Most College Students Are Actually Bald

In my current place of employment, we’ve had some incidents regarding a patron who seems to have a strange fondness for emailing the FBI from our public terminal computers. And not just any emails to the FBI, mind you. These are amazingly misspelled and bizarre emails filled with so much intrigue and conspiracy that even most Sci-fi writers would find themselves giving a hearty “wtf?!” in response. While I would post these little gems of hilarity here, I’m pretty sure I would be fired for breach of confidentiality, so I’ll tell you only this: one of the emails involved stolen goods, suspicious packages, models from Brazil who ranged from about 175-180 cm tall, a gay and wannabe-stalker Eddie Murphy, and last but not least, the Russian mob.

Oh god, I’ve probably said too much already.

Needless to say, this whole thing was becoming a bit of a problem. He had begun to send emails alleging that several our staff members were anything and everything from counterfeiters to murderers at large (I work with a bunch of certified badass extremists, apparently. These librarians are a tricky bunch, that they are.). Our boss came by to let us know that we should keep an eye out for this individual, and to give us a general description to go by. And by general description, I really mean a useless description, but I thought that was too mean. He was described to us as being “clean shaven, fairly average build, African American, with a full head of hair.”

Ok.

Consider this: We are located on a college campus in one of the top 25 largest cities in the US. I have come to find that 60-75% of the people that come into our building have a “full head of hair”, and probably 40% of the people fit that exact description. I was confused as she walked away from us (“How the fuck is that supposed to help at all?”), but my coworker was kind enough to straighten me out.

“What she meant was, he has an…” and then she paused, before ominously mouthing, “…AFRO.”

So, to get this straight, because she was afraid to offend anyone, she managed to twist around the only helpful part of her description to be “…full head of hair”. Because she was afraid she was going to offend…the person who was turning us into the FBI, who we were attempting to find and BAN? And to think, due to this politically correct culture we’ve managed to cultivate, I would have completely missed him had he actually come in. I would have been too busy imagining a black version of Mel Gibson John Smith, with those plentiful blonde locks, and boyish good looks, whisking a certain [underage] Indian maiden off of her feet. (Apparently, some people say he actually looked like this, but I think they’re just jealous). At best, I might have been looking for an Aladdin, with his hair gently billowing around him from the breeze of the ceiling fan, whilst this other guy sat close by, reporting me for committing murder, terrorism, or worse yet, stealing a candy bar. It would have been a disaster.

So, I guess the lesson learned from all this (aside from my awkward love of Disney movies, and the fact that the lion king made me cry) is simply that sometimes an afro is just an afro, and talking around it isn’t that necessary. In fact it could be downright detrimental. If you’re going to give someone an accurate description of a person, just go ahead and spit it out. I’m pretty sure he knew he had an afro, and that he was not, in fact, John Smith. While I can understand people’s desire to avoid offending others, they often forget that other people are just like them, and will most likely be A-OKAY with a few non-PC remarks. Unless, you know, they’re anal retentive assholes, in which case you should take pleasure in pissing them off as much as possible.

So what I’m trying to say is this: let’s all relax, and chill out, ok?

Now excuse me while I go grab some jello, phone the mob, and kidnap a few more people to hack up and store in my freezer.

What’s in a Name?

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, the Teapot Army had to walk into mine. It took about five minutes, by the way, of identifying items within reach on my desk and stringing them with the most ridiculous combinations of nouns we could possibly muster before we managed to divine such a singularly spectacular name from the heavens above (enter: the gin). It was a tough call between “Teapot Army” and “Kinda dried-out whiteboard marker I should probably chuck out”, but we got there in the end.

So what’s in a name? Last week I was approached by a friend asking what he should call his new band. After reading me his shortlist (including a name I swear to god sounded like a furry adaptation of Starcraft and something to do with clams) he said to me “The name itself isn’t important; no matter how stupid it sounds, over time people will just associate it with what you do until you can’t imagine calling it anything else.”

Let’s review: The Beatles? Check. Wal-Mart? Check. (I mean wtf, really.) Coca-Cola? It’s named after one of the original ingredients; the leaves of the good old coca plant, providing us with sweet sweet cocaine since 1859. DOUBLE check. You’d want to hope the name’s not important in their case.

Another great example of the sheer ridiculousness of some of the names out there is the late “What Brand Are You?” website – a prank which automatically generated the stupidest company names the creators could think of – which backfired in 2003 when it was discovered people were actually registering the names they got from the site.

So, to haughtily answer my own title question: fucking nothing is in a name, my friends. So grab a cup of tea and get ready to kick back and read the least tea-related rants and reviews this side of your mum’s good china cabinet right here with the Teapot Army; a blog by any other name would smell as sweet. Just don’t inhale too much. You never know if there’s cocaine involved.