DAILY DIRT: For starters, you can’t name your child an obscenity in Louisiana

Daily Dirt for Friday, May 17, 2024

Once you get to thought No. 3, I’m guessing you probably would have agreed with Martha Stewart … Welcome to today’s three thoughts that make up Vol. 951 of The Daily Dirt.

1. Those parents who have a baby due in the near future and are contemplating potential names, there are some restrictions, depending on where you live.

First of all, there are no apparent rules involving baby names in Illinois, Missouri or Iowa, but around the nation there are some definite ground rules. Here’s a sampling:

• You can’t name your child an obscenity in Louisiana. 
• Special characters, such as asterisks, are banned in Idaho.
• Kansas does permit the use of symbols.
• Alaska’s state’s computer system handles umlauts, tildes and many other (but not all) foreign characters, so just about anything is legal, including Chloë and Beyoncé.
• In Arizona, there’s a 141-character limit — 45 for the first name, 45 for middle, 45 for last and 6 for a suffix. Apostrophes, hyphens, periods and spaces are OK.
• In Arkansas, Baby, Babyboy, Babygirl, Baby Boy, Baby Girl, Infant, Test, Unk and Void are invalid.
• In California, only the 26 characters of the English alphabet are allowed, which rules out umlauts and others. Pictographs such as smiley faces or ideograms such as a “thumbs-up” sign are specifically banned.
• Want to name your baby K8? In South Carolina, you can. Numbers and symbols (think: M!ke) are both allowed.
• Colorado has no limit on the length of a name, but you need to be able to spell it using a standard keyboard, so no graphic symbols or foreign characters.
• Each name — first, middle and last — is limited to 50 letters each in Minnesota.
• Numbers, symbols and obscenities are prohibited in New Jersey.
• Male and Female are banned names in new Mexico.
• Vermont says, “You may use trademarked names (IBM), diseases (Anthrax), and obscenities, but we highly recommend against it.”
• When one Wisconsin mom wanted to name her child a numeral, the state required that the number be spelled out.

2. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys, unless they are in Dallas because Dak Prescott is about to get PAID.

Yes, have them be NFL quarterbacks instead. Here are the five highest-paid quarterbacks for the coming season:

• 1. Joe Burrow, Cincinnati: $55 million.
• 2. Jared Goff, Detroit: $53 million. (He just signed this new deal earlier in the week.)
• 3. Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers: $52.5 million.
• 4. Lamar Jackson, Baltimore: $52.5 million.
• 5. Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia: $51 million.

3. Did you know (Part 16) …

• That Martha Stewart stopped dating Anthony Hopkins after seeing his performance in “Silence of the Lambs”. She could not separate Hopkins from the infamous character, Hannibal Lecter.
• That most Koreans have no need to use deodorant because they do not possess the gene that produces body odor.
• That there are 1,665 steps from the bottom to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
• That the earthy smell that comes from the rain is called “petrichor”.
• That a cockroach can live for weeks, even after having its head cut off.
• That a group of parrots is called a “pandemonium”. 

Steve Thought O’ The Day — According to studies (because I certainly have never tracked this), your average cow will relieve itself up to 15 times a day, producing as much as 115 pounds of manure. What a bunch of crap.

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. You can smell rain if you’re not near all of that cow poop.