Names, Words, Success, and Acronyms

            In an apocryphal anecdote, Cole Porter's mother added a singular "A" to Cole Porter's name because she had heard that people whose name spelled a word were more successful in life.  If there is indeed that much power in the initials of a name we may be left to wonder how much intentional or coincidental gematriya was employed in the selection of the center initial.  If we assume that Ms. Porter was set on both the name "Cole" and wanted her son to have only three initials then she would only have had two options, "A" and "U."  By going with "A" she chose the first letter of the alphabet, perhaps indicating that she wanted her son to be "first" in whatever he did.  But she also chose a far more common letter and ladled her son with a seemingly symbolically unremarkable name. 

            By the same standards my own name dooms me to insignificance, but perhaps not as extreme as my parents LMF, NPF, or my brother, DJF.  My brother currently has nearly 18000 followers on twitter.  Imagine how many he could have if my parents had the foresight to make sure his middle name started with “a” (daf: a Persian drum resembling a tambourine, but without the cymbals).  My Uncle Steve, accepted as a success within my family and the statistician community, has the only set of initials with a readily pronounceable unit; SEF. 

A cursory check of Forbes’ top 100 most wealthy people for 2012 indicates that not a single one of those billionaires has a name which spells a word.  Of course there are many other indicators of success which are measured in more elusive individual ways.  For instance, I was unable to find a list of the top 100 happiest people in the world, or the most satisfied.  No certain conclusions can be drawn from this list.  The survey of the forbes list indicates that whether your name represents an esteemed acronym, common word, or even, a clean slate, success is still a possibility.  Clearly there are possibilities for further research.

Choice acronyms for each of my family members presented in alphabetical order, followed by the total number of acronyms (as listed on acronyms.thefreedictionary.com):

DJF - Daniel James Fienberg

Divorced Jewish Female

Djibouti Franc (ISO currency code)

Total: 2

LMF - Lorne Michael Fienberg

Lacking Moral Fiber

Library Management Facility

Light Manufacturing Facility

Logical Mainframe

Lutheran Ministries of Florida

Total: 15

NPF - Nona Paula Fienberg

National Park Foundation

National Peanut Festival

Nigerian Police Force

No Problem Found

Nuclear Power Facility

Total: 24

OJF - Ori Joseph Fienberg

Online Job Facility

Order of Sir John Franklin

Total: 3

Differing Opinions on John Storer

*Architect Sketch of John Storer House

Sometimes, I like to go surfing. I'm somewhat lacking in balance and live on the East Coast, so I of course mean wikisurfing. Oh, the times I've had; the pub-quiz trivia knowledge I've gained! Sometimes though, I stumble across discrepancies, especially when it comes to tangential people in history.

John Storer had his home, of Frank Lloyd Wright's textile-block-house era, built for him in 1923. There's precious little information offered about him on Wikipedia. One spot is in the Millard House entry, while another is in the John Storer House entry. In both articles he is described as a "doctor," yet in one he's described as "homeopathic" and in the other he is described as "failed." The former entry cites Ruth Ryan, a former Celebrity Homes Columnist," but does not provide an active link to the article. Meanwhile the latter does: Hugh Eakin's article is a riot of adjectives; tempestuous, obsessed, untested, free-spirited, and motley, all make appearances in the first two paragraphs of the article, along with rhetorical questions and broad cinematic pronouncements; I can't help but distrust it: there are just too many adjectives to wrangle with.

So my question is, who's right? Or are they both right/wrong? Was he a successful homeopathic doctor, but not a "real" doctor, and thus a failure? Or did he turn to homeopathic medicine after failing to make it as a conventional doctor? Or something completely different?

Searching for "John Storer" and "Frank Lloyd Wright" together on Google returned 9,370 results, but it took till page three to find a substantive article here.

The article is from a series Young calls "Biographies of Homeopaths" (I will, for the purpose of inquiry accept "homeopathy" as medicine), and further down the page she also writes that John Storer was a professor and Dean of The Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago. Hey, professor and Dean (just like my Mom!), that doesn't sound much like "failed" to me. And if like me, you think the failure Eakin refers to may be the mere practice of "homeopathic" medicine, then this article, cited by Young, becomes especially helpful in gauging if not the legitimacy of homeopathic medicine, at least the status of homeopathic medicine in Chicago around the time The Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago was founded.

With a little historical perspective, and with Dr. John Storer's titles, I hope that's not what Eakin is referring to. And anyway, let's remember that at the time (or even sometime after) Dr. Storer moved into his house in 1923, Heroin Cough Drops, Benzedrine Asthma Inhalers, and Lobotomies for Depression were all accepted medical practice.

So, if "homeopathy" isn't what Eakin was referring to at all, what could he be basing his adjective choice on? Another answer emerges when you read deeper into Young's article, as she suggests that Dr. Storer went bankrupt because of the cost of the home. Here the linked source is within a book, Frank Lloyd Wright's California Houses by Carla Lind, which states in the sidebar on the right that Dr. Storer died bankrupt in 1927. The 6 reviews of Carla Lind's books on Amazon are somewhat inconclusive. A few say the books are great, and a few say they're thin and slight on information. That sort of statement makes me doubt that they include a work cited, and I'm not about to buy the book just to find out, which means that without some extra work I can't confirm the possibly sad fate of Dr. Storer.

Regardless, while "failed doctor" adds the flair of desperation to the "motley" bunch that Eakin assembled, and while in assessing his lot at the end of life it's possible that Dr. Storer considered himself a failure, it just doesn't seem like a fair phrase because it implies that Dr. Storer failed "as a doctor," and ultimately, unless other evidence can be presented to contrary, misrepresents the man...

Anyway, if anyone has more information about Dr. John Storer, do let me know.

---------------------------
Differing Opinions of Dr. John Storer

Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storer_House_(Los_Angeles,_California)

The Storer House was built in 1923 for Dr. John Storer, a homeopathic physician.

Source: Ruth Ryon (2001-02-03). "Home of the Week: Restoration Has All the Wright Detail". Los Angeles Times.

About Ruth Ryon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ryon


Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_House

As The New York Times later said of the California houses built by Wright in the 1920s: "It didn’t help that he was obsessed at the time with an untested and (supposedly) low-cost method of concrete-block construction. What kind of rich person, many wondered, would want to live in such a house? Aside from the free-spirited oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, with whom he fought constantly, his motley clients included a jewelry salesman, a rare-book dealing widow and a failed doctor."

Source: Hugh Eakin (2005-08-14). "Fixer-Uppers That Need Love and Concrete". The New York Times.

About Hugh Eakin: http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/hugh-eakin/

My Unique Name --- An Interlude

I am the only "Ori Fienberg" in North America, and for now, if Google is to be believed, the world.

Some of this is because "Ori" is a unique name outside of Israel. Some of it is because "Fienberg" is a unique spelling (The likely apocryphal story of why the family name is "Fienberg" is worthy of it's own post on another day).

When I first started to care about what popped up when someone searched for me on the internet I would always start by typing in my name without quotes. Invariably I would be prompted: "Do you mean Ori Feinberg?" Who was this person who shared my name, but for a slight spelling variation (also, I don't know his middle name)? Why did Google prefer him over me? What did I have to do to be the dominant "Ori F---berg" (there's also an "Ori Fineberg" in Israel)? Apparently Mr. Feinberg has an MA in Contemporary Art, and at the time was an aspiring gallery owner. Every now and then I'd receive an e-mail intended for Mr. Feinberg, sometimes in Hebrew, which I'd forward along to him.

Last night I was checking my e-mail and saw that one of my colleagues had sent out a general update in which she instructed students who did not know their Workshop times to e-mail me. Great! But evidently she doesn't know how to spell my last name because she gave them the g-mail address for Mr. Feinberg. I e-mailed the students with my real e-mail (which the students and my colleague should have anyway), and then I sent an e-mail to Mr. Feinberg, apologizing for the random queries he might get, and asking if he could please forward them to me.

Later this morning he replied to say he would (he never has before, and given how often my name is spelled wrong on name tags at events, I can't imagine that he hasn't received anything before), and then suggested that in order to avoid this in the future I should change from g-mail to Yahoo. While I can't help but feel some small connection to Mr. Feinberg, in part because of our names, and in part because we both value the arts, his response seemed rather presumptuous. I never told him he should change *his* account when I received his e-mail.

Perhaps his suggestion stems from some insecurity: not long after I discovered he existed through Google's suggestions I eclipsed "the other Ori F" in internet presence. I suspect when he Googles his own name it asks him if he meant "Ori Fienberg." I've been there, so if this is the case I understand his irritation. But despite this and the minor inconvenience he may have had in the past when he deleted messages intended for me and now when he may choose to forward me a few student e-mails, I don't have any plans to change the main e-mail account I've had for 7 years.

Selections from the Complete Rhyming Dictionary

... and Poet's Craft Book, Edited by Clement Wood, c. 1936

The desire to write poetry, or at least acceptable verse is almost universal. The achievement of this desire may be gained by anyone, without excessive effort.

* * *

Poetry is the expression of thoughts which awake the higher and nobler emotions or their opposites, in words arranged according to some accepted convention.

* * *

Insofar as the conventions of poetry were artificial and unnatural, poetry tended constantly to rigidify and petrify. It became artificial and unnatural,
whereas prose continued...

* * *

Poets, bound by fossilized conventions, have become a tepid social group...

* * *

The fulfillment of desire causes others to spring hydra-like from its invisible corpse.

* * *

In all cases the danger is rather in the overuse of the intellect, than in the use of inspiration.

Grass Jelly Soda [Drink]

I am an adventurous eater, and sometimes, that can backfire.

Every now and then, someone asks me about my least successful food experiences, and I only have one answer for them: grass jelly soda. Sometimes the name is so inexplicable that they're stuck, and don't bother to ask about it. Other times they're intrigued, and want to know more. But despite myself, I've been unable to give them an adequate explanation of my horror. It just seemed like too much. But at long last I've decided to, if not conquer my fear, at least put it into words.


During high school, my chemistry teacher, who despite acting as a professional taste-tester for Coca-cola for a several years (which I thought sounded cool), was mind numbingly, and perhaps competitively boring, managed to impart only one interesting piece of wisdom:

"If you want to eat really healthy, just eat brightly colored [natural] food."

I bring this up, because the color of grass jelly soda, and particularly the grass jelly, is almost utterly devoid of brightness. I think it's the darkest green a semi-opaque substance can be without turning black. It stands to reason that grass jelly soda is in no way healthy, but it goes beyond that. While the colors of other foods are inviting, the color of grass jelly soda is a warning. It's a color with glittering, malevolent intent, like the eyes of an attacking swamp monster.

For the taste, imagine blending a bunch of grass, bitter-glossy leaves, a child's handful of potting soil, with a hint of mint. Add to that the same cloying sweetness of the liquid amoxicillin doctors prescribe to children.

Finally, "grass" "jelly" "soda" contains no grass (it's made from some sort of mint-like leaf) and no soda (it was a syrupy liquid. To be fair, "Grass Jelly Drink," is far more common. My can had no English on it, and so the store where I bought it was responsible for that element of false advertising). As for the jelly, that's where words really fail. It's not so much jelly, as gelatinous-substance, and also, it's chunky.

Ultimately, truth in advertising wouldn't have mattered: I still would have bought it had it been called "Malevolent Chunky Gelatinous-substance in Leaf Syrup" (not that far-fetched if you've ever wander around a Super 88 market). Apparently there are many different kinds, and I feel like I should give another variety a try, but it's hard. Very hard. I'm just not sure I'm ready yet.

Endangered Internet Species

Who here remembers the Google Whack? There are many variations on the Google Whack, but the way I've always played is that you must enter two words, no proper nouns, without quotes, into the google search engine producing a search with 1 google hit. That's the purist form. Other variants allow proper nouns, and in another, the goal is to get as many hits as there are characters in the two words.

At its onset the Google Whack was an extremely rare phenomena, but you could do it, if you knew a handful of obscure words and some chemistry terms. But like the unicorn, the Google Whack is and was an endangered species. Sites emerged that collected them, and news outlets did stories on them, but of course once they were recorded that Whack ceased to exist. Other websites emerged that seemed to simply catalog vast swatches of words. Google Whacks are a web phenomena that may soon be extinct. If it's not already. I haven't thought about them in a while. In fact, the last I found was a few years ago. On 8/3/06 I found this gem:

popsicle triskaidecagon

The same google search today yields 19 hits. This is compared to

Methuselah bobbysocks

(yes, I know I broke my own rule and used a proper-noun) which was once a Google Whack and now inexplicably yields 448 Google hits.

Googlewhacks.com has what they claim to be an up-to-the-minute and unindexed Whack List, and yet I've tested several of them and not one of those supposedly fresh whacks is even below the century club, several have more than 1000 hits.

... Anyway, yesterday I was using Google image search to find illustrations of emotive monkeys. There are plenty of enraged, happy, sad, and even "sarcastic monkey" (with quotes in the search) yields 400 hits. But a search for "sardonic monkey" yielded a singular hit (not even of a monkey), it's own sort of Google Whack.

Honestly, I'm surprised, I suspected by now monkeys and monkey illustrators would have uploaded images with titles covering all possible monkey attitudes. However, without the quotes sardonic monkey yields over 10,000 hits.

If you're hunting a Google Whack I've found in the past that you should

1) avoid words that could be near each other in the dictionary
2) avoid common favorite words like defenestrate
3) pair two words from two radically different highly technical professions
4) pair something innocuous with a highly technical term
5) pair a word no longer in common usage with a highly technical term

Can you find any Google Whacks, traditional, or your own variation?

If you find a true google whack you can post it in the comment section with dashes between the letters so as to preserve the thrill for future Whackers. Honorable mentions for single digit returns, or for bizarre word combos that return far more hits than expected.

Happy Hunting!

Timeout Boston

Faces in the Crowd

Less Popular Games for XBox

When you need to relieve stress try out this "game."


Magic and monkeys. I defy you to find a better combination.

Are you extreme enough for Baby Maker Extreme?

Almost certainly not.

The Crystal Gavel of Spontanteous Writing

This is another bit of internet-writing-memorabilia akin to Michael Martone's Leftover Water. However, whereas the sale of Martone's water was laden with obvious writerly artifice from start to finish, it seems possible that the assortment of crystal hammer reviews may be born less out of a collective plan to create a postmodern essay or collection of stories, than a spontaneous response to the shear strangeness of the product.

However, this still doesn't come close to matching the fictional delight inherent to the products of merchant starry1_night on ebay. Though I may be close-minded. Perhaps there is nothing fictional about "offering authentic djinn on ebay since 2005."

Love, Alice

Many antique shops carry old postcards. Some people buy them for their kitsch, old-timey feel. Others erase the messages on the back and resend them to friends.

Last year I created a blog specifically dedicated to these postcards. Who was the sender? Who did they send it to? Some how each of these cards left the study desk drawer, scrapbook, or shoebox and made it's way to an anonymous antique shop many decades later. Sadly, many find new homes after estate sales brought on by the death of the recipient, but surely others are just lost, waiting to be reunited with somebody who will cherish them as the worthless, but somehow also priceless artifacts they are.

I've found that I'm unlikely to maintain and post on two blogs, and so ojconfesses is now absorbing and re-posting the postcards that were previously listed on postcard-rescue.

Posts will present the address of the recipient, date and full text written on the postcard, and perhaps pictures of the cards from time to time. Follow-up posts will contain any information I've been able to find about the sender, recipient, and their family. If I manage to find proper heirs' addresses I will send them the postcard. Likewise, if you can provide further information about any card I've posted to this site, please comment.