”Doug” is the alias I use on the road when I don’t feel like revealing my real name.  I chose “Doug” because I’ll react to it anyway, since it was the nickname I had from 1999-2001 at the dot com I worked in New York.  Our phone system had an internal office caller ID, and the guy who set it up, Doug Tinnerello, forgot to enter my name for my extension—it therefore defaulted to his name.  So whenever I called people in the office, they’d see they were getting a call from “Doug”—and the name stuck, particularly amongst two of the comedy writers we had on staff.

“Doug” was used most prominently as my alias on my trip through Mali to Timbuktu, when I used the name to introduce myself to a tout-turned-guide name Van.  The entire trip he knew me as Doug—I was even introduced to other people as such.  To this day, Van still knows me by that name.