melinda

This is Melinda:



Melinda is my Gibson Les Paul Studio. I just switched out the pickups to the EMG KFK pickups shown in the picture. I have a few different guitars (and should sell at least one), and Melinda is, by far, my favorite of the lot.

Where did I get the name for my guitar? Simple:



Opeth, a Swedish metal band, is one of my favorite groups, and the color of my guitar is similar to the color of the cover for their album, "Still Life". "Still Life" is a love story that focuses on a woman named Melinda.

I love to give nicknames to things and people around me. One of my other guitars is named Tricia. I've given my wife dozens of nicknames--I usually only call her Becca if other people are around. My previous car, the Acura TL, was "Tara the TL"--so named because of the female voice that provides directions in the GPS. My new car has a male voice (which really bugs me), so I've decided to call him Bob. I have a GPS program for my computer (very handy on trips, by the way), and I call that one Gigi.

I typically only give nicknames to people and things that I like. I think I got this habit from my dad--he had a lot of nicknames for my mom when I was growing up, and probably still does. Sometimes there are stories behind the nicknames, as in the car of Melinda, and sometimes it's just a function of alliteration (e.g., Tara the TL and Gigi the GPS) or some other linguistic property. Many of the nicknames I've given Becca over the years have been altered based on linguistic rules I've learned from studying other languages. For example, Korean has no "f" sound, so loanwords from other languages often get a "p" sound where there should be an "f". I've used this rule to create variants of nicknames I've given Becca.

I'm such a nerd.