Look, there are at least 315,008 registered users here at dKos, as of last night at 08:31:28 last night. I'm sure there are several more now. I don't know how to find out how many there are, but I suspect you're out there. So, I needed to pick a name.
I wanted an anonymous name, and the registration page comes up with something like "Desired User Name" on it, I just started picking stuff. Things that looked like my name, but weren't were already taken. To my great surprise, my Chinese name was taken years ago, which means that we are not only born of the same generation (my father is his father's cousin, however far removed) but that the person charged with naming him had the same ideas about him that my great-uncle had about me. Somewhere in China, there are two children of the same generation, registered in two branches of the family, with the same name.
I knew there already was "thereisnospoon" and I found out that a lot of my favorite SF characters had already registered names. I didn't want to be anything with a number after it,
no offense, Clarknt67. Anything with a number identifying me as a potential derivative of a previous member, I really didn't want or I would now be Meteor Blades 1.1. And my varied professional and personal life wouldn't do either; NeverBecameADoctor, or Corporate Chemist didn't have the right ring to it for here. My personal life? The Daily Kos is a surprisingly conservative group, banning/shunning and H/r-ing is almost Amish in it's trigger-level.
So, I started running through character names from books. I wasn't going to go through Twain, Clancy, 1984, or even Woody Allen. I figured the good names from those sources would already be taken. Let's start with the Heinlein kid's books. Jonathan Hoag was my first unregistered dKos ID and I registered it. I mean, it was taking me 5 seconds or more to check on a name I thought I liked, and I could fit into Jonathan Hoag.
I was a line cook/chef, I love food, picnics aren't a problem with me. Admittedly, I'm the last person you'd hire as an art critic, I lived through the times when art looked like nice tile patterns for the bathroom, and Yoko Ono wanted to sell you an apple to watch it rot, as art for $30k. But her trying to sell people on the street an apple for that purpose was filmed, and that became the art, and then, watching people react to watching that film became art and, really, my head started hurting.
Where was I? Oh, yes, I picked a user name, and four or five people have shown me how clever they are by identifying the story where the name came from. Congratulations. I like that we share a small piece of our literary taste, but is it really comment-worthy? If I registered as "Romeo" would I have "Juliettes"? (not that there is anything wrong with that.In fact...no you might be reading this on an elevator somewhere...)
If my User Name had turned out to be Benedict Arnold, would I be a traitor? If my user name had been Jacques De Farge, would I be a Revolutionary? Two choices here: If I had said, "Watson, I need you!" would it make a difference if I was Alexander Graham Bell or Sherlock Holmes? I've done my bit of acting, I've been a killer, and killed. I've been a Revolutionary on stage, and a newsboy trying to get along. And a touch of porn, but we won't go into that. I'm here now, and yes, you're all clever for having read Heinlein.
I picked a name, I have fine profession, not at all unpleasant. My other professions in the past were sometimes more or less pleasant, but that's another diary. (Good grief, the Left has gotten to be so conservative, anti-sex, semi-racist...never mind, I'll publish that anyway, brickbats be damned)
My point, and I do have one, is that it's just a user name. Like patofbutterinaseaofgrits, it's just a name. Any profession I have now or have had in the past is irrelevant to comments made today. It's really nice that you've read Heinlein, who was a sexual libertine in his youth and turned into an anti-Communist, reactionary rightist in his later years. Really nice. But I picked the name just because I kept entering names into the box until one came up as not having been used before. I'd rather have had an "o;d" name that someone wasn't using anymore, but that's not an option here, so there are 315,008 registered users here, many who aren't users anymore.
Whatever.