The Gremlin's Wings

I spend probably an unhealthy amount of time online.

This revelation comes as no shock to anyone who knows me at all, as even at work I would not engage too many people in conversation and just write and read a lot on the computer. I barely know what a book is anymore – though I will definitely NOT complain if/when the Kindle actually becomes available in the “frozen wastelands” that we call Canada. I don’t even have cable TV, which is a very unusual pattern for anyone in North America. You get different reactions from different people, where some refer to it as “makes sense” or “kind of cool” to treating me like a diseased leper because I do not watch any TV, which I think highlights one of the reasons why I am glad to not be drawn to a TV. I may get into this subject deeper down the road, but for now… I have a different thing on my mind.

Since I spend so much time online, I tend to see a lot of different names that people choose to represent themselves (unless you’re looking at 4chan’s boards, where everyone’s Anonymous), and I can see a lot of different things about people. The same is true in the gaming world, really. There’s a lot that will just use their own given name – really says that they are a casual Internet user, maybe even a first-time user. Nothing wrong with that at all, I like people who are like that. Then you have people that seemingly have random text strings as user names, but 99% of the time it makes sense to the user as sort of an inside joke with themselves or their friends. You also have nicknames that they are given in real life, by others around them. Some people use ones that refer to their birth year, or a celebrity. And then there are others that relay hobbies of the person behind them. Some even create whole new personae – they are named Bob, but they go by John online.

Then there’s those that just come randomly, and that is where mine comes from.

My online name over the last little while has been “Flying Gremlin”. People shorten that to FG, Gremmy, idiot, sarcastic bastard… you know, the good stuff. One of the questions I get asked a lot is where the name came from. Rather than explain it each and every time, I will just write it here, then link anyone to this explanation.

About a decade ago, I started on the Internet. I was still in high school, and my parents got cable internet. Of course, this was before wireless internet, and the Internet only ended up being in one room of the house – my mother’s office. So I was stuck with a computer – a pretty good computer for the time, actually – that was a standalone box. I would be able to get online every once in a while at school, but because my mother worked at home a lot, and when she wasn’t at home I wasn’t allowed to go in there and use the computer because I had my own, I was without it.

The one class I had at school that allowed me to use the Internet a lot, I actually finished the coursework about two months early, and I found myself sitting in front of a computer for 77 minutes a day with nothing to do BUT to surf the Internet. A friend of mine had introduced me to a game called Dominion that I just found out is still running – way to go Ross! I played Round 4-11, I believe is when I left. I had been playing this off-and-on when I could, but then with my accounting class in high school so far ahead, I could play this a little more regularly. Once I realized that it only took about 15 minutes to finish that part… I got bored some more, until I realized that Grand Theft Auto 2 was on the teacher’s computer, and I learned how to beat the first level in under an hour – didn’t really help that he had a program on those computers to wipe the computer’s hard disks clean every night and restore them to what they were when I entered the room, else I would have beat the game.

Once that became boring, I started to go back to the Internet and back onto Dominion, where I noted they had a delightful message board. Ooooooooh, people to talk to that I didn’t know. I registered there with the name “OneBadMonday”, because I had been having a bad Monday at that point, and I didn’t have anything better to put down as my name. I started to talk, and then slowly became part of the community. Even after that class ended and I moved on, I tried to keep up as best as I could. Life got in the way o f me participating in the forums for a bit, but I came back and said a few things. People even noticed my absence and stuff, which was nice – to be honest, I don’t get that a lot in life – and I continued on.

Now, with the name “OneBadMonday”, a couple of people were reading it as “OneBadMonkey”. I see now what that was about, and now it seems slightly silly to say, but I used to hate it when people would just shorten my name to monkey. Could have something to do with the fact that throughout my entire school life, I was made fun of for my last name, or just called by my last name instead of just by my given name. It depressed me a lot when I was younger; I guess you could say that I was emo about it before emo was created. So I went looking for a new nickname.

Unfortunately, as with all creative processes in my brain, I hit up against writer’s block.

I was stuck! I couldn’t think of any different names for myself, no matter how I tried. I wanted something that wouldn’t talk about my name at all – I’m still really paranoid about my real name getting out and identity theft, coupled with the fact that I hated how people, when they find out my last name, just refer to me by my last name – and I wanted something unique. I spent a good week debating on names, when finally, I just picked something at random.

I was watching TV when there was this Midas commercial that came on and it just got stuck in my head. Unfortunately, I can’t find anyone who thought to save it – YouTube, you have failed in your duties! – but I can at least describe it. It was one of this guy telling about a new service – I think it was a car inspection or something – and then he went in to a story where there was this one person’s car had this one problem that stuck out in his mind. Camera cuts away, and the guy’s poking his head out of the hood of a car and he just simply says: “Flying gremlin.” The people in the car stick their head out the window and are confused, but then, sure enough, a CG flying gremlin pokes his head out of the hood and starts flying around and knocking things over, and he is subdued by the mechanic hitting him over the head with a wrench. Then it cuts back to the original guy staring at the camera and he just says, “Well, actually it was just a stuck hose, but you get the idea.” For some reason, that particular ad stuck with me… and still does, since I just described it in its entirety.

UPDATE: Thank you to the guy in the Klingon armor: http://adland.tv/commercials/midas-flying-gremlin-2002-030-usa

Anyway, I had my new nickname just because of a random TV ad that no one saw but myself, because I ask people, and others are still confused when I tell them about it. It’s an odd coincidence that I got my Internet name off of a TV commercial, but I right now have not had cable TV for a year and a half. I got myself a new name, then introduced myself as Flying Gremlin over on the Dominion boards. I didn’t get made fun of unless I wanted them to make fun of me, which is what I wanted.

I don’t exactly know what “Flying Gremlin” makes me look like to anyone else, but in hindsight, I guess it does make sense. If I were to list my favorite video games of all time, I realize that there’s a significant amount of flight games listed in there, or games involving flight vehicles – I also happen to prefer sneaking in on people who don’t expect it and blow stuff up. I’ve always wanted to fly a plane, but never really had the money to do more than buy a plane ticket once a decade. Maybe a Cessna is in my future someday, but for now not so much.

For now, though… my name is Adam. Online, I am known as Flying Gremlin or just plain FG. Call me one of those online, and I’ll respond.

Outside of the Internet… getting called a Flying Gremlin is just weird. Just call me Adam. Please.