aliases

I’ve been asked on occasion why I sometimes use aliases in these posts. I think it started (I’m too lazy to check) because some friends of ours had asked that they not be mentioned in social media. I was torn because they were involved in a story that I really wanted to post. I figured that I’d use an alias for them instead.

I soon took to using aliases for just about everyone except relatives. Even then, I’ll change the name if I’m writing something less than flattering about them. I don’t mind publishing my own foibles but I don’t want to be embarrassing other folks.

I also figured that I should use random names instead of always using the same alias.

Then I thought, “Why just think about this when I can overthink it?” The first aliases that I used were from radio codes. I didn’t want to keep coming up with names starting with “A”. To handle this, I started a rotation. When I needed another alias, I’d remember or look up the last alias that I’d used and then move to the next letter in the alphabet.

It did occur to me to build a database to keep track of which aliases I’d used so that I didn’t get any repeats. Part of me thinks that’s too nutty and that I’d be crossing some kind of obsessive line if I did that. Besides, it’d be too much work to retrofit it with my blog.

Martin Smith

All this talk about publishing friends’ names reminds me of a snippet that I’d read in Neil Gaiman’s “Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Douglas Adams had used his friends’ names in the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. However, one of his friends, Martin Smith, who apparently came from Croydon, had asked Adams specifically to not use his, Smith’s, name.

In a scene in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” when Dent claims that he’s already met Zaphod, Ford says that Zaphod is the president of the galaxy, “not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon.”