I don’t suppose I’ll ever find my name printed on anything in a souvenir shop. I don’t think I’m particularly bothered by this, as I don’t really purchase things from souvenir shops… but why is anyone with a generic name allowed to feel so much more special than me, when shopping for souvenirs?

I think if you’re in the business of printing names on low quality coffee mugs, shot glasses, t-shirts, fake license plates, or pretty much anything else, you should stop cutting corners and start manufacturing products with every name, known to man, printed on them. I’m not saying you have to print first and last names… as well as middle names, but… … actually that probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. If I found some shoddy merchandise with my whole name printed on it, I’d probably be inclined to purchase, or at least steal it. Come on, souvenir manufacturing people, where’s the business sense?

If I ever print people’s names on souvenirs, I’m going to go really obscure. I’ll print a person’s whole name… and maybe even a caricature, of how I’d imagine said person to look, on the merch. If you saw a sweatshirt with your name and a cartoon rendition of someone, who looked nothing like you, on it you’d probably buy it… and wear it around all the time… and get a spare to be buried in when you die… I know I would.

Do you ever walk down the street and hear someone call out your name, so you turn to them and respond, only to find that they were talking to someone else… and then you awkwardly pretend you were coughing or something… and walk away? Yeah that doesn’t happen to me all too often… but when it does happen it’s doubly-bad, cuz when someone calls out my name, I’m inclined to think that they’re probably talking to me. If you have a super obscure name, you’re probably not going to look like a tool too often, but when you do look like a tool, you really look like a tool; trade-offs.

I’ve come up with the perfect solution to this problem. I’m going to change my name to ‘;’ (that’s semi-colon). See if your name were ;, you’d probably never hear anyone calling your name out on the street, and if someone did, you could be pretty damn sure they were talking to you. An even cooler thing about being named ; is your name would pop up all over the place! It wouldn’t be as common as if you were named . but it would be common enough. I’d see my name, in print, far more often than I do now. When you see your name printed somewhere you’re likely to feel really good about yourself… cuz you’ve been included. You won’t really be sure how, or why, your name was used in the context that it was used in, but why be picky about recognition? They say any publicity is good publicity, so why complain? On the other hand, I suppose if your name happened to be ;, you’d be used a lot. Maybe you’d feel under appreciated… like people were just using you for your grammatical value instead of truly appreciating you for who you were… you know, on the inside. Sort of like models.

I never understood the whole “artist formerly known as Prince” thing. Like the guy came up with a symbol to represent the phrase artist formally known as Prince… is that what he would introduce himself as? If so, if someone printed the actual words “artist formerly known as Prince” on some souvenir stuff, would he buy it? Or would he be like… that’s not my name? It’s just a strange situation. If I ever met Prince (or whatever the hell you’d like to call him at this point) I’d refer to him as Circle-Trumpet-Cross-Arrow, and let him correct me if he wanted to be called something else. CTCA would be easier to say… I may call him that instead… that or dude. Dude is easy to say.

I think a cool name would be Bond… James Bond or Cygnus… Vismund Cygnus. Whenever you introduced yourself you’d get to feel like a super-cool secret agent… and then people would be like “Oh, pleased to meet you James” and you could be like… “It’s Bond… James Bond… get it right asshead!” and then the person would be confused and insulted… and you’d feel really awesome about yourself.

Recap:
The people in charge of producing souvenir shop products need to quit fucking around;
; is a better name than the one you have now;
Circle-Trumpet-Cross-Arrow needs to come up with a better name;
Bond… James Bond and Cygnus… Vismund Cygnus, are equally kick-ass names.

Tell your friends it’s Bond… James Bond, and then steal their automobiles and drive them off a cliff… cuz you can.

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