( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Lets start with the meat of this essay, there is no meat. If you came by looking for issues or action or insight (not that you get a lot of the last from the Dog anyway) you are SOL, that’s right you are a Slovenian On Leave. However if you are looking for a place to be a little silly, to let your hair down and get to know a little something about your fellow community members, well you are in the right place!
Given that we have had a recent influx of long term members and new members here at DD the Dog thought it was high time we talk about one of the great, unexplored issues of blogging, namely, what is the story behind your username or handle? It could be a prosaic story or it could be some wild ride or even a shaggy dog story, but whatever it is, c’mon and share it with the rest of us!
Since this is the Dog’s essay, it only seems fair that he go first. Back in 2005 the Dog was having an argument (shouting match) with a conservative friend of his. We were arguing about the Iraq war when this fellow says “You policy ideas are about as good as the ones that dog gave to the Son of Sam!!” Yeah, pretty harsh. A few weeks later I was signing up at the Great Orange Satan and thought it was time the world knew something the dog said.
So there is the origin of the Dog’s handle and the reason all these essays are written in the third person. Now it is your turn! Tell us all how you came up with your handle!
Since this is meant to be silly also tell us your favorite color and your favorite Loony Toons character.
The floor is yours!
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You have my story but my favorite color is dark blue, and there is not a better character than Marvin the Martian.
this is maybe the second time you’ve posted an essay with a first paragraph that isn’t written in the the third person, although your second paragraph is in the third person and your first comment is in the first person, while my comment is the second comment in the first person too.
I’m really curious to see what the third person will have to say this morning about the second person and the first person.
Arf.
the floor is NOT mine. if it were mine i’d have a thick rug in a leaf pattern down!
i’m just me…RiaD
i came by this shortning of my name when my nephew (age about 2) stamped his lil’ foot & proclaimed “she’s my Ria too!” i’ve been Ria ever since. everywhere. even my kids & grandkid call me Ria.
i don’t normally capitalize because i type with one finger.
my favorite colour is…. sky…no! forest…
hmmm. just as aesop & bible stories & grimms are all just teaching tales to me… all cartoons are just toons to me. so. i’m not sure if these are ‘looney’ toons or not.
foghorn leghorn.
those lil’ chipmunks who are NOT chip&dale, they have overdone manners & say ‘indubitably’ a lot.
the mammy on tom&jerry
roadrunner!!
…I always signed on as “Robyn,” which has been my first name since 1992. Since the number of users at IRC was relatively small then, I became “the” Robyn. But when I signed on to DK, someone had beat me to the name.
As far as I am concerned, I’m just moving back to th 90s with this name. 🙂
mine’s a shortened version of a former handle. I picked it because it suits me. Something to do with the Latin for where three roads meet and information was exchanged, The Roman Goddess who was the equivalent of the Greek Goddess Hecate, but mostly because if you don’t remember who played Major Healy on “I Dream of Jeanie,” or something like that, call me, I probably do.
We published on Wednesdays. Since we did not interact with the public much (we were too busy with design work), Wednesday was the default casual day. Hence, Casual Wednesday.
Now that I am in grad school, I take Wednesdays off anytime I can.
back in 2003.
The “president” was determined to go to war in Iraq. It was obvious to anyone with a functional brain what he was doing; going after some oil, avenging his father, increasing his popularity with the base, and using American troops to do it.
What really made me furious was the republican assertion that if I didn’t support this merry little war of his, I was a traitor.
I’m a veteran. No one calls me a traitor dammit! I’m a patriot and I wanted peace, and I didn’t think it was a lot to ask.
Son of a Bush never should have been president in the first place, and he acts as if his cowardice during Viet Nam is some kind of honorable act.
Grrrr.
The Chicken Hawk (“Are you gonna come along quietly, or am I gonna have to muss ya up?”)
I’m a green kind of guy.
when I had a cb in my car and was working in a “bad” neighbor hood. That was back in the early 80’s. I was also “MommyMedic”.
i am conchita at dk. wasn’t sure back then how the grand experiment would evolve and hedged by bets by doing what felt natural – writing as my dog since she basically runs my life anyway. by the time dd came along i was deeper into face to face activism and thought it made more sense to write as me. will most likely do so elsewhere going forward.
Road Runner/Sam the Sheepdog, and I feel sorry for Wile E.
Blue water is my favorite color.
… the Australia Railpage, and originally at the SBS soccer forum, back in the day that serious discussion was for academic email lists and the web was for diversions.
But when I first signed up at the One America blog, “bruce” was taken. So I extended it.
And, yes, I’ve been chatting online since before the World Wide Web had pictures.
was just an irritant in Rushbo’s gut, I decided to jump into the fray at the GOS (having lurked for a while, though apparently not long enough, because my first diary was really lame!) I decided to share my thoughts on John Dean’s concerns about Patrick Fitzgerald not doing his job for sinister political reasons… as you can imagine, that didn’t go down well…mainly because in the title (since abashedly corrected) I called him Gerald Fitzpatrick…lol).
Of course, having decided I had something important to say, I had to sign up, first. Filling out the form, as I recall, one of the boxes asked for my name. I filled it out, little realizing that was to be my username. So my username was suddenly my rl name, and all hope of anonymity was immediately lost. The feds who sponsor my witness protection identity were a bit miffed, and they promptly changed my name to Lisa Onedumbcookie, but I’m not supposed to tell anyone that, so SHHHHHhhhhh.
Amyways, I got roundly teased and gently (and not so gently) made aware of my first diary gaffe, and that was my baptism by fire. Humiliated, I shut up for another six months, and learned a thing or two. Outrage overcame shyness one day, so I penned something rantalyzing about John Kerry and John Conyers “shutting this puppy down” and went from falme to fame (well, a legend in my own mind, anyways…first trip to the rec list was a bit dizzying, after my inglorious start).
Fast forward a bit. Buhdy (and his adorable miniature equine band) and the others who started this place were some of my favorite essayists at GOS, (OPOL, for one) so when I learned about it (sniff… I wasn’t even invited! I had to learn about it second hand through diary references made at the Orange!!! The inhumanity!) I galloped over in search of more likeminded ponies.
I’ve come to love the smell of horsedookie in the morning, cuz it smells like old hippies. Buhdy’s made us a nice place to hang out, and some amazingly accomplished folks here have created something that feels like home.
…..for me to do is skiing at Taos Ski Valley in Northern New Mexico. It is a wonderful little ski area, with some ole’ graybeard hippy ski patrollers as well as some Native Americans and local Hispanos. Cool, unique ski area.
….so taoskier seemed logical.
I chose publicv simply because, everything on the internet is in the public domain.
here I chose Underdog. As for the first, I’m Al, I’m big, and I live in Wash St. For some reason I thot it good to change names when coming to DD and after channel surfing on TV one night, I came across the movie Underdog. That was it, simply because “There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here”. Made sense after a few beers anyway.
actually more than I realized, its my name, and hence easier to remember than anything else.
I was sooo pissed when we had to go to signing up at dkos. Wasn’t much of that happening at blogs back then. I put it off for as long as I could.
Too many toons to pick a fav.
via my spiritual work. It is a valkyrie’s name and means “Shield of Peace” in Icelandic. RandgrÃðr is a guardian female spirit (or “Dis”) who works closely with me.
The white shield of peace was the precursor to the white flag which symbolizes a truce. It is mentioned in the Asatru lore:
Ironically, the name Red Shield translates to Rothschild, which is a centuries-old European banking family dynasty which some say are heavily involved in the globalist “New World Order” conspiracy.
As for me, I have been unemployed for about three years now. I don’t see anyone lifting me up any time soon… no, not even those who call themselves my friends for whatever reason, and certainly not many people who claim to also value peace. When the Norns are involved in one’s wyrd, the irony can get thick enough to cut with a knife.
My initials are rb, so that’s pretty boring, but 137 is pretty cool…
Look here. I’m just in the middle of procrastinating a diary about this. (My diary will be more fun than the article I linked.)
Here is what’s cool, or one of the things that amuses me, anyway. The Fine Structure Constant is unitless, 137 is a prime number, and for many years many Very Smart People (VSP) thought its value was exactly 1/137. Many more VSP started thinking that 137 was somehow cosmically mystical and tried give it all kinds of crazy properties.
When we measured that it wasn’t exactly 1/137, there was a period where people matched its value with functionals made from prime numbers.
Anyway, the whole idea of all of these geniuses working their guts out to make an idea fit — rather than just letting the damned constant be what it is — tickles me to the core. So I added 137 to my handle.
(no time today to reveal more) The Libertine
This I settled on, in frustration, after several foiled attempts to join with any number of my usual noms, “KC” or some variation thereof. Lapis Lazuli was taken as was Cobalt Blue. I think. It was last May at DK … then here, it just made sense to keep same.
Fave color… cobalt blue.
If its easier, you can call me KC. But LL works.
KC
… to Looney Toons characters. My favorite cartoon character is Sei Sato.
I remember a GOP state chairman in 2008 set up shop outside the Dem convention and said “consider us the Ministry of Truth”
Between that and the Corporate Media, the choice was obvious.
The funny thing about the name is that my brother thought it was great since there was a gorilla in a zoo nearby where I was born with the name Casey. He was brought in to help with a mating program, the gorilla not my brother! Sadly, Casey the gorilla was raised by humans, often eating at the same table as them, and had never seen another gorilla until he was a mature adult. He took one look at them and never once did he copulate with those lovely lady gorillas. That’s the story and I’m sticking with it! Ha!
or, ClosetoCommon, but I loved the Tom Robbins book, Another Roadside Attraction and they had a guy in there that wasn’t too weird and in that group that made him stand out so they called him, Nearly Normal…I also considered Seldom Seen as a tip of the hat to Edward Abbey.
Now, I’d probably just use my name.
Mehitabel, who in turn was named after a literary alley cat (www.donmarquis.com).
..my favorite pastimes. 😉
Plus, my doctorate is in Rhetoric. (Hence the cussing.)
satan in late october of 2005. I had been lurking for over a year before that and finally I had to make a comment on something. I had to wait two-weeks but I went back to that diary and commented. Anyway, the day I signed-up I had been re-painting and deep rigging decoys for a hunting trip on the White River in Central Arkansas’ Grand Prairie region. It’s not a prairie at all but a beautiful hardwood wetland. I did not put much thought into the name, didn’t think I’d be using it that much. It was over six-months before I made another comment. I’ve taken a lot of flak for my handle. There are a lot of anti’s though more often they are people that just don’t get it. I have to remind people that I am an ethical hunter (and that there are many more like me than not) not a killer. It means so much more and my involvement runs so much deeper than pulling the trigger. Pulling the trigger is actually quite anti-climactic. My greatest joy is managing two pieces of property one in Grand Prairie and one at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and just below the Illinois River and Mississippi confluence. I have returned both of them, as much as I have been able, to their natural states. The former as a hardwood wetland (it hand been drained for timbering by the railroad decades before) and the latter as a moist soil wetland (previously a cornfield in the Missouri bottoms). People also think hunting makes me a “gun nut” and I am not. I am for reasonable gun control. What we have now are not so much unreasonable control measures that are poorly thought out with many, too many gaps. But that’s a discussion for another day.
is based on a Dog’s name, not on William Wilberforce as many have thought.
The story is this: I was camping out in the boonies among the gators, and along came this hairless critter, at first couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally we figured out it was a young dog.
Really starved, no hair, scabs everywhere. It was eating sticks to survive.
So I fed it.
And it got a huge hard-on.
Someone said: “look at it’s Willy!”
And the name stuck.
Later the dog grew up and into a beautiful golden retriever, and I speculate that it was an escapee from someone trying to ‘train’ pitbulls.
I didn’t put any thought into it at the time, just in a hurry to comment and was living in Indy. Funny, my first comment at Kos was troll rated by geekesque. I commented at the beginning of the primaries on why I thought Clinton was the wrong choice and why progressives should support Obama and now you can get troll rated if you say something negative about Obama.
My normal username is Noelle. It is what I used at Huffpost and a few other sites during some of the worst years of the Bush administration. I was pregnant with my third daughter during the lead up to Iraq and the whole “freedom fries” idiocy. I was so disgusted with everything and everyone that I gave my daughter a french name, Noelle, which means Christmas Day in old French. It served 3 purposes. It was beautiful (and suits her well), it pissed off my right-wing family members to no end and it reminds me of my mom, who loved Christmas and died before my last two daughters were born.
My new name falloutgirl wasn’t so planned (fall out boy was playing on the radio when I signed up and this site wouldn’t let me use Noelle) but it has been very symbolic as of the last few weeks. My husbands industry is going up in flames like so many others and the fallout of this economy is starting to hit us hard. We took a major hit last week and we are scared. The Bush years live on.
I don’t have a favorite loony toons…My character of choice has always been Tom. I still lmao watching Tom & Jerry.
Dave In Chi(cago).
On the upside I like to pronounce it in a similar way to Leonardo DaVinci, except DAY-vin-shee.
was a beat up Honda with a bumper sticker: Yellow Dog Democrat
My first election was Reagan 1st time – I had an ex-hippy Sociology professor that convinced the entire class to vote Democrat. I have pulled the lever for Dems ever since (sometimes holding my nose).
My favorite color is Bird of Paradise – favorite character is Tasmanian Devil.
In the office where I work, we are split 50/50 Dem/GOP – except our VP who doesn’t follow politics.
During the 2008 election, in meetings we would frame “business talk” to make jabs across the aisle (i.e. “Our customer is much too liberal to go for that style” – “An average hockey Mom would find that appealing”).
After a while the VP caught on and prohibited any “political” conversations during staff meetings.
and if this were a baseball team I like to think I’d be the back of the bullpen guy. I don’t post diaries/essays and I mostly lurk and hand out mojo.
I like red and green and Speedy Gonzales.
🙂
and I live in the South. Don’t drink much anymore, but I’m still down here cause my soul needs the sun and the water and the music and crawfish. I would love to live on a boat in the middle of the Atchafalaya Swamp, sippin’ Mint Juleps and wasting my time away. Sorry,it’s one of them days where I want to run away from home and it’s only Monday!
Blue is the color and sometimes purple. Marvin the Martian who is mostly green,but I love him anyway.
Leftvet is better than Leftout or Leftveg.
Former infantry officer in Vietnam, war protester, political prisoner, hippie drop-out drug addict, investment banker, expat in Russia for nine years, now pot-bellied non-profit bureaucrat father of two teenagers in suburbia.
Guess my “veteran-ness” is still my strongest identity.
jamess is short for James S.
lol
It’s short, and easy, to remember
(only 1 in 10 can spell my surname)
jamess is my brandname so to speak —
oh it’s just that joker again.
Handles bugs me
they leave too much room for anonymous rage,
and just plain meanness.
People say things on line, sometimes, behind a handle,
that they would never say to a person’s face.
(charming ain’t it?)
If I had my way, everyone’s handle
would be the same as the real name,
just like in the real world —
but Hey, Tim Berners-Lee never asked for my opinion.
I remember when AOL was truly a Beta App.
I was an early Adopter, on CompuServe.
My first Web Site, was circa 1995.
Although my Global Warming site circa 2005,
was a bit more interesting.
I was an active blogger for John Edwards … (se la vie).
and finally got sick of the playground tactics,
dished out by hall monitor bullies,
at that site that shall not be named.
jamess likes Bugs Bunny,
and Auburn Leaves,
and all the pastel shades of the
aurora borealis.
The TV Series I used to most identify with,
is the HBO Classic Dream On
I remember the deaths of JFK, MLK, and RFK.
I spoke out to end the Vietnam War, back in the day.
I like SciFi, Math Theory, History, and Creative Writing.
ps. my friends call me james, for short,
lol
Howdy, and helllloooow!
Ok… once upon a time long long ago… a young man met a young woman. They got along. They got married.
In their first conception, I was stuck in the back and lost out in the “get to the egg” game. The winner became my oldest brother.
In their second coneption, I was up front waiting. Then. GOOOOOOO. I almost won, but, I got a vicious tail the knocked me off my stride. That winner became my second oldest brother.
After dodging fellatio and masturbation, the third time came. I was trained, I was ready. It was a brutal race. There was a lot of tails wagging, but, I won.
And, thus, I came into this world with my nick….
but signed in briefly to say hello to everyone, and to give the quick 411 on my handle:
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, basically the founding father of the Renaissance (the first great humanist, who tempted religious condemnation by arguing that a human being is a wonderful thing indeed) and one of the most erudite writers ever. So much so that his On the Dignity of Man reads like an over-full brain that exploded on a page, merging Western European thought with ancient Mesopotamia proverbs with Eastern fables with Muslim teachings, etc. The first great syncretic thinker in the West.
If you haven’t already, you really should read it. It’s awesomeness. Naturally his work was condemned, and he was arrested for it.
that I was.
I have a calico, a very vocal and dramatic calico, but when I first snuck on the blogs I was hesitant to do much more than lurk so I was “undercover”….
Yawn, I know…..
Ross Levin. RossL. rossl.
Sorry for being boring… my name on AOL is inkabinkaboo182. No crazy story behind that, my brother came up with it and his old name on AOL was boo82.
0/ The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades 0/
Followed by the flash of a nuke-ya-ler explo-zee-un.
so from one dog to another……….
I got my handle by means of two time honored methods by which blues musicians and blues heads get a blues name – I made it up myself, and then I stold it, ya dig?
My ol’ dog was quite a howler when he was younger. If he wanted your attention, he would look at you, and howl. Any reason to howl, he howled. Ahooooooooorh! I decided he needed da blues name, so I dubbed him Howlin’ Hound Dog Brown. I liked da name so much, I stold it back for myself.
I invented a new Looooney Toooon, and gave him a scientific name Demorepublicratus chickenwarhawkus blogospherii
Warner Bros should use it.
When doing excessive speed runs across much of North America in the early seventies I found it advantageous to know what was going on ahead of me & if anyone was sneaking up from behind. Since I rode a Knucklehead then, as I still do, I used that as my handle on the CB while doing my cross country runs in different four wheeled cages.
and I was a child, my neighbor Emil called me Keefer as a nickname for Keith. The 55 is my hot rod Ford.
I started on a Ford Forum and used keefer55 as my nom de clavier, and it was easy to remember. I use k55f a lot also.
Fav colour-The colour out of space
Fav Cartoon character-
All across soapbloxia, the curses are the same: “if it’s a gonzo ripoff, then Keir’s the one to blame!”
I used the same handle everywhere, branded as me-because my parents gave me a good one. And because hey, if I accidentally say something brilliant, I want my name on it.
Around the turn of the century–the current century, though it sometimes feels to me like it must have been the last one–I worked in the adult video industry under the name Keith, which is not my real name. Somebody told me that “Keike” was the Hawaiian spelling for Keith, so I started using “keike” as a log-on online, since “keith” was usually already taken. That gradually expanded into “keikekaze,” as a play on the Japanese word kamikaze, the sacred wind. I’ve since learned that the Hawaiian spelling for Keith is actually Kika, but “keike” in Hawaiian means “children,” which is kind of nice. So I keep it because I’m used to it now, even though it doesn’t make much sense!
stormchaser = climate scientist.
*/:-D
as per usual.
But I’m Youffraita b/c my real name is too common, and when I was trying to establish email, back in the bad old AOL dial-up days, and every variant on my real name kept coming up with an unacceptable [read: I couldn’t remember it] numeric suffix, I just invented a name based on a horrific mispronunciation of the town where I lived at the time.
Youffraita = Ephrata, PA
Stupid, huh? But afaik, I’m the only Youffraita on the toobz (& yeah, I tried to find another one, out of curiosity. There isn’t another one in the U.S., apparently).
For someone with a common name, it’s kind of nice to be the only Youff out there…
Member of the Religious Society of Friends.
Have a great day!
We have a lot of nature in Alaska, which I love with all my heart, so my name honors the ol’ environment there with a tribute to the mighty caribou.
Also I use the “Barbie” part of my name as a tribute to brave beauty pageant contestants, without whose leadership this great country of ours would surely degenerate into immoral socialism.
at dkos in 2003. I had come to the net via Howard Dean’s site. I started reading the front page at dkos and then discovered the diary side. My husband and I had become active locally in the Democratic party after the bush coup. He had been reading Kos since it started and I used to read it over his shoulder as I was basically a Luddite as far as the net and computers went. I was a amazed at the stories and the different lives of the community, and the whole world of the net.
When I signed up I was working as a graphic artist on a catalog for an artist who does glass mosaics. I would take a break from my struggles with Adobe and go to dkos to read. The artist had a series of mirrors with a exotic motif and one was named Scheherazade. I picked it, misspelled it (I had been doing that for days in my project) I kind of felt like my namesake as each night I would have exotic tales of Budhy, BT, ek, and all the other posters, for my husband. He too joined the fray and used the name of my husband in the tale.
There’s nowhere to go but up.
Besides, I tend to push buttons. Hard. And most people don’t like that.
By the way, in ‘real life’, I’m a musician and teacher of music… and a husband and father. And grandfather, now!
in politics since the 70’s, worked on more campaigns than I care to remember, ran a couple of bulletin boards back in the day and have been online a long time. I’m the same on many, many sites though lately, it’s an acronym for brevity. I’m more of a lurker; a behind the scenes sort of person. It suits my personality and my long evolved blogging style and it’s mine!
No body else can have it.
(No one else probably wants it)
Bonus answer: My favorite candy are those tiny little rolls of Smarties.
My favorite color is anything that matches the geriatric cats that coexist with me …I swear, I go through more of those sticky lint roller things than you’d want to imagine – Just try finding business suits in ginger /white.
I worked as a teenager during the opening season of one of the Marriott amusement resorts in the Midwest, I spent the summer sweating in a Sylvester The Cat suit.
I didn’t say much back then either.
…”Merc2723″ back in 1998 on AOL and Yahoo. I have a mercurial temperment. I lost my AOL account on a TOS violation and came back as “Quicksilver2723,” a handle I have used for everything I do online since.
I ditched AOL not long after a misdirected email landed in my box addressed to an FBI field agent. And my best friend in the chatroom got a visit sans warrant from the SS and HS for posting something innocuous about Dick Cheney. They threatened to disappear him, got his medical records from the VA, refused to identify themselves or provide copies of the statements he had to sign after they searched his house and copied the contents of his computer. I think he posted, “I can’t wait until Dick Cheney’s political career is pushing up daisies” in the chatroom. Those were the days when all our phone calls were filled with clicking noises and bizarre interruptions.
Favorite cartoons are Pinky and the Brain and Roadrunner.
It takes the entire color spectrum to outfit my mood swings throughout the day. I don’t like orange. Narf!!
From AOL’s chatroom, The Podium, I drifted to yahoo political groups, to CLG, and to TPM, before landing at Dkos. I quit online/street activism when my son was deployed to Iraq in 2003 other than to attend the screening of Michael Moore’s movie, Farenheit 911 in Crawford, TX with my daughter. That was a gas seeing his movie in a field with all the national media in attendance.
And now I read this site too because it feels like people are free to say what’s on their minds without fear of being ostracized by roving bands of legalists and self-appointed experts. My view is that we’ve all been traumatized during the last eight years, so we’re bound to be touchy or emotional at times. We might even post something that’s ::gasp:: inaccurate.
But we need to talk through our perceptions/feelings with one another to shape national consensus for goals we hold in common. Politicians don’t like it when we talk to one another.
I do.
begins with fireworks and pink floyd playing in the background.
the sound of one-hand clapping (from the only sober person in the room). (somewhere in the back, i think.)
thank you, thank you. no need to flick the bics, someone will be around later to collect money.