Why is it wrong for a Japanese national to be called Hiro, Liese? I thought that was perfectly reasonable. There's no reason a Japanese national has to be Japanese by blood, but adopting the names of your birthplace isn't weird.

I don't know about the error in the other book, but a kid born in Japan with an American father having a fake English language last name and a real Japanese first name worked fine for me no matter what race he was.

Matt, I had a long response to you, with lots of demographics of our company, but then my computer took it upon itself to reboot, and I don't have that in me again. I'm fucking toast. Suffice it to say my boss feels vulnerable to mass pressure put on by women in the office in a way he doesn't feel he has to comply with his male colleagues whether they're above or below him in the org chart. I also wonder what a guy would have done instead of crying when I got too angry and frustrated to talk, and how he would have responded.

Clearly instead of crying, ita should have kraved him.

Oh, the horror of being surrounded by the opposite sex in the workplace. Welcome to my 15 years in companies in which all the professional women could meet in an elevator and not be crowded.

COMPACT FLUORESCENT BULBS ARE KILLING YOU

The FDA addressed that issue and says exposure is only significant if you're a foot or less away from the bulb.

Crying worked perfectly, I'm not going to lie--he yelled himself out--I'm pretty sure he vented (loudly) what he had massive displeasure with, and then he got kind of uncomfortable, and then he started laughing at being uncomfortable, and I used that energy to turn it into him coaching me.

I was residually shaken when I came out of the office, but with enough distance and hindsight, it kinda couldn't have gone better. I feel weird about that, and it's why I wonder what the boy version is. Or the "grown up" woman version.

Okay, I just saw two astronomical "yo momma" jokes that I have to assume are funny just because I can't understand them properly. I've heard of the things, I just don't know the things.

sarameg, can you confirm or deny?

Yo momma's galaxy is so old that it was fully formed before current models of the early universe predicted it

Your mom's galaxy is so big it doesn't need dark matter to be added into the equation to keep it from tearing itself apart as it rotates

those just made me laugh due to the geek factor.

Talk about sentences you will NOT hear on the street in this lifetime.

Yeah, I'm pretty helpless in the face of someone actually having thought those jokes up. They win for that.

I sent an email to my parents asking which one of them made up my name. My mother has not answered (it was almost a week ago--she has replied to emails since), and when my father answered it was clear I'm in his address book as "suzanne" (case verbatim) not "ita". So I don't even know. No, he doesn't answer. He asks if it's a trick question.

are you sure either party is to blame and not another relative or someone else in attendance at your birth?

Where did suzanne come from?

The current explanation is that one of them, a few days after the birth, made a handwaving transition from "it" to "ita" with a sense of satisfaction and a conviction that there were little girls called that in Mexico where they had met and done the horizontal (perhaps) mambo and made my fetus. And gotten married. They totes did that too. When they had time. Neither that nor figuring out what to call the baby seemed to be priority for them.

And Amy, I have absolutely no idea why they chose that middle name. My sister got a Yoruba (mostly Nigerian tribe) (well, half a name, but at least they picked that half before she was born) first name and a Twi (Ghanaian tribe) middle name. Suzanne is pretty random, but they were clearly startled by the whole thing.