The Larval Stage

Blue Maggot Towel (BMT) was originally a name in search of a purpose. The name itself came from an incident in 1998, when the two founders, Kevin and Joselito, were roommates in a neighborhood that allowed them the luxury of labeling themselves urban pioneers. Though the apartment was never dirty or squalid, it would occasionally suffer from a lack of tidiness, a forgivable trait given the fact that

* they were both in college
* they were both guys in college

One day Joselito (Hose is what we all call him - a whole story unto itself) noticed a blue dishrag had fallen onto the kitchen floor. According to him he didn't bother picking it up since it wasn't his, and the rest of the kitchen was clean. Impeccable logic. Kevin never commented on it.

A good week must have passed before the rag surfaced above his subconscious; he asked Kevin to throw it into his laundry. Kevin agreed, but as he approached to pick it up he let out a small yell of disgust; pulling back a section of the wrinkled rag revealed a few maggots writhing and burrowing throughout the small towel.

Seems an errant pregnant fly must have mistaken the towel for larvae-nourishing meat, or she was in the final throes of holding back a barrage of eggs and figured that her babies could find something to eat amongst the terrycloth. Maybe she wanted to build a sect of super-flies, and figured she could weed out the weak by making them struggle for any tiny morsel they could locate... or maybe she hoped they would fight each other to the death, at which point cannibalism would enter the picture.

Who knows.

Kevin managed to get the rag into a plastic bag and out to a trash can in the alley. When he came back, no doubt annoyed that while performing maggot disposal duty Hose just stood and laughed, he mumbled something about a 'damn blue maggot towel.' In the deep recesses of Hose's mind something clicked (or snapped?), and he proclaimed that Blue Maggot Towel would make a spectacular name.

"Name for… ?" is what we're sure Kevin asked.

"The name of our writing company, of course," Hose responded. As a pair of budding writers, a formalized writing company would have given them the excuse they needed to rent out a loft in a dilapidated building in a low rent corner of Chicago and fill it with romanticized objects; a thrift store desk, crowned with an ancient Underwood procured from eBay would be ideal. The best part, however, would be the ability to put a terrible name on their business cards.

Immediately following what is now coined The Blue Maggot Towel Incident of 1998, they registered the domain name.