On the subject of silly nicknames

by Smitty

Commenter 'Random' inquires concerning the whole Porch Manqué schtick.

First, I'll point you to Wikipedia, which discusses the term.

There used to be a bit on that page saying that Robbie Williams had been alluding to "manqué" on the track "Me and My Monkey" off of Escapeology.

This cut is a silly, over-the-top shaggy dog story. Note that it ends with an F-bomb at ~7:20. Other than that, it's a hoot, and worth watching in the HQ mode for better audio:

By putting "porch" in front of "manqué", we get a distinct handle. When first invited to be Vice Deputy Assistant Under-Secretary to the Spitoon Wrangler on this blog, I wanted to have a term to explain the relationship between Stacy and me. If I completely tubed a post, that was because I was an embarrassment; a failure.

The term "porch" allows all sorts of (hopefully comic) allusions to toiling away in abject squalor.

There is also the bit that the term veers quite close to a racial slur. Having served several years in the military, I'm about as un-racially biased as anyone. To the extent that every time I use it, I can play the Alinsky Rule #5 card and mock the ignorance of racism, it's a good thing.

Of course, every time you use the symbol, you exhaust a bit of its meaning. One day, Porch Manqué Productions may collapse into PMP. Nature of the symbolic beast, really.