Personas, Nicknames, & Assorted Nonsense

WARNING! This document contains concentrated amounts of sarcasm, parody, satire, and metaphor (and probably also some alliteration and some analogy, irony, and similé). Place your tongue firmly in cheek and get several grains of salt ready (ooh, metaphor!). If you are Humor Impaired or Sarcastically Disadvantaged, you should leave this page now, before you incur serious mental trauma. If it helps, picture me holding up a sign that says SARCASM or JOKE after just about every paragraph. Try to smirk a lot; that should put you in the right frame of mind. I do hope you read my disclaimer....

I have a lot of nicknames and pseudonyms (in fact, my sweetheart goes by the nickname of Pseudonym) and odd titles and such. I'm not entirely sure why I have so many nicknames. I've always seemed to be called some sort of pet name or other, from the time I was very young. Past nicknames include Missy, Banzai, Bernard (for patron saint of orators, not for the dog), BonBon (I hate this one, but can't seem to discourage its use), BonAmi (that means "good friend"), and a few others which escape my memory just at the moment. The oddest was given to me by a former co-worker (hi, Mike). He called me "Bondage", which I actually found rather amusing.

Well, I still have a lot of nicknames, only lots of the ones I use now I gave myself, or at least coined the usage of them. I also use different pseudonyms when I write. Different pseudonyms represent a different style and character of writing, which is why I have several. Among my noms de plumes are Trinity, Priscilla (or Prisca), and Alicorna (which also happens to be the name of my web design company).

All right. Now it's going to get rather more silly...

Her Grace the Duchess

This nickname is very much associated with me, on the net and in real life, believe it or not. Several of my friends call me Duch or "Your Grace". Duchess is a sort of alter ego, and the nickname was taken from Sarah, Duchess of York, aka Fergie, another redhead with an ample bottom and a rather bad attitude. Duchess is bawdy, in the style that Mae West was bawdy: funny, sassy, naughty, borderline obnoxious. Why I ended up being "Her Grace", I'm not entirely sure. It just evolved and I liked the sound of it, and it stuck. And I'm not the duchess "of" anything, although I'd happily be the Duchess of Melbourne if the good people of Melbourne didn't mind a brassy, presumptuous, bawdy, opinionated American claiming their city as her own.

One day, in a fit of strange inspiration and boredom and the need for something light and amusing to do, I created a web page for the Duchess nickname/persona. It's geared toward someone who might come to the site via a talker and has some info on talkers I frequent and a tongue-in-cheek FAQ related to talker culture.

Minister for the Development of Huge Tracts of Land

Well, I'm a big Monty Python fan, and this is from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The scene arises when the king of Swamp Castle is talking to his son Herbert, who is supposed to be marrying the Princess Lucky, a girl who's father owns the biggest tracts of open land in Britain. Herbert complains that he doesn't like her. The father retorts, "Don't like her? What's wrong with her? She's...." [gestures with hands] "...beautiful. She's...." [gestures with hands] "...rich. She's got huge..." [gestures with hands in front of his chest as if indicating breasts] "....tracts of land!" (Scene 14, Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

I leave it to you to work out why I took the title Minister for the Development of Huge Tracts of Land.

Director of Pseudo-Omniscience, Nitpickers Party

My beloved brother-in-spirit, Sacha Roscoe, is a nitpicker. He's a mathemetician, which is partly why he's nitpicky, but he's also just an annoying git who notices every little detail and error. So he was dubbed, quite rightly, The Nitpicker. He eventually went on to form the Nitpickers Party, of which he is head, and I got made Director of Pseudo-Omniscience. For those who may not know, pseudo means "false, but appearing to be" and omniscience is knowing everything (not the same as omnipresence, which even I can't pull off). So you see, I just appear to know everything.

Society for the Getting of Cheap Laughs by Using Naughty Words
St. Looney Institute for the Terminally Silly
Chairman of the Board of Irresponsible People

The original phrase "Board of Irresponsible People" came from a Monty Python sketch which advocated feeding sausages to goldfish among other things, and the joke was that this goldfish diet was recommended by the Board of Irresponsible People. I simply appointed myself Chairman, and never show up at meetings. Can't. I'm chairman. Got to set an example.

St. Bonni the Bawdy, Patron of Sarcasm, Innuendo, and Spam

Oh, well, it's just a joke, innit? Bawdy, as I already mentioned, is funny and irreverent and generally on the naughty side. I started calling myself this a while back and people got a giggle from it, so I use it still. It's slightly less obnoxious than calling myself a goddess, but only slightly, and somewhat akin to the Disorcordian custom of having everyone be a "pope". The "spam" part came from the fact that my newsgroups (see below) are generally filled with the stuff. Spam, that is. Well, not actual Spam™ Luncheon Meat, obviously, but ridiculous, off-topic, annoying newsposts. You know, spam, spam, spam, spam, make money fast, spam, visit this website, and spam.

BitchTech
Domain Goddess

At my last job in the "real world" (i.e., working for someone else rather than freelance), I was a system administrator (not the system administrator, but still an admin, to be sure) and support technician. As any of you who have had to deal with technical support or read any of the many, many joke articles about tech support know, it's an interesting job. I did, in fact, try hard to be polite and helpful to the lusers, but sometimes it was really difficult to keep from shouting "You are a total idiot! You can't seem to find your butt with both hands, how do you expect to operate a computer?!" but of course, I never did. Well, actually... Sometimes I did. I just did it after I'd hung up the phone. And because of this habit of rolling my eyes or saying things like the above after hanging up the phone, a co-worker (hi, Than) gave me the nickname of BitchTech. The fact is, I like the nick, and I know he didn't mean it offensively, particularly considering that he was known to be pretty grouchy, himself.

The title Domain Goddess was just a twist on my actual professional title, which was DNS Administrator. Yes! I am the Goddess of All Domains! [insert maniacal, echoing, evil laughter] [pause] Well... not really. Just the Goddess of All Domains I Personally Adminstrate (something around thirteen or fourteen as of this writing). But a goddess is a goddess, y'know?

Goddess

All right. I admit it. I am, in fact a goddess. I'm not entirely sure how I came to be one, but it seems I am. For one thing, I have worshipers, or at least, I have Usenet newsgroups devoted to me. Yes, it's true. An acquaintance of mine created the newsgroups alt.fan.bonni-hall and alt.religion.bonnism after a particularly silly conversation wherein I stated that, as a net goddess (or maybe Net.Goddess™), I obviously needed my own newsgroups. I was just joking, but he took me seriously and actually sent out control messages. Do note that while there are some news services that carry these newsgroups, they're pretty scarce, with limited circulation, probably on account of the rather malicious rmgrp (remove group) control messages that were sent out a while back. As of this update, I have access to both of them, but there's not much traffic there, especially since my ISP filters spam pretty efficiently.

I do seem to be regarded (by some) as a net.personality, and... errr... Well, given to silly role-playing as I am, I can actually get into that "persona" rather effectively. It's a lot of fun, and completely tongue-in-cheek. Anyone who thinks that I really think I'm a goddess or a saint should check into the Monty Python Enrichment Program for the Sarcastically Disadvantaged, or seek help at the St. Looney Institute for the Terminally Silly, where there is a fine and helpful outpatient program for the Humor Impaired.

I do, however, have an actual hymn in my honor. Or maybe it's a her. Anyway, here it is, written by one Martin A. Hohner:

Is that cool, or what? And bloody clever, too, I should say!

My net.deityhood appears to be a mandate from the masses, so who am I to argue? [Humor Impairment Warning! Definitely insert a smirk here]

To quote a charming and awed net newbie (one Michael McGarr, no longer a newbie, but still reasonably charming):

We choose our goddesses. They do not choose themselves.

Well, regardless of who or what I am, I gotta be me. Mostly because no one else knows how or wants the job.....

Thus Speaketh the Bonni.