So long, HankChizlJaw

A part of me getting my ducks in a row for 2019 has been a bittersweet change: getting rid of my rapidly ageing username, “hankchizljaw”. Although using “hankchizljaw” as my username for everything has brought me many benefits, it’s also a bit daft, so now, it’ll be “andybelldesign”.

How did “hankchizljaw” come about? permalink

Ok, it’s time. I’ve been promising I’d tell the incredibly underwhelming story about why I had such a ridiculous username for ages now, so it’d be rude to put it to bed without sharing its origin.

Years ago, I used to use the term “Hank Chisel Jaw” to describe a certain type of steely, “tough guy”—mostly on TV. David Caruso’s meme-worthy character, Horatio Caine was often to victim of this label. I used to say “Hank Chisel Jaw” a lot because CSI: Miami found its way on our TV a lot at the time.

Along came a situation where I had to come up with an Xbox Live username for Halo and I decided that Master Chief was also a “Hank Chisel Jaw”, so that’s what I settled on. The problem was, I forgot how to spell “chisel” correctly at that particular moment and in the pre-smartphone era, I couldn’t be bothered looking it up...hence, “Hank_Chizl_Jaw” was born. After a few years of refinement, “hankchizljaw” stuck around—even outliving the Xbox Live account and probably for way longer than it should have...

Underwhelming, right?

I’ll finish this post saying that over the years, I have dropped a couple of Easter Eggs in articles that hint at “Hank Chisel Jaw” and David Caruso. Let me know if you find them 😎