The Displeasing Component

I was revising my links list (to your right) earlier today, and I got to thinking: I wonder if anyone has my blog linked on their website. I know Virgil and Batmite do, but I wondered if someone anonymous fan out there in the world put me in a list of favorite sites. So I Googled "The Undesirable Element" hoping to find some fans.

There was a surprisingly high number of results. There were several environmental websites about pollutants and contaminants as I expected, and I also found several disturbing sites that seemed to refer to undefined minority populations as "undesirable elements." It's nice to know that my blog bears the namesake of verbose racists with a penchant for euphemisms. But I also discovered the following excerpt:

"Muhammed Sule, author of The Undesirable Element, died in his sleep, Monday morning, 12th Feb. 2007. Not many people, even within the literary circle, knew him as a person."

The headline gave me pause. I didn't recall dying in my sleep last February. I know my life's been dull in the last year or so, but I thought I still qualified as, at the very least, "un-dead." However, the thing about dwelling in obscurity among the literary circle despite my dazzling prose and unbridled wit certainly seemed valid. And I don't remember being a large black guy wearing a powder-blue robe and kofia...

Though I'd probably look pretty fly in a kofia.

It turns out that The Undesirable Element is a relatively obscure book from a Nigerian author. I don't have a clue what the book is about, but the cover intrigues me. You've got a pleasant-looking woman standing next to a very disgruntled man smoking a cigar and what may or may not be a 70s pimp with an afro peering around the corner. This guy wrote his book when he was in high school, which means he has dibs on the title. As I said in my last post, I have a knack for plagiarizing even if it's unintentional, so it seems fitting that my title isn't original either.

The title for this blog can probably be traced back to my high school days as well. Back in my freshman year, when the net was in its infancy, I was in a chatroom. Remember those? Has anyone actually been in a chatroom in the last five years? Aren't you just dying to be asked "a/s/l?" by some random slob named "PussyLover69"? Damn, my internet handle was lame. But in any case, I was chatting with some kid from school (I still remember who, but I haven't even seen the guy in six years, so I'll leave him anonymous), and his screen handle was "The Undesirable Element." I rather enjoyed the name, so I stole it from him. No matter how you slice it, the name either comes from a dead Nigerian or a kid in Kittanning.

I used the name for those times when I wanted to be anonymous on online message forums... typically if the topic was something outrageously nerdy and pathetic. If I was in the mood to vehemently defend "The Squire of Gothos" episode of Star Trek or engage in a lengthy discussion on the probable spatial area of Klingon territory, then I would likely use "The Undesirable Element" as my online name.

When the time came to name this blog, I really liked "The Undesirable Element." It made me sound like some sort of internet maverick. "Look out!! He's an undesirable element. He's DANGEROUS!" That's right, bitches! The Undesirable Element don't take shit from no one!! Double negatives be damned!

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Mohammed Sule's Estate: Planning to sue JP for copyright infringement and take him for all he's worth. JP gets the last laugh when they discover that he has no money and owns nothing of value.