Have you ever heard of a Thomasson? It's basically a useless vestige of an urban environment — a pipe connected to nothing, a telephone pole that hangs no wires — that is still maintained. The idea came from artist Akasegawa Genpei, who in the 1980s was walking past a flight of stairs that led to nowhere, and yet he could see its rails were recently painted. Even though there's no point, its still retained its upkeep. Akasegawa started a column in a magazine describing Thomassons he found around town, and eventually readers would send in examples of their own. In 1985 he published a book compilation, and eventually in 2010 this was translated into English. To generate interest, the publisher had the translator start a blog about Thomassons he found in San Francisco, and like Akasegawa he too received reader's submissions. However one day he got an image of a middle finger along with a note that said, "Thanks for making my family famous." It as from Gary Thomasson's daughter.

You probably wondered from the beginning of this post why the hell these are called that. Akasegawa was a rabid baseball fan, and in the 1980s an American baseball player named Gary Thomasson was signed onto the Yomiuri Giants. In America he had a splendid career, playing for both the Yankees and San Francisco Giants before heading to Japan. However once there he couldn't perform, almost set the record for the highest rate of strike outs, and was usually benched. Akasegawa saw him similar to these urban remainders: completely useless but being "maintained" through his exorbitant contract. When his book was being translated, Akasegawa expressed fear that the actual baseball player would learn of it and become insulted — regardless of his Japanese records, Akasegawa was still a fan of Thoamsson — and it seems this was realized.

Then why the hell did you name this after him? Imagine for a moment you're a big fan of Dick Cheney, but then you coin a term for any hunting accident involving shooting your friend in the face a "Cheney." And then later you fret about whether Cheney would be upset at what you've done. Well, yeah. It's pretty insulting and humiliating. Maybe you shouldn't've fucking done it in the first place. I myself wouldn't have the balls to do something like that, even if I didn't like the guy. It's just too disrespectful. And this became a movement in Japan in the late 1980s. Everyone was in on calling this guy completely useless.