It's a Good Thing I'm not Valerie Plame

Oddly enough, after three whole days of blogging, the Nobel Foundation still has not called. Though I'm a little confused by their silence, I'm sure it won't last. Alas, I know it's only a matter of time before the paparazzi start in. Accordingly, to ward off the crushing hordes of adoring fans peeping through my windows, I am blogging semi-anonymously. This means that I took a zippy little pseudonym like Trailheadcase, didn't post my name or picture on the blog, and only divulge select details about myself in my posts. I also set up a hotmail account, the address of which is trailheadcase@hotmail.com.

But I also knew that if I didn't tell anyone about this blog, I would have exactly one reader. Me. So I e-mailed a few people who are obligated by genetics or friendship to take a passing glance at this blog. If you are reading this, you are almost certainly one of them. This circumstance accounts for the "semi" in "semi-anonymously." The idea being, if anyone not in the aforementioned category takes a wrong turn in cyberspace and lands here, I will be anonymous to them.

So Friday afternoon, I e-mailed an established and successful blogger whom I have never met for blogetiquette advice respecting the Gender Genie, which I posted as the Time-waster of the Day. I found the Gender Genie on her blog. She is a wonderful lefty political blogger (okay, she's Echidne of the Snakes, minor Greek goddess and blogger, and she had an amusing post about raisins on Friday that you should read). She replied quickly and kindly, with a "Dear [my first name], good luck with your blog!" and the requested advice.

It took me a moment to notice that she'd addressed me by my real name, but then I was stumped. How did she know my name? I went over and over in my mind the ways she could have figured out my name. Did I accidentally sign my real name to the e-mail? Is she really, in fact, an omniscient goddess, as she claims?

Turns out neither. (Well, I'm pretty sure she's a goddess, that's just not how she knew my name). Believe it or not, it's a little known fact that when you sign up for an e-mail account under your real name, that name actually appears in the recipient's in-box when you send an e-mail. Little known, that is, to people who have been living under a large boulder in the Gobi desert for the last ten or so years. Way to impress the big dogs, Trailhead.

In sum, I believe it's a very good thing I never became a secret agent, because I would have been assassinated before sundown. Who needs Karl Rove?