I Need a Name Change

This is not The Greatest Song in the World, no
This is just a tribute
Couldn't remember The Greatest Song in the World, no, no
This is a tribute

Tenacious D
"Tribute"
Tenacious D (2002)

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my blog needs a new name. Despite the fact that a curiousity of my parents' naming decision left me as Larry William Swank, often confused with my father and as his junior, without the dignity and sophistication of being Larry Adrian Swank, Junior, I've always found my name to suit me quite well. I appreciate being Larry, ala Larry Joe Bird, rather than being a Lawrence, as everyone automatically assumes, and for the most part, I like my name. It's me.

The blog here, however, needs a new name. For those of you who may have been wondering, I Lead Seven Tiny Bats isn't just a non-sequitur I pulled out of nowhere to be my blog's name, despite how Larryesque an act that might have been. Had I been pulling non-sequiturs, Toast Leavings Diorama would have been the clear winner.

No, I Lead Seven Tiny Bats is a name with history, at least with me. The story is long, and it is in surround sound, so I'll try to keep it as brief as possible for the purposes of this post. In a first-year composition class at Indiana State University, I ended up writing a paper - and for the life of me, I can't remember the purpose of the assignment - that served as a treatise against the holiday Valentine's Day, and was titled in the same fashion as this blog. "I lead seven tiny bats" is an anagram for "Valentine's Day bites."

This paper was, unequivocally, the greatest thing I will ever write. It was funny, it was the penultimate example of my dry, snarky brand of written humor, and it got my reasonably-attractive teacher's assistant who was in charge of our class to hit on me. I will never surpass this writing achievement, which I believe in large part is why I've stopped writing as a regular practice, despite my love for the activity. I'm done; there's nothing left for me to accomplish, because my skill level won't let me do anything better than that paper.

There are two problems with leaving that as the name of my blog, though. First off, the paper no longer exists. I don't save things, you see, and the people who love me who do save things either never saw the paper, didn't know me when I wrote it, or have - uncharacteristically - also lost track of it. This leaves me with no proof to the greatness of this paper.

As a brief aside, I think this adds to its mystique, too, because there's no frame of reference for it except how people remember it. As people remember it fondly, it gets better and better in every telling. It's the written equivalent of William Wallace at this point, shooting bolts of lightning from its margins and balls of fire from its frayed, worn edges. I digress ...

Secondly, I wrote that when I was a lonely, sullen kind of kid. Today I'm a happily married family man that just so happened to have his first date with his eventual wife on Valentine's Day. Needless to say, my opinion of the holiday has changed somewhat since the writing of that composition in 1995. Sweetest's Day is another issue entirely, of course, but that's outside of the scope of this writing.

So, I am left to ponder a name change. I'd like something meaningful and significant, but I can go with a non-sequitur if necessary. Yak Malarkey Theater is sounding awfully tempting right about now. Suggestions are welcome via comments!