blathernym raze [noun] a play on the word "pseudonym"; invented by e_o_i to denote the names we give ourselves in the blathosphere, and — i think — a delightful addition to the collective lexicon we've created. 220520 ... kerry a delightful addition indeed! and something i do not have. perhaps i should come up with one? 220520 ... raze i think you're wonderful just the way you are. (but you did write as "nightcrawler" once, a million years ago on blue, if i remember right.) 220520 ... epitome of incomprehensibility raze, thank you, but I don't think I invented it!! I'm pretty sure I read it here or on blue before, but we don't really have a blatherwide search function to verify that. ...blatherwide, eh? (the extent of my (possible) neologisms: adding things after the word "blather") 220521 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Why epitome_of_incomprehensibility, of all things? I plead being 16 or 17 (see blather_loves_you, which it does). I won't pretend I wasn't pretentious, but I never thought I was a perfect specimen of the incomprehensible. The song came first: the original was about 9/11, but also me feeling melancholy, because far-off-enough disasters are backdrops for sad_romantic moods, like bad weather for the pathetic fallacy. Maybe I'm being unfair to my past_self. Or loathe to admit that my obsessions could be morbid (a fascination with appendicitis, ages 11-13 or so, branched out into general hypochondria; the fear of my body changing was about puberty but also aging and dying). Anyway, the lyrics were cheesy and vague, something like, This is the epitome Of incomprehensibility When things that were just words to me Have now become reality But I soon found it cheesy, an embarrassment. Plus, if calling sad things hard to understand was hackneyed, the reverse, that hard-to-understand things were sad, wasn't always true. Eventually, the tune was repurposed as a funny song about James Joyce, e.g., I'll be the epitome Of incomprehensibility From swerve of shore to bend of bay, From Dublin on to Tripoli That's a later version. Anyway, somewhere in between I published a poem in my CEGEP's art magazine. It started wide at the top and slowly narrowed, perhaps to offset the simple rhythm. This one was about, I don't know, finding oneself? Finding oneself hard to understand. Wanting to be hard to understand. Selfish. But bouncy! I'll be the e-PIT-o-me of in-com-pre-hen-si-BI-li-ty! Things that were re-A-li-ty are REAL-ly on-ly WORDS to me! (but words are reality and reality is only partly words) 220730 ... raze i've wondered about that for years now! maybe you told me and i just forgot. but still. i loved reading about how your blather name was born. i wish there was a good story behind deciding to call myself raze. i just didn't want to be johnny_west or baby satan anymore, and none of the other names i'd used (melted plastic, unpublished lyric machine, barbiturate, and on, and on, and on) seemed to fit anymore. i wanted something that would stick. something that was me without being me. i was nineteen. i was in an angry place. i wanted one word that summed up where i was at. a small rock i could hide behind before disintegrating. this one felt right. if i knew i would still be breathing all this time later, i might have chosen something different. but i feel like i've lived into all the different meanings the word carries, and now it's just ... who i am here. even the names we give ourselves when we don't know what we're doing have things to tell us about who we are. 220731 ... tender_square the last time i had a screen name on a forum similar to this, it was "issac's_gyrl," laying my claim to the oldest hanson brother. if i remember right, my msn chat name was "c-hill," an old nickname i got when i worked at mcdonalds. i can't remember what my myspace once said. all i know is that when i started blathing here i needed something new to call myself. i wondered what could i use that i wouldn't grow tired of. i decided to take emotion out of the process, turning to a "random word generator." i set the system up to create a pair of unexpected couplings. i don't know how many times i refreshed results (a precursor to the way i would refresh the recent page here); all i know is i clicked past "tender square" accidentally and the reaction within was "wait!" i don't know that i can interpret what the name means to me now after nearly blathing with it for a year. but maybe it has something to do with putting all that's in my heart out there without fear anymore, typing the words into a little white square and pressing "blather" knowing that with that release, my red_family gives me acceptance and understanding. 220731 what's it to you? who go blather from