What's In a Name? More Than I Wanted to Know.

While pondering the greater mysteries of life, such as why am I here wasting my time writing a blog no one reads, I stumbled upon the fact that the acronym NMFP is being used for a vast array of other projects and purposes unrelated to my own. Tossing NMFP wantonly into a search engine will bring uup things like the rather obtusely named Nebraska's Money Follows the Person project, which really is a bit of unfair shoehorning on their part. Just go with NMFTPP or, better yet, how about rethinking that name all together? Sounds like code words for secret agents in some cheesy Cold War spy thriller:

"How is the lobster in Vienna?"
"Nebraska's money follows the person"
"It's a fine day for pontooning."

And then cyanide capsules and microfilm all around.

Then there's the ubiquitous Facebook page for something called Team NMFP, which as far as I can tell is some kind of group for office drones to empty their impotent anger at a life gone sour into, much in the same way one would empty a mouthful of chewing tobacco into a spittoon. Some clever wag will no doubt draw a comparison between my blog and their spittoon of beige rage (raige) but I say to you, we are nothing alike. They have an extravagant 142 member while I am sporting a modest 2.
I also found this lovingly uncurated website which gives you a whole 30 definitions of the NMFP acronym, 10 of which are grammatical variations of themselves. What really stands out for me would be the curious inclusion of New Mexico Film Please and Neutrino Mean Free Path and yet nary a mention of Nipples Made From Plastic. While I'm sure begging the state of New Mexico for film is a very valid and noble calling, we should never be so blind as to forget the plight of those who, but by the grace of modern science and the the petro-chemical conglomerates, would face each new day cruelly devoid of chest mounted fleshy bits.

We will never forget.

This blog finally makes an appearance 41 hits into the search, with a Hipsterpedia entry, reminding me that I have, yet again broken a promise I made, like that deadbeat father in Angels in the Outfield. Maybe Christopher Lloyd will ghostwrite one for me.

After he gets done watching Danny Glover and Tony Danza eat small children.

But what is in a name? In the first issue of his seminal underground comic, American Splendor, Harvey Pekar relates how he once looked up his own name in the phone book (the 60's version of googling yourself) and was surprised to find that he shared that name with several other people. While my name is unique enough that I don't have to share, this last time I googled myself (as I am wont to do most mornings, nights and shower times) I discovered a rather sad list of things attached to my name. Since no one is reading this blog currently, I feel quite comfortable outing my pathetic internet legacy for my own amusement and perhaps the amusement of anyone who accidentally stumbles across this blog while looking for the Person Nebraska's Money was Following.
All of five hits come up on an exact search of my name, two of which are people locating services with outdated information on my whereabouts, phone number and even age. I would think that these kinds of sites would keep their info up to date, seeing as how they're selling it to anyone who wants to know. Then again, I find it rather comforting that the only thing some stranger who is trying to find me will get for their one-time purchase of $8.99 is a snootful of inaccuracies. I'm not paranoid or anything, but if you don't know where I am or how to contact me, odds are that there is a very good reason for that. That's right, Faith Bible Christian School Class of 2001 10-Year Reunion Committee. I'm talking to you.
Another unsolicited appearance of my name pops up on hot-people.info. At first I was pleased that my natural state of hotness was being given the proper spotlight it has so richly deserved all these years. I was quickly disabused of this opinion upon scrolling down to the bottom of the page where I was informed (in a font that says, "I never knew I could change fonts until this morning!") that it is in fact a list of people who live in close proximity to "hot" toxic waste dumps. I lived in Texas for three years and all I got was my name on this list of people who can probably expect to undergo chemotherapy in the future.
The next search result was something that had lain dormant in my memory for many, many years, the sight of which caused me to violently blush and void my bowels even though no one else was in the room. Once upon a time, when I was but a geekling, I submitted my name to an organization called the Nitpickers Guild. The guild, which is run by this goober, is dedicated to, I shit you not, finding and publishing plot holes and continuity errors in Star Trek and X-Files episodes.
And I found one.
Is a joke even necessary here? I think the whole premise of the Nitpickers Guild and my involvement with it is such big circular train of uninterrupted virginity and stolen lunch money that we can just let it sit there, sweaty and pasty in the light of day, without actually having to poke at it with any further remarks.

Not me, but you'd be justified in thinking it was.

Ah, and then the Pièce de résistance (means "death of dignity" in Aramaic or something). The Friendster account that was never closed. Do you have one of these things? Dear god, it is the most excruciatingly painful reminder of how cool you thought you were at a time before hanging out in bars was a legal option. The stupid jokes. The bad pictures. The "friends" you'll never see again. It's actually shocking to me that someone is actually still paying for the server space necessary to keep the ghost town of spammers and porn-bots up and running. Even more shocking? People are still using the damn thing! At least two of the "friends" on my account have been active in the last year. That's almost more traffic than this goddamn waste of time blog is getting. Once upon a time, Friendster (or MySpace's MySpace) was the hottest thing on the internet. It was the progenitor of all the social networking sites that currently rule the cyberscape. Now it's the internet equivalent of running into your best friend from 8th grade who's now selling PCP-laced weed under and overpass in Spokane, Washington.
Let that be a lesson to us all. Today we are hot shit. Tomorrow we are toxic sewage.