I am curious about what many of y'all's handles mean - not the ones that are obvious given names, but some of the others. Y'all know who you are!
I'll start:
Mine stems from when I returned to the U.S. after an 18-year 'stopover' in Brazil: I found my vocabulary hadn't suffered much during my absence, as I worked with words the entire time, but the long-term Latin influence caused my syntax to suffer intermittent involuntary inversion. That under control I think I now have.
You did that for rhetorical effect! : )
as to tsuwm, it comes from my webpage (see profile). I was once simply wm (wwftd master), but the day the wwftd was atman I became The Supreme Universal Wwftd Master!
(tsuwm is also a Hebrew word meaning to fast)
Thanks, you-all, I've been wondering! (For all who do not
live in the U.S. South, you-all is Kentuckian for y'all.)
O Supreme one, is it all right if I pronounce your acronym
tsu-wum, I hope? Speaking of handles, mikstu, were you
ascribing one when you wrote jeff-enuf?
OK, though you may be disappointed with the result.
Full name: Ravi Shankar Nair
shanks - contraction of middle name that is easier to pronounce for those unaccustomed to the flatter vowels and consonants used by most Indian languages.
Ravi - another name for the sun god (Surya). Poetic licence turns it into 'sunshine'
Nair - Malayali caste name, the equivalent of the standard Hindu kshatriya, or warrior, caste (actually more nobility or landowning, but warrior sounds so much more romantic). Hence the 'warrior'
cheer
the sunshine warrior
Shucks, I may as well confess. It is really the name of my dog, Lucy, in the form she normally uses. You see, she doesn't spell very well, and the lower case is because she has trouble with the shift key, like her good friend archie who (so she claims) lives under one of our kitchen cupboards with his large family.
Y'all, I thought I'd move this back up to the top, because I'm still interested in what some of the more esoteric handles mean.
I was asked about mine again: AnnaStrophic = anastrophic.
Hey, Tropic-anna!
(Had you thought of that one?) No insult intended!
Understand I now think I. Beaucoup merci.
and as a sidebar to all those who insist on misspelling or providing 'humorous' representations of the pronunciation of tsuwm, the official and correct rendering is "sue-em".
Payne and Durance
Attorneys at Law
http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
I recently received a query regarding my 'handle'; perhaps this thread will get more response at this point in our development. wadaya say, wow?
Mine's pretty straightforward - Capital has, and has had, so many meanings. It's a word I really like. Kiwi is self-explanatory, except my beak isn't all that long. The popular definition is .... no, not in this forum.
. That under control I think I now have.
Could Anna be the same sage one who uttered these famous words: "Do, or do not. There is no try." And, of course: "When nine hundred years you reach, look this good you will not."
My handle is of course, an homage to The Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. It has the added bonus of including a real name, so that my ego and my id now have a name each, a situation we are both very pleased with.
When my kids where younger, and we went on long car rides to see great grandparents, for entertainment we played "licence plates" a game common to US. The object is to find as many different states as possible (zipping by on the highways)
Since I was driving, and this was a lonely stretch of high way, we too, where zipping–Interstate 91 going north in Vermont was famous for not enforcing the speed limit–and I would find my speed increasing and increasing, until I maxed out my engine (a slant 6 with 3 forward gears, no overdrive) at 85 mph.
I offered bonus points for vanity plates. One very slow trip–no one but native Vermonters on the road we made up our choices for vanity plates. Of troy was a natural– it give my name, and doesn't.
I like to say I have the face that sank a 1000 ship–but the truth is,
I have blonde hair, that falls in waves, about half way down my back, blue eyes, fair skin– I keep my nails long, and polished...
and if I dieted from now to the end of my life, I might get to be zaftig...
And I would still have the pug nose, and the "rosy cheeks"–that are not quite of as res as W. C. Fields nose, but getting there–
you know what they say, on the internet, no one knows you're a dog!
Faldage because it starts with an F. You could look it up.
The full version is Faldage of Fong, Conceptual Detective and Free Lance Fool. It derives from the early Ruby episode when she was Ruby Tuesday, a galactic gumshoe from New Fez, Europa and was hired by Colonel Abullah Abdullah from the star cluster Saudi Asteroidea to track down the missing planet Cleo. The full story is on the CD Tired of the Green Menace? available from ZBS Media. Be careful, their stuff is addicting.
A creative use of jaundice, Helen!
Jazzoctopus - what can I say? capricious piffle
wow. It didn't take long for someone to turn it upside down but then there was a pause before the second meaning was tipped : wise old woman -- although I was enchanted by some of the flattering guesses made before you all got to know me better!
To quote Max Q : "..my ego and my id now have a name each.." As an aside to this ... who is the oldest among us?
In case you're shy : anyone over sixty? over seventy?
If you admit to one of those we could get down to brass tacks : month, day, year.
Aloha, wow
If you admit to one of those we could get down to brass tacks : month, day, year.
Or do you prefer to stick to name rank and serial number?
wow
we could get down to brass tacks : month, day, year. I was quite pleased with the symmetry of my birthday this year - I turned 33 on the 22nd of the 11th. My father remarried on my eight birthday, which makes me the only person I know (hobbits excluded) who has to buy presents on his birthday.
i just like trying to get my tongue around alliterated latin without a slip up.
i just like trying to get my tongue around alliterated latin without a slip up.So, if you felt like trying assonantal Arabic, you might go for
Allahu akhbar?
MoM
WoW suggests
As an aside to this ... who is the oldest among us?
In case you're shy : anyone over sixty? over seventy?
If you admit to one of those we could get down to brass tacks : month, day, year.
Sorry dear. I don't have birthdays, I have a use-by date. That was 20/07/1971. Yes, Yankophiles, we do the day and month ass-backwards. Why that particular date? A good question!
On another board I occasionally contribute to we take the names of authors and their characters. I couldn't possibly live up to Darcy so I took the name Bingley Austen. I decided I liked Bingley, so now I use it for all online purposes.
Bingley
When I was in highschool, I played D&D with friends. I needed a name for a character, and I rolled dice. I got Xar doing that, added the 'a' to make it more fem, and found a name I liked. I later learned from a friend from Greece that xara means happiness in Greek. What better name could you ask for?
In case you're shy : anyone over sixty? over seventy?
If you admit to one of those we could get down to brass tacks : month, day, year.
OK, I'll happily admit to seventy-plus. Before I come completely clean, though, I noticed that Capital's use-by date (I'm not going to try to guess its significance) happens to be very close to my own birthday (21/7). I am told that a group of twenty or so (I think) people will contain at least one example of a common birthday (day-month only, of course). How many other 21/7's do we have? Who do I have to remember to tell Happy Birthday to in July?
sakezuki lusy (Enigma wants to replace OK with Okamoto! Where on earth did he dredge that up?)
I'll happily admit to seventy-plus : says lusy Me, too, lusy, over 70 but a February child. Glad there is another mature adult lurking!
WOW
>I am told that a group of twenty or so (I think) people will contain at least one example of a common birthday (day-month only, of course). You're on the right track, lusy, but the word "will" is dangerous, statistically speaking. Ignoring 29 Feb birthday deviants
, you'd need 366 people to be certain that two would share a birthday.
A group of 23 or more people has a
better than even chance that two people will share a birthday. Maths teachers love testing this out on an unsuspecting class, because with a class size of 30, the probability of a shared birthday jumps to 70%, with 40 pupils it's 90%.
I won't go into the maths behind it, but you could check out
http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_11_23_98.html
A group of 23 or more people has a better than even chance that two people will share a birthday.
Yeah, thanks Marty, you're right of course, and that's what I really meant to say. In fact I originally had written along the lines of: "you could make money ... etc, etc." The person who first told me this, years ago, claimed to be well ahead of the game by using this in various pubs with an appropriate number of people present!
I'll follow your link gladly. The last time I tried to work it out to prove it to someone I got hopelessly lost in the process—at least I now know the number is 23!
Rgds, lusy
well i'm a mayday child-- born on the first of may- i'll leave the year off off-- I remain 47
but there are no big celebrations here in states for mayday-- no may poles, or morris dancers, or military parades.
I have friend born on may 30-- it wasn't till he started school that he realised that it was a holiday, and not everyone getting together for parades and picnics just to celebrate his birthday! (may 30 memorial day/ honoring end of US civil war)
of Troy wrote : but there are no big celebrations here in states for mayday-- Oh, Dear of Troy,
Save your dimes and go to Hawaii for the First of May which, there, is "LEI DAY" and it is a super-dooper day. People are given lei or buy for themselves. The types of lei vary greatly and you see some amazing lei. Sometimes a Boss will give a lei to all in an ofice. The neck lei are not the only ones worn that day, the head lei is also to be seen. There is a lei making competition and the magnificent results are displayed at Kapiolani Park. You'd love it!
Aloha, wow
go to Hawaii for the First of May...So presumably the tourist marketing department has already run through the variants of "Come to Hawaii and get lei'd"
Mav said, suggestively: So presumably the tourist marketing department has already run through the variants of "Come to Hawaii and get lei'd"
Could be. In Russia under the Soviet regime, May 1 was Labour Day. Somehow seems appropriate in the context.
Yes, i knew that-- when i was being a disagreeable child, my mother would remind me that the first thing i did wrong was to get born a godless-communist holiday! it was all down hill from there!
Any attempts to counter that she had more say in my birthday than i did, were not tolerated!
well, maybe next time i head so far west as to end up in the east, i'll stop in hawaii. I've been to japan, and would like to go again, but next time, i want to continue on to the great down under...
--well there's a plan get down and get lei'd -- that would be a memorable vacation...
> --well there's a plan get down and get lei'd -- that would be a memorable vacation...
That's what fronds are for!
Wasn't there was an effort to make May 1st "Law Day" as I recall it was during Cold War times and was a sorta' anti-communist ploy. Never had much success.
As to Lei Day ... even marketing wallahs occasionally have a good idea!
wow
the catholic church made it the "feast day of st. joseph the working man" so that catholics could have parties of there own-- that happened sometime in the mid 50's-- other wise i would have ended up as josephine-- and since i dislike names for women that are really men's names-- words too, Actor's all--no more actress's and aviator-- forget aviatrix, it's just as well.
but try as i might, i can't force the end to such sexist words! some have even shown up on this board!
St. Helena feast day is some time in the first week of may-- 4th or 5th i think...
(but it took my parents long enough to agree even on that-- my birth certificate notes that my first name was entered into the record on June 6th!--goodness knows what they called me for the first few days!)
Does anybody see the same thing in their neck of the woods...here, women will often try to plan their pregnancies so that they will have the baby in the summer or autumn so as not to be pregnant in the wintertime.
Our winters can get somewhat brutal so you can surely imagined why a woman would not want to be pregnant at that time. You are bloated, with feet that are so big your boots don't fit (and you can't bend down to tie them anyway) and no coats are large enough to cover your belly.
Wow sayeth: Wasn't there was an effort to make May 1st "Law Day" as I recall it was during Cold War times and was a sorta' anti-communist ploy. Never had much success.
Would that (taking the sum of this thread together) make it the Day the Law was Lei'd Down?
From bel:
In reply to:
Does anybody see the same thing in their neck of the woods...here, women will often try to plan their pregnancies so that they will have the baby in the summer or autumn so as not to be pregnant in the wintertime.
Our winters can get somewhat brutal so you can surely imagined why a woman would not want to be pregnant at that time. You are bloated, with feet that are so big your boots don't fit (and you can't bend down to tie them anyway) and no coats are large enough to cover your belly.
Too much information, too much information!
too much information!Don't agree - it conjured up a lovely image
Wow sayeth: Wasn't there was an effort to make May 1st "Law Day" as I recall it was during Cold War times and was a sorta' anti-communist ploy. Never had much success.
Would that (taking the sum of this thread together) make it the Day the Law was Lei'd Down?
Grooooooaaaaannnnnn
St. Helena feast day is some time in the first week of may-- 4th or 5th i think...I am very glad there is no rule that we must be named after the saint upon whose feast day we are born. On my birthday in those bygone days, it was Saint Scholastica!
Ann has worked very conveniently for me and it "ages" well.
wow
Sorry to be so late on this one - I've not had time to look on this bit of the board recently!
My handle stems fro aquiz team of which I was a member, back in the good old days at Ruskin College, Oxford. The leader of the team was a dogmatic socialist who had received the scathing comment from a worsted adversary (he
had used some wooly arguments!) "You're just a Rhubarb Commando!" He named his team in honour of this soubriquet.
When I moved to Lancaster University, I bought a house in a village which is known locally as "Rhubarb City," so it seemed appropriate to apropriate the team's name.
As to age - it would seem I am a mere youngster at 61 (late November - Saggitarian con-man!)
wow moaned (as if she had never, ever committed such a literary solecism herself): Wow sayeth: Wasn't there was an effort to make May 1st "Law Day" as I recall it was during Cold War times and was a sorta' anti-communist ploy. Never had much success.
Would that (taking the sum of this thread together) make it the Day the Law was Lei'd Down?
Grooooooaaaaannnnnn
I take the pain was from too many hotdogs at the amusement park where your carousel was?
As to age - it would seem I am a mere youngster at 61
Would that mean I'm still in the womb at 17?
In reply to:
As to age - it would seem I am a mere youngster at 61
Would that mean I'm still in the womb at 17?
When I was 10, I got knocked down by two cyclists while crossing a road. This happened on Guy Fawke's day, just 17 days before my eleventh birthday. When asked, I gave the nurse my DOB, but she entered the current year, instead of the year of birth. While lying on the exam room table, I heard the attending doctor remark - "well, it seems we have a ten-year old foetus in here today."
Max, responding valiantly to a cri de coeur from Jazz, said: When I was 10, I got knocked down by two cyclists while crossing a road. This happened on Guy Fawke's day, just 17 days before my eleventh birthday. When asked, I gave the nurse my DOB, but she entered the current year, instead of the year of birth. While lying on the exam room table, I heard the attending doctor remark - "well, it seems we have a ten-year old foetus in here today."
Well, it's understandable if you were born in the Hawkes Bay region. There's so much wine drunk up that way that everything is well-pickled. I wouldn't be surprised if even the corpses from the district's graveyards fronted the bar in the local pubs ...
And it must take some really special talent to get knocked down by two cyclists. My congratulations!
Well, it's understandable if you were born in the Hawkes Bay region.Nope. I was born in Sulphur City, but the accident happened while living in Tokoroa. As for the two cyclists, I have always been rather proud of that achievement, it always impresses/puzzles people that I managed to pull that off, or should I say, them down!
proud of that achievement...Showing singular effishiency
Max corrected: I was born in Sulphur City, but the accident happened while living in Tokoroa.
Rotorua -> Tokoroa -> Hastings. Is that a kind of eastward continental drift. Or incontinental, if that's more appropriate?
>>>Does anybody see the same thing in their neck of the woods...here, women will often try to plan their pregnancies so that they will have the baby in the summer or autumn so as not to be pregnant in the wintertime. <<<
I was born just at the beginning of a medium size blizzard. After my parents took me home, my mother didn't leave the house for several weeks. I don't think she cared for that very much. However, that's not the reason that I intend to plan my pregnancies to avoid winter. My birthday is Dec. 29. That's just 4 days after Christmas!!! To a small child, it seemed a horrible punishment for me to have my birthday so close to Christmas. Uncles and Aunts would give me 1 present and say "that can be for your birthday too." I never got to have a birthday party in class because we were always out for Christmas. My friends were always away on my birthday, so my parties were sad affairs. I have no intention of putting my children through that! Summer babies for me!
My sister was born on the 23rd of December and luckily she never had to face those things. In our family a birthday is a thing to be noted. We always have dinner on the Sunday before the person's birthday to celebrate. We eat his/her favourite food and have his/her favourite type of birthday cake. January is the only month in which we do not have at least one birthday.
Funny thing in my family, birthdays are. My mother and brother were born in November. My dad and I both have December birthdays. My dad's brother also had a December birthday (Dec. 24, to be exact.) Every birthday in our house fell between Nov. 2 and Dec. 29.
I didn't mean to say that my parents didn't honour my birthday. In fact, they went out of their way to make sure that I had a party, and separate birthday gifts. It was just my friends, and my aunts and uncles who would give my brother a separate birthday gift, but not me. I felt jipped growing up, but not anymore.
My wife's (SWMBO) birthday is on December 24. We always go out for dinner the night before, and I make a point of making the present more significant than her Christmas gift. There are two reasons for this - (a) she would kill me if I didn't, and (b) I can't afford a big Christmas present as well ...
My birthday (August 25) is shared by my uncle and my grandmother. Dates are funny things!
Every birthday in our house fell between Nov. 2 and Dec. 29In the Spring, a young man’s fancy turns…
I was apparently due on Christmas day, but got impatient!
i hope your mother appreciated that! my kids got off to late starts-- my "due date" with my son was October 4th and he was born Nov 3rd-- and no i didn't mis calcuate, or miss a date-- he was 9lbs (almost a full 4k.) and 23 inches long...
my daugter was as bad-- and was induced! 3 weeks after due date-- and even bigger.. 9lbs, 15 oz( more than 4 k.) -- and a full 24 inches long.. but i can't as i had a difficult time of it, i have a nice set of peasant hips-- both were natural, and no screaming or carring on-- and no problems after-- i was up and about after one good night sleep.
but i got tired of being pregant after 7 months, and looked forward to having pregnancy end, and having a baby-- the extra months wait was no fun!
And in my daughters case costly! -- she was expected on dec 26th --St Stephen's day--(boxing day) but wasn't born until the new calendar year-- and we lost claiming her as a tax deduction for a year!
>>>the extra months wait <<<
Yow! Were you late as well? I hope to follow my mother's example. Both my brother and I were born 2 weeks early.
In reply to:
MMDDYY
I have the dubious distinction of having been born on Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday. Don't bother to look it up -- Apr. 20, 1939. And in connection with the odds of people having the same birthday, one of my brothers was born on my 8th birthday and on the same day my aunt gave birth to a daughter. That cousin, improbably, always resembled me; my brother is about as unlike me as possible.
BobYB observed: I have the dubious distinction of having been born on Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday.
Have you always had an almost uncontrollable urge to grow a toothbrush moustache, talk very loudly in beer halls and set up holiday camps in Poland?
And, later on comments: That cousin, improbably, always resembled me; my brother is about as unlike me as possible.
But that probably means ... nah, let's not go there.
About 20 years ago, I was studying at the University of Konstanz in West Germany. Konstanz is a peninsula on, you guessed it, Lake Constance. On the "lower sea" is the Insel Reichenau, renowned for its delicious, and highly toxic, produce. At the university I met a student, Peter. Peter had grown up on his fathers small farm on Reichenau, and was so naive, you'd have thought he'd never left there. Because of that, I named him Inselpeter (inzel payter). I never called him that and only one other person even knew about it. I still have dreams that I am back in Konstanz after a long time away. The name is a kind of souvenir.
"Scribbler" is descriptive (alas) of my penmanship and, simultaneously, evocative of my aspirations. An aspiration to "scribbling", I hasten to add, does not reach to "WRITING" ( i.e. LITERATURE in any of its noble manifestations), but seeks merely a more scherzando form of verbal communication, one that may, on occasion, (and for a purpose) be full of bombast, humbug or conceit, or one that may stoop to conquer petty grievances or address trivial concerns, or may do whatever else my Muse may suggest to aMuse self, or beMuse, provoke, annoy or otherwise stimulate and entertain, others.
Dear Scribbler: I implore you, indulge yourself more and share results with us.May your Muse compel you to do so.
do whatever else my Muse may suggest to aMuse .. beMuse, provoke, annoy or otherwise stimulate and entertain, others.
Right beside you, Scribbler! Abu!
wow