Elephant Town Chapter 10 (pages 10-12)

Hahaha! Thank you, Faith. :)

Danielle Corsetto

Happy Birthday Danielle! Paul, no... no... that is not a path you want to go down...

Faith Nelson

At least he didn't go "Peter... Mary?"

Minzoku Bokumetsu

I know, it shocks me too. Everybody wants to jam in extra R's and T's into it. Prendergast, Pentagas, Prendergrass. As I tell people over and over again "Just pronounce the letters that are there: Pen-Der-Gast."

I have a friend named Tominda and her parents' names are Tom and Linda and well you can guess how she got her name and you'd be right.

Danielle Corsetto

PAUL NO

Jonah Sanville (firelight_waltz)

When I was growing up we had a neighbor lady named Eula. She had sisters: Beulah, Tallulah, Oolah...go figure people.

MaryAnne Glazar

Whew! Good to know!

Boum

Ahahaha

Danielle Corsetto

Say your name! Paul! Choose a new name! Um.... McCartney? A tougher name! Um... um ... Reubens? ... God damnit, Paul.

Dan Wilson

Whatever works. I didn't grow up listening to Paul Simon so not an association I'd make first.

Meisterj

I'm not certain how much I'll touch on it in this book, so I think it's spoiler-free for me to say: most of those books have value, it's just hidden in many layers of macho bullshit. They're mainly teaching the reader to find a confidence they either lost or never had to begin with. They teach things like NOT making a big deal out of a woman rejecting them (which makes things SAFER for women - they teach not to cling to/pester one woman, just let her go and move on to the next one), and to just generally take things more lightly. A lot of men who've come out of these programs say they took the good stuff and got unstuck in their lives - jobs, relationships, living situation, etc. So, it's not all bad!

Danielle Corsetto

Still, that must have been really cringe!!

Boum

I DID. I actually dated someone who bought the $150 audiobook of an old PUA author, and I asked to pleeeease please let me borrow it so I could find out what he needed to unlearn! Luckily it wasn't one of the shittier guys - this was David D'Angelo, whose books were more "so you're trying to find a wife" than "so you wanna get laid."

Danielle Corsetto

Thanks Melody! Yeah, it's the audiobook. I changed the box color because it stood out more, and felt more immersive than the stark white, which I hoped would get across the feeling that that the audiobook is now kind of ubiquitous to Paul after he's been listening to it for awhile.

Danielle Corsetto

It's funny, I was going with "Paul Simon," because he's probably the most famous Paul and it just came to mind immediately... which is dumb, because "Simon" wouldn't come to mind to a person who's been named Paul all his life. But it made me chuckle, anyway.

Danielle Corsetto

People have trouble pronouncing Pendergast?? It's such a fun name to say! Assuming I'm saying it right...

Danielle Corsetto

I don't think that's a voice in his head. I think that's an audiobook about how to get laid.

Melody

I so do not envy your research experience. This is kinda dark.

Gary Walker

Big Yikes. Did you listen to such videos for research? This is wild to me.

Boum

That's a lot of red flags.

Cab

For me, the voice in his head is the scariest part. The smile on his face when saying his own name, then being contradicted by that voice, is unsettling. This guy desperately needs a good friend. He’s so alone, but that voice is no friend.

Fred Baker

This breaks my heart. His smile after being loud...

Sky

...This inconclusive rambling brought to you by my yet-to-be-finished first cup of morning coffee. 😂

Sarah Manx

I kind of get it. The "power" of having a name is giving the person some kind of identity in the sense that have a place in language. That said, growing up as "hey you, kid" is probably equally awkward as growing up named Pilot Inspektor or Moonunit. And my very boring given name technically means "left-handed princess of the waterfall," but I am as far from a princess as they come, right-handed, and dislike being wet.

Sarah Manx

I read Simon and my mind went to Chipmunks. Absolutely no reason but you know, associations are wild.

Meisterj

He's sticking with the names of the Apostles. So there's definitely a strategy at play here.

Andy Ihnatko

I've never quite understood the power people give to names. Granted, sometimes they are the first bad thing that happens to us, but they're really just so we can tell each other apart. But why some some parents feel the need to come up with a seventeenth variation on Crystal or grab a random handful of Scrabble tiles and call it a name in the desperate hope of being original is beyond me. It's been my experience that the giver of an exotic name is usually that much more excited about it than the receiver, who then has to explain it their whole life. That being said I hope whatever guy I end up marrying has a cool last name because I'm ditching mine ASAP. Tired of people not being able to pronounce it or spell it and thinking they're the first person to make the joke about me being related to that dead 70s singer and then wondering why I'm not laughing and my fists are clenched.

Oh dear

Robin the Bun

Or maybe a Steve Urkel➡️stefan urquelle thing without the machine🤔 Except Steve already treated women as people so🤔🤔🤔

Dea'ja Caldwell

Oh god, he's going to successfully introduce himself as Matthew to a woman isn't he? He's going to get caught up in a double life. Oh good lord.

Maemae