titular affectations

A point for those wishing to win trivia challenges, writing the vanity wikipedia entry I've always dreamed about or otherwise planning a good prolonged stalk at my expense: My given name is actually Russell.

However, within days of my birth even my own mother chose to call me by a shorter nickname, Russ. I have often maintained that it left her that extra bit of breath critically needed for pushing out those really lengthy epithets.

Still, the name suited me more than any other at the time. Eventually, it became so deeply entrenched in my psyche that these days even the voices in my head call me Russ more than anything else.

Mind you, I've been called other things. Some of them aren't even attached to painful childhood memories. I even have a few impressive-sounding titles attached to my resume.

Living outside the fray, titles are something of an amusement for me. I understand that in the real, corporate-driven world titular affectations can denote position, prestige and ultimately paycheck. In my less rodent-racing lifestyle, they are nothing more than silly things I've collected over the years, the way others save shiny buttons and bits of colorful string.

What follows is a few of the gems of my collection. Given enough time, interest and whim, I'll see about keeping this list both up to date and annotated.

The Canonical List of Titles

08 / 17 / 2007
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