When I was little, maybe 5 or 6, wrestling was popular on TV. My older brother used to practise his wrestling moves on me, his little sister. I gave myself my user name (and called my brother Woodchuck McGluck). It made my mother laugh. It’s the only time I can remember her being openly proud of me.
Harlan Ellison used “rowrbazzle” in his book about “The City at the Edge of Forever”. But ISTR I read the word in something else he wrote before I read that book. Here’s the quote from the book: “There was actual rowrbazzle size money to be made from this kind of thing.” (An article for TV Guide about the episode.)
But the way I remember it originally is the same meaning: an amount of something that was happily much larger than expected. And it sounded funny!
I added the extra “r” because somebody else on the Internet was already using the original word. Not totally proper, but I was clueless at the time.
I didn’t know it originated in “Pogo Possum” until someone here hailed me as a Pogo fan. I apologized for the confusion.
Jerome was quoting Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism.
You and Paul Krugman.
I have not encountered this good haired fellow named @Trip yet. Perhaps he’d drop by and introduce himself to his long lost brothers. After all, he’s likely to be confused for one of use before long. Sometime I can’t even tell us apart when we’re weaing hats.
He’s a '99er. Only two posts.
Interestingly, the website in his profile is still active.
The first bumper sticker I remember that was not just a travel destination (I saw the Grand Canyon!) read, “Who is John Galt?”. This was back in the 1960s. About 15 years later I idly picked up a book at a party and read that famous opening line. Instantly I knew I was not well read anymore.
As I recall I had a shortlist of names when I signed up, and Treppenwitz wasn’t first choice - but the others were taken, so Treppenwitz it was (Trep for short - and I have no hair [ ↑ ]).
It’s not a bad name - I like the sense it gives of me posting something and then realising I could (should) have done much better - which is pretty accurate.
j
ETA: and the current avatar is Wilko Johnson either flying, or not flying, a plane (depending on who you believe).
When I first joined AOL (back in the covered wagon days), I selected a screenname consisting of my first initial, my middle initial, and my full last name, all shovedtogetherlikethis.
The first three letters were therefore capitalized, and people (for some strange reason) took to calling me VOW.
I ended up working in an area called “The Amazing Instant Novelist,” named after Dan Hurley. My official working for AIN name became NOVLVow.
At that point, everything I did was signed “VOW.”
When I joined SDMB, three-letter names were allowed, so of course, I am VOW to the SDMB world.
Any other message board or community, I try to stay with VOW. If that name isn’t long enough, my brain panics, and I simply don’t know what to call myself.
~VOW
In the early days of online gaming I attempted to get ‘EvilSponge’ (Adult Swim Reference) as a game handle. It wasn’t available (without adding the annoying numbers, etc). DarkSponge was and I came to like it.
Absolutely no reason, sorry.
Well, I guess the reason was that I signed up here and they wanted a screen name. Since this was the only social media I’d ever tried (still is!), I was flummoxed, "Wait, I pick my own name? That’s weird… ummm, oh I don’t know, I guess digs."
Been digs for over two decades, so I 'spose this is me.
My first internet community was the alt.fan.monty-python usenet group. This was when the internet did not play well with non-ascii characters and the ø in my real name became a [ or some such, so when I was knighted (or kniggited) by one of the Old Guard of the group I became Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Alphabet, or NAITA.
This is now the only place I actively use that nick, since I started signing up with a version of my real name at some point.
Back in the early 90s, I was both interested in the lore of angels and on IRC (internet chat rooms for those unfamiliar). I would use an angel’s name as my nickname but the server didn’t let you actually “hold” a name so you’d log in and find someone else currently using any popular name. So I eventually settled on Jophiel which was both obscure enough that no one else was ever using it and also an interesting angel to talk about – Jophiel was (according to extra-Biblical lore) the angel who drove Adam & Eve from the Garden and was tasked with preventing anyone else from entering.
By the time 1999 rolled around, I was “Jophiel” to anyone I knew in the online community and so that became my name here. The internet now being a much more crowded place than it was back in 1993, I doubt I could get the name on anywhere but the newest sites but I’m still Jophiel here, harkening back to an old era.
Gary Gnu was a Muppet-esque character on a kid’s puppets-and-humans variety show when I was very little called The Great Space Coaster who was the anchor on a silly newscast segment. He was always a favorite of mine.
In the mid-90s, I went by “cookiemonster” in online chat rooms, but I discovered way too many other people using the same name. Being an obscure reference, I switched to “garygnu.” All lower case and no spaces were required for screen names. I kept in when I joined here.
I have been involved in sports car and motorcycle racing. I did not want to use an already well-known handle I had. Turns out TubaDiva was also involved in the same group but she never unmasked me, kind soul that she was/is.
In pre-avatar days, there was a thread that asked us to visualize our thread names, and I said that I am those little bits of food that fall into the footwell of the car if you eat in the car. Therefore, my avatar.
Mine goes back to when electronic bbs’s were a thing. I had just signed up on one (using my dad’s Tandy 1400 laptop with 1200 bps modern). A friend was over when I was doing this and he gave me the username, “Dragwyr”. I would use it on every system and message board since then. Still do use it when I have the option.
Well, duh.
“Jasmine”? It’s actually my name. LOL
I had an image of you hurtling down frothing rapids in a kayak. LOL
I think that may depend on the meaning of “well read”. I mean, just because you have not gone through poorly-written ill-thought-out plop does not necessarily mean you are not well read.