Earlier this month, Newsweek published a rather controversial and thought-provoking edition gay marriage. I flipped through the pages over dinner one night…religious case for same-sex unions.

Yep. I’m feelin’ ya.

I’ve been wrangling with the Catholic Church’s position and mine for years. I’ve pretty much racked it up to “let’s agree to disagree” and it’s become one of those bones of contention that I pretty much ignore unless directly challenged by it (which is largely why my husband and I opted out of a ministry that was actively supporting California’s Prop 8).

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Seems like the Mominatrix is causing a bit of a stir with her movement to “Shave the Date” to honor President Bush’s exit from the White House. Those of you in the Detroit and Dallas areas can hear the Mominatrix talk about (B)ush on your local airwaves tomorrow, 12/9.

In Detroit, she’ll be on around 7:45 a.m. EST on WRIF 101.1 FM’s Mike in the Morning show talking to… Trudi Daniels. Maybe Mike is on vacation? Next up at 8:45 a.m., Mominatrix will be on the Billy Madison Show on Dallas’ 102.1 The Edge, so you know the interview will be “edgy”. And of course if you’re not in Detroit or Dallas each station has a link to listen online.

A lot of thought, or at least you’d hope. After all of the commotion over celebrity baby naming over the last few years, you’d think the “civilians” among us would learn from those “on high” and have some good sense in chosing the monikers for their offspring.

Michael Malone over at the New York Times apparently feels the same way, having gone through the agonizing process of picking “Charlotte” from more than 60,000 on the lists and books out there to help him decide.

We went through a similar process when naming our two. We have a rather challenging Polish last name, so we wanted to keep the first name somewhat simple and easy to spell. Our criteria also included:

No names of SUVs: Sorry Sierra, Dakota, Tahoe, etc. You belong in a garage, not a crib.
No brand names: Apple, Armani, or Chanel. I agree with these folks – As much as I love Steve jobs, there will be no product placement in the nursery please.
Avoid names of slutty or women of angst as captured in song. We’re big Cake fans, but this killed Jolene and Daria from our list. This also kills Roxanne.
No stripper names: Really, with toys like these on the market, do we really need to strap her to the tracks with “Chastity” or “Destiny”?

So, now that I’ve probably ticked off at least half of the people who read this, tell me. What are/were your criteria for picking a name?

Just a quick reminder that today is the last day to vote for our Alltop badge and give Kristen and I the bragging rights we so richly deserve. So if you could pretty please, if you have not already, head on over and vote for us (ours is the badge you see there on the right). Hell, even if you have before, you can vote again. If you do, we’ll crush on you for at least a day, maybe two.

Okay, I’m done with this kind of begging shit for a while, I swear.

ETA: We won! Thank you, we love you all.

OK, since we don’t bombard you with memes, lists, goofy contests and all that other bloggy shit, I’m going to unabashedly make an exception and post this because we want to win, dammit.

Here’s the deal — the lovely Mominatrix and I came up with a bunch of badges dripping with double entendres (I just did it again) for a contest to promote a new blog aggregate, Alltop. Well surprise, surprise, we must have tickled them in just the right spot because we’re amongst the 20 semi-finalists picked out of a brazillion entries for the badge you see to the right there.

And like I said, we want to absolutely crush the competition so if you could pretty please vote for us here (look for “Kristen”) we would greatly appreciate it.