Your Religion Told You To Multiply And You Left Your Child At The Airport? You’re Shitting Me…

God said, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

God did not say, “Be fruitful and multiply and leave your children lying about the place in airports and whatnot…”

What are you? Some sort of orthodox, baby-toting, Johnny Appleseed?

From an article entitled “Israeli parents forget daughter at airport” on the AP newswire:

JERUSALEM – An Israeli couple going on a European vacation remembered to take their duty-free purchases and their 18 suitcases, but forgot their 3-year-old daughter at the airport, police said Monday.

The couple and their five children were late for a charter flight to Paris Sunday and made a mad dash to the gate. In the confusion, their daughter got lost.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a policeman found her wandering in the duty-free area at Ben-Gurion airport, Israel’s bustling main international air portal. He said the officer alerted airline staff, but the flight had already taken off.

But perhaps the real coup-de-grace here is this paragraph at the end of the article. What the heck is going on at Ben Gurion airport? People! Buy leashes for your children or something, ok?

The paper recounted that several days ago, an 8-year-old boy traveling alone boarded a flight to Brussels instead of Munich, and two weeks before that, a 10-year-old boy was left behind when the rest of his group flew to Copenhagen.

You Came Up With An Even Dumber Name For Your Child Than ‘Tula Does The Hula From Hawaii’? Now You’re Really Shitting Me…

I know, I know. We already looked at absurd names and the legal cases they inspire but I have to circle back to the subject after running across this tidbit on the wonderful Volokh Conspiracy website.

Here is a legal exchange between a judge and a parent wherein the parent defends and explains their decision to name their child “Weather’by Dot Com Chanel Fourcast Sheppard”. One parent was suing for custody to change the child’s name to Samuel Charles Speir.

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

The Court: I simply do not understand why you named this child — his legal name is Weather’by Dot Com Chanel Fourcast Sheppard. Now, before you answer that, Mr. — the plaintiff in this action is a weatherman for a local television station.

Sheppard: Yes.

The Court: Okay. Is that why you named this child the name that you gave the child?

Sheppard: It — it stems from a lot of things.

The Court: Okay. Tell me what they are.

Sheppard: Weather’by — I’ve always heard of Weatherby as a last name and never a first name, so I thought Weatherby would be — and I’m sure you could spell it b-e-e or b-e-a or b-y. Anyway, Weatherby.

The Court: Where did you get the “Dot Com”?

Sheppard: Well, when I worked at NBC, I worked on a Teleprompter computer.

The Court: All right.

Sheppard: All right, and so that’s where the Dot Com [came from]. I just thought it was kind of cute, Dot Com, and then instead of — I really didn’t have a whole lot of names because I had nothing to work with. I don’t know family names. I don’t know any names of the Speir family, and I really had nothing to work with, and I thought “Chanel”? No, that’s stupid, and I thought “Shanel,” I’ve heard of a black little girl named Shanel.

The Court: Well, where did you get “Fourcast”?

Sheppard: Fourcast? Instead of F-o-r-e, like your future forecast or your weather forecast, F-o-u, as in my fourth son, my fourth child, Fourcast. It was —

The Court: So his name is Fourcast, F-o-u-r-c-a-s-t?

Sheppard: Yes….

The Court: All right. Now, do you have some objection to him being renamed Samuel Charles?

Sheppard: Yes.

The Court: Why? You think it’s better for his name to be Weather’by Dot Com Chanel … Fourcast, spelled F-o-u-r-c-a-s-t? And in response to that question, I want you to think about what he’s going to be — what his life is going to be like when he enters the first grade and has to fill out all [the] paperwork where you fill out — this little kid fills out his last name and his first name and his middle name, okay? So I just want — if your answer to that is yes, you think his name is better today than it would be with Samuel Charles, as his father would like to name him and why. Go ahead.

Sheppard: Yes, I think it’s better this way.

The Court: The way he is now?

Sheppard: Yes. He doesn’t have to use “Dot Com.” I mean, as a grown man, he can use whatever he wants.

The Court: As a grown man, what is his middle name? Dot Com Chanel Fourcast?

Sheppard: He can use Chanel, he can use the letter “C.” …

The court of appeals finished with, “we hold that the trial court did not err in determining that it was in the child’s best interest to change his name.”

You Named Your Daughter Tula Does The Hula From Hawaii? You’re shitting me…

Some people should not be allowed children. That list of people includes anyone who names their child any of the following:

Tula Does The Hula From Hawaii
Fish and Chips
Yeah Detroit
Keenan Got Lucy
Sex Fruit
Number 16 Bus Shelter

Fortunately some countries have judges who can step in and stop these people. New Zealand is one of them. From the Associated Press:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names here, and did something about it.

Just ask Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. He had her renamed.

Judge Rob Murfitt made the 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name could be changed, he said in a ruling made public Thursday. The girl was involved in a custody battle, he said.

The new name was not made public to protect the girl’s privacy.

“The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child’s parents have shown in choosing this name,” he wrote. “It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.”

The girl had been so embarrassed at the name that she had never told her closest friends what it was. She told people to call her “K” instead, the girl’s lawyer, Colleen MacLeod, told the court.

Sesame Street Is A Dirty, Dirty Place