So as you may or may not know the internet is a vast wasteland filled with identity stealing, pedophile stalkers who want nothing more than to find out your real name, track you to your home, sneak up and pork you from behind whilst simultaneously emptying your bank account and leaving racist comments on your Myspace friends pages. The only way to keep you butt cherry intact and not lose all your money and friends is to never ever reveal your real name. Instead you should use various screen names and alias' to identify yourself, if indeed identification is ever necessary. In fact I think the internet would be more accurately compared to a cheap hooker. While it can occasionally lead to good old fashioned fun, you are more likely to catch a virus, get robbed, and quite possibly go to jail.

Now I have started my fair share of accounts on various websites and have had to come up with a hefty number of these screen names. It's actually an activity I enjoy, though I never really prepare in advance. I can't think of a really kick ass name and remember it until the next time I start an account somewhere. I inevitably get to the page where it asks you to enter your user name, and then I blank out for five or ten minutes until I can think of something half way cool sounding.

But I like the fact that you get to choose your own name, in essence defining your identity to the other e-lurkers. It seems rare that we get this sort of choice. Mostly whenever I got names they were given to me. As a child I was (real name removed for privacy) the squash. Then for a while I was Super Mano. I chose that one only to find out that it actually translates to "Super Hand". My Spanish class found this much more entertaining than I did. I was called "Flip" for a year or so. And last but not least I got donned with the nick name "Muffin".

Yes, like the breakfast pastry. Not at all manly. And the worst part is that I actually did have a choice as to what my nick name would be. I was at my friends place and there was some sort of party going on. A few drinks were had. At some point in the evening my stripper friend Kitty decided that I didn't sound like my real name. She thought I needed a new fresh name. A general consensus was taken and due to the atmosphere of Johnny Walker wisdom, my friends all seemed to agree I needed a nick name. So she mulled it over for a few seconds and decided I would be Muffin from thence forth.

I immediately objected, because I have a wiener, and there fore should never be called Muffin by another man. She agreed that that was fair, and decided to give me a second option. I could either be Muffin or "Dew-og" which is "Dog" but with a Jersey accent. Now there aren't many things in this world that irritate me more than Jersey accents. I'm sorry if you have one, but please don't ever speak to me unless you wish to be punched directly in the throat. Clearly I could not accept Dew-og without the threat of punching my friends repeatedly in the throat, a dilemma if ever there was one.

"There is no way in hell that people will really call me Muffin." I said to myself. "Everyone will forget about this tomorrow. There is just no possible way that this could stick."

So convinced of my logical decision, i chose Muffin. And here I sit five years later and I'm still called Muffin. I have made my peace with it, in fact I hardly even notice whether people call my real name or Muffin. But I would have liked to pick something really cool. Like when you name you wang. I think most guys name their junk. I never really got around to it until one of my girlfriends asked what I called it. Up until that point I just made up whatever popped into my head, as long as it sounded like a large and rock hard name. So we tossed around a few names and I eventually settled on Rod Thunder. (She thought Thor Maximus was cheesy)

I still wish my friends had a little more charity in their hearts and had nick named me something really cool like Staff SGT. Max Fightmaster. I know right, I couldn't believe that was a real name either! He must be the happiest man in the world.