Once I had coped with the fact that my random babbles is lost forever, I managed to amuse myself in a divine mission: looking up (virtual subdomain) names for new blog. One never thought it would be such tedious and hideous task.

It was so very trying and tiring. My first choice, quietude, was unavailable. I aimed for gobbledygook, gobbledeegook, gibberish, gneiss, bla bla bla, until I heard myself grumbling, “Dunderhead! it's just a name! Make up your mind and pick one!”

I stopped. I recalled a post in muslif mailing list, in which a junior voiced, “What if Al Qur'an had been revealed in non-Arabic speaking land? in Latin, maybe? Surely we might have called the Almighty-One ‘Deus’ instead of ‘Allah’. It's just a name.”

Of course, his post set off a blast. I personally appreciated his guts, though I strongly opposed his reasoning. His what-if extrapolation was more of a wishful thinking than a possibility. I was about to post something when someone suggested ignoring him for fear of engaging in endless debate. Apparently, this particular junior seemed to have been a regular "fire cracker" in the milis and have a knack of throwing remarks on subjects of much controversy.

What prompted me to respond was a reply from another junior (I am paraphrasing his paraphrasing Shakespearean wisecrack): “What's in a name but a string of characters.”

It is true and I knew he was joking. But we, of all people, should've known better that ‘words’ set computers (and life) in motion. We need them to understand ‘jump’ and ‘return’ and act accordingly. Moreover, arrays of characters, had they not been properly null-terminated (in C), might have set computer on suicidal mode.

The thought led me to null. I always have soft spot for it in aesthetic subtext, a healthy (hopefully) respect in conceptual level, and a good dose of fear in practical use (segmentation fault, core dumped, va-va-va-voum, anyone?). Pronunciation of null in Indonesian phonetic rules often makes me jump because at times I mistake it for second syllable of my name being called out. That was an annoying and effective means of dispelling sleepiness during lessons. Considering what it represents, both in personal and cosmic level, maybe null is not a bad name for a blog, ay?

However, it seems the notion that "there is nothing new under the sun" is well-grounded. Someone has already thought of null. The choices then expanded. At first, I thought of nullify but it's taken too, and so is null-terminated that I landed with null-terminator instead. Then I looked up nullify. Thanks to answer.com, I secured nullifies, annulere, and nulificare. Too bad annul, nullified weren't available. I thought of acquiring annihilation and its offshoot too, but they didn't sound politically friendly on second thought.

So, I now have eight blogs at hand (added chronomantique and two others, but that's another story). Why is there so many? During this quest for a blog, half of me was consumed with rage because of the loss (hence the annihilation freudian slip) and the trouble of obtaining blog names. The other half was screaming for revenge: get hold of vacant names as many as possible in return. Now as things cooled down, I think having eight blogs are indeed superfluous, maintaining them would be a pain.

Nonetheless, the damage has been done. Move on.

I hope this is not only going to be the babbles clone, that I can contribute something. Sharing life experiences, though simple mine may be, hopefully enriches one's own.