This homemade honey ale has a nice color. The carbonation could be a teensy bit stronger, but I’m not complaining.
This is an open thread, so any topic goes. But one thing I’m curious about is how and why you chose your online name, so share that if you care to.
greg
My most common online name, recurvata, comes from recurvata litobrancha, the scientific name for the largest mayfly in North America. Pretty good flyfishing when you can find a hatch. They look like small sparrows floating on the water waiting on their wings to dry.
Tommy
My name is my username. I have been online since the last 80s. Always felt I should attach my name to anything I say online. That I would say it to you face to face. I wish I could recall back a few things I’ve said but it is what it is.
evap
My initials are vap. The “e” stands for “evil”. This nickname was bestowed on me many many years ago spontaneously after I did something that the bestower (who was my PhD thesis advisor!) thought was kind of evil. I’ve been using this online since I started playing Diablo 2 online many years ago.
Corner Stone
My papa, Rollin Stone, named me so as to be foundational for all the things that might happen in life.
AnderJ
Ander means other in Dutch and sounds like my first name. The J is my other initial.
Baud
Completely random shortening of a completely random username.
Laertes
Laertes is basically a decent guy, but he’s a hothead who tends to fly into rages and act before really thinking things through. The name is a sort of warning to myself, a reminder to not do that.
Corner Stone
@Tommy:
I always find this to be a common idea to people who are either bland to the point of unseasoned baked potato, or self-employed.
Corner Stone
@Baud: Are you and Baud 300 the same commenter?
BillinGlendaleCA
Mine’s as easy as Tommy’s. My first name is Bill and I live in Glendale CA. Sorta a riff off BillinPortlandME over at GOS. I’ve also used 10am or 10amla, because I’m generally useless prior to 10am.
Pogonip
It seemed like a good idea at the time; it is short and easy to type.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
No. He predates me here, although he doesn’t comment as frequently. I almost thought of using a different name, but I thought it was different enough.
Calouste
This guy, Calouste Gulbenkian, who played an interesting role in this book, The Prize, that I was reading just as I needed a user name that no one else was likely to use.
Origuy
I started out using origamiguy, because I do origami with dollar bills and use them as tips, so some people at places I frequented knew me as that. I shortened it to Origuy, which also incorporates orienteering, as I’m active in the sport.
Corner Stone
I love these cheerleading squads from the lesser NCAA basketball competitors.
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: I’m self-employed, but since I happily lighten the wallets of wingnuts in my commercial endeavors, I prefer an admittedly tatty and threadbare cloak of anonymity.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yes, but do you still use dial-up for your intertube connection? Acoustic modem?
Corner Stone
@Baud: Ok, thanks. For whatever reason, you both have a kind of short, comedic satire type commentary.
So it seemed, to me at least, like it was possible.
pacem appellant
Tacitus once wrote: Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. “Where they (i.e. the Roman army) make a desert, they call it peace.”
Tacitus wasn’t anti-war by any means, but it is one of the strongest anti-war sentiments ever penned, I think, and is relevant across the nearly two millennia that separate our empire from his.
Pronunciation: PAH-kem ap-PEL-lunt
Mike J
Just spent ten minutes watching an eagle circling basically over my front yard. He was being chased by two crows, but was completely unperturbed. I don’t think I saw him flap once. Just circled and climbed the entire time. The crows had to flap like mad to keep up, and eventually gave up.
As for my username, Michael means “godlike”. My parents were prescient, and I like the friendly sounding shorter version.
Kifaru1
My name means rhino in swahili….I grew up in Kenya and my husbands favorite animal is the rhino. We named our first (of many) basset hounds Kifaru Kidogo (little rhino). She has been gone since 2009 (at 15 years) and I have used the name ever since. :)
Tommy
@Corner Stone: Not sure how to respond to that.
Elizabelle
Eliza is a variant of a family name, and belle is kinda short for “dumbbell”, because I fear my comments run to the vacuous, alas.
There are trenchant and incisive commenters here. I don’t pretend to be one of them, but I learn something cool just about every day.
Although sometimes following current politics depresses me.
I think that might be some of MSNBC’s problem (addressed this morning). If you’re sick to death of the disrespect thrown at your president, and don’t feed off ugliness and delusion and controversy and dysfunction, you are not going to be glued to MSNBC’s breathless account of the latest Republican awfulness.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In 2007, David Petraeus was testifying before the Senate about Iraq, and John Warner asked him if the invasion of Iraq had made the USA safer, and Petraeus said he couldn’t say that. After a break, Petraeus asked to clarify his remarks. Joe Klein, then posting on a Time magazine blog, posted that Petraeus had gotten a call from the White House during that break. The left blogosphere ran with the story, and Klein posted some tut-tutting about how he was OBVIOUSLY joking and he couldn’t believe some “foolish literalists” had taken him seriously, given his well known history and a jokester and a wit. “Jim, Fellow Unworthy of a Dinner Invitation” is too long.
I almost miss Klein as an internet presence. He was so arrogantly befuddled by the fact that nobodies could talk back to him, it was like a bald, bearded Margaret Dumont had wandered in to the toobz.
Elizabelle
I miss “judas escargot.” Loved that moniker.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve seen really good hearted, community oriented/focused people be hunted down in my local neighborhood message board for not being wingnutty “enough” in their comments.
No BS, they called my friend’s employer and forced this guy to document that he had never commented once on company time, to his boss.
I have no doubt some of the sadists that have run through here would have no qualms of doing same, if they could.
SiubhanDuinne
Mine, I guess, is slightly more complicated, and I invented it when I was about 10 years old. According to a Scottish-English glossary in the back of a book of tartans (yes, I was an odd little 10-year-old), “Siubhan” is a variant of my first name (Judith) in Scottish Gaelic. My last name was Mann, and the word for “man” was given as “duine,” so I doubled the “n” in a childish attempt at wordplay. Have used it all my life as a nom de plume, a “signature” for anonymous greeting cards and Secret Santa gifts, and more recently as a screen name.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Maybe in my next online life, I’ll change my nym to LTE.
bin Lurkin'
I’ve been lurking here since well before Cole became a Democrat, I certainly don’t read all the threads or all the posts on every thread but I’m here most days at least a little. Every now and then y’all get onto a subject I know a little more than average about and then I post.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: What we really need is a pronunciation guide, Ms. SDuinne, as pacem upthread helpfully provided.
I think of you by sight or by your IRL name, since quite sure am mispronouncing….
Baud
@Elizabelle:
I think you have one of the prettiest nyms here.
joel hanes
Been using my real name online since 1986. Most people did, on Usenet. It was a better world
(Hiatus around 1995 when Scientology’s barrator Helena Kobrin threatened to sue me for quoting six lines of the Copyrighted Super Sekrit Scripchurs in a comparision to the lyrics of Frank Zappa’s “Call Any Vegetable”)
Suzanne
The Arizona shooting is in the neighborhood I grew up in. I live four miles away now. This is heartbreaking.
SiubhanDuinne
@Pogonip:
Your screen name is one of my favourite words, along with its (sort-of) companion, pingo. Frozen fog and an earth-covered mound of ice.
DCrefugee
Uhh, I lived and worked in DC for 30 years, until finally escaping. I live in Sarasota, FL, now…
Pogonip
I think I might change my pseudonym to John Cole.
I hate you all.
Elizabelle
Incidentally: dumbass TPM headline of the day: “2016 Might be America’s Next High-Stakes Election.”
Ya think? Not linking because it’s so asinine.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne:
They had books back then? What was Johnnie Gutenberg like, anyway?
feebog
My user name is not latin for anything, nor is it the name of a greek god or mythological creature. Quite simply, it is my childhood nickname, created during a cross country road trip where four kids were screaming mad with boredom, having read all the Mad Magazines and torn up the Monopoly game. We used the broken board to create a whole new game, wherein we renamed all the spaces. I managed to get control of the jail space, and renamed it the bog. Thereafter, I charged a fee of ten monopoly dollars to anyone who landed on the bog space. Feebog.
Trollhattan
Trollhättan (mit umlaut) is the city where Sweden’s best cars were once built and makes a happy pun for online byte-wasting/pixel mangling efforts. There’s a nearby Trollhättan Falls under which the trolls may dwell.
Pogonip
@Suzanne: We lived in Killeen when I was little, and I was surprised how emotional I got about the Fort Hood murders.
Baud
@Pogonip:
We need a pupdate!
Corner Stone
@Pogonip:
Not complete without a GWB or Jesus middle finger pic.
And you also have to be defending something indefensible, typically about three days too late.
Roger Moore
My parents gave me this name when I was born. I posted under my real name when I got started on USENET back in 1990, and by the time it became clear that posting stuff on the internet under your real name might be a bad idea, I had a long enough track record that it was probably too late. It helps that I share my name with somebody far more famous than me, which makes me hard to find by name alone.
Pogonip
@SiubhanDuinne: Pingo is a new word for me! And for FYAC, which wanted to change it to lingo.
Suzanne
@Pogonip: Literally, every one of those places he shot someone is somewhere I went to school or had a friend live or got into hijinks in high school or took my daughter.
Botsplainer
My current name came from somebody hear a few years ago – I forget who. Don’t think it was matoko chan or mclaren, but I forget.
I change every so often.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: LTE does have a nice ring to it.
Goblue72
My nym is my Daily Kos screen name which I signed up for before Howard Dean screamed.
Combo of year I was born and my law school alma mater.
NeenerNeener
My online name is kind of a joke based on my initials.
Bystander
My name is a hangover from my moniker at the he late lamented CapitolGrilling. That site got to be an online bum fight until .
I’m now beginning to realize how much I will be loving HRC by 2016. By the time we get there, political life will be so unrelievedly dismal that she will shine like a beacon in the fog.
Pogonip
@Baud: Damn right. Where is that lazy-ass copycat Cole, anyway?
Trollhattan
@joel hanes:
You gotta be kidding me (I know you’re not).
Standing there shiny and proud by your side
Holding your joint while the neighbors decide
Why is a vegetable something to hide, to hide?
Did not have to look that up, either.
BillinGlendaleCA
@DCrefugee: DC to FLA, is that a move up or down?
Baud
@Botsplainer:
I remember you changing, although I can’t remember the name of the troll (Ted & Hellen?) or your prior nym.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: I saw that too and assumed it was meant sarcastically. Didn’t read the article, though.
Pogonip
@Corner Stone: Oh, all right, if you insist…
I think Boston needs more snow.
How’s that?
The Ancient Randonneur
I am an avid cyclist (been riding brevets for about ten years) and I remember when Sputnik was a big deal.
catclub
@pacem appellant:
I know very little to zero latin, but the translation of this to desert seems too easy on the Roman armies. How about: a wasteland with no people?
Also: From Jenny Linsky and the Cat Club, with Pickles the Firecat.
Corner Stone
@Baud: Todd.
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: The kid’s b-day is in that song.
AliceBlue
Alice is my given name. Alice Blue comes from a story about Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. There was a certain shade of blue she favored so people began calling the color “Alice blue.” There was also a song called “Alice Blue Gown.” Blue is my favorite color, so I figured it fit.
jacel
My online name is a way to pronounce the three-consonant initials of my name. I have used Jacel as a condensed signature since 1970 when I started writing for science fiction fanzines and APAs.
Pogonip
@Suzanne: Upsetting, isn’t it? Everybody else said ” That’s awful!” and went back to work, as one does when there’s a mass murder, and there I was sitting there thinking about Fort Hood and Killeen and darn near in tears.
Cacti
In the news of racial law enforcement disparity…
A neonazi ex-convict went on a shooting spree today in Mesa, AZ.
He killed 1, injured 5, but still managed to be taken into custody alive by law enforcement.
Amazing, innit?
Link
muddy
I’m Muddy from being a potter. Very very muddy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
The truth is, I’m not totally sure just how to pronounce it. But I think you wouldn’t be far off if you did something close to shuh-VAHN DOON-yuh. Easier to type than to say.
Corner Stone
@efgoldman: I’ve always meant to ask him but he never seems to sit still long enough for me to find out.
gogol's wife
@Botsplainer:
Yours is a good one.
Mine is the title of a story by Tommaso Landolfi. Gogol never actually had a wife. I love Gogol. But I’m not much like the girl in the story (which I don’t remember well and read once many years ago).
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
He had better manners than some I could name.
Poopyman
September 20, 2002 was a beautiful day, and in the afternoon I stepped out of my office to go for a walk through the office park. A few minutes later I heard what sounded like a weird bird off to my left at the other end of the parking lot, but I couldn’t see anything so I wandered over there to check it out.
It was a kitten! And a very loud one at that. He was alone at the bottom of a wall. Of course I picked him up, left work early, and headed for my vet, who told me he was only about 2 days old. Of course I kept him.
You ever bottle feed a kitten? I hadn’t, so I got a quick lesson and some basic supplies from the vet and off I went. After the initial can of formula ran out I went to the pet store and bought the same stuff in a dry mix. That’s when the problems started. He started getting plugged up, to put it bluntly. I had to take him to the vet to get an enema a couple of times, although really all she was doing was popping the cork and letting it flow. A little online research told me that was common with dry mix formula. Switching to ready-made cured the problem, but not before he got permanently stuck with this nickname.
You have to bottle feed a kitten every couple of hours, so I had to finesse the work situation. I needn’t have worried, because a couple of coworkers offered their office where he could wander around and socialize, since I was just in a cubicle. I thought it would be appropriate for him to have an email account (hotmail, not corporate) to keep in touch with everyone.
When I started commenting on blogs they all required an email address, and I decided to use his to keep some anonymity. I wasn’t feeling terribly original and just used his nickname along with his email account.
And here we are. He’s something of an asshole, actually, and still loud. But still going strong.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
LOL
Suzanne
Suzanne is my real name, though I also go by BadDesignHurts other places on the series of toobs.
dp
I went through a complicated algorithm that involved choosing the first letter of my first name and pairing it with the first letter of my last name. It took forever to figure out.
'lectric lady
This was my CB handle. This is how old I am.
The Ancient Randonneur
BTW Betty I hope you carefully vetted the sources for beer making ingredients. Just want to make sure you didn’t purchase them from a genocidal maniac or a known commie. You can never be too careful in these open threads.
Suzanne
@Cacti: I think he went to my high school, from what I’m hearing. We had a lot of fucking losers who were white supremacists.
hoodie
Came to me by accident after watching Eminem’s “Mosh” video. Kind of absurd, seeing as I’m a relatively well off middle aged white guy. But then again, so is Eminem.
Tree With Water
I grew up in the suburban tract immortalized in the song Little Boxes:
“Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same..”.
And they all had one small stinking little palm tree, stuck uniformly smack-dab in precisely the same spot- in the middle of each little rectangular front yard lawn. I now live a stones throw from the Russian River (just beyond the flood zone), and my house is surrounded on all sides by redwood forest. I guess my moniker should read Trees With Water, but I went with the singular instead.
Cacti
@Suzanne:
My sister in law used to go to EVIT, near where the shootings took place.
dp
@Betty Cracker: Lightening the wallets of wingnuts makes me happy. Please carry on!
catclub
@dp:
Looked for abbreviations for sexual acts, BJ was taken. ;)
Suzanne
@Cacti: One of the victims got shot at EVIT. I used to live down the street.
burnspbesq
@Tommy:
First thing that came to mind was a fungo bat.
shelley
Simple. quannlace….my favorite flower, queenannlace.
Now! Is it too much to ask for some puppy pictures tonight? Could use some cheering; we’re expecting snow here on Friday, the first day of Spring.
Corner Stone
“Thass what I tole him!”
Elizabelle
@Baud: Thank you.
TooManyJens
The name I use here came about because I used to be Jen R but people would mix me up with the various other Jens who were around at the time.
On Twitter, I’m tealdeer, after tl;dr. I just thought it was funny to use that for a medium with a 140 character limit.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq: So, inquiring minds want to know. How in the world did you ever come up with your commenting name here?
Another Holocene Human
I wonder what created the left consensus of the social democracies in the past and why that seems unachievable today.
drunken hausfrau
mine sort of explains itself… formerly had two careers, suddenly found myself without any career, home with kids, doing the 50s mom thing… more of a martini drinker than a “mother’s little helper” sort of mom.
TooManyJens
@Origuy: …oh, so it’s not a Stargate reference. Live and learn!
Elizabelle
@efgoldman: I had wondered how you came up with that.
You can be JeopardyDad now too.
Corner Stone
I used to watch a ton of NCAA men’s BB. But after the various rule changes allowing early exit, and other life changes, I kind of slowed down.
But now that my son is into basketball I find myself really enjoying NCAA level games.
Can’t stand AAU level stuff as they have never bothered to learn how to spell the word “defense” much less try it IRL.
dp
@catclub: LOL. Never got that before! I blame my parents.
Old Dan and Little Ann
“Where the Red Fern Grows.” My favorite book.
geg6
Mine is my initials plus the number of people with those same initials when I was assigned my university email at work. So I’ve been using this not-at-all imaginative nym for sixteen years, seventeen in September. At the community college I worked at before my current school, they didn’t see any reason that we’d need email. That was from 1990 to 1998. Fuck, I’m old.
Tree With Water
@drunken hausfrau: Mom!
ThresherK
A stab at “clever” for when I had to pick a name for my first message board ever, back in the 90s. It was a CFL message board and I chose a pivot on my favorite football team.
Okay, so Thresher (like in wheat, like in the decades-old logo) isn’t too clever. The “K” is mine.
WereBear
I like bears. And I chose it before I became famous for cat related activities.
I do love hearing the stories!
Elizabelle
@WereBear: Beats whingeing about Republicans.
Omnes Omnibus
Scaramouche..
Trollhattan
@Tree With Water:
Heh. My favorite parents of friends when in college were the ones who would include us in cocktail hour on visits home. “Why yes, Mr. Eisley, I’d love a Tom Collins.”
Elizabelle
From Wonkette: check out the background on photo of soon to be Mr. Bristol Palin, holding someone else’s baby.
Elizabelle
@Trollhattan: or a “highball”. Does anyone under 90 now ever use that term?
mainmata
“Mainmata” is Bahasa Indonesia meaning “eye-play” literally but “flirting” figuratively since eye playing with another person is one form of flirtation, especially there. I spent many years living and working in Indonesia and chose the nym because it suited my blog and mood. By the way, I love Betty Cracker – a really good nym.
TooManyJens
@Elizabelle: Jesus Christ.
2liberal
re: username
i used to post in USENET groups about 15 years ago and often posted in the New England Patriots newsgroup. There was a lot of right wing political commentary and I would provide some liberal responses. So some right wing scumbag [I assume] ratted me out to my ISP , saying I was posting off-topic which violated the terms of use. I got an email from my ISP on this with a warning.
So i changed my posting profile and used a fake email address, and changed my display name to “2liberal” because i was “too liberal”
mainmata
@Baud: Though, of course, baud is an actual word too.
delk
Middle syllable of my last name. I have two other variants of it I use.
RandomMonster
Just an old school D&D reference!
muddy
@Elizabelle: I know one person that says it, she is 70. I have a set of really nice highball glasses that no one ever wants to use because they are too small for modern folks I guess.
the Conster
My least favorite boss ever – a senior partner in a Big Law firm, affectionately called me Conster all the time as a variant of my given name, and it made me, and everyone else laugh every time – harkening back to the Rob Schneider character on SNL. It caught on with other co-workers who laughed with me, not at me because the partner was a giant fucking tool.
skerry
Skerry is a Scot word for a small, rocky island. It fits.
Trollhattan
@Elizabelle: @TooManyJens:
They Just. Can’t. Help. It. It’s like being a Crowder on “Justified” only without the Elmore Leonard dialogue to make them sound interesting.
Hope she has Little Richard sing at the wedding.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, I remember you schooled me pretty well on that a year or two ago.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I wrote bad poetry under this nym in high school, long before the internets were a thing. I have an unusual name IRL and would be way too easy to Google, but there are many online Mnemosynes, so ironically it lets me blend in.
Roger Moore
In other places that won’t let me get away with such a boring name, I will sometimes use “VATVSLPR”; I use that one on twitter, for example. It’s a sort of secret handshake that only somebody who works in my field might recognize. I’ve actually even made a connection because somebody I knew was looking for it and found my nym incidentally.
mainmata
@pacem appellant: Yes, that is a great statement of Tacitus. BTW, it’s “pakem” in classical Latin but “pachem” in Church Latin. Most likely, Tacitus would have pronounced as you described.
MomSense
@Suzanne:
Oh damn. When I saw the news today I thought of you and your family. Sending you a hug.
BBA
I refuse to explain my nym, but it does not come from any support of a Balanced Budget Amendment.
Another Holocene Human
Why is the left not talking about Jonathan Capeheart’s column except for twitter insults?
Is this going to be the new Village common wisdom with nary a voice in contradiction?
I don’t believe a single assertion Capeheart makes.
Capeheart thinks Dorian Johnson is lying and Darren Wilson is telling the truth. Here’s what I don’t get:
Capeheart says Wilson knew Mike Brown had stolen the rellos. But we know that a customer, not the owner, called it in, and the police did not have the video at that time. So Dorian and Mike only “fit the description”. However, IF the customer had named them, why wouldn’t Wilson roll up and say, “Are you Mike Brown?” not “Get the fuck off the sidewalk!”
Capeheart says Mike Brown charged Wilson. But Shaun King showed pretty convincingly that Mike Brown died yards away from Darren Wilson’s car. Who are you going to believe, Darren Wilson or that lying physical evidence?
Why did Darren Wilson act like a guilty man, calling his union rep, not calling for medical, leaving Mike Brown’s body on the pavement for hours? If he was totally justified wouldn’t the police have acted completely differently from the start?
Capeheart says Dorian is lying for his friend … but why would those two middle aged craft workers who saw the whole thing lie about it? They’re not even from that neighborhood and they don’t know Mike Brown from Adam.
I’ve seen the video that turned up of Darren Wilson about 6-12 months earlier being insulting and frankly threatening to a citizen over some nothingburger. Hmm, who to believe, the trigger happy, power drunk, foul mouthed, puffed up cock of the walk or scores of witnesses and evidence. Tough one.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Yep. Nothing whatsoever to do with public transportation.
Baud
@mainmata: Right. The word wasn’t the genesis for my nym, however.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Can you do the fandango?
mainmata
@SiubhanDuinne: Siubhan is also Erse. Probably Diunne, too but am not sure.
Elizabelle
Testing
testingETA: Yippee. Was going to ask someone to instruct me on strikethroughs, and then realized it’s right in the comment box options …
Villago Delenda Est
My online name for here, Wonkette, and Powder Blue Satan (where I haven’t posted in ages) is self explanatory.
However, it’s not my only online name. I have different names for the MMOs I’ve played.
Another Holocene Human
Oh, one more thing, Darren Wilson empties that clip so fast that no human being could have reacted to that other than reflex reactions. Wilson shot him in the head as he pitched forward in a dead man drop. Sick stuff.
ps: I know a former cop from Alabama who had to retire after getting injured in a brawl with a really big dude on a domestic call … somehow his first instinct was not to show up and empty a clip into this guy, even though he said back then, yeah, if you had a beef they would go down to the creek bed, take the uniforms off, and fight it out … yet they weren’t emptying clips into people … it’s astonishing that policing has changed for the worse when it was so bad to begin with … but it has
SiubhanDuinne
@skerry:
That early love of all things Scottish I referenced earlier (#27) was really focussed on Hebridean traditional songs. One of them, which I learned at about the same age, is called “The Cockle Gatherer” and includes the verses:
Joy scream of sea gulls
Down on the skerry there
Joy scream of sea gulls
While I gather cockles there.
Laughter of sea waves
Down on the skerry there
Laughter of sea waves,
Blythe I gather cockles there.
I’m quite sure that song was my introduction to the word “skerry.” Lovely word.
Ninedragonspot
Just what is a nine-dragon spot?
Elizabelle
@Baud: Could it be a bard, a la Shakespeare, in Harvard Yard speak?
Another Holocene Human
I thought about doing a diary on GOS about this issue but decided against it. ‘Tis a silly place.
smintheus
Smintheus is a Bronze Age god who protected fields and storehouses; the name means something like “mouse bane”, which seemed appropriate when I started writing about the Republicans who were busy chewing away at our society and government.
Originally we gave the name to a kitten a few days old that we found alone by the side of our country road, at the edge of a swollen river, after a night of terrible rain. He was a tough little ball of fur and we thought ‘Smintheus’ would do him proud. But later we decided ‘mouse bane’ might be a hard name for a kitten to live up to, so we renamed him Milo. And so ‘smintheus’ was just lying around unused when I first started blogging.
Baud
@MomSense: He is very, very frightening.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: I could if I wanted.
mdblanche
First initial, middle initial, first part of my last name. It was my email handle at the time and I carried it over out of inertia. I sometimes think about changing it since I’m a guy and the blanche part might throw people, but inertia’s still winning.
p.a.
@efgoldman: Oh I don’t know; the snow could fill the potholes for a while. That’s a temporary benefit.
My handle is my initials. I lack imagination.
Baud
@Elizabelle: Nothing so cultured.
Scamp Dog
My first dog was a retriever mutt who would sneak up on my wife’s dog (I was married back then), nip her tail and then run away. She’d turn around and bark at him, and he’d run in a circle around her. That, and all his other tricks to make a very dignified Chesapeake Bay retriever play, earned him the title of scamp dog. When we got him, she weighed 83 pounds, but after a couple of months she was down to 70.
So my nym is a nod to the dog before Miss Biscuit, my border collie.
Suzanne
@MomSense: Thank you. Lots of people I know are flipping out right now. It’s really weird seeing it all over the news. Thinking about the 85210 right now.
smintheus
@SiubhanDuinne: Huh, I always thought ‘skerry’ meant a rocky beach but turns out it’s an island.
Baud
@mdblanche: I think I may have confused you for a chick at one point.
Pogonip
@efgoldman: I’d say my post was sufficiently indefensible.
Boston broke the previous record a couple of days ago, didn’t it?
SiubhanDuinne
@mainmata:
Well, Duinne with the double-N isn’t an actual word (I’m pretty sure), but yes, there is a big Vennish overlap between Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, and Erse.
Siubhan is more commonly rendered as “Siobhan,” but I believe that’s more Irish than Scottish. It is usually given as an equivalent to Joan or Joanne, but Judith was definitely listed in the back of that little book of tartans.
Litlebritdifrnt
I started out with TrueBrit and still have active accounts with that in some places. That is when people began shortening it to Britty. (Hence the blog title) I changed it to Litlebritdifrnt when BBC America started using it as a tag line for their channel.
MomSense
@Baud:
Thunderbolts of lightning!!
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ok lace up your dancing shoes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdlWXlTAK8
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Goddess of Memory, though!! Mother of the Muses!!
Linnaeus
My online name refers to, of course, the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. I chose it because I’m trained as a historian of biology and I wanted something a little different than a name that referenced, say, Charles Darwin.
SiubhanDuinne
@mainmata:
In my head, I’ve always pronounced it “pachem.” In high school, I studied Classical Latin at EXACTLY the same time as my various choirs were learning Masses and Glorias and all kinds of works in Church Latin — just enough differences to confuse me for life.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Tunisia’s got us beat today on civilian body count. The skinhead aspect makes your local shooting somewhat memorable, but they are all happening too often.
It’s terrible. One cannot look at a school or any other public building and think “nothing gun-related will ever happen there.”
Meanwhile, citizens get frisked like crazy on attempting to enter the U.S. Capitol, where our betters toil away on our behalf.
mdblanche
@Another Holocene Human:
“I’m now emotionally mature enough to support collectively helping out people who look and sound like me.”
“Eek. People who look and sound different just moved in next door.”
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: I don’t want to.
MomSense
@Suzanne:
I think flipping out is a normal response. It’s shocking how casually we seem to shrug off gun violence.
the Conster
@Baud:
There was a regular commenter here – arguingwithsignposts – who was suicidal here one night years ago. I was sure that person was female, and responded to “her” that way. Wrong. It’s funny how no one is who they seems on the internet – exhibit A is a BJ meet-up. I’ve had several people think I’m a guy- probably because I have a way of expressing myself that my late mother would disapprove of.
Elizabelle
@the Conster: Is “arguing” back, do you think? Did he mention what his new name was?
PS: I adore frequenting a blog where one of the commenters is “just some fuckhead.”
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: What Wingnut-wallet-lightening business is there? Do you sell gold? King James Bibles? Commercial time on the Rush Limbaugh show?
Baud
I blame Obama.
Litlebritdifrnt
I always though that Siobhan was pronounced “shavaun”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well, yes, but almost 30 years later, I can’t entirely remember why I chose that goddess in particular and not another Greek goddess. I’ve always been pretty obsessed with Greek mythology.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ninedragonspot:
Fascinating. Thank you!
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t know how anyone can listen to Boccherini and not move. I can never resist it.
smintheus
@Tree With Water: The Russian River valley is lovely. The local wines are pretty damn fine as well.
Baud
@the Conster:
I remember him, but not that event. FWIW, I always read your nym as female.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: Absolutely. I know that this is affecting me because I lived there so long, and I still am very close by. And EVIT is a high school—one of the victims was working at the school’s restaurant. So this is another school shooting.
the Conster
@Elizabelle:
There was a rumor that he was posting on another site instead of here – that was a very intense situation that he got past, but then he was gone again, but not by his own hand if you know what I mean. Which reminds me of General Stuck, whom I miss, still.
David Koch
Beltway media in a tizzy.
Hillary leads Jeb! by 15 pts.
The bubble refuses to accept that the Bush brand is poison.
SiubhanDuinne
@the Conster:
Oh wow, I remember that so well. I was on a road trip while that was all unfolding and I remember stopping at EVERY.SINGLE.REST.AREA so I could just check and make sure AWS was still with us and still okay.
I think he’s still around and reads BJ occasionally, he just doesn’t comment any more. He had a lovely cat named Smudge.
skerry
@SiubhanDuinne: Very nice. Thanks for sharing that.
the Conster
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes, SMUDGE!! Would love for him to check back in with updated pix. I really cared about him, and that he had that sweet soul cat to keep him tethered here. Teh interweb can be a strange, awful and wondrous place.
Tenar Darell
My nym is an homage to LeGuin and Asimov.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: The day of the Sandy Hook killings, before we even knew the full horror of that — just that shots had been fired and police were on the scene — I went to the school behind our house to collect a neighbor’s child.
Walked in and the school staff was so calm, I wondered if they had heard. Decided against saying anything, but thought it probable that someone of their acquaintance had texted or emailed them.
Horrified at how vulnerable we all are, so that gun nuts can exercise their second amendment fanaticism.
Cervantes
@evap:
So … not spontaneously?
Pogonip
@the Conster: Me too. I hope he and Smudge are both happy, and wonder if Smudge is still smudgy. Sometimes a kitten born with one colored spot like that ends up white as an adult.
muddy
@Suzanne: It’s unusual that they put him in a white suit, all the way up over his head. I read it was to preserve evidence but I’ve never seen it done like that. I wondered if they were trying to hide his Nazi face/neck tattoos.
Cervantes
@Baud:
Baudrillard, obviously.
Pogonip
@Elizabelle: He’s the only one who admits it.
Baud
@the Conster: I also miss Stuck.
Elizabelle
Almost 185 comments, a Betty Cracker thread, and none of us named after chickens.
Bubblegum Tate
Did you guys know that there was a rumor going around the dumber, crazier parts of dumb, crazy Wingnuttia that Obama was going to nuke Charleston, SC? Ol’ Rih Frothy himself got a double-barrel blast of crazy about it (and many other things) at an SC Q&A.
Also: I got my username from Futurama.
SiubhanDuinne
Many years ago there was a cookbook that accidentally ran a recipe calling for “ground black people” instead of “ground black pepper.” There was a commenter here who, in tribute, used “ground black people” as a screen name (that doesn’t sound quite right, but close enough that y’all probably know who I’m talking about). Any idea whatever happened to him/her?
Also, the person who lived in Australia (“in Sydney” was part of the nym) who drew a marvelous series of sketches of John and Tunch and Lily — The Fat Guy and the Fat Cat and the Barky Dog, or something like that. Whatever happened to him?
Pogonip
@efgoldman: My sympathy to you all. We had our 2nd-snowiest year last year; the worst was the blizzard of ’78.
mdblanche
@Bubblegum Tate: You’re that Bubblegum Tate?
Pogonip
@Elizabelle: If anyone wants to start commenting, Just Some Cluckhead is still open!
catclub
@Bubblegum Tate: wow, just wow. PLus great lungs to keep going – maybe circular breathing.
Baud
@Cervantes:
Had to look him up. I’m not that smart.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne:
She’s still all over the blog…sometimes.
the Conster
@Baud:
I read you as male. amirite?
SiubhanDuinne
@skerry:
Here’s the terrific Kenneth McKellar singing it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xIHC7m7S4
Bubblegum Tate
@mdblanche:
The Harlem Globetrotter/hotdogging scientist himself!
Cervantes
@Elizabelle:
“Vacuous”? Not at all!
@Elizabelle:
Yes, a good one!
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
A “she”? I sure guessed that wrong! Anyhow, glad to hear she’s still around.
Baud
@the Conster: 100% baby.
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne:
AWS was not temperamentally suited to blog life. It’s most likely that he found his Somebody and went back to being miserable in a new relationship.
Cervantes
@Suzanne:
Ouch.
Sorry to hear it.
Turgidson
Dr. Strangelove reference, obvs.
Good ol’ Buck Turgidson would be a voice of reason among today’s neocons and wingnuts. Yikes.
Tree With Water
@Linnaeus: Well, of course it is. I don’t know why you even bothered to explain. Why, every schoolchild in the country is aware of the work of the great Linnaeus. Maybe not in Wisconsin anymore, though..
Eric U.
my real name is Cletus, I just always thought that Eric sounded better
Pogonip
The Roto-Rooter man started Roto-Rooting about twenty minutes ago. It got dark about ten minutes ago
Does Roto-Rooter have a hire-more-vampires policy?
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne: …wellll…
mdblanche
@Bubblegum Tate: Well you sure ain’t his grandma.
JustRuss
Because “Fair and Balanced Russ” was already taken. Or too damn long maybe, who can remember?
Belafon
Mine is a programmer (druid moving large rocks) in one of Terry Prachett’s Discworld novels.
divF
I’m stunned this isn’t a dead thread yet, but since it’s not…
divF is a math nym, related to the kinds of computer simulations I design.
(When people ask me what I do for a living, giving them the answer is a real conversation-stopper. So I quickly change the subject).
Tree With Water
@smintheus: Yes, some of the local wines hereabouts are excellent (indeed, the thought of them sometime tempt me to start drinking again).. much of the contraband agriculture grown hereabouts is likewise superb.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
The gentleman in Sydney is now an occasional front-pager, but in disguise.
Cervantes
@Ninedragonspot:
Excellent!
Justawriter
I find people who do actual and useful things and then I write about them. Ergo, justawriter.
Botsplainer
@Baud:
I was Michael, then something else I forget.
Found the place in 2007, really liked it.
Olivia
I used to use my everyday name all the time but several years ago I saw it being batted about on some gun nut website as a candidate for a home visit and target practice after I had asked a question somewhere about concealed carry. All I asked was what people were so afraid of that they need a gun with them at all times. Several of the wackos wanted to come and show me what I should be afraid of, which didn’t answer my question at all. Anyway I was snacking on some olives at the time and decided to be Olivia.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
SP&T?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
My nym Bella Q was a combination of a green sale horse’s name with the Q from my favorite horse’s registered name. I became fka when Sarah P&T told Doug J, in one of his topical variations, that his name sounded like a hip hop artist from Idaho. The description caught my fancy and I appropriated it for my nym.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: I am just purr cat, I need no sympathy.
Abo gato
Abo was one of my favorite cats. Lived till the great age of 15. Just had met my future husband, and a friend of his gave us this black kitten. Husband to be had never had a cat. Husband to be was/is a lawyer. We live in San Antonio, a more than 50 % Hispanic city. Gato is cat in Spanish. Abogado is attorney in Spanish. I thought this was the most awesome mashup of names/ideas/language things ever and the cat himself well lived up to the concept. Oh, we’ve been married 25 years now. When I need to change names, I’ll have to pick one of the recent cat names, so I’ll either be Norbert or Occie.
LanceThruster
My introduction to the online world was’Mega-Wars’ on CompuServe (a space battle game). While my mates chose handles like Kirk, Skywalker, and Solo…I opted for something original that sounded like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, and LanceThruster was born.
Debating on religious boards for equal rights I’d be accused of being gay (not true – not that there’s anylthing wrong with that) or a pornstar (not professionally).
I learned the value of a ‘secret identity’ when honestly entering profile information at the LA Jewish Journal forum. I was harassed at work and threatened for speaking out for justice for Palestinians. Got banned from many sites for the same reason. If I could not reregister with same nick, I wouldn’t go back. I’ve developed a continuity of sorts. “LanceThruster – accept no imitations!”_\
It’s remarkable to realize just how intensive the gatekeeping was (Huffpo and DKos being notable examples).
the Conster
@Baud:
Phew. I’ve still got functioning antennae. good.to.know.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
Si. IIRC, Yutsy spilled the beans last year.
Mike E
Mine is a GOS nym but it dates back to when Michael was the most popular name (several decades running) and I was never just ‘Mike’ in grade school, nor were the 2 or 3 other Mikes in my classes. Named for the archangel that consigned Lucifer to Hell, so me and Satan go way back. Heh.
I’m quite fond of my daughter’s name here–Miss E–but she’s a Betty too when I ask her if she’s ready when we’re going somewhere!
henqiguai
“henqiguai”; pinyin because, well, I am…
Baud
@the Conster:
Me too. 100% baby!
thruppence
My two cents worth, adjusted for inflation.
Zinsky
A truncated version of my college nickname – FWIW
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I knew I’d regret not reading every single comment in every single post. Thanks, I had no idea.
Calouste
And I assume you replied to the latter accusation with: “Your wife thinks I am!”
Steeplejack
My nym seemed to come from the same part of my brain that provides pet names: I need a name, the request gets registered in the “mute, holistic right brain” (love that phrase from a pop-psych woo book I read), and pretty soon an answer comes back. Sometimes it’s surprising, but it almost always fits.
Sometimes I try to back-figure where a name comes from. I think with “Steeplejack” I was just starting to immerse myself in political blogs and was really feeling the difficulty of seeing above and beyond the “lamestream media.” And I get a mental picture, Soviet realism poster style, of a guy hanging off a spire and looking into the distance. Maybe like this? No, too
gaySoviet. More like this. Or maybe this.P.S. The housecat’s name is Stella.
Anne Laurie
@Corner Stone:
You talkin’ to me?!?
David in NY
Lack of imagination.
Surprised there aren’t more of me, however. Was confusion once with DavidNYC (David Nir) over at the Orange Satan. And a couple of other similars, but I’ve never spotted anyone else with the same, potentially incredibly common (how many Davids must be in NY?) name.
Anne Laurie
@Ninedragonspot: Huh. You’ve just taught me something cool. (I had assumed it was some kind of mah-jongg hand!)
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
I’m a network administrator by trade and a big Star Trek:DS9 fan.
joel hanes
I always liked the nym of former Sadly, No! commenter “Truculent And Ureliable”
ThresherK
@Bubblegum Tate: Showing off your crazy Globetrotter algebra again?
schrodinger's cat
My nym is also the name of my blog and was inspired by the many-worlds-interpretation of Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment about wave-particle duality.
grandpa john
@Cacti: more amazing , they subdued him using a stun gun,instead of the real thing or choke holds. How ingenious of them to think of that. Somebody should make it known to police depts all over the country
Steeplejack (tablet)
I like the nym “Tara the Antisocial Social Worker.”
sempronia
My friend’s name in Latin class. Dunno why I didn’t use my own, since I’m not in touch with her anymore, nor were the names based on anything resembling our own.
Peale
I used to be Suffern ACE, which is where I live plus my nickname from summer camp which I always wanted to keep, but it never caught on.
Peale is just a name I adopted when I tried my own hand at blogging. He was supposed to be my grouchy side, but he’s kind of failed. I couldn’t troll a haunted forest if I wanted to.
sempronia
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
fascinating. I have always read SP&T as a young-ish gay man.
Bubblegum Tate
@ThresherK:
And making Sweet Clyde laugh derisively at people.
RepubAnon
RepubAnon comes from my discontinued blog: Republicans Anonymous. “Hi, My name is _________, and I used to be a Republican. I haven’t voted for a Republican in 23 years…
mai naem mobile
people here are way more creative than me. Mine is just a speshul scpehlin of My Name which could pass as somebody’s real name. I did use Warren Terrah here(I’d been using it a while at other sites) a couple of times but there’s another Warren Terra who posts here. I used to have a Jayne Dough gmail addy but at some point when Gmail changed their security stuff they wouldn’t let me use Jayne Dough.
Ninedragonspot
@henqiguai: Perhaps you’ve met my neighbor, Geng Qiguai.
DCrefugee
@BillinGlendaleCA:
The weather’s definitely better. And it wouldn’t be all that bad except the majority of residents are inbred, uneducated real estate agents…
Elmo
When I was a young lawyer, there were two people named Laura in my office. My boss said he would call me by my middle name, Maureen. Mo for short.
Then he grinned. I’ll call you by your first initial and your middle name, he said.
“L.Mo. ELMO!”
Miss Kitka's Comrade Wayne
I was watching the (1966) Batman movie a few years ago and remembered how I once was impressed into showing my dog at a dog show. The dog names then (in the AKC studbook) were all So-and-so’s-Thus-and-Such. Also, I really liked Lee Meriwether’s Catwoman, who was beyond gorgeous. Back to the movie: Catwoman pretends she is a Rrrrusssian, though that is merely a ruse to seduce the ever eligible and gullible Bruce Wayne, who naturally falls in love with the fake Soviet temptress, oblivious to her true identity as she is to his.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@sempronia:
You were reading correctly. :-)
Anne Laurie
P.S. BettyC, thanks for coming up with such a great thread-starting question — you have a gift!
Ruckus
I started blogging 10-12 yrs ago and needed a name other than my real one, as I had a job that had public exposure. I’ve thought about changing to my real name and even posted a question about doing that and several people told me that they thought it would be better to stay Ruckus. Wanted a name suggestive of someone who wanted to stir things up. Didn’t know anything about Uncle Ruckus at the time but I will say we are quite different. Both characters, I’m the one who breathes and has a heartbeat.
Smiling Mortician
I stole my nym from this poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, back when I was commenting at Sadly, No! in the mid-two-thousandsies.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@sempronia: Which is how I thought of Tattoo Sydney, oddly enough.
LanceThruster
@Calouste:
It was usually a variation of that with their mom since marriage status would be strictly guesswork.
BruceFromOhio
It was a snap judgment call… needed a handle, looked around and thought, okay, I’m a guy…. from Ohio. So I was GuyFromOhio.
Then one of the aussies on an open thread told a joke about two bruces and a sheila… and I said, hey.. I’m a bruce … from Ohio.
So now it’s BruceFromOhio.
There was a brief shining moment when I was ZulifFromOhio. I blame Arkon DougJ.
ETA: Zulif? Someone wants to be a “zulif”?
BruceFromOhio
@Miss Kitka’s Comrade Wayne: This is the most awesome handle ever, and it just rrrrrolls off the tongue.
Cervantes
@Peale:
Ah. Do you recall the Ford plant in Mahwah, or was that before your time?
the Conster
@Smiling Mortician:
That poem was a huge discovery for me. Thanks for the link. Wow.
Peale
@Cervantes: before my time. I know about it and the health issues about the Ramapo tribe because of it. But Ive only been here 12 years.
Death Panel Truck
Death Panel.
Panel Truck.
Death Panel Truck.
Amir Khalid
Very late to this thread, Just as well, since I don’t have a nym with an intriguing story behind it. (Alas, and also alack-a-day.) Amir Khalid really is my name. I did consider using my byline as a newspaperman, H. Amir Khalid. But then I thought, nah …
PurpleGirl
The thread may be dead but I was napping earlier…
When I began using e-mail and surfing the net I wanted to be anonymous. I choose PurpleGirl because I like the color purple and I didn’t know what I felt like age-wise. I sometimes play with the idea of changing my nym but at several sites everybody does know as PurpleGirl. Also various combinations of purple and my name were already taken and I didn’t want to add a number to my name. I also didn’t want to use a variation on hooker for my crochet hobby. Early in e-mail I used the tag line “I’ve become a psuedo-techno geek but I bead, therefore I am.”
(At the kitten cams I use my real name and last name initial.)
SWMBO
From the Rumpole of the Bailey books by John Mortimer. She Who Must Be Obeyed. My husband used it on me and shortened it to She Who at times. I just use the initials because it’s quicker than spelling it out.
henqiguai
@Ninedragonspot (#250):
Thanks for the laugh, I need it
Edgar Allan Podunk
I like to take a real person’s name, and then make it stupid.
Cervantes
@Peale:
Thanks.
Yes, the pollution was awful.
Joel Hanes
@SWMBO:
She Who Must Be Obeyed
Was a well-known reference to H. Rider Haggard’s She a the time that Mortimer was writing the Rumpole books.
Cervantes
@Joel Hanes:
Which character, in turn, was named after a doll that the young Haggard’s governess used to terrify him into submission with.
Glidwrith
Super duper late to the thread (if it’s not dead already): Glidwrith is a half-golden dragon D&D character, cursed into a humanoid form. She was able to ‘study’ other creatures (aka their DNA) and assume their shape. She broke her curse and assumed her true name of Golden Wraith. She was also a killing machine known to munch on skewered goblins for a snack.
Why, yes, I am a bit of a gaming nerd!