Hello, Fenway!

How're things with you? I have been sort of busy lately--hence the sparse (and fairly unimaginative) posts. However, dear reader, there have been some pretty awesome developments over the last few days that I feel I should share with you. I don't want to be too obvious, but they rhyme with: I got to go to Fenway.




Go ahead. Be jealous.






Things to notice about the picture?
A) My kickin new Red Sox hoody.
B) The Green Monster
C) The fact that I am standing in fucking Fenway stadium.

It was a marvelous, last-minute trip. We rode the Fung Wah bus to Boston. For $15. Seriously. And then we had dinner at this great little Italian restaurant in the North End (I had the chicken saltimbocca--I am kind of an idiot for things-with-prosciutto-in-them). And then we went to Fenway, which was packed. All the seats were full, all the beer was cold, all the music was awesome.

My grandmother was a huge Red Sox fan. She believed, however, that she was bad luck for the team, so she stopped going to games later in life. I am hoping that it is not genetic, but my boys (especially Josh Beckett) did not look so good. I will have to test the theory and see another game. I am sincerely hoping that it is not genetic because Fenway is my favorite stadium, so far.

And Boston, with its lobster rolls and its long, flat vowels and its delicious water front is a place I'd like to visit again. Soon. For $15.

A Periphrasis Game for You

A while ago, DHawhee posted a bit on her blog (and in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students) about her favorite trope: zeugma. Which is an Awesome Trope, btw--and is the rhetorical process of joining two very different phrases with the same verb (ex. "He ordered tea and the troops to invade" or, from "So I Married An Axe Murderer": She stole my heart and my cat.)

Anyway, another pretty neat-O trope is periphrasis, a form of circumlocution, in which one uses extra words to convey, talk around, and point to (but never actually say out loud) particular meanings. So, if you're a wordy bastard like me, you're gonna love periphrasis.

Hmmm, you may be wondering, what the hell prompted this blog entry? Well, I'll tell you. The other day my friend was telling me about this game he used to play with his buddies in college. The point of the game, he said, is to name different kinds of crazy based on characteristic. Delicious reference for tropes, I thought? Or super-fun way to pass the time on the bus to school? Well, dear reader, it is, in fact, both...

Here are a couple of the types we've come up with so far:

From his college buddies-

Marilyn-Manson-Crazy--used to mean someone who may look very very scary but is, in fact, from Ohio. Or Florida. And is mostly harmless.

Eating-salad-with-a-spoon-crazy--used to mean someone who is not super-clear on how to get things done in the most, um, expeditious (not to mention maybe culturally appropriate) manner.

Recent additions:

Probably-has-a-necklace-made-of-thumbs-crazy--this is the antonym for Marilyn-Manson-crazy, used to mean the type of person who everybody describes as quiet and polite until they find the bodies in his freezer.

No-passing-in-the-right-lane-crazy--used to denote a person suffering from slow-driving cars on the highway road rage. May lead to binge drinking and invention of new strings of curse words in a row. This happens between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa quite a bit.

Wire-hanger-crazy--violently OCD, used to denote the kind of person who must always be in control of even the weirdest details. Do not mess with this person. May not be quite as bad as the Thumb Necklace guy, but still not the most fun to have at slumber parties.

I'm sure there were more, but I cannot think of them right now, and I have to go to school and GRADE GRADE GRADE. There is probably another kind of crazy for that...

Places I Would Rather Be

March in Arizona = Baseball, frozen lemonade and 80 degree weather