Lotion Blanket Corndog Gumby Homestar-Runner

One of my favorite past times is making up new middle names for our dog, Charlie. Richard tolerates this pretty well; he just rolls his eyes as Charlie acquires more and more middle names. As of this morning, Charlie's name stands like this: Charlie Lotion Blanket Corndog Gumby Homestar-Runner Newton.

It all started when Rich and I were watching that old episode of 60 Minutes about the life of Michael Jackson. They started talking about Jackson's children, and when I found out his third child was named "Blanket," I thought it was delightful! I couldn't stop grinning, thinking about naming people after inanimate objects.

(Side note: Arguably, I should have already known that Jackson's child was named "Blanket," as everyone I told about it at the time looked at me like I was insane for not knowing this. But you have to cut me a break, as I grew up in a house where, for the first NINE YEARS of my life, I though the radio only played one station- the Christian one. Michael Jackson wasn't exactly on my radar screen.)

It all started that day. Charlie gained two middle names: Lotion and Blanket. Charlie LOVES lotion. Anytime I moisturize my hands, I can count on Charlie to dutifully make out with my hand until no lotion remains. I think he would eat it straight out of the bottle if we would let him. Blanket naturally had to be included as an homage to our inspiration for random middle names. (This, I can safely say, is the one area of my life where Michael Jackson can be said to be my "inspiration" for anything.) The list just grew from there, and now Chuck has five glorious middle names, to be verbally slung at him whenever I get to feeling a bit schmoopy.

All this to say, give your pets some middle names! The stranger, the better.