Mostly Semantics

Forming a blog is the new forming a band. I’m utterly convinced that this is the case, and my experience starting this one backs it up. Actually, it should be known that “The Maestro” and I actually tried to start another blog last year and quit doing it almost immediately. I had a ska band in high school called “43 Man Squamish” that broke up without ever doing anything either - this is not coincidence.

It’s not just that most blogs falter before they even really begin. Blogs and bands are both usually started for mostly asinine reasons - they’re quasi-artistic ventures that enable people to display their affection for themselves in a public or semi-public space. Usually you either start them with your friends or you just start a solo career right off the bat. Sometimes a blog or band takes off, usually they do not. I think sometimes bloggers even “go solo”, though I may be hallucinating to prove my point (it’s not unheard of.)

The main similarity, though, and probably the biggest pain in the ass for both, is that you have to pick a name. Holy shit, did we spend a long time picking a name. In retrospect, I stand by the process, because honestly the name is pretty important. Choosing a ridiculous band name usually screws you, but if it’s the right kind of ridiculous you make millions and spend the rest of your life probably golfing or some shit. For posterity’s sake, I thought I might retrace the evolution of our blog name for our first post (already with the clever ideas, right? am I right?).

We should note to begin with that none of us liked the idea of doing a blogspot blog or anything else - we’re clearly people of high class and great substance, not just another string before the dot in a conglomerate. No, a unique assemblage of personalities required a unique domain name. We knew our blog was going to be self-absorbed (it’s practically redundant to state, but just note from the get-go we’re self-aware and -absorbed), but we figured we might also, generally, cover politics, (pop) culture, food, sports, and the things going on around us. I believe, some weeks after the proposal to begin what had heretofore only been referred to textually as ‘groupblog 2k7′ had been floated, the first iteration of the name that gained any currency was dcenester.com. The idea, see, is that we’re located in the Federal District of Columbia, and, um, we’re not scenesters. There was a fair amount of debate as to whether the name made this clear or not. My argument was that scenester is understood to be a pejorative term, and nobody would self-identify as such. Obviously anyone would understand that we were punning on the idea being de-scenesters, de- here meaning ‘do or make the opposite of’ or ‘remove or remove from’. Explaining this three or four times in a row did nothing to bolster my case. Alternate spelling schemes (descenester?) were proposed and roundly rejected.

At this time we also started to think about the all-important tagline. For you see, our name was already such that some explanation would be necessary. Initially we were contemplating tried-and-true self-deprecation - “dcist minus talent and work ethic” anybody? In that vein, another team member here (CV) promoted either “esquivalience” or “procrasturbation” (self-explanatory). These were accepted as being relatively indicative of the general philosophy of the blog, but more or less useless as tags. Troublingly, they were already registered as domains. To be fair, not all of us relished the idea of telling our friends our blog name was ‘ procrasturbation.com’. We cast our nets wide again. My pal JP, in a rapid-fire sequence, suggested “conversation posse” (we’re hunting you down, conversation!), “conversation all-stars” (the fans vote, and they don’t know anything), “Masters of the Converse” (so many jokes I don’t know where to begin), “Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog” (obviously hilarious but more than a bit derivative), “Captain’s Loggers” (taking dumps on Ed Morrissey? I dunno), and finally, “Noblesse Oblog” (which does kind of make me snicker.) Additionally offered was “Navel Observatory” - which is really a pretty awesome name for a DC blog, particularly one that acknowledges up front its self-absorption. Somebody might want to steal that one.

CV suggested “Tweedy Impertinence” - a line from Lester Freamon in the Wire. Certainly a worthy reference, and not a bad descriptor for what we surmise will be our style (who knows, right?) - but c’mon. Are we British? Only CV, and only in pretend-world. Our search for some significant signifier was so wide at this point I honestly considered ” esoterotica.com” (taken, btw) - because goddamned if the obscure wasn’t turning me on a bit by then. That was when we started thinking about sneaky blog names. Y’know, like del.icio.us. Some way to sneak in a real domain without using .com, since they’re ALL TAKEN (hey, like band names!). We started thinking about all the available country domains. Eventually we figured out that there was a site already built to search for potential “domain hacks”. Oh my, did we have fun with that. digforfi.re (my favorite Pixies song - nixed by the others) - shoutout to the homeboys on Reunion, though. Estonia (lovely place) gave us squar.es or ohno.es. Sao Tome and Principe - pedera.st? dci.st? Turkey reincarnates an old fave - procrasturba.tr. And oh, sweet Libya! Final.ly! Ridiculous.ly! Essential.ly! I honestly read about the domain registration practices in a good half-dozen bizarre countries. For the record, Cook Islands lets you register things at co.ck, which is obviously a recipe for hilarity (not lost on British sitcom writers). But, well, most of them are very expensive or just impossible to actually register as some jackass with no real business on the internet living in *ahem* the land of the free.

One that was not was .tk. The good people of Tokelau, all 1392 of them, give their domains away for nothing. You can get them for the price of a .com (cheap!). And though “tk” is not a very common construction in English (particularly at the end of words), it IS proofreader/editor shorthand for “to come.” Not in an ejaculatory way, dirty, but as in if I knew I wanted a picture of a ridiculously cute animal here but didn’t know what yet, I might just write “picture tk” - and we could all skip over it, knowing it would follow. Apparently you can find “quote tk” in newspaper articles sometimes, where reporters/editors have just accidentally left it in (evidence of this phenomenon tk, haha!). We considered title.tk, which happens to be the name of the final breeders album (the Deals get off on editing jokes, too!) but (cue the refrain) it was taken! I think at this point we were stymied for days. Dcenester was still the best name, or maybe tweedy impertinence at this point, but the point was we didn’t really like any of them. Then, somehow, I came up with trope.tk and it stuck. “WTF is that supposed to mean?”, you might ask. Fair question. “Trope” works (to my liking) in two ways here - firstly, a trope is a figure of speech or a play on words - so here meaning that we can’t come up with our bon mots, but y’know, we will (which obviously we wouldn’t.) But then there’s this OTHER meaning of trope that’s more highbrow and ridiculous. Seriously, we were going to go with a play on words relating to (what I assume is) an obscure bit of the philosophy of history. Somehow, I convinced the others of this. I am not lying about this, we were really going with trope.tk. I remember it well, we were all very satisfied just to have a name picked. The four of us (”The Maestro” - whose house it is, too, “Caseus Velox”, “Vermonstrous” and myself) were at the house, feeling relieved to have a blog, and a dispute (as often happens with us) about something inane and meaningless arose. After debating the matter (the specific subject is lost, at least to my memory) for far too long, I chimed in with “oooh, good blog tagline: ‘mostly semantics.’” After a hearty chuckle, we all looked at each other as if to say “hey wait a goddamned minute - that’s kind of perfect! - is it taken?!!?!?” It was not taken.

Well, it is now.

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