Talk:Chilton Company

Identity theft

The year is 1900. Four brothers meet, to sit around a table in their newly reorganized book publishing plant in Pennsylvania. The eldest brother, Edward, is in charge of the meeting and Stephen, James, and John CHILTON have no problem deferring to him.

"Okay," says Edward Chilton, "we need a name for our publishing company. Are there any ideas? My own preference is for Excelsior Printing, because excelsior is the Latin term for Higher or Upwards, in terms of human achievement. It is the state motto of New York."

"This may sound strange," Stephen said, "but what I think we should do is 1) obtain old manifests of ship's passengers immigrating from Europe, 2) examine their last names, and 3) choose a name from among them. Actually, in preparation for this meeting, I looked through the a manifest of 1846 arriving ship Der Bremen. On the ship was a man with the interesting name of Herman Dingleblatz. I move that we name our publishing company The Dingleblatz Press."

"Hold it right there," spoke James Chilton. "We are overlooking the option of fanning out in eighteenth century cemeteries and writing down interesting names we find on gravestones. Last Sunday I was in such a cemetery and I saw the English name Nigel Cowperthwaite. I hope to convince you it is a good idea to call our publishing company Cowperthwaite & Sons.

"We don't have any sons," John piped. "I will mention that twice a year some guy comes to my house to tune our piano. His name is Oliver Musselmann. I think a good name for our company would be Musselman Books. It's a simple matter of stealing his forebear's name."

"Musselman Cowperthwaite has an interesting ring to it," Edward agreed, "but we should review our meeting of last week where we rejected the ideas of: Chilton Printing Co., Chilton Publishing Co., & Chilton Book Co. Who would like to summarize that?"

"I'll start," said Stephen.

"For hundreds of years, morons and dyslexics have stared at the letter sequence C-H-I-L-T-O-N and confidently spoken aloud SHELL-TUN (Shelton). The reverse condition is not true, and this is partially diagnostic.

"Although 17th century British immigrants named Chilton and Shelton arrived in roughly equal numbers, by 1800 Sheltons out-bred Chiltons four to one. Today, 100 years later, Sheltons outnumber Chiltons at least eight to one. For what it's worth, black Sheltons outnumber black Chiltons about fifty to one. Anyway, this disparity has led to the claim by some Sheltons that Chiltons are Sheltons too stupid to spell their own name correctly."

"A good question for them, " James spoke, " is what shursh they attend on Sundays to worship God, also whether they go to zoos to look at shimpanzees."

"What we suspect," John said, "is that a book company named Chilton would not becalled Shelton Books, because it would succeed in being called - by many people - Shilton Books.

"Why?" someone asked.

"Laziness," replied John. Occasionally in life we are issued a chit, a small coupon for something. But each day we take a shit. To enunciate chit requires tensing more oral musculature, and more physical effort than to enunciate shit. Using a stop watch, compare how long it takes one to say chit and shit 500 times in succession. During 500 repetitions of chit, fatigue will occurr and out will pop the sound but not the word shit. Chiltons and Sheltons would probably take the same time to speak 500 repetitions of the word church."

"Well, the time for this meeting is up," said Edward. "I seriously feel that, if we are not going to use our own name in the identity of our publishing company - ethics dictate that we do not usurp the name of any other PERSON. We should choose the name of an object or condition. Back to work, everybody."

This comment composed by Edward Morgan Chilton.