Where did your screen name come from?
Unless you use your first name.
Fritz Leiber and Gene Wolfe. Both are Merlins.
It's a combined reference to The Dark Half by Stephen King. Sparrows play a big role and George Stark is "the dark half" of the main character...it's about writing, and for whatever reason, it is one of the few books that ever gave me a nightmare.
Ha - David Eddings had this character named 'Sparhawk' and every time I see your name I think of him for some reason. - don't ask me why.
I'm on a debate forum that is part of a mommy website and they always call me "SparrowStork", which doesn't even make sense. Sparhawk is better.
Oh, so I'm being purposely excluded? You're all LOSERS.
I'm a WINNER. All the time.
I QUIT THIS SITE.
Lol, Okay, I'm back.
Too soon?
Chester Alabaster Pane
Hi Ren-A!
Dave, you make me lafffffff in my shorts.
Ren-A is better than people who pronounce it Ren-E and then wonder why I look at them like they've just called me Mike.
Hi Mike.
Mine came from my obsession to have alter egos and something I can hide behind. I saw a girl wearing a panda mask in a magazine and took it as my own.
I thought you were just a big black metal fan
Chester is fiesty tonight.
He is?
Hi Wordy Bitch!
No, but really, how is your kitchen remodel? I am heavy into this bathroom now...fun--and painful.
It is Joshutahs fault. He told us to go do cocaine.
I use my first name. But there's a bit more of a story to it. I was named after my father, but didn't find that out until I was 18 and needed a copy of my birth certificate. It was then I found out my 'father' was my step father and my mother had tossed my biological dad out when I was less than a year old for being abusive. She married my stepdad a year later and when it came time for me to go to school, used my middle name as my first name and dropped the 'Gregory'.
Since it was pre-9/11 and they weren't defrauding the government, the school system didn't care. So up until I was 18 everything was under an assumed name. Since there was no adoption paperwork, when I joined the military I had to prove my identity (since my ID and Birth Certificate didn't match). Every couple of years it comes up and I have to prove my identity (Passport, marriage, divorce, marriage, etc.). Now, with restrictions on getting official copies of birth certificates, I can't request my own because my name is different. I need a note from mom. Heh.
The weird part was, growing up I never felt like my name was right. When They finally told me, it all made sense. The only reason they waited so long was to avoid the 'you're not my real dad' fight. Which seemed absurd to me at the time, but makes sense now.
Oddly enough, I'd been given the name 'Grigori' by a girlfriend (prior to learning about the step father/biological father thing) who was obsessed with angels and mysticism etc. So I kept it.
I tried. But Cocaine is hard to get. And expensive.
But all I could find was this new-fangled fabric softener called uh, what was it? The fella told me he got it from a doll--a doll who was cavorting around an office? Or something. I think the doll kept saying 'To divinity and Bed, Bath and Beyond?
Dolls are creepy. Especially ones hanging around corporate Americans.
Then the doll whipped this shit toward me with his lasso.
Rhopane™
@Grigori: That is very interesting. Especially the mysticism and angels angle.
Whoa. This thread is getting intense.
Here is an addition to the jolly tone:
My Grandfather, Chester I, was an only child.
My great grandmother was schizophrenic and my great grandfather couldn't brook the insanity, so he abandoned my great grandmother, which to an extent, was understandable. But he left my grandfather, who was only a boy then, about eleven, with my schizophrenic grandmother.
If that wasn't bad enough, when my grandfather called him pleading to come and live with him, my great grandfather told him not to contact him again.
Mental illness.
I still don't understand why the fuck my great grandfather didn't get my grandfather out of there?
Gregori, you fascinate me. Can I crawl inside your head and take a look around?
My screenname aliensoul77 is something I have been using for awhile.
It comes from my obsession with aliens but also because I tend to be a very emotional person and wear my heart on my sleeve. I am often misunderstood and when I feel betrayed I lash out but I'm really not a bastard. I'm just an aliensoul in a mechanical world. 77 is the year I was born.
I feel like I have told this story 5 times. But here is a bright shiny THREAD for it....
Can't resist repeating myself....
Avery was the title character from the first book I wrote. Doll is also fromt he book, a character has a doll collection. Yes, in a creepy way. But then again, my twitter is littlereddoll - which is from Valley of the Dolls. So maybe both of those.
My real name is because I was born in the 80s and my parents were not very creative. If I'd been a boy, they would have named me Aaron. Same middle name.
Picked wickedvoodoo as an email address when I was about 15. I actually don't even remember why, probably just because it sounded cool to my 15 year old brain.
Never really seen a reason to change it. It seems a nice easy name for folks to remember and stuff.
Actually, LR was the first time I considered signing up to a forum with my real name. I use it on FB but I didn't have an account until this new year just gone. Most people here know my name anyway.
Americantypo came from American Psycho, but also from this running gag about my shitty spelling. And when I started a blog years ago (which I now just started writing in again), I toyed with the idea of making every entry a pun of some sort, then quickly abandoned it.
After having earned a degree in English and writing ficiton for all these years, I'd like to think that my spelling has goten better.
Well my parents were 12 when I was born and they thought it would be funny to name me happygurl13, but since I am neither happy, nor a gurl, nor 13, I decided to just go with something rather ordinary.
Back when I was Meat Seeker, it was something I came up with drunkenly on a different forum I used to frequent. My avatar was Sorority Slut Barbie, and I mostly used it to troll people I know in real life and ban them from posting as I had recently aquired my first Ban Hammer. I was also a vegetarian at the time.
Profunda Saint-Sylvain is a witch that came to me in a dream and tried to force me to celebrate a collective birthday party for everyone in my office. She walked really strange and as such I couldn't forget her when I woke up. Why I decided she was my alter-ego is because in the dream she was trying to pass herself off as my boss's wife, whose real name is actually the same as mine.
Also my real name happened as a result of my mother watching Charlie's Angels and thinking that Jaclyn Smith's character walked really strange, since her legs were too skinny to touch at the top, and thus named me Kelly.
@Alien
It's a dark, dark place. How up to speed are you on first responder training and battlefield triage? Unless you've got a strong stomach and don't mind being elbow deep in someone elses death, it is ill advised to poke around the darker corners of my brain.
I stole mine from some dude's girlfriend who was on the Cult for a while when I was still a lurker over there before I joined the workshop. But is it really stealing if she isn't using it anymore?
Well, I generally don't accuse the janitor of stealing my trash.
But if I set my purse down, you shouldn't take it just because I don't happen to be using it at the moment.
Oh Chester. It's already out of control and we've only gotten the appliances into the house. We're getting an estimate on putting a gasline in and my dining room looks like a mini-Home Depot kitchen section. FTR, I knew the gas line would be expensive and was in favor of just getting a GD electric stove to replace the GD electric stove. Hmph.
@Ches: People in my office are looking at me, wondering why I'm laughing out loud. Well played, sir.
Bill Tucker is my name. In these types of forums, I use one of the following:
njskaguy33: Cheesy as all shit, but I grew up in the Jersey ska scene, so there ya go. Also, 33 is a recurring theme in my online avatars.
BCorgan33: If I had a dollar for every schmo-hawk that's asked me if I was related to or actually was Billy Corgan, I'd probably have enough to buy me a bicycle. A really nice bicycle. When I first signed up for AOL back in 1997, this is what I came up with, being a huge Pumpkins fan. Looking back, it's pretty amazing I was able to score that name, as Thirty Three is Pumpkins song. Guess it pays to be an early adopter, blazing along with my 2400 baud modem.
Bulletproof: This is actually my goalie nickname, assigned to me when I was 13. It was after a scrimmage and we were all talking nicknames. Growing up with videogames molded much of my childhood, so when my best friend said, "What do we pick for Bill" and his brother replied, "Bill...like Bullet Bill from Super Mario Bros.", Bulletproof was born. Still think it's a damn good hockey goalie name, so I've used it on one or two boards.
On the Lit, I treat this as a workshop with a message board component, so I decided to just use my real name. I wouldn't walk into a real workshop and say, "Hey everybody. Call me Bulletproof", so I decided to not do so here. Sure, it's not considered safe Internet usage, but I don't have much for anybody to steal. Just a bunch of maxed out credit cards and links to porn sites. Just kidding. Maybe.
I chose to go with "Nick Wilczynski" instead of my full name, "Nicholas Karl Wilczynski" because when I use my full name it looks like I should be the goddamn Emperor of Poland.
I looked through somebody's purse one time. Found a crack pipe. I'll never look through a purse again.
Boring story: When I got to college, the guys in my dorm started calling me Utah. I said, "You can't call me that, it was my old man's nickname in Vietnam, that's like sacrilegeous or something." So instead they called me some relatively predictable (albeit incorrect) religious thing because I'm from Utah. And I said, "Fuck that, just call me Utah." So that's who I am.
Actually, I'm Utah because all the prophets of the Mormon church who have died live in my head and tell me to do shit. Which can be very confusing, because they don't do a great job keeping a consistent message.
My Mom came up with mine.
@Renfield: So you're really Tom Waits?
@Kirk: Genius.
@Renee: We are living the same nightmare. But gas is so much better to cook with. I can't cook on electric.
No, I'm actually Roland Topor, but I appreciate Tom Waits's rendition of me.
@Chester--yeah in the end it will be nice because I will have two ovens (a baker's dream) but it's just gotten way more expensive and way more time intensive that originally planned. I am waiting for the gas guy to tell us the only way to do it will be to tear up the floor, then my worst case scenario will be complete.
I have my junior high gym teacher to thank for mine.
My last name is Gallegos. People far and wide have mispronounced it for as long as I can remember. It's never really bothered me. I've heard every variation and nickname. Gal-eh-gus. Gaygos. Guhl-ee-gos. Folks like to have fun with it, I guess.
One day, gym teacher Mr. Shaver shouted to me, "HEY! LEGO-MY-EGGO-GALLEGO! GET OFF THE FIELD!"
The name didn't stick. People prefer Gaygos. But I've always liked his variation. It was funny and it pronounced my name correctly, minus the "s".
I keep reading your name as eggoallegro. which makes me think of a really fast breakfast chef. But I realize i might just be developing some kind of username dyslexia.
I used to have a bulldog. His name was Otis.
Now I have a bulldog. His name is Karl.
Karl's got some work to do if he want's this honor.