So, What's a "flooglemop"?

In 1999 I bought an Apple G3 Powerbook which now serves as the world's most expensive Leap Pad for my pre-schoolers. Before merging onto the internet highway, I needed to choose an AOL screen name and quickly discovered that practically every word or phrase in the English language was already taken.

Wanting to avoid the usual, unimaginative, first name/last initial/cup-size that most people seem to default into, I searched for something different (I actually didn't try bubbaismygirl@aol.com, but I figured that username was probably already being used by a guy in striped pajamas who turns KFC sporks into shivs and trades them for candy-bars). 

And then I recalled a term I encountered in a Guitar World magazine from way back in '85 (amazing, the useless information we recall). The article quoted a stanza from the following poem (imagine this read in a 60's coffeehouse, bebop jazz providing background ambiance along with the sound of snapping fingers, and the word "daddy-O" being uttered between drags on one of the few things that can still produce death-by-sucking).

The songs that erupt

Are gist of the posey,

Come by themselves, hark,

Stark as prisoners in a cave

Let out to sunlight, ragged

And beautiful when you look close

And see underneath the beards

the holy blue eyes of humanity

And brown.

The stars on high sing

songs of their own, in motion

that doesn't move, real,

Unreal, sinsong, spheres:––

But human peotries

  With God as their design

       Sing with another law

 Of spheres & ensigns

     And rip me a blues,

     Son, blow me a bob,

     Let me hear 'bout heaven

     in Brass Fluglemop

–– Jack Kerouac's

     195th Chorus from

     Mexico City Blues

     (242 Choruses)

I suspect the "Fluglemop" here is a reference to a fluglehorn, a brass instrument that resembles a cornet, but with a wider bore. 

Anyway, I originally used that spelling, but for reasons long forgotten I respelled it. Since then I've used the term for a children's book character of mine.

As it turns out, finding an unregistered domain name is as difficult as finding an available AOL username. Bubbaismygirl.com turns out to be available (probably not for long), but I figured 'flooglemop' has served me well thus far, so I decided to stick with it.

So there you have it. Mystery solved. Now quit asking.