Monday, February 07, 2011

Homophonia

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

Mr BC and I are in bed preparing our characters for a new season of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, because that's the kind of saucy stuff we get up to these days.

ME: My character is going to be massively gung-ho and macho, but I can't think of a name for him.

MR BC: Call him something Pictish.

ME: Great idea, I'll borrow a name from the (largely fictional, history fans) Pictish king list. I'll call him ... *thinks* ... Brude Urpant.

MR BC: You could call him that, but I must warn you, people may laugh.

ME: WHO DARES LAUGH AT BRUDE URPA.. Oh OK, I'll change it to something else.

A couple of minutes pass.

ME: I've got it! I'm going to call him Ben MacDui.

MR BC: (Outraged) You can't call him that!

ME: Why not? Not Pictish enough?

MR BC: Ben's a well-known Jewish name.

ME: Yes, but it's also Scottish Gaelic for 'mountain'. Like 'Ben Nevis'. And Ben MacDui is a cool mountain, it's the second highest peak in the United Kingdom, you know, and it's supposed to be haunted by a ghostly Great Grey Man, although that's pretty much discredited now, and most people think it's probably just a Brocken spectre, although Brocken spectres in themselves are pretty cool, they're like a giant shadow cast on the-

MR BC: You can't call him Ben McJewy, it's racist.

ME: Not McJewy! MacDui! With a 'd'! And a 'u'! And, for that matter, an 'i'!

MR BC: I'm just saying.

ME: Brude Urpant it is then. All hail Brude, Eladrin Druid, occasional shapeshifter, and part-time forklift operator in a Feywild basket warehouse.

MR BC: Sometimes I think you don't take this nearly seriously enough.

7 comments:

Dave said...

I thought for a moment your heading was going to refer to the problems you have had getting a telephone line installed in your house.

Christopher said...

I think you've chosen very wisely. You could so easily have been seduced by Erp or Murtolic. Not to mention Foth, Beli, Dubhtolargg or Fochle. Nor should we forget Uerb.

(It's clear where the word verification bank draws its stock from.)

Boz said...

Better a Brocken spectre than a broken sceptre.

(I don't really know what I'm talking about anymore either. Please take the standard HURRAH YOU BLOGGED! as read.)

Tim F said...

Oh why don't you just call him Rastus Pooftah and be done with it?

John Cowan said...

It's pronounced Mac Dooey, not Mac Dewey/Jewy. (Of course, we Yanks always say Dooey: "do" and "dew" sound the same in American English, whereas "Jew" is completely different.)

Anyway, thanks for the spirit-lifting posting! The CAPTCHA for this comment happens to be "shypoke", which is also quite teh funny.

Valerie said...

Broody Underpants is a perfectly reasonable name for a character.

Uh, er.

You blogged! Huzzah!

Marsha Klein said...

Making up Dungeons and Dragons characters in bed still sounds saucier than doing the Private Eye crossword, which is about as racy as it gets chez Klein these days.