Uh, oh. They’re at it again.
Another public agency is feeling the need for a name makeover.
Last year, the Summit County Port Authority changed its moniker to “the Development Finance Authority of Summit County: An Ohio Port Authority.”
Only someone who is paid by the word could possibly consider that an improvement.
The latest self-reexamination involves the Summit-Akron Solid Waste Management Authority.
Granted, that name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But the two names floated thus far are “ReWorks” and “MindFill.”
Wrong.
First of all, both names look like typographical errors. I hate that trend, epitomized by FirstEnergy and FirstMerit. Either split two words into two words or lose the second capitalization.
Second of all, what on earth is a ReWorks? A revised purchase offer drawn up by Re/Max?
MindFill? That doesn’t exactly fill the mind with thoughts of the agency’s mission, which is taking old stuff and turning it into new stuff.
What’s wrong with just telling it like it is?
“Summit Recycling Agency.”
Short, sweet, simple.
Case closed.
Mixed messages
One of my pinheaded editors was driving to work the other day when he pulled up behind a car stopped on Arlington Road in Green.
The car was sporting two bumper stickers. The first was a longtime favorite, the epitome of civility: the word “coexist” made from symbols from different religions.
The other bumper sticker read:
“[Bleep] you. I’m from Akron.”
Name rage
Calvin Winston II is fed up.
The Akron native, now living in New Jersey, is steamed that people seem to be using “The Second” interchangeably with “Junior.”
“When you put ‘The Second’ behind your name, it means you are named after your grandfather,” he says by phone. “If you’re named after your father, you’re a ‘Junior.’ ”
He is indignant that “there’s a trend to use ‘The Second’ when you’re named after your father.”
Winston says he sees it all the time, and it annoys him every time — so much so that he occasionally confronts people who, in his eyes, are misnamed.
“They say, ‘I can call myself anything I want!’
“It’s the same as calling yourself ‘Junior’ and you weren’t named after your dad. It just sounds cool to them.
“But you gotta follow the rules so people know what’s going on!
“They’re ruining it! They’re ruining it!”
I was afraid to ask him about RG III.
Gifts that aren’t
Speaking of pet peeves, Ed Reymann of Stow has had just about enough of the trend of giving a gift by donating money to a charity in the recipient’s name.
Two recent “gifts” he received were cash sent to create “a flock of chickens in Africa” and cash sent to a religious conversion group operating in Africa. His daughter’s Christmas present from her boss was money given in her name for a cow in the Middle East.
Reymann says a gift like that “is really not a gift at all.”
For the record, he has no problem with the concept of regifting, “as long as you don’t give it to the same person who gave it to you.”
Prize catch
You’ve heard about trophy wives. Here’s a trophy girlfriend — but in a somewhat different sense.
The report comes from Springfield Township.
“A Pressler Road woman, 26, was charged with domestic violence after she allegedly threatened her boyfriend with a kitchen knife and hit him in the back of a head with a trophy. She told police she was upset because her boyfriend didn’t come home until 1 a.m.”
So she crowned him.
Not very local
Rick Krochka got a chuckle out of a recent item in the Beacon Journal’s business section. He was referring to a new smartphone app launched by the Greater Akron Chamber — “Save Local Now” — that offers chamber members a chance to promote special deals and events.
Krochka noted that the “Save Local Now” app for the Greater Akron Chamber was developed by a company in … Greater Chagrin Falls.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.