Somebody should have nominated Letters From Texas
The City of Austin asked citizens a simple enough question: help us rename the city's solid waste department. The department takes care of garbage, recycling, street sweeping, that sort of thing.
With a question that wide-open, you had to know that the "Keep Austin Weird" crowd would not disappoint. The overwhelming favorite at the moment is the Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts, with almost 26,000 votes.
Also getting significant votes at the moment are:
-- Department of Neat and Clean
-- Ministry of Filth
-- Longhorn Alumni Society
-- Austin Department of Are You Gonna Eat that?
Also included in the options seeing heavy voting is "The Colbert Solid Waste Department," an obvious reference to when NASA asked for public input when determining a name for a new node of the International Space Station. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert led a campaign to name it after him, and his name was a runaway favorite among those giving input.
Of course NASA ignored that public input and named their Space Station node "Tranquility" instead, and sadly, the City of Austin is likely to ignore the above suggestions on new names for their garbage department as well.
That said, one of the suggested names did catch my eye as being especially appropriate for an Austin garbage department. But I'm guessing the person who suggested "Texas A&M University" will ultimately be just as disappointed as Stephen Colbert's fans were.
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