\m/

I think it's a good idea to only name children after dead people, because even if some people may have sprinkled our world with art or justice or sport or mercy or innovation, you just never know what people might end up doing (do you want your name to be Orenthal James? Richard Milhous? Richard Cheney?) Our son is named after a guy who "drowned in a massive amount of red wine," but even so, I always had other tribute names swimming around my head, like Daniel Day-W. or Charles Nelson Wenzley (the original Charles Nelson Reilly died just 10 days after Jimmy was born, shucks!) but I had to shy away from the names due to that nagging what-if-they’re-homicidal-pedophiles thing.

Today one of my “Someday But Let’s Face It Probably Not Ever” baby names sadly became available. Ronnie James Dio died at 7:45am, presumably finally finding out if that theory about aliens authoring the Bible is true, and leaving behind a glorious library of music, lyrics, hand gestures, performances, and a respectable name for some little boy, somewhere.

We're a ship without a storm

The cold without the warm

Light inside the darkness that it needs, yeah

We're a laugh without a tear

The hope without the fear

We are coming - home

RIP Ronnie James Dio

July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010