Monday, March 16, 2026

'That Which We Call A Rose'


There has been some difficulty in the pronunciation of the first name of the new Ayatollah of Iran.  This is no small thing.  How would we all feel if people around the world consistently miss pronounced our President's names like Barack or Dwight or Lyndon or Franklin Delano?  The problem seems to lie in the spelling of Mojtaba.  Is the J silent?  Is it pronounced J and how?  This isn't English or Spanish.  

We will need to write about him from time to time, so why don't we just call him Mojito?  Mojito Khamenei.  Mojitos are fun.  Once we have a fun term everyone can use, we can avoid offending.  Something we try very hard to do, not offend, that is.  Oh yes Mojitos are a rum based drink that came from Cuba originally and they are quite tasty and depending on who makes them, can be quite potent.

And yes there a other problems with Mojito Khamenei.  He might be in a coma.  He might have lost a leg.  He might need a lot of plastic surgery for his face.  But the biggest problem is, he might not be around too long.  Who will be next?

And we hate to feel dumb.  But we don't pretend to be experts, so well, we can be dumb.  But we don't think anyone here, has ever heard of Kharg Island before.  Have you?  Seems that 90 percent of all of Iran's oil goes through this heretofore never mentioned island but now on the lips of every expert, as it got bombed.  How come no one has mentioned it before?  We don't mean Gamers who have been attacking this island for a few decades on their screens, but the Cognoscenti Of The Known World and the Talking Heads, especially the military experts among them.  Maybe dumb, is a thing that's going around and we shouldn't feel too bad about it.

We get why the Secretary of War and our own Head of the Joint Chiefs wouldn't mention it.  As why alert anyone to potential targets?

And oh yeah how do you pronounce Kharg?  Sounds like "Car egg" maybe.  Maybe we should just call it Rose island.  That way we can link this article back to the title.

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Title "That which we call a rose by any other name, would still smell as sweet."  Juliet to Romeo.  William Shakespeare.