(Except for Twybil, who never replied.)  Submitted by Sharpshooter.

COD         [log in to unmask]                    Dan Becker
"Gee, the details are lost under the accumulated weight of several billion
posts to BP.  I started out somehow as a lower case god, an assumed term in
response to who knows what, that then mysteriously morphed into Cod (or COD)
at the hands of the mysterious and inscrutable at times Shaman."

Girl Architect      [log in to unmask]                    Anne Sullivan
"The rumor ... is that the "girl architect" goes up on the rig, bashes holes
in the wall, then takes slides back to her boss to show them.  The boss is
completely oblivious to this and she's keeping her job by doing this.I loved
it.  ss/ Anne "The Girl Architect""

][<en           [log in to unmask]                       Ken Follet
"][<en comes about from a desire to negate the unreal Ken Follett. I know it
is a perversion, but I cannot help myself."

Reverend        [log in to unmask]     Jim Rhodes
"I'm only aware of using the "Reverend" nickname since joining the BP because
my first postings sounded a bit preachy.  It also supports my  concept of
"The Church of the Holy Restoration"."

SHAMAN      [log in to unmask]                       Ken Follet
"I'm expressing that I want my poetry to look as if it has meaning, to look
as if there may be an expressed rhetoric within the poem - while recognizing
the impossibility of expressing the unspoken. I'm not looking for any more
meaning than possibly Ashbury is. I'm a chameleon, a trickster, a coyote
shaman."

[separate post] "Minor correction, I am not g_d on BP, that is reserved for
Citizen Becker, he
claimed the role first. I am only a lowly shaman. I cannot be Mayor, it would
be a conflict of interest, thanks though."

[another post] " Shaman, well, Dan Becker caught onto the spirit of BP and
early on claimed god/God, which was changed at my request to Cod to avoid
offending those intolerant religious who argue over the meaning of small g
versus big G. Note: the issues of polymorphous deities has not been fully
discussed on BP -- I mean, as in offspring creating new Urizens. Following
after the KILL Gab & Eti episode on PL I may have been overly sensitive to
the potential of attacks from the stuffed up right-wing intelligentsia that
is really pretty dumb but still likes to think highly of themselves enough to
quash humorists in their midst like plump June bugs underfoot. And I figured
Cod needed an earthly dwelling Bhodisattva type Shaman assistant whose role
is 1) bleed off the bad vibes by eating them into the psyche and 2) pays
undue attention to the voices in their head, 3) keeps the wheel of life
turning and 4) can  travel through the I-way ether without an extension cord.
Since the nickname I have been collecting & reading books on Shamanism. If
any of you have tingling feelings in the middle of the night please let me
know."

ONEcat      [log in to unmask]              Heidi Harendza
"Ken gave it to me after I whined that I wanted a nickname. On the same day I
think I posted regarding getting the smell of cat urine out of a floor to the
woman from Eastern Europe who had the stone house and 7 cats. I dealt with
one small apartment and ONE cat.  Ta Dah.  A nickname is born. Not as cool as
your's and COD's, but hell, cat urine works for me."

Sharpshooter        [log in to unmask]              Met History
[Mary Krugman's version:]  "Well, for starters, we know that it is because of
your quick wit and biting comment!  ;-) [How diplomatic!  CSG]  However, the
original source of this handle is Ken's post of 5/8/99, which followed some
fairly critical comments by you on windows, barf index (Syndey Harbour), and
a direct response to a Gray-derived Haiku."

polygon     [log in to unmask]             Lawrence Kestenbaum
"Back in 1988 when I was in grad school at Cornell, I had the opportunity to
participate in a worldwide online chat system called Relay.  Though primitive
by today's standards -- and running on the now-forgotten network BITNET,
using the 80-column punched card standard -- it was pretty cool at the time.
Most of the participants on Relay were college students from a relative
handful of specific East Coast schools, including Cornell, various NYU
campuses, Clemson, and Gallaudet College in DC.  Every once in a great while
you'd see someone from Israel or Japan.

"On Relay, you identified yourself with a nickname, and I quickly learned
that ordinary given names like Larry or Jim marked you as a dork.  To be
taken seriously in that environment, I had to come up with something more
creative, and I chose Polygon.  I don't specifically remember why, but it
probably had to do with my interests in octagonal houses, geometric patterns
and tiling, and GIS cartography.

"Pretty soon I fell in with a group of other Cornellians, most of them in
engineering or computer fields, and since they knew me online as Polygon,
they called me Polygon even in person. When I moved back to Michigan in 1990,
I again became involved with online conferencing, and naturally selected
"polygon" as a user name.  Once again, I knew people who called me by that
nickname even in person.

"Last year for my birthday, my wife got vanity plates for my car with the
number "POLYGON".  I had misgivings about this -- an obvious and memorable
automotive identity really limits your aggressive driving options! -- but it
has had some unexpected benefits.

For one thing, you practically get waved through the inspection gates at the
U.S.-Canada border.  Presumably drug smugglers don't have vanity plates.  (A
plate like "SMUGGLR" or "DRUGS-R-US" might get a different reaction, though.)

"And for another, I didn't get a parking ticket one time at U-M despite
forgetting to put my parking permit on the windshield.  The (normally
relentless and unforgiving) parking police must have remembered my POLYGON
license plate -- out of thousands of cars that regularly park in that area.
Maybe they saw "POLYGON" and didn't bother to check my windshield.  That
alone saved us more than the cost of the vanity plate."

pirate          [log in to unmask]                Michael Davidson
"Thanks for the Stevenson poem. During the 70's I lived in Scotland and
helped build a large stone multipurpose theater  27 miles east of Inverness
by the North Sea; one of the job perks was to take R&R on a remote Hebridian
isle of Erraid (roll the r's ) During the 19 th cent Stevenson lived on
Erraid as a boy;( the cottage is still there ) his father was an engineer in
lighthouse building; and much of the Granite used to build English and some
in the Americas lighthouses ( as ballast)came from the quarries of Erraid.The
pirate stories in Kidnaped and their place names can all be found on Erraid;
Balfour Bay; is a nature sanctuary and as good as place to play pirate as you
will ever find. M"

Arkie Cuz       [log in to unmask]                Tom Gray
[message regarding tossing Osage Orange fruit]: "Dan, Guess somboby shudda
yelled "Encomming" for you. [ss/] Arkie Cuz" [Tom's from the Arkansas region,
but no cousin of mine, even though I'm from Missouri]

Mary Julep      [log in to unmask]                   Mary Delaney Krugman
"Sometime last summer during the heat wave, I posted some comment about
sitting on the front porch of my old house, watching the neighbors go by and
feeling the slight breaths of air coming down off the hill. I mentioned that
the only thing I was missing was a Mint Julep .... then realized that I
didn't even know what was IN a mint julep. Only that it was in a frosty
silver cup. That provoked a rash of MJ recipes. Some day I will have to
actually try them! Maybe a Mint Julep drink-off will be the next BP outing at
the Krugman Wildlife Preserve. Any recipe that doesn't pass muster will be
fed to the woodchuck under the porch."

Village Idiot       michael devonshire
"Hey, wait a minute. You told me I could be the biggest fool. I've been
working very hard at this for some time. Don't you remember the sex-change
thing? You be the shaman, save the idiocy for me. "It takes a village idiot.""

Churchmouse     [log in to unmask]        Barbara Mitchell
[mean, hurtful, accusatory retort by Sharpshooter to Barbara for unauthorized
lurking:]   "[log in to unmask] writes:
>  Was that directed at us lurkers? I'm not sure how to take it...
>  ~ A Chronic Lurker  (who luvs her daily dose of BP wit and factoids, but
doesn't have the gumption to chime in...)<
Hey, Barb, don't you think Ken, Ralph, David and the rest of us are a little
tired of pulling around dead-weight lurkers?"

BP Counter      [log in to unmask]     David West
[post from Shaman] "nickname time David West = BP Counter"

Lurker Raydome  [log in to unmask]        Ray Walkowiak
[does not speak to reporters; may or may not have a full head of hair]

Humor Czar      [log in to unmask]                     Ralph Walter
"I didn't realize I'd become the Pinhead Humor Czar, but will accept the
heavy  responsibilities of the office with my customary grace and (half) wit."

david           [log in to unmask]     David West
"It is a long story.  But since it is Christmas Eve, and nothing much is
stirring in the office, here goes.  About 13-14 years ago I decided that my
signature needed to be reinvented.  The cursive script left over from my high
school days just didn't fit the image I wanted to portray.  One of the people
I worked with had a great signature with flowing loops and flourishes.  But
the letters D, G and the surname West really didn't lend themselves to such
fancy frippery.

"After much doodling and study of lettering styles, I adopted an all
lowercase signature, with an upwards loop on the ascender of the d, and a
downwards loop (naturally) on the descender of the g, and a bit of a flourish
on the cross of the t.

"To go with this, I started writing my name with lower case letters.  And
really liked the shape and symmetry of david."

"I've stuck with it, and progressively introduced it to more and more of my
life.  Now I am at the stage where not only do some of my friends remember to
write my name that way, but I sign all my business correspondence at work
that way, and some clients even write back to me in that format.  Next
challenge is business cards ... and then credit and ID cards .... and the
ultimate dream is to have my passport lettered in lowercase.

"I have trouble recognising my name when it is written with capitals, and if
I try to write it that way, it feels wrong.  If I have to do it, I will use
all caps, but my preference is for the lowercase variety."

[later post, sounding annoyed] "anyway, it's not a nickname, it's my name."

END