Would a dick by any other name smell as sweet?

Look: post number two. I have started a blog. I wasn't lying. Lucky you.

So today kids I have a treat for you all from the dense archives of my writing library. This bad boy was written at the time of the trial of Gary Dobson and David Norris, who were convicted of murdering Stephen Lawrence. Don't worry, I didn't write anything intellectually relevant. With this one I felt like I really got the ratio of dick jokes to slander spot on. There's sort of a base layer of slander with dick jokes peppered intermittently throughout. So, who loves insensitive, retrospective and irrelevant articles about people you probably haven't heard of? You love insensitive, retrospective and irrelevant articles about people you probably haven't heard of.

And if you are wondering if every post will start with an angsty, self-referential introduction, then yes. You are catching on quickly. Ahem, here you go:

Being terribly self-involved I tend to remain completely oblivious to all world affairs, however a while ago I watched the news on television (I know wait it gets better) and I watched a story about the Stephen Lawrence murderers being convicted. What caught my attention was not the historic case of an unsolved murder finally coming to an end, but the fact that the Acting Deputy Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police is called Cressida Dick. Seriously, Cressida Dick. Why is this not a news story in itself? The question we need to be asking is not “why has such an atrocious murder case taken eighteen years to solve?” but “how can a woman with such a life-cripplingly awful name reach such a highly esteemed position in society?” How do we ever hope to progress as a nation if we refuse to answer these big, hard questions?

One would think she was doomed from the start, I mean, what was going through her parents heads when they thought of that one? I mean, I'm assuming the surname Dick was inherited and they didn't pick that one for themselves, so they didn't have much to work with. But Cressida? Did they think, “hey, I'm worried that people won't take my daughter seriously because her surname is a phallic euphemism, so I better give her a nice, respectable first name to work with, yeah something normal, you know, like Cressida.” Or perhaps they thought “well, our daughter needs to be called something sophisticated to make up for the vulgarity of her throbbing surname, and what's more sophisticated than a classical reference? Nothing, that's what. We're calling her Cressida and sending her to Oxford.” I mean, why are people always saying her name with a straight face like those are perfectly reasonable words to name one's child with?

And while I was thinking such thoughts about how stupid her parents are, smiling smugly to myself, it suddenly struck me, what if Cressida Dick's long-running success is a result of her ludicrous name, not in spite of it? What if the person that decided on the name Cressida Dick is actually a genius, and they are laughing at me as I think? What I am proposing is something I like to call the 'Boy Named Sue' hypothesis. It comes from the Johnny Cash song about a man who called his son Sue before he abandoned him. Because of his name, Sue was bullied at school, until he learned to stand up for himself and became hardened to the ways of the world, and learned how to be strong. Sue then found his father at a bar and beat the shit out of him, asking why the hell he gave him such a humiliating name, and his father replied that he did it deliberately, because it was the only way he could be sure that Sue would become hard as fuck. I think the same can be applied for Cressida Dick. I mean, she must have had a hard time at school with that name, (she went to private schools in Oxford, they blatantly got the classical reference) and because of this she too learned to be strong, and has gained the determination and independence to reach such a high place in our police force. Don't get me wrong, choosing such a strategy when naming your child is a massive risk, but Cressida Dick's parents are obviously the gambling kind. That or they are actually insane. According to Bruce Feirstein, the distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success, so we have to hand it to her parents; they had a vision and they went for it. Some people may have thought they were crazy, but where are they now? They're sitting at home with their normal names doing normal things and wishing they had listened to Mr. and Mrs. Dick.

Either way we can all learn a fine example from Cressida Dick's remarkably intelligent parents: stupid names will get your children far in life. It teaches them to deal with adversity and to rise to challenges. It's hard on them but it will pay off in the end. I am personally going to do my civic duty and name my first born (irrespective of gender) Troilus Wankstain in the hope that he will one day go on to find a cure for cancer. For the good of our country I urge you all to do the same.