If authorities at Jackson High School in Mill Creek were hip enough to run with the MySpace-Facebook crowd, they might not have egg on their faces, left with $4,000 worth of class spirit T-shirts and contemplating spending another $5,000 to hide slogans on the shirts that some students call offensive.

According to this Seattle Times story, class names were put on the shirts that sounded innocent enough, for example: Freshman were "Krabby Patty and Juniors were "Mole Rat." But some students said the terms are actually crude descriptions of people.

Student leaders' said that Krabby Patty comes from the television cartoon, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Mole Rat from another popular cartoon. I guess I might have been more suspicious if I had first visited this slang dictionary.. Spend some time on the site and be prepared to be offended. A lot.

But at what point does this become ridiculous? Feeling peckish, I looked up cake and while the first reference is a sweet pastry, the second and third meanings cannot be mentioned on the website of a family newspaper. And skirt? According to the dictionary's meaning, I'll have to slap the next person who says skirt in my presence.

A lexicographical calamity, this is not.

Jackson officials shouldn't spend a dime more on these shirts. Students have already accomplished their first goal: these T-shirts will never, ever be forgotten. And if they are, a quick media search will bring it all back up again. The rest of us can take solace from the fact that Ralph Waldo Emerson called language the archives of history. It should reflect the times.