Date: 01/22/03 03:02:38 PM
Name: "Diogenes"
Subject: Where my silly a**ed nickname comes from
City/Location: Chicago

"Naming yourself after an ancient philosopher? Isn't that kind of pretentious?". It would be if I was serious, but I'm not. The name is an old bit of self-mockery.

It refers to a piece of folklore about Diogenes wandering the world with a bright lantern, searching for an honest man. When I first went polytheistic, it was my misfortune to run into an unusually crazed and crooked community. Without naming names ... We had one elder embezzling charitable contributions in order to build a resort, for example, and a member run out of the community based on allegations that he had been launching "psychic attacks", those allegations being backed up by nothing more than the fact that he was born in early June, making him a Gemini (gasp!) and the fact that he was noticably Non-Anglo-Saxon. Racism and paranoia : It's a winning combination.

Common sense should have told me that it was time to walk off. Instead, I went out looking for the proverbial honest or, in this case, honorable man. Not surprisingly, I ended up with about the same track record of success, and, I had to admit, was showing about the same level of common sense.

So, I figured, if I was willing to spend so much time being Diogenes, I might as well borrow his name. I hold onto it, now, not as a souvenir of a time I'd rather forget, but as a semi-humorous reminder to never be so foolish, again.

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