A horse by any other name

As I was bloggishly AWOL yesterday I missed a day of my week dedicated to the triangle of happiness formed when a birthday, a presidential election and a horse race reach out and hold hands.

So to make up for it, I'm bringing hands and hoofs together today for some equine-leaning, birthday-related analysis. Giddy-up.

On our day of birth (or hopefully not too long after) we all receive a name from some parental-type persons that determines how much we're bullied at school, what our starting salary will be, and whether we'll have hursuit toes.

Some names are sensible names, like Peter, Paul and Mary, others may lead us to be mistaken for teen swimwear brands, like Heavenly Harani Tiger Lily, while some are just down-right confusing, like Celery.

Similarly, horses must negotiate the minefield of names that their non-species-aligned owners lead them blinkered into.

There are sensible horse names, like Flame or Flicker, names that sound like painful and itchy equine medical conditions like Bucephalus, and others, yep, that are down-right confusing, like Shergar's Missing Foot.

So today's funtime activity is to pick which of the following names were given to human and which to equine ankle-biters:

1. Bebba
2. Vecta
3. Ordric
4. Navigator
5. Narqwell

How did you go? If you said all were kids' names you're 100% correct. That's right, some mean buggers out there looked into the sweet, perfect face of their sweet, perfect baby and said in hushed tones to each other, "s/he looks like a Narqwell".

Frankly I'd rather be called Seabiscuit.

Mappy goodness

The 'Maris Pacifici' is believed to be the first Pacific-dedicated map to be printed anywhere ever.

How awesome are old maps? Very, according to this page and the 9,270,647 people who have clicked on it.

There's so much to love about this map:

1. It was drawn by a chappy called Abraham Ortelius (I'm a big fan of 'O' names, especially 'Ormerod'. 'Ortelius' comes a close second);

2. It was drawn in 1589 (I couldn't even hold a pencil then);

3. It contains the word 'qvod' (high up in the 'blurst' poetry family tree); and

4. According to the map, giant ships (about half the size of a small continent) used to inhabit the waters around South American. I wonder when they died out?

Wouldn't you like to travel the Pacific Ocean with Ortelius and his giant ships? GPS is for chumps.