It’s all surmisal, but I always blamed BMW for the fetish over the lower case “i”. Rod makers are nearly indistinguishable due to exponential numbers and consonants. “Herd Beasts” as first one, then all of them engage in the practice – not to be outdone.

I’m sure hundreds of slides and dozens of Powerpoint presentations (replete with dancing frogs) show unequivocally that naming a new Sage line, “Bludgeon” lacks the proper fit to the demographic of married women – older than 30, with 2 children, whose median family income was $150,000 and above.

We used to call them “yuppies” in the old days – anyone who gravitated to shiny mechanical objects containing a lower case “i” … BMW was the culprit – and I’m sure marketing genius’s have some telltale statistic proving well-to-do males consider it a pheromone.

If it was that compelling we would have rewritten sizing on women’s underwear, losing the “DD” and adding the “i” – but I don’t ply their craft, so I’m hot air…

I’m Old School, where poetry should rhyme and the letters should mean something. I’ve always been leery of the “Beamer” naming convention, as it’s too close to software versions, “Windows 7 is buggy as hell, but we’ll get it right in Windows 8, trust us…”

At $800 per – I don’t have the luxury of “fool me once” – it’s safer to take a flyer on the Bludgeon 906 (9′ for AFTMA #6) – nomenclature we can feel and understand.

Most of us skipped Math class intentionally, opting for grades less than optimum, yet retaining some small dignity. It could be they’re attempting to confuse us thinking we’ve forgotten the laws governing additive or distributive mathematics.

They’re not far wrong, as asking a fisherman how much his fish cost per pound results in a panic look and vapor lock.

As even the vendors don’t know what their naming convention means, a decision made by some bespectacled fellow from Madison Avenue, here’s a reference guide to aid you in rod selection:

Xi2 (Sage) =  “Xi” is the roman numeral for eleven, times 2 = the age of the advertising executive’s girlfriend. That way he can offer the romantic gesture of gifting her a rod rather than a diamond.

It could also mean “excessive interest” – which is what you’re paying on the card used to purchase it.

VT2 (Sage) = Stands for Vermont, where Sage refiled it’s articles of incorporation. Vermont companies can better resist hostile takeovers via “poison pill” codicles, preventing Shakespeare from eating Sage like a tea crumpet.

IImx (Winston) = (sexual content) not suitable for this site. Gross.

X(raised to the power of)2s (Scott) = (pornographic content). Gross.

T(raised to the power of)2h (Scott) = Stuttering T-t-t-t-aper. Great rod, but the engineer has an outlandish speech impediment.

A(raised to the power of)2 (Scott) = Functioning Alcoholic, on Step 4 of the 12 Step program, likely his sponsor is at wit’s end. The rod lacks taper, as it’s only used as a prop to get out from under the watchful eye of spouse and dependants.

We’ve broached exponents, subscripts, roman numerals, and imaginary numbers, so what’s left other than scientific notation?