grumble

[dragonlady7]

I hurt my shoulder pushing Dave's car out of a snowbank this morning.
Grumble.

In other news, he's just completed a really funny program that makes fun of northern new jersey really effectively: the Instant Suburb Name Generator. (Have you ever driven through northern new jersey and wondered how they named their stupid little towns? Here's how. Refresh the page for more amusement. The scary thing is how many of the randomly-generated names are ACTUALLY TAKEN already.)

The adsense ads are pretty funny too, unintentionally.

Comments

but where are the absurd names?

[(Anonymous)]

A very handy tool if you're looking to attract the white bread, white picket fence, white everything people to your new suburb, but my favorite NJ towns have those inexplicable names like Cheesequake and Ho-Ho-Kus.

-qwerty

Re: but where are the absurd names?

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

See, Cheesequake and Ho-Ho-Kus are actually interesting names. Which is what makes them inoffensive. They have redeeming merit.
Dave's suburb generator is a railing against the opposing force in new jersey-- the anonymizing respectability of the northern suburbs. Hideous!

I'm a native of the town of Schaghticoke, in Rennselaer County, so I am a little biased in my belief that the harder it is to spell a name, the better the name is.
I also think that a name should have some reason. there's no reason for Montvale to be Montvale: it means nothing. Schaghticoke is named for a tribe of Indians native to the area; the Van Rensselaer family owned most of eastern Upstate NY and had a family home in my town.
Give me history! Give me soul! Give me color! Give me character!
I don't mind the parts of New Jersey with all of those things. (Not even Jersey City, though I have to point out that for some reason, food cooked there tasted like nothing, so i doubt it's got that much soul.) But the soulless north.... Bah!

I'm sure Dave has a far more eloquent argument behind all this, but I'm thinking perhaps he should write a blog posting contrasting soulless suburbia with colorful suburbia. Because I think it's the Cheesequakes of the world that really highlight the deficiencies of the smug little Edgemont Vales of the world.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

D'oh!
It's RenSSelaer, not ReNNselaer!
I am shamed.