Time For The Annual "How did you pick your DU Name" Thread

[Parche]

HISTORICAL REFLECTION

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




SUBMARINE HEROES

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Parche in a predawn attack on a Japanese convoy, 31 July 1944. Boldly penetrating the screen of a heavily escorted convoy, CDR Ramage launched a perilous surface attack by delivering a crippling stern shot into a freighter and quickly following up with a series of bow and stern torpedoes to sink the leading tanker and damage the second one. Exposed by the light of bursting flares and bravely defiant of terrific shellfire passing close overhead, he struck again, sinking a transport by two forward reloads. In the mounting fury of fire from the damaged and sinking tanker, he calmly ordered his men below, remaining on the bridge to fight it out with an enemy now disorganized and confused. Swift to act as a fast transport closed in to ram, CDR Ramage daringly swung the stern of the speeding Parche as she crossed the bow of the onrushing ship, clearing by less than 50 feet but placing his submarine in a deadly crossfire from escorts on all sides and with the transport dead ahead. Undaunted, he sent 3 smashing "down the throat" bow shots to stop the target, then scored a killing hit as a climax to 46 minutes of violent action with the Parche and her valiant fighting company retiring victorious and unscathed.


Lawson P. "Red" Ramage,
Medal Of Honor Recipient



Lawson P. "Red" Ramage

by Edward C. Whitman

The third Medal of Honor awarded to a submariner in World War II was earned by then-CDR Lawson P. "Red" Ramage for a blistering night surface action against a Japanese convoy south of Taiwan in July 1944. For sheer excitement, it ranks among the greatest "shoot-em-up" tales in our Navy's proud history.

A tall, genial redhead, Ramage was born in Monroe Bridge, Massachusetts on 19 January 1909 and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1931. After several years on surface combatants, he entered the Submarine School in mid-1935 and served for two years on USS S-29 (SS-134). Following a year at the Postgraduate School and a tour as Executive Officer on the destroyer USS Sands (DD-243), Ramage found himself on the Pearl Harbor staff of Commander, Submarines, Pacific, when war broke out on 7 December 1941.

He made his first war patrol as Navigator of USS Grenadier (SS-210) in early 1942 and then assumed his first command - USS Trout (SS-202) - in June of that year. In his initial war patrol on Trout, in August 1942, now-LCDR Ramage scored several hits on the Japanese light aircraft carrier Taiyo near Truk, the first damage inflicted by a U.S. submarine on a Japanese carrier. Although Taiyo survived the encounter, Ramage went on to sink three ships, totaling 5,800 tons, during his four war patrols on Trout. This total might have been significantly higher were it not for the duds and premature detonations that plagued U.S. torpedoes early in the war, and after seeing several of his attacks thwarted in this way, Ramage became an outspoken and effective critic of torpedo performance.


:hi: :patriot:

[Auggie]

1. Family dog

1962-1974. We grew up together.

RIP, my dear friend. How I miss you.

[Strong Atheist]

3. Indiana Jones? Is that you? nt.

[Auggie]

5. No

Who is Indian Jones?

[Strong Atheist]

6. A guy who was named after his dog. nt.

[Strong Atheist]

15. Corrected the spelling... nt.

[Strong Atheist]

2. My DU name? It is a topic of interest to

me...


:rofl: MAO

[newcriminal]

4. It was the same week I was arrested (by mail) for obstruction of justice.

[Danger Mouse]

18. How do you get arrested by mail?

[newcriminal]

19. They send you a nice little letter telling you to go get fingerprinted.

Along with the summons of course. I'm not shitting you either.

[Danger Mouse]

22. Wow. That's...weird.

[newcriminal]

23. The worse part was my husband was my lawyer and went with me to get fingerprinted,

and they asked me my weight. I lied of course. They also took pictures of my tattoo.

[Danger Mouse]

25. I hope you got it resolved quickly and with a minimum of difficulty...

:hug:

[newcriminal]

26. Of course my husband got me off, he's good!! Not quickly though,

took over a year. During that time one of the scumbag deputy sheriffs died, another got some kind of brain cancer, and the last one was transferred somewhere else. I'm just waiting for the sheriff to get his.

[dgibby]

36. Dayum, you got some serious ju ju going there!

Remind me to call you if I ever need to inflict some bad karma on somebody.:evilgrin:

[backwoodsbob]

56. not too wierd

when I moved down here from Michigan we had a big stink with my wife's ex and he had me arrested on some bullshit.

They called me to tell me I was under arrest and to please come down to the jail :toast:

[Iggo]

83. How civilized!

:patriot:

[Captain Hilts]

29. The Canadian Govt. threatened to deport me...while I was in Washington, DC! nt

[azmouse]

7. I'm a mouse and I live in Arizona.

Simple.

[Minimus]

8. I like pigs, I like poetry, and I like Animal Farm.

Minimus - A poetic pig who writes the second and third national anthems of Animal Farm after the singing of "Beasts of England" is banned.

[Parche]

10. Pigs on the wing

:woohoo: :hi:

[omega minimo]

64. We may be related!

:hi:

[Grey]

9. Because life is all shades of Grey......

[BuelahWitch]

11. Buelah Witch was, of course, one of Burr Tillstrom's Kuklapolitans

Buelah "joined" the Kuklapolitans in the mid '40s when Burr was still doing puppet shows at Marshall Fields in the toy department. She played the witch in the Kuklapolitan version of "Hansel and Gretel." When Burr was offered a TV show in 1947, Buelah came with him. It was at this time that Burr named her after his producer, Beulah Zachary.

I like Buelah because she was a "modern" woman, not afraid to try new things and because she knew how to put snooty Madame Ooglepuss in her place, but they still remained friends. She was brash and outspoken and lots of fun.

Studs Terkel was a great friend of Burr's and a fan of the Kuklapolitans. When he spoke at Burr's funeral he said, "In this world, it's every man for himself. The Kuklapolitan world is a tender place where people treat one another with respect. This was the world Burr Tillstrom created." I think it would be nice to live in that world.

The real Buelah Witch lives with the rest of the Kuklapolitans in the Chicago History Museum.

[ellaydubya]

12. My Initials

L A W

ell ay dubya

ellaydubya

Don't you love it? It's the only good thing I ever got from g"dubya"bush!

[Xipe Totec]

13. I like make people jump out of their skin... n/t

[Mojambo]

14. It was something Kramer called Newman one time.

I use it as my handle all over the net.

[velvet]

16. it's based loosely on my surname

and it's cuddly

[Bryan]

17. Well, it's my name

It's not my full name, though, so I am warmly identifiable while still maintaining plausible deniability for anything I might do or say...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

20. Since I am a great Italian, I chose the name of a great Italian

It's one of those anti-climactic, non-cliffhanger kind of "how did you pick your DU name" stories.

:rofl:

[Danger Mouse]

21. For the obvious reasons...

those being that I am not just a mouse, but a dangerous one.
Always I am wary of my greatest nemesis, Safety Cat...

[EndersDame]

24. To fans of Orson Scott Card It should be obvious

[Captain Hilts]

27. Lotta great redheaded sub skippers-Fluckey - I know the artist of your picture, Tom Denton. nt

[Captain Hilts]

28. I just love The Great Escape and Steve McQueen.

[NYMountaineer]

30. Simple enough.

Where I'm from + what I like to do.

[InternalDialogue]

31. Obviously, mine is figurative.

I admire Andy Richter for his motivation but not his intellect, and I have a weakness for root vegetables.

[abq e streeter]

32. Resident of Albuquerque, and proud member of the E Street Nation

[madinmaryland]

33. Easy answer.

When I joined, the swiftboaters had me highly pissed off.

Also when I joined Ken Jennings was on a winning streak, and I am getting really disjointed.

:hi:

[bluesbassman]

34. It's really cryptic....

[sakabatou]

35. Sword of Kenshin Himura from "Rurouni Kenshin."

[proteus_lives]

53. Nice ref!

You've given me an idea for a post!

[sakabatou]

57. I have?

[dgibby]

37. Easy.

D=my first initial
Gibby=short for gibbon, smallest of the apes.

I was working at a primate sanctuary, taking care of a baby gibbon, who had been abandoned and injured by her mother.

Best joy I ever had.

[AllenVanAllen]

38. Cool name and story, Parche.

I have a great love of things celestial, so it was easy to pick a name. I'm named after the electromagnetic fields emitted by the earth that protects it from deadly solar winds.

Van Allen radiation belt

[armyowalgreens]

39. It's mocking the militaristic expansion of big business...

Crush all things in your path. All in the name of Capitalism.

I picked Walgreens because I'm a former employee.

[dropkickpa]

40. The elbows made me do it

It was back in eighteen-dickity-three and the kaiser was making a push to overtake our position. Me and my platoon were pinned down in the middle of a pineapple orchard along with the remnants of a button-making factory crew and all we had to eat were muffins. For five hard nights we scrambled from rooftop to rooftop looking for safety, me and Louie, with shells bursting all around us. On the sixth night, during a lull in the action, and we hid behind a barrel of lard, Louie's head in my lap, my fingers in his lank hair, his warm eyes gazing into mine, I told him the truth. That it was all for naught. It was pointless. We were going to die in this burning inferno, this hell we called Lisbon. And for what? For glory? For god and country? For want of another match? No. Not anymore. And I jumped up, guns blazing, cigar clamped between my teeth, and tripped over the chicken pecking in the gravel. Fucking chickens, always underfoot.

[Tobin S.]

41. My dad picked it for me when I was very young.

;)

[old mark]

42. My name IRL is Mark, and I am getting old.

That is all.

markO8)

[Frosty1]

43. Easy

It was -40 the day I changed my name
:scared:

[Silver Swan]

44. From the madrigal "The Silver Swan" by Orlando Gibbons

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached, unlocked her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sang her first and last and sang no more:
"Farewell, all joys; O death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise."



(And also because I have silver hair.)

[Hell Hath No Fury]

45. The 2000 election --

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Voter Scorned!

[Blue_In_AK]

46. 2004 election,

I was a Democrat and sad, blue in two respects, and obviously I'm in Alaska.

[KamaAina]

47. It means "local person" in Hawaiian

seemed like a good idea at the time... now it will hang like a millstone around my neck until Election 2012. :eyes:

[Parche]

61. butt you are in SJC now

:woohoo::hug::hi:

[KamaAina]

65. That's the whole problem.

They won't let me change it. :(

[coconuted]

48. I was at the grocery store

And I saw a guy looking at the coconuts. And my name is ed.

[Kingofalldems]

49. Because I am

[liberaltrucker]

50. Political inclination and occupation in a neat package

Nice historical perspective on yours!

:patriot:

[Parche]

96. since Wahoo was already taken

:hi:

[schmuls]

51. One day here at work, I was gone from my desk. A coworker

called me up and asked the student who answered the phone if "Schmulie" was there. (My name is Julie). Amy said "who is Schmulie?" and he said that is Julie. So around here I am referred to as Schmulie, and I've adopted it as my nickname. That's my story.

[proteus_lives]

52. Proteus is one of my favorite comic book characters

and I live so proteus_lives.

[backwoodsbob]

54. I would hope

mine explains itself :hide:

[El Supremo]

55. Because it is better than "El Peón".

[Bucky]

58. My name picked me

Seriously, I got this nickname in high school; it resurfaced in college from a completely different source. There are people in Houston who only know me as Bucky. I don't even think it qualifies as a pseudonym anymore.

[SKKY]

59. "SK" = my initials, "KY" = where I'm originally from.

[gratuitous]

60. Automatically generated for me when I joined DU

What, I could have picked my own handle?

[Brother Buzz]

62. I watched a lot of early morning television in the fifties

The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz was the first broadcast program after the test signal was retired for the night.

[hatredisnotavalue]

63. 2004 election

It seemed the party of values was spewing so much hate. I thought it was a good comment on those times. Several months later I was at a Best Buy and saw a bumper sticker on a car that said, "hatred is not a value"

[sagetea]

66. Sage tea is very good medicine!

[dixiegrrrrl]

67. Southern chick with a no BS attitude

Don't believe me? Ask the dog, it was his idea to add the grrr.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

68. Well, I wanted to use my own name...

And I'm from California!

So there you have it: CaliforniaPeggy!

:hi:

[ThomCat]

69. La Lioness Priyanka gave me my name.

:)

I had a previous name here, which was my first initial and last name. I wanted to start over with something different and asked for suggestions.

La Lioness Priyanka not only had the best suggestion, she Insisted! :P

It was a wonderful gift. :loveya:

[Parche]

78. a good name

for an awesome guy and DU'r!!!

:hug: :loveya:

[Hardrada]

70. The Thule Society suggested I use a good Nordic name.

My alternate choice was Sigurd.

[darkstar3]

71. Mine's actually a tri-fold, and nerdy as only a computer guy can be.

(Apparently I love lists, as other posts on this site so far have contained a lot of them...)

1. As a teenager and huge geek, I loved the television show Babylon 5. On the station, there is a casino/bar area called the DarkStar where the command crew would gather and blow off steam after hours. Some very good character development scenes took place in that bar...(good lord, I'm such a nerd.)

2. In my second year of college, I built my first computer. My good friend, a software engineering major, helped me build it and the home network we (mostly he) created for all of our housemates to get on the internet. The name he chose for that network? Darkstar.com. So there's some nostalgia involved as well.

3. "Darkstar 3" is the name of a base which is the central plot point in a story I've been kicking around my head for a few years. I can't say with any seriousness that I'm an aspiring writer, but hey, maybe one day, huh?

They have a hippie smilie on here, they need a geeky one. :)

[applegrove]

72. All of my ancestors going back several generations had at least one apple tree in their backyard.

Some of them lived in houses built on old orchards. So that makes me applegrove.

[omega minimo]

81. Did they know Johnny Appleseed?

:hi: :bounce:

[JonLP24]

73. My first name shortened and middle and last initial

With my favorite number at the end of JonLP

[Maine-ah]

74. meh, location

[Blasphemer]

75. I think it kind of speaks for itself... heh

In a very religious family, I'm the only disbeliever so I developed some highly blasphemous views on religion from a young age. In addition to that, during the dark years, having certain views (i.e living in reality and not fantasy land) seemed to be considered blasphemous in this country my 10%-er self found refuge here at DU.

[rrneck]

76. renaissance redneck

Started out a tractor jockey, ended up an artist.

[1Hippiechick]

77. I'm a 60s hippie, and girls were called chicks - thus HipppieChick n/t

[GreenPartyVoter]

79. Oddly enough, no one ever asks me that. LOL

[Bluzmann57]

80. It's simple really

I am Bluzmann and I was born in '57. Whether it's 1957 or 1857 is up to you to decide.

[Odin2005]

82. I'm of Scandianvian ancestry and was interested in Nordic mythology when I was younger.

And the one-eyed god of wisdom kind of fits well with my Asperger's.

[Iggo]

84. Playful insult/term of endearment...

...among my siblings and me.

ETA: And our kids now. Bunch o' lames.

[denbot]

85. I was really in to computer gaming back then.

I would and still use denbot has a character name for computer games. In the old'n days a computer generated player was referred to as a 'bot, short for robot. My first name is Dennis, so denbot was a natural choice when I joined DU.

[underpants]

86. from "National Lampoon's Vacation"

Clark (who my friends compare me to) says to the barkeep at the Wild West town

"Hey! Hey buddy! Hey underpants!...."

I had to come up with something and since I was just getting my DU feet wet in the Lounge I figured why not make it something funny

:shrug:

[Parche]

87. run underpants run

:woohoo::hi:

[wearenotmissing]

88. Ok since I'm new ...

My name wearenotmissing is part of my on going drama :popcorn: with my Narcissistic sociopathic/psychopathic ex husband who has put our pictures on Missing children's sites claiming that I've abducted my own children to the UK. When in fact we came to live in the Uk with the permission of the court and permission from my Narcissistic sociopathic/ psychopathic ex husband. His signature is on the document!

I have been unsuccessful :banghead: in getting our pictures off the National Centre for missing and exploited children site along with various others even with the proper documentation, soooooo I set up my own web site called,

www.wearenotmissing.com

with all the information and documents proving his allegations to be false. Still no joy! :argh:

Although he did respond on the guest book and I gave it it's own page and picked through his response with a fine tooth comb :) Now that was, in a way, very satisfying.

I have recently had an article published in a UK magazine called Bella outlining my story and the drama of it all. I am in talks with a major broadcasting company here in the UK about an interview but I have had a taste of what he said in his pre interview and he used it as a platform to start accusing us of mistreating the children once again!!! This after he has already sent the American Embassy and Social Serives to our home of which we cooperated fully just to try and get someone in authority to try and SHUT HIM UP! :nuke: They sent him reports saying that his accusations were unfounded and then he accused them of not doing their jobs properly!!! :banghead:

I don't think there is a hope in Hell of shutting him up.

Good Gawd, sorry to go on a rant.:rant: But I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!! :grr:

wearenotmissing

[fNord]

91. welcome to DU...

:hi:

I'm sorry to here about your troubling circumstance, but your among friends. :grouphug:

keep at it, and I am sure the side of right will prevail.:thumbsup:

[fNord]

89. you really wana Know? You might be sorry you asked........

Fnord?

Fnord is evaporated herbal tea without the herbs.

Fnord is that funny feeling you get when you reach for the
Snickers bar and come back holding a slurpee.

Fnord is the 43 1/3rd state, next to Wyoming.
Fnord is this really, really tall mountain.
Fnord is the reason boxes of condoms carry twelve instead of ten.

Fnord is the blue stripes in the road that never get painted.
Fnord is place where those socks vanish off to in the laundry.
Fnord is an arcade game like Pacman without the little dots.
Fnord is a little pufflike cloud you see at 5pm.

Fnord is the tool the dentist uses on unruly patients.
Fnord is the blank paper that cassette labels are printed on.
Fnord is where the buses hide at night.
Fnord is the empty pages at the end of the book.

Fnord is the screw that falls from the car for no reason.
Fnord is why Burger King uses paper instead of foam.
Fnord is the little green pebble in your shoe.
Fnord is the orange print in the yellow pages.


Fnord is a pickle without the bumps. Fnord is why ducks eat trees.
Fnord is toast without bread. Fnord is a venetian blind without the slats.


Fnord is the lint in the navel of the mites that eat
the lint in the navel of the mites that eat
the lint in Fnord's navel.

Fnord is an apostrophe on drugs.
Fnord is the bucket where they keep the unused serifs for H*lvetica.
Fnord is the gunk that sticks to the inside of your car's fenders.
Fnord is the source of all the zero bits in your computer.

Fnord is the echo of silence.
Fnord is the parsley on the plate of life.
Fnord is the sales tax on happiness.
Fnord is the preposition at the end of sixpence.

Fnord is the feeling in your brain when you hold your breath too long.
Fnord is the reason latent homosexuals stay latent.

Fnord is the donut hole.
Fnord is the whole donut.

Fnord is an annoying series of email messages.
Fnord is the color only blind people can see.

Fnord is the serial number on a box of
cereal.

Fnord is the Universe with decreasing entropy.
Fnord is a naked woman with herpes simplex 428.
Fnord is the yin without yang.
Fnord is a pyrotumescent retrograde onyx obelisk.

Fnord is why lisp has so many parentheses.
Fnord is the the four-leaf clover with a missing leaf.

Fnord is double-jointed and has a cubic spline.
Fnord never sleeps.
Fnord is the "een" in baleen whale.

Fnord is neither a particle nor a wave.

Fnord is the space in between the pixels on your screen.

Fnord is the guy that writes the Infiniti ads.
Fnord is the nut in peanut butter and jelly.
Fnord is an antebellum flagellum fella.

Fnord is a sentient vacuum cleaner.

Fnord is the smallest number greater than zero.
Fnord lives in the empty space above a decimal point.


Fnord is the odd-colored scale on a dragon's back.
Fnord is the redundant coin slot on arcade games.
Fnord was last seen in Omaha, Nebraska.

Fnord is the founding father of the phrase "founding father".
Fnord is the last bit of sand you can't get out of your shoe.
Fnord is Jesus's speech advisor.
Fnord keeps a spare eyebrow in his pocket.
Fnord invented the green hubcap.
Fnord is why doctors ask you to cough.

Fnord is the "ooo" in varooom of race cars.
Fnord uses two bathtubs at once.



I cannot escape them
No matter how I try
They wait for me everywhere
I cannot pass them by.

Driving down the street
I see "Jesus Is Lord"
And then immediately after
I hear the word "FNORD!"

Innocuous sayings and parables
And on the evening news
I hear the word "FNORD!"
And suddenly I'm confused

I sit alone in my room
And I'm feeling rather bored
I turn on the tube and guess what
I hear the word "FNORD!"

"Don't see the fnords and they won't eat you"
That's what I've heard the wisemen say
But I can't get away from those beasties
There's just no fucking way.


Copyleft. All rights reversed.

Kallisti

[EndersDame]

90. are you my brother?

He had seethefnord as his handle for awhile

[fNord]

92. no...

but I was a big Orson Scott Card fan for a wile......

weird huh?

[Skittles]

93. Skittles was my beloved 23 pound black bundle of feline fur when I joined DU

he passed away in 2006, on my fifth anniversary on DU - yes, I named him after the candy :)

[PRETZEL]

94. Very simple,

Pretzel is a nickname I've had since I was a little kid way back in the mid 60's. It just stuck with me all these years.

[Ohio Joe]

95. Well... I'm Joe and I live in Ohio

In a few days I'm moving to Mass, so it won't make much sense anymore but... ehh, oh well.