News You Can Bruise for 2012 October 4

As I recall, Brendan was sitting in my living room and he said "I want to do something that lets people change my Twitter name, but I don't want another @ReaIBrendan fiasco. Oh, how I regret the catastrophe that was @ReaIBrendan." That may not be exactly what he said--I don't think he pronounced the at-signs. Anyway, I said "To limit the possibilities for mischief, you should let people change your name to any anagram of your name." Instead of that sensible idea, he did this.

Here's my revenge: @everybrendan. Inspired by Adam Parrish's @everyword, I've crawled the English canon looking for one- and two-word combinations that meet Brendan's naming criteria. I've eliminated duplicates and also ones that are just kind of samey. For variety's sake I only crawled one book for each author, excepting Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, who have three or four each. Also excepting James Joyce, literature's greatest source of Brendan names ("brandylogged rudeman").

@everybrendan posts one name every half-hour. One-word names like the upcoming "brokenhanded" are sent @BrendanAdkins, so they'll actually become Brendan's Twitter name for a while. Should Brendan displease me for any reason, I will change the bot so that all names are sent @BrendanAdkins. There are currently about 2600 names in the queue. This will take us to the end of November, by which point we'll all be sick of this anyway.