Why "The Chucklehut"?
I don't know why I did it, but before I had my own site I was very nervous about tipping my hand or revealing my identity on line, even in the comments to other blogs. Maybe it was paternally-induced paranoia, but the very idea of personal revellation completely freaked me out. Instead of signing off with my own name, I used "Chuckles" as some sort of deprecatory dig at the sour, antisocial nature of much of what I was saying. Once I'd grown accustomed to that identity and decided to start up my own site, adding on a "hut" just seemed too obvious a solution not to employ it.
Since then I've seen a few other Chucklehuts on the web - a military-themed comedian, a media clearinghouse of some sort, and a juvenile rant site that makes MySpace seem like Chekov's journal (and not the one from Star Trek, either). I began to question if I even wanted to keep the name, in light of these pretenders to my pretensions, but by then the site seemed to have its own momentum. When I was given the Chucklehut.org domain as a warmly appreciate gift, I realized that there would be no name change. Rather, I determined to reclaim the C'Hut from those dilettantes. I'm locked in now for the long hall.
And that's the story behind why this, despite all rhyme or reason, still the Chucklehut. I guess we'd better just get used to it.