This, That, and the Other

Hip hip hurray. Dr. Tanya is back with her weekly Blogging Insights prompt, although she took about a month-long hiatus since her last Blogging Insights prompt. Today Dr. Tanya wants to know our thoughts about Gravatars. She asks:

How important is your Gravatar to your blogging persona?

“Gravatar” stands for globally recognized avatar. I didn’t know that, so thank you, Tanya, for educating me.

Here’s my Gravatar:

Because I blog anonymously, I didn’t want to use my real name or a photo likeness of me, so I searched around for a pseudonym to use and a Gravatar for my blog. I wanted them both to be unique and memorable.

I chose my pseudonym, Fandango, after listening to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and focusing on the verse…

I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?

Fandango, huh? That sounded promising. “Do the Fandango”? Must be a dance. So I Googled it. Here’s what I found:

• Fandango is the name of a company that sells online movie tickets.
• Fandango is a lively partner dance originating in Portugal and Spain, usually in triple meter, traditionally accompanied by guitars, castanets, or hand-clapping.
• Fandango is the ring name of professional wrestler, Curtis Jonathan Hussey, who also wrestles under the name “Dirty Dango.”
• “Grim Fandango” was a 1998 adventure game published by LucasArts for Microsoft Windows. It was the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered static backgrounds.

And that’s where I found my Gravatar.

How important is my Gravatar to my blogging persona? Well, I never played the adventure game “Grim Fandango,” so I don’t know if my blogging persona is anything like the character in the game. But all of my WordPress friend call me Fandango and recognize my Gravatar as the blogger Fandango, not as the character from the game.

Therefore, when it comes to my blog, I am Fandango. Or, as fellow blogger Jim Adams reminds me, I’m the blogger with a paper bag over his head.