(image from here)
Most of the things I write here are somewhat personal & kinda dumb but this may be too much of both.
When the time came - in 1994 - for me to pick an email address, I chose this one: slug@mail.utexas.edu
That address doesn't exist anymore - I haven't worked at UT in a decade & a half & they retired that mail server. Why that address? I wasn't thinking, & I remembered at the time I had a D&D character in the 1980s I called Slug. That was it. Nothing personally about me. I regretted it - I wish I had been more clever - but that email was mine until I left UT in 2009.
In the 1990s tho I spent time on Usenet. If you don't know what that is, it's not important. It actually still exists, mainly for porn. Like everything else. But I was on what were called newsgroups & I wrote dumb stuff & made some friends, a few of whom I still talk to, mainly on Facebook. Because of my email, I identified myself with names related to slugs. For a while, my username was "Agriolimax reticulatus," the Linnean name for a common slug. It did not satisfy me tho so I looked for another one.
When I discovered the German name for a slug, I was charmed: nacktschnecke. It literally means "naked snail." So for the rest of my time on the Usenet, I was "Die Nacktschnecke." Some folks mistook the "nackt" for "nacht" but otherwise it was uncontroversial.
So you see - for a time I was a slug - a naked snail - which is why I feel a kind of personal connection to this week's theme. Not that I would be comfortable among slugs or snails - I am horrified by them. But in some let's say spiritual way oh yeah. We're a lot alike.
When the time came - in 1994 - for me to pick an email address, I chose this one: slug@mail.utexas.edu
That address doesn't exist anymore - I haven't worked at UT in a decade & a half & they retired that mail server. Why that address? I wasn't thinking, & I remembered at the time I had a D&D character in the 1980s I called Slug. That was it. Nothing personally about me. I regretted it - I wish I had been more clever - but that email was mine until I left UT in 2009.
In the 1990s tho I spent time on Usenet. If you don't know what that is, it's not important. It actually still exists, mainly for porn. Like everything else. But I was on what were called newsgroups & I wrote dumb stuff & made some friends, a few of whom I still talk to, mainly on Facebook. Because of my email, I identified myself with names related to slugs. For a while, my username was "Agriolimax reticulatus," the Linnean name for a common slug. It did not satisfy me tho so I looked for another one.
When I discovered the German name for a slug, I was charmed: nacktschnecke. It literally means "naked snail." So for the rest of my time on the Usenet, I was "Die Nacktschnecke." Some folks mistook the "nackt" for "nacht" but otherwise it was uncontroversial.
So you see - for a time I was a slug - a naked snail - which is why I feel a kind of personal connection to this week's theme. Not that I would be comfortable among slugs or snails - I am horrified by them. But in some let's say spiritual way oh yeah. We're a lot alike.
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