Shitty Inheritances

My last name's Bentley. This means I get asked a lot if I'm "one of those Bentleys". Including when I'm at a Toyota dealership buying a Prius. Look, if I was one of those Bentleys, I'd save gas by converting my car to burn 100-dollar bills. But the point is, I'd love to be "one of those Bentleys."

So it kinda makes me feel for people with last names whose association is not of Old and Nouveau Riche, commuting together. But what about the Alzheimers' reunion at Disneyland? They can't get shirts. And if you thought, like I did, that the reason for their not getting shirts was not the fear of askance glances but because no one would remember to pick them up, you're going to hell too. But, hey, those names got their fear through study and effort, and that is to be admired.

It's the Shrapnels who bear the original sin of their progenitor. Lieutenant Henry Shrapnel devised a way to kill people that would be unsurpassed for 100 years. And so he became famous. But not in the, y'know, good way.

For the solution to this problem, which Harry could hardly have foreseen, we must turn to that great compendium of knowledge and sage advice: Professional Sports. Selling naming rights on his new invention would have yielded riches enough for him to endow a prize better than Alfred Nobel's. And he could have made more than mere stadia because everyone can agree on a negative. To wit: only GM would want to name a new pleasurable experience the, e.g., GM Orgasm. But every car company in the world that isn't Honda could agree to call a new munition the "Honda Accord Instrument of Death and Sadness."