I have been ‘accused’ of being roadkill, and asked if there was a connection with some obscure film that I now can’t remember (I think that was @Johnny_L.A who pointed that one out), but the simple fact is that I signed up here because I was curious, and we all know what that does to cats. A while back a smarter person than me (which is most of you) suggested I put that as a custom title, to try and avoid giving the impression I wish harm on animals. I still tend to avoid posting in pet threads, though.
The —dar thing is from my actual initials (dar) and what I misremembered from Dan Aykroyd’s character on SNL (Beldar, wasn’t it?) or ZEL—
So it’s just a made-up name all around. There was a Zelda Fitzgerald from Alabama which is where I used to grow up, so there’s that “connection” too.
I’m an ornithologist who studied corvids and brachyrhynchos is the species name for American Crow. My avatar is one I caught, giving me the stinkeye. You can call me brachy.
That’s the cartographers fault. Should have a proper title, easy to find. Lower right corner. We got rid of all of our flat files. The wooden ones where pretty cool though. The steel ones sucked big time.
Unless you mean in person, you know me too. Though I mostly work in data now. Don’t make maps. I manage the data that makes them. 35 years in GIS. Before that it was pen and ink, pencil, and paint brush.
When I went to University, it so happened that I shared the same uncommon Scottish last name with the President of the school who had the nickname Sparky. During Frosh week, it was presumed that I was his son so everyone started calling me “Sparky Junior” After a year or two, the president changed but the name stuck and it shortened to Sparky.
The 812 comes from necessity so I added the old OU812 (oh you are one too?) joke which was Cheech’s license plate in Next Movie as well as a Van Halen album title.
‘Obscure’? Nay! It was A Bucket Of Blood by the late, great, Roger Corman and starring Dick Miller!
Here’s Walter’s ‘sculpture’, Dead Cat.
Returning from a lucrative overseas job back in the early 80’s I bought a very small house on a very small lot in a very small town directly across the bay from the Golden Gate bridge, where a finger of fog would linger long after adjacent communities were dancing in the sunshine.
My wag housemate brother and I called the place “Sunny Acres” and I’ve been sunacres ever since. It was confused a bit when I went to work for Sun Microsystems a few years later, but the name weathered that storm intact.
“Homie” is a diminutive of my last name, and also a colloquialism for “friend.” I’m hella friendly, and my name is already there, so back in college my dorm-mates started calling me “Homie” or sometimes “RastaHomie” (I sometimes wore a tam o shantern with the colors of the Pan African flag, for the lulz). When Al Gore invented the Internet I used RastaHomie, for pretty much everything, including my SDMB handle. After a few years, I figured the Rasta- portion was misleading (I’m agnostic, not Rastafarian) so I chose HeyHomie instead. The Hey- portion honors my brother (same mom, different dad, so different last names). Often when he greets me, he’ll go into the voice of Barney from The Simpsons and say “Hey Homie,” and I rather like it. So I figured I’d change it to that.
I am a member of Delta Tau Delta, and I am rather large in stature. (6’5", mumble mumble pounds…) Folks have called me Ogre for a long time.
It amuses me when someone calls me “Del,” as if my last name were “Togre.” I seldom correct them.
Once upon a time, I used the pen name “Vance Moravian,” but I no longer produce written online content as a vocation.
My avatar is Zap Rowsdower. That’s a stupid name, but he saved us, and saved all the world…
Sorry, I meant “map” by user name.
One of my favorite books as a kid was “Ball Four” by former MLB pitcher Jim Bouton. It was the first ‘tell-all’ sports book. For revealing all the players’ philandering and boozing, Bouton became the most hated man in baseball.
One day while Bouton was warming up on the mound in Cincinnati, Pete Rose registered his disapproval of Bouton’s literary effort:
“**** YOU, SHAKESPEARE!”
Eight Bobs in high school algebra class. Didn’t much like the teacher’s cute notion of assigning us variable names BobA, BobB, BobC so I moved my last initial to the front, and have used it as a single name for over fifty years.
Mine is from a Doonesbury character with the rationale lost aeons ago, but I have a proud tradition to uphold.
It’s also code for @snfaulkner , which is also a lingering tradition.
I am not nearly as good looking as @TriPolar though, who by handle looks like me, but IRL he rivals Schwarzenegger in both body build, wit, and wealth.
Tripler
Some traditions should be acknowledged . . . but ultimately let go.
I somehow got hold of the book and loved it. I was 11 and thought maybe I shouldn’t be reading it. I had just finished reading The Exorcist (a neighbor had dropped it off for my mom) and I similarly thought it was above my age range.
From an earlier thread:
Every time I see your user name I think of the financial term:
Which is actually due to a book I read:
My own user name? See here:
Cool! I always wondered, and was surprisingly close with my guess.
One of my favorite Star Trek TOS episodes.
My old Army unit. Regimental Support Aviation Troop, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
A guy I played with on a company softball team back in the late 80s, around the time “Field of Dreams” came out, used to call me Shoeless. Definitely not because of my outfielding skills! When I first signed up for a Yahoo! email account, I used a slightly different spelling as my user name. That was my primary email address for many years. Then when I registered here, I had to enter my email address and come up with a user name, and I couldn’t really think of anything clever on the spot, so I went with Shoeless.
As for my avatar, when they first allowed avatars here I tried to find a picture of Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson, but they were all kind of dark and hard to tell who it was. Then I thought as a joke I should use a photo of the other Joe Jackson, the musician. Then I remembered the “Look Sharp!” album cover, with the shoes, and it just made some weird sort of sense.