Wednesday, November 01, 2006

where did you come from?

So I am about 2 hours into day one of NanoWriMo and already needing a break. As such I started browsing a couple of my favorite blogs, and the whole NaBLOpoMO idea that I first read about over on Alyndabear's site keeps bouncing around in my brain. I have all but decided to particpate in this as well, though very UNofficially. To try both Nano and Nablo is either

A)Certifiable
B)A sure way to fail at both
C)A sure way to at least succeed at one of the two

or

D) some combination of the above.

Seeing people like Alyndabear, and fringes in it make me want to do it even more so what the hell count me in, though I make no guarantees about the quality of said posts. Then again, I never did that anyways.

With that in mind:

Michael over at Cardiac Fantasies explained how he came up with his blog's name which I found interesting since I am always wondering where people got their names from. Also, that is one of the questions I get a fair amount of the time as well. With that in mind here is a meme or challenge, or writing prompt, or whatever you want to call it.

Part 1)Explain where or how you came up with the name for your blog. You can go into as much or as little detail as you like it is totally one hundred percent up to you.

Part 2) If you see a blog that you like or plan to explore on the list, BEFORE you go to read the explanation, try to guess it yourself and see how close you are.

If you choose to participate leave me a permalink in the comments and I will add a link to your site on this post for others to click on. One word of warning, be prepared to see a drastic increase in traffic to your site as my site is read on a regular basis by no less than three people!!!!


Okay as for the boring details of mine: I have posted a little about this before but in case you missed it I will again and hopefully a bit deeper this time.

A) I grew up in a rather large family with 4 older brothers and 2 older sisters(plus one younger).
You know the old saying 'shit rolls down hill?"

Since I was # 7 out of 8(not counting step siblings) I got my share of shit. To say the least I was picked on my share, but I didn't take it poorly. I learned from it, embraced it, and took notes. I trained for hours upon hours in hopes of one day being able to snatch the "smartass" pebble from the hand of my older brothers and move out in the world on my own.

Very rarely does a day go by that someone who knows me does not call me a smartass. I don't claim to be good at a lot of things, writing or blogging? enhhh! I have seen worse but I have seen much much better! drawing? .....I can't draw stick figures without ending up with an extra limb or two. In fact, every stick figure I have ever drawn has grown up THOROUGHLY confused about whether it was in fact a male or female.

Dancing? ......please! I have all the rhythm of a bobble head.......okay okay!!! Dear Bobble heads put down the knives and step awayyyyyy from the computer.... ,,,,one day with lots of practice I HOPE to have all the rhythm of a bobble head! better? Hopefully that stops at least SOME of the hatemail from the bobble heads and keeps the bobble heads from suing me for slander.

Fixing stuff?........You know how some people can walk into a nuclear power plant which is on the verge of an imminent meltdown? Even though they have never been there before, after a five second inspection they can proclaim in complete confidence "well duhhhhh your fluxcapacitor(bonus points for anyone who can name the movie that word is from) is obviously broken". This mechanical gene allows them to fix their own cars, replace the roofs on their houses, stop toilets from leaking and even save the world from disaster.

You know those people? Yeah,,,,,THATS not me either. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with a malfunctioning straw if you gave me 17 days to do it and 3 perfectly functioning straws to compare it to.

Are we getting the picture here? There are LOTS of things that I am NOT good at, and that is being kind.

However, being a smartass, is NOT one of them. Therefore when it came time to name my blog the choice was pretty obvious. "Smartass" Only two problems witht that idea: 1) While I never bothered to check for sure I was fairly certain that name would be taken already. More importantly 2)I didn't think I could get away with "smartass" without violating some sort of TOS agreement so I was left with a choice. Read through the 43 page T.O.S. agreement to be sure or disguise it a little bit. For those of us who talk in single syllables that was an easy choice.

Besides, Smartass was too obvious, and didn't fit in enough with my dull, dry , corny, never afraid to reach for a joke, sense of humor at all. Therefore,"smart" became "brilliant" and "ass" became "donkey". They say "if you have to splain your jokes, they probably are not as funny as you thought they were." BriliantDonkey is an example of this I guess.

Last comes the misspelling: When I first started exploring this thing called the internet I was in some chat room or another. As tends to happen one idiot came in on a regular basis looking to start trouble. To accomplish this he would pick out the name of someone in the room and say for example

"BD is stoopid " and then move on to the next person and the next. Always the same "Jenn is stoopid" "BL4332 is stoopid" .......sometimes he would even include an expletive or three and so on it went. Finally having enough of this and unable to stand the irony any longer, I said something along the lines of :

"wise man say one who calls people stoopid over and over should take care to at least spell 'stupid' correctly, to do otherwise only proves that stoopid is as stupid does."

Whether a)his computer chose that moment to quit working, B) he realized his error(and was actually smart enough to get the irony) or C) BL4332 was a serial killer/computer genius who tracked him down at that moment and got rid of him, I do not know. I only know he quit showing up in that chat room. Changing from brilliant donkey" to "Briliantdonkey' is just my own way of reminding myself that I am anything but brilliant, to not take myself too seriously, and keep the lesson learned from 'stoopid' in mind. So there you have it. The story of where Briliantdonkey came from for what it is worth.

If you read this and are interested consider yourself tagged. Post the explanation on your blog and send me a permalink to it in comments if you would like me to add you to the list. 2:51 am, time to get another 500 words or so done and then hit the sack. Nite all. BD To check out more "where did you come from" stories please click through to the following links: 1-Alyndabear
2-Cardiac fantasies
3-roadchick
4-

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck on the novel writing! Not that you'll need it...

I will do this meme in 5 hours. When it counts as my November 2nd blog, teehee.

(And I did always wonder why you spelled Brilliant that way - question answered, your work is done.)

Roadchick said...

The movie that flux capacitator is from is Back to the Future.

Right???

The 'chick did a story about why her blog is called 'All-American Girl's Roadtrip'. Anyone interested can read about it

here:

It's not too far from the top - it's the entry dated 7/28/06.

Donkey, dahlin' - if you're wanting help with your HTML, drop the 'chick a line at her email. Roadchick Technologies, Inc. is here to serve YOU.

Anonymous said...

http://alyndabear.typepad.com/ramblings/2006/11/please_explain.html

This is my response to "Where Did You Come From?"

:P

LaLa said...

"I am your density, I mean, your destiny"

Back To The Future?

Good Luck!

anne frasier said...

good luck, briliant!

Michael Thomas said...

BD - If I said something to offend you, you have my sincerest apologies.And public apology, if you so desire.

Michael

briliantdonkey said...

Alynda: Thanks for participating, but on behalf of those finding your site accidentally, are you SURE that name has nothing to do with the 'B' word that I won't say in fear of being recognized by search engines?

Ding ding ding! we have a winner! Roadchick and LaLa are both correct. That word is from the movie "back to the future". Thanks, for the offer, I will have to take you up on that.

Anne: great to see you as always.

Michael: No you haven't offended me at all that I know of. You do have me wondering now what I said that made you think, I thought, you thought that I might think, that I may be offended though.Thanks for stopping by.

BD

LaLa said...

Better late than never?

http://julaberry.blogspot.com/2006/11/where-did-i-come-from.html