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What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

Well, it's not very interesting, but what the heck...

My family was financially challenged during my upbringing and as a result depended on disposable automobiles for transportation. Disposable automobiles could be loosely defined as older, clapped-out cars that could be trashed if something major happened to them (as opposed to having a more valuable vehicle we'd feel obligated to fix and pour money into). For whatever reason, my parents started calling these cars "bulas," and, as things turned out, my first car was Bula5. It was a 1975 Chevrolet Impala with a 350 engine, huge bench seats and a lot of rust. I loved that car, my friends loved that car, and it didn't take long for people to started directly associating me with that car. Driving down the street in my hometown I'd occasionally hear calls of "hey, bula!" On rarer occasions people would greet me in person with that name, although I tended to discourage that.

The Impala finally died in the late 90s. Since then my mom had Bula6 and I had Bula7 (a 1987 Caprice wagon with serious electrical problems). My present car is not a bula, but I suspect that if I ever have kids, they'll probably end up having cars worthy of the title.