In 1935 the owner of Shibe Park baseball stadium in Philadelphia got so tired of fans being able to watch games for free from the roofs of tenement blocks over the road that he added 22 feet to the top of a 12-foot wall along the outfield.

The one in Shepton Mallet seems spectacularly spiteful as it appears to be built right in front of the next door house cutting off all views from its windows. Of course we are not allowed to do that sort of thing now under the planning laws. We just plant leylandii instead.

Anyway, it jumped off the page as a great name for a band. (As do many old architectural terms like 'Priests Hole', 'Dentils' or 'Blind Arcade'.

Spite Wall would be a folk band who keep getting heavy metal fans turning up at their pub gigs because the name sounds a bit dark and gothic.

Raining Perseids



I came across this page today. It is about a photograph taken of the annual perseid meteor shower, using a series of 30-second long exposures over 6 hours.

I just thought Raining Perseids would be a great name for a slightly cosmic band. Maybe with a bit of a Hawkwind influence.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Taboo Colour



I usually read one of the IT trade papers called Computing. On the back page there is a light-hearted column called Backbytes (geddit?!?) which I only found out today is available online as a blog.

A couple of weeks ago there was this piece where a reader asked what signs in his workplace referring to 'this week's taboo colour' were all about.

This week there was a follow-up where someone had said it was a term used in engineering to indicate which set of tools, equipment, jigs, etc. were being calibrated and should not be used.

I thought that was a great explanation, extremely plausible, and also a great name for a band.

After that I did a search for "taboo colour" and "taboo color" and could not find a single reference to the phrase as an engineering term, which was a little surprising. I also found that, maybe, I should have set the safe search option on because I got loads of references to a porn film of that name...

I thought that the name Taboo Colour ought to belong to a slightly confrontational world fusion band. Their music might be like Natacha Atlas or Khaled's more westernised material. Or someone following in Cornershop's footsteps perhaps.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Googlewhack


A googlewhack is when you type two words into Google and it comes back with only one hit. Dave Gorman got a live show, book and DVD out of it a while back.

While 'Googlewhack' itself would make a pretty good name for a band, its so obvious that someone has probably already done it. On the other hand, some of those already found (listed on the Whack Stack) would make great names for a band.

But just going there and finding a whole list of names like Grampa Buppie, Lowbrow Laughlines, Schlub Purslane, Vampirical Medics, Scallywags Jetpack, Flickable Centerfolds, Schoolchilds Whimper, Sidley Retinues or Nomadic Saucepots would be cheating wouldn't it?

So I won't do it. I like to record stuff I just happen across rather than go out looking for interesting words and phrases.

Shame, because Schlub Purslane has a nice ring to it... sounds like a folky act with a side-order of attitude.

Bandit Benches


Charlotte County in Southern Florida is having trouble with 'bandit benches'.

This is where compaies have been getting round local ordinances on billboards (like our planning laws I guess) by shoving up benches with adverts on them, with the knowledge that they are unlikely to have anyone sitting on them and hiding the adverts.

Reading it made me think about those people in England who would not get planning permission for a huge poster in their field by the motorway, but just park an old lorry in their field (which just happens to have a huge poster stuck to its side.)

Great name for a band though.

Maybe its the subconscious link with bandit BMX bikes or something, but I can see The Bandit Benches as a skate punk band.

Hairy Ball Theorem



And people say that maths is boring!

What other discipline could come up with something like Hairy ball theorem??

Its great because it sounds a bit risque, but is actually just a very abstract bit of algebraic topology. But what a great name for a band!

Hairy Ball Theorem would not be used as a real band name. This would be the fake name that a someone like Green Day, Iron Maiden or U2 use for a small scale secret club gig. (Like REM used to perform under the name Bingo Hand Job or Genesis used to use the name The Garden Wall and the Sex Pistols used SPOTS - for Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly)

PS. I think Genesis used to use that name. I might be wrong on that one.

PPS. I really wish I had turned "safe search" on before doing a Google Image Search for "Hairy Ball"