++ [ originally posted by swag ] ++
swag is short for a pseudonym I adopted a good 15 years ago.
One day, looking for any kind of excuse to keep myself from studying, I picked up the mail and found a JC Penney white sale catalog addressed to me for some unknown reason.
"How can you sell a color?," I asked myself.
Inside, I saw various items of home fashion and design -- which seemed as foreign to a student just recently living on his own as photographs of the surface of Venus.
Then I came across many "swags" in the draperies section. I had never heard of such a thing. Then I came across all the different kinds of swags: turban swags, pleated swags, Georgian swags, pole swags. It was like discovering the whole subculture lingo for people running meth labs, except they instead deal with window dressings.
But when I came across a "swag valance", it immediately dawned on me. "That's it!" I knew at that very instant that this would be the perfect sleazy, drunken lounge singer stage name I could use at Holiday Inns across the country ... the world.
And so Swag Valance has stuck with me since...