I’ve been tagged several times for this meme, but had to set it aside while I met some writing deadlines. I am amused by the misleading subject; after all, eight truly random things about anyone would either bore or horrify you (or likely, both). So my “random things” are really eight things I’d like to share with you, carefully trawled from my life’s lagoons.
- When I was very young (and a precocious reader, like most of you), I read The Last of the Mohicans and thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t like it. Then I read James Thurber’s critique of James Fenimore Cooper. That was my first critical-reading “ah hah.”
- I go for salt over sugar most times, and I’m ecumenical—junk food as well as haute cuisine—but cheese and fish make me wild with joy, and I adore oysters, raw and cooked. If I knew the nuclear missiles were headed to Tallahassee, I’d run out for blue cheese (especially Point Reyes), salt-and-vinegar potato chips, Tater Tots, sharp crumbly cheddar, Nathan’s hot dog nuggets, brie with tart, dense sourdough French bread, smoked oysters, fresh oysters, deep-fried oysters, barbecued oysters, oyster stew, and oysters Rockefeller; and if I still had room before the mushroom cloud rose over the capitol, I’d tamp it all down with as much good caviar and Nova as I could afford, washed down by crisp, mouth-tingling capers by the spoonful.
- I am bad at languages and even after two years of college German and two years of living in
- I was a Camp Fire Girl for several years. My mother still has my Bluebird vest with all the beads on it. I was a terrible sissy, though my troop leader, Mrs. Derrick, protected me from being tortured by the more sophisticated girls.
- I accidentally ended up in a riot at
- Until last year, I thought “synecdoche” was pronounced “cynic-douche.” (I still have trouble with “ancillary,” which my brain is convinced should follow the same beat as “artillery.”)
- I love getting tagged for memes, and in general love invitations, even to functions I can’t attend.
Tag, you’re it!
Posted on this day, other years:
- Links on the Grill - 2008
- The Next Catalog: Drivers Wanted - 2006
- Californians: Go, Vote yes on 81, Right Now - 2006
- New Home for Free Range Librarian - 2004
- The National Lobotomy - 2004
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9 Comments
For those of us in the hinterland, White Crane is available via EBSCO’s LGBT Life database, which has the wonderful feature that it can send alerts when new content is available for a journal.
Hah, I would be in the Hinterlands myself… the closest library that carries White Crane is University of Illinois, at 705 miles away! Nice to know that Ebsco steps in… it would be interesting to see if any libraries in the Southeast carry the LGBT Life database.
I, too, read Last of the Mohicans at a young age and did not like it.
“Forsooth, wouldst that be a colonist?” “I say, I do believe so!” “What ho, let us invite him over…”
I tried womanfully to get through Last of the Mohicans, because it was my grandfather’s favorite book and I was very fond of my grandfather.
I didn’t make it.
Re: synecdoche. Until very recently I thought that “heartly” was a real word. Like a lot of Catholic kids, I could speed-pray through my penance, which always included the “Act of Contrition.” AofC begins: Oh my God, I am heartly sorry, for having offended thee… I was well into my forties when I learned the right word was “heart-ily.” My confusion was probably reinforced by our preference for “Oh my God I am hardly sorry….” which we thought was wildly funny, of course.
I like “heartly” — “She was many things, even heartly.”
My American Lit prof was unamused when I brought Mark Twain’s “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” to class while discussing The Deerslayer, but that was an AHA for me too
http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/rissetto/offense.html
Hah, great! But Julie, Cooper’s books do “reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention.” Absolutely nobody talks that way…
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