Dan Aid………

I know you are there. I can feel your gaze on my words, Feels nice, kind of tingly to be honest. So now that I know you are reading this with your eyeballs, I need to ask you something.

I need your help.

No, not you. Can you move out the way please? Stand over there.

You, there, wearing that thing with the red on it. I need your help.

No, not you. Your in the way again. The last time I accepted help from you I ended up on my own in Prague, wearing a floral dress with matching hat, carrying nothing but a passport under the name of Mrs Bigglestaff. Do you remember that? It was a nightmare getting home, I tell you. That wasn’t nice at all. You are definitely out sunshine.

That's it, you. Yes, you, I need your help. There is no point looking round to see if I’m talking to anyone else, it’s clearly you I am talking to. You’re the only one here now, so it must be you? So take that look of surprise off your face and hunker down while I tell you how I need your help (hmmmmn, you smell nice).

It’s like this………..

I am an original. A one off. Unique in shape, form, and indeed, texture. There is nothing else like me out there. God was in a special mood when he made me. He had a big smile on those godly chops as I was hewn from the purest of clay into this fine specimen of a human being that is currently tapping out these words to you right now.

And that's how I would like my blog to be as well, a reflection of me.

Original.

So when I started it, I emptied my brainscape to try and come up with a sparkly original title. Deep in that cavernous pit where my thoughts scamper and scurry like tiny hobgoblins in the witching hour, an almost slow dawning of something huge arriving began to take shape. Vague at first, it slowly appeared through the green mind fog to flash at me two simple words.

Vacant Mind.

PERFECT! I cried in my head. And I may have even cackled as well. And I may have even been stroking Dotty on my lap to complete the Bond villain caricature.

Vacant Mind. It was the pinnacle of blog names. Two words that summed up perfectly the attitude to blogging.

Here's an exercise.

Next time you idly flick through blogger, looking at everybody else's wonderful sites, check out the names of them. I bet you about one in three have the same word in the title.

That word, you ask?

Ramblings.

The word ramblings appears in so many blog titles it’s unreal. And that made me wonder why?

The only explanation I could come up with is maybe it’s a small sense of self conscious behaviour on the writer’s part.

I mean, when you blog, you are basically taking a load of your thoughts and giving them to a complete stranger to look at. So when you do so, you might as well be saying “Here you are, take a look at something I wrote. Don’t worry if you think it’s silly, it’s nothing serious, just some stupid ramblings that I put down for you to read.” 

It’s quite a daunting experience for first time bloggers to suddenly let their babies out into the world, so perhaps as some form of protection, sticking the word ramblings into the blog title might take the sting out of it a little bit, a consciousness effort on the writers part so the reader doesn’t take them too seriously in case they hate what they are reading, which is complete monkey bollocks to be honest, as every blog I have ever come across always has something worth reading about (apart from those Earn Money While You Blog ones. They never floated my boat to be honest).

Anyway, that's my theory on the rambling thing. Could be true. Could be the musings of an idiot. I’ll let you decide.

Now, back to me.

Vacant Mind was a perfect blog title. It had a touch of the Hey, look at me, but don’t take me too seriously in those two words sitting majestically in the title, and I liked it immensely. It pleased me.

So I ran with it for a month or so.

And then I thought I would google it.

Big mistake.

I wasn’t original.

I wasn’t unique.

I was one of about four blogs that had that title.

I’m manly enough to admit that I nearly wept. I beat at my apartment walls, crying “Why? Why must you torment me so?”

It was bad.

By now you must be reading this and thinking “Where the hell do I come in?”

Well, I’ll tell you.

I have to change the name of this blog and I need your help in doing so.

I need something unique, I need something pure, and I need something that just screams me.

“So why not think of it yourself?” You would also be thinking (along with “Why am I going along with this?”).

My creative well has run dry I’m afraid, I have been trying to think of new names and been coming up short. Plus, I thought it might be amusing to get other people involved. I like interaction. It makes me happy.

Looking through some of the blogs I follow, I see some really cool and unique names in there. My favourite has to be Jules and Night Notes On Napkins. It sounds really funky and original, not just a generic blog name. But I also like Matthews AbodeOneThree, its very bold and to the point. In fact, looking down my blog list, I can’t see a bad name in there. And that's where I want to be, amongst all the cool kids. With a funky sounding name.

So, my fellow bloggers, can I ask you for your help on this? I would like to run it like a competition, but I am unemployed and have nothing to give you. I can give you my gratitude though, and that's worth more than any trinket in my eyes.

So I am welcoming all suggestions to a name change. My aim is to have it changed before the end of the year.

I will ask you if you would be kind enough to give me your suggestions, then once I have enough, I will run some kind of poll for people to vote on (This could all backfire spectacularly as I could get no suggestions, or even worse, no votes. But if that's the case, I’m sure I would have thought about something by then anyway. It’s only a bit of fun to see out the year in. I’m crazy like that).

Here are some pointers for any new folk reading (and I’d like you to get involved as well).

: My name is Dan.

: Ninjas make me laugh.

: Also zombies.

: I’m mildly neurotic.

: I over analyse myself far too much.

: I don’t like people (other than whoever is reading this. You rock!).

: I’m the most sarcastic human being alive.

: I'm grumpy.

Those are a few pointers; any of my fellow readers who have been here long enough probably have a pretty good idea of how to sum me already (twat).

In case you think I am incredibly lazy in asking others to rename my blog, I ran some of my own efforts past Kates this afternoon.

What about I See Ninjas?

No.

I See Zombie Ninjas?

No.

DanLand?

*Silence*

And that's why I need your help. If you leave it to me, I will just end up with something really shit.

So that's it then. Thanks for any help you give me on this. Feel free to stick any suggestions in the comments section (any libellous ones will be removed swiftly. Oh, and it might be an idea to google it as well, we don’t want to be doing this again in a few months time when I have another hissy fit) and I will shortlist them for a poll.

I’m hugging you all.

EDIT

I've just thought of one.

The Glorious Nation That Is Dan.

I can’t decide if it’s genius or donkey shit.

That's probably not a good thing?

It's donket shit, isn't it?

Damn, this is hard.....