omglan: The Real Meaning

People always want to know what omglan means. So here is the real meaning:

A few years ago one of my friends was a well respected member of poetry forum. Being the emo he was, he used to post short poems, which were rammed off by the other forum members. After a few years he became an admin on the forum, and had a fanbase which had grown rapidly.

One day he recieved an email from a member called Ian saying how much he loved he poems, and how he felt they really touched him and he had to meet him. My friend was a bit shy, and being under 16 he didn't think it was safe to meet him, so in the most polite way possible he refused.

After a few email exchanges with my friend still refusing, Ian got more and more annoyed. He told my friend he would never leave him alone until he met him. After further threatening behavour my friend banned him from the forum.

Everything was quiet for a few weeks... until he got a phone call, saying "I will find you" in a whispered voiced. However much we told him it wasn't us, he was certain we were tricking him. We told him he should go to the police, but he thought nothing of it... until he recieved a letter though his door two weeks later. The letter just had written on it "Found you", signed by 'Ian'. This shit him up quite a lot, and he went to the police, who said they would look into it.

We were all meant to be going over to his house the one evenings after school, after we had gone back to get changed. We met at the park and walked over to his house. His door was swung open, and nobody seemed to be home. Thinking he had been burgled, we rushed in to see if everything was okay. I was the first into his bedroom, to see my friend lieing on the ground dead, after an obviously vicious knife attack. There was a lot of blood, but I noticed that in his last breathes he had managed to write 'Ian' on his computer monitor.

I shouted for my friends who rushed in. One of them, obviously shocked, shouted 'OH MY GOD...' then his eyes went to the moniter, and he said, confused "... LAN..?". We all had a big laugh and went home.

... from then on we always called ourselves omglan, said as 'oh my god lan'.

omglan: The Real Meaning

Wow. I have just realised that I haven't once mentioned 'omglan' in this blog directly. 'omglan' is the standard name given to anything relating to my group, such as the name of our dodgeball team, football team... actually, any team we have. We all have football shirts with 'omglan' and '21' on the back, bought for each of our 21st birthdays. From now on, I will stop referring to it as 'omglan' and just say omglan.

A lot of people ask why we are called omglan, and where the name came from. We vowed never to tell people, and to make up a reason on the spot each time. Though now, although I will probably be hated... I will say the real reason.

About 6 years ago we all used to play a computer game on the PC. It was quite a small game, and at the time not many other people played it. The game was based on a made up sport, which used aspects of football and basketball, with only one goal, with a hoop above, placed in the centre of an arena.

We got quite good on the computer game, but thought that playing the real thing would be better. Eventually we put up a goal in a field, with a hoop placed just behind it, and divided ourselves into teams to play. It was very fun, and even better than the computer game of it. After playing it we slightly adapted the rules, and it eventually became a great game in its own right.

We looked into it, and saw that we were actually the first to try this properly, and that there were no copyright restrictions to claiming the game as our own. We set up a website, and a local league... which initially only had a handful of teams. We were all pleased when we got a small mention on a website dedicated to following the birth of new sports. Little did we know this would only lead to trouble.

The small media attention had gotten us noticed by the Italian creators of the game, who still claimed it to be their own as in their eyes the changes we made wasn't sufficient for it to be named as its own game. Although we just played for fun, and made no money, they rushed through a copyright and threatened to sue us.

We received an email from their lawyer, Omiodio Lan, so we thought we would play along. As one of my friends knew Italian, they saw it slightly sounded like 'oh mio dio' (or 'oh my god'), so we replied as 'Omg Lan'. The emails went backwards and forwards until we decided to drop the whole thing.

... from then on we always called ourselves omglan, said as 'oh my god lan'.