What's In A Name?

So people are wondering why they hear my name pronounced two different ways in the media. Sometimes they hear "ball-silly" and sometimes they hear "balls-ly" and they want to know which is right. Well, here is the scoop. My stupid parents and all my relatives and everyone I grew up with and went to school with pronounces it "ball-silly", which is obviously wrong. Myself and my PR team pronounce it "balls-ly" which is, of course, correct.

Now, I don't want to seem high and mighty here. The fact is that I also used to pronounce it wrong. I said "ball-silly" until last year when I hired an image consultant to find out why some people don't seem to realize how awesome I am.

"Why," I asked, "do some people refuse to realize how awesome I am?"

"Everyone hates you," the consultant replied, "because your head is shaped like a giant penis, and you are an arrogant know-nothing fuck. Also, "ball-silly" is a really stupid name."

Okay. You don't get to be a super-powerful business dude like me without being able to cut the wheat from the chaff. I immediately disregarded the first two items as unimportant and/or wrong, and concentrated on the obvious meat of the matter, the pronunciation of my name. I hired in a squad of interns from the marketing department at the university and we brainstormed for a few weeks and came up with "balls-ly" instead.

The problem, of course, is that being a public figure meant that the old and incorrect pronunciation of my name was already entrenched in the media. Getting it changed has been a real chore, but also turned out to be a great auditing tool for me. Now I just have to listen to the TV or radio for a couple of minutes to find out of a particular reporter is on my payroll or not. If you hear some talking head on the tube or some loudmouth on the radio refer to me as "balls-ly" then you know that they are on the take and will say anything that my PR staff tell them to say, all in return for a couple of free Blackberries and a "Make It Seven" t-shirt. But if you hear some reporter say "ball-silly" then you know they won't take my "incentives" and are therefore nothing more than a lying sack of shit and you shouldn't believe anything they say.