mucus

When I got to UCSC as a freshman in '89, my cats account (cats.ucsc.edu?) was "baciami" and that was also my nickname on icb.

Sometime my junior year when I was living in Parrington Dorm at Cowell, I started icbing on a regular basis. I only had a sorry old Mac SE that was useless, so the most convenient place I could check email and icb was at the UNIX lab in the bowels of the Cowell Dining Hall.

One day, after lunch, I went down to the UNIX lab to log on to check email and icb. Of course, the lab was filled with Mudders who looked like they hadn't seen the sun in days, and smelled like they hadn't showered during that time either. They would just sit there for hours monopolizing the terminals.

Finally one of them got up and I jumped into his seat. While I was sitting there, other mudders appeared and were hovering.. waiting for someone to get up and leave. I was suffering with a really bad head cold and was sniffling and sneezing the entire time and needed kleenex badly. BADLY. I wanted to get up and go to the bathroom and get some toilet paper or something to wipe my nose. But no way was I going to get up and relinquish the terminal I had been waiting for. So I had no choice but to suffer, wiping my nose on just about anything including binder paper. I was getting snot everywhere. It was awful. And thats when I changed my nickname on icb to "Mucus."

I kept using that nickname for a week or two, until my cold went away. When I switched back to "baciami," everyone on icb kept asking, "hey - aren't you Mucus?". Apparently Mucus was what everyone remembered and seemed to prefer calling me regardless of what I signed on as, so I kept it and it Stuck. (no pun intended).

So 10 years later, I am still known as Mucus, or affectionally as Muke. Just please do not call me that in public.

scruznet

I got the nickname "baciami" from this really wonderful little short film I saw at a Spike and Mike festival. It was an italian aria set to animation and "baciami" was repeated several times in the song. It means "kiss me" in italian. I thought it was beautiful.

Pretty big shift to go from that to "Mucus" huh?

-- Courtney Young