July 6, 2002
Again, you can thank the brain cells that were working at 1:30 AM instead of helping me sleep for this update.
I've found that it's very rare for me to be called by my first name. When I was a kid (up to junior-high, I think) I was usually just called "Jay." In Boy Scouts, since there were several Jasons, I was usually called "Flesh." Once my father became an assistant scoutmaster I became "Flesh Jr." even though Dad actually is a Junior. But everybody knew who was who.
Once I got to college I spent most of my time in the fraternity or (for a couple years) getting bitched at in ROTC. ROTC used last names almost as default, and the fraternity had multiple Jasons. So for pretty much all of college I was "Fleshman." People I know from college still tend to call me that. There were a few attempts at hanging nicknames on me (like "Peanut" -- don't ask) but they never stuck.
When I started playing Team Fortress Quake I needed a screen name. One of the fraternity brothers my freshman year called me "Flesh-meat." (He was a jarhead, this amused him.) So, when combined with the fake clan a few of us created, the screen name became "FleshMeat[stg]." That's also the username I used for my LiveJournal account.
At work, I actually got to use my first name (for once I was the only Jason around) but since we were all a bunch of weird people, we decided to come up with rapper names for each other (actually, it was all Keith's idea). Mine was "Fleshy J." I thought it was funny. One of the women thought it was disturbing. She was out-voted. In addition to being my LJ "name," it's also my Counter-Strike screen-name: "[pimp]FleshyJ." (Yeah. Clan PIMP, bi-atch.) Of course, the lastest "upgrade" broke my install, so I haven't played lately.
Finally, there's "JJ." When the DFC and IADL were running, I submitted my captions as JJ. When the fora launched, I kept the screen name. Ditto for the IRC channel. One of these days I'll wake up, and won't know what the hell my real name is...
Which of these do I prefer? Well, "Jason" is always a pleasant surprise. "Fleshy J" is always good when you want me to be sure you're talking to me. Yelling "Flesh-meat" will probably cause me to go deer-in-headlights for a couple seconds if you sound enough like Monta. But as I've said elsewhere, it's all good; just don't call me "Jayce."
