The Storybook of Misused Words (Part Two)

I forgot to blog last week.

I had a deadline, and my grandma came to visit (which was wonderful), and blog posts were the last thing on my mind.

Instead, I played this card game from Atlas Games:

The rules say that winning in one round is incredibly rare and unlikely (and if you've played it before, you'll know why), so of course, that is what my grandmother does the very first time she plays.

I guess I'll just have to write two posts this week. For now, here's another tale from

The Storybook of Misused Words

"An Intense Story of Somber Purpose," 

or "The Difference Between 'For All Intents and Purposes' and 'For All Intensive Purposes'"

"What are you doing?" the gardener said, as the pixies giggled and tore the roses to pieces.

"Why are you eating that?" he demanded, as trolls gnawed on his wheelbarrow till the wheel was quite crooked.

But the trolls and the pixies continued to destroy his garden and his tools.

"Why won't anyone listen?" gardener moaned. "For all intents and purposes, I might as well be speaking to myself."

Later that day, as he wandered through town looking for pixie repellent and a new wheelbarrow, he stumbled across an unusual shop. The sign read: "Dunne, Dunne, & DUNNE Modifiers: For All Intensive Purposes."

Immediately, the gardener hurried inside and bought several intensive word forms, including some that were quite strange and rare.

When he returned to the garden, he shouted one of his new modifiers at the pixies, "What in tarnation do you think you are doing?!"

And the pixies faltered a little.

So he threw out at the trolls: "How in the Sweet William am I supposed to work if you keep eating the wheelbarrow?"

And then: "Why the Weeping Willow won't you leave?" Followed by "Who the Monkey Puzzle Tree do you think you are?!"

And under this onslaught of strange modifiers, the pixies and trolls fled.

"That was intense," said one fleeing troll to a pixie.

"I think," replied the pixie, "that was the intent."

Bethany ___ Politics with a ___, and then ___, Quickly

Normally, I don't like to touch politics—the same way I don't like to touch rotting zombie flesh. But last night I watched the State of the Union address like the good civic-minded person I pretend to be. (This does eventually have a connection to language; I promise.)

I've watched a fair number of State of the Union addresses, over several administrations. And I find myself wondering, Can we all just agree—not as Republicans or Democrats or too-cool-for-your-party Independents—but as Americans, that State of the Union addresses are boring?

They're basically recap. We're really just watching to see if the President is going to sneak in something awesome (i.e. Our New Inalienable Right to Chocolate) or horrifying (i.e. Selling Idaho to China Will Help Us Balance the Budget). And because all the good TV shows have been postponed.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, do you remember Mad Libs? I sure do. As a kid, I learned the difference between adverbs and adjectives from those crazy fill-in-the-blank stories.

Well, Cracked.com kindly gives us State of the Union Mad Libs. There's more to the article, but the Mad Libs made my night.

(Heads up: The rest of the article contains some swearing—as is typical of Cracked.com articles.)

P.S. Thanks, Caitie, for pointing this out.

Racquetball Poetry

I've only ever played Racquetball once. By myself. I couldn't figure out how the scoring worked, so I can't tell you who won—either the wall or the ball.

That said, I will not be traveling up to Racine, Wisconsin to compete in the Racquetball Chapbook Tournament on February 1st, but I sort of wish I was.

How can you not love a contest that begins its description with

Tired of myriad chapbook contests whose winners are determined by their works’ literary merit? Are your poems being rejected for publication because editors deem them unfit to print?

Would you prefer your chapbook published because you displayed a level of athletic prowess and competitive determination that in no way signifies your achievements as a writer?

In other news: I won an honorable mention placement in the Kentucky State Parks 85th Anniversary Poetry contest. Richard Taylor, a former Poet Laureate of Kentucky, was one of the judges, and the thought of him holding one of my poems makes me feel happy and slightly sweaty at the same time. At some point, the winners are supposed to be listed on the Kentucky State Parks site, but that point is not yet.

After this experience, I feel a connection to Ken Burns. He created a 600-hour documentary on the National Parks; I wrote a one-page poem on a Kentucky State Park. I'm probably only two-degrees removed from a Peabody Award now.

The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator

A friend directed me to this, and I had to share.

(Maybe the shortness of this post makes up for the length and convolutedness of my last one.)


Also, I'm having a meditation published in The Upper Room in the 2010 Sept./Oct. issue. So, um, you can congratulate me... in a year.

Book Personality Quiz

I love Blue Pyramid's Book Quiz! In six questions, it picks one out of 64 works of literature for you to be. I'm A Prayer for Owen Meany. Not half bad!

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS!



But then, of course, I had to keep retaking the quiz to see what else I could be. (I stopped when I got Ulysses.) Take it and let me know what you get. I know it's silly, but come on, it's only six questions...

More Things in Heaven and Earth... Hamlet Text Adventure Game

Everyone is probably tired of my Hamlet obsession by now, but this is the best thing I've seen in ages. Yes, a Hamlet text-based adventure game. I never played many computer games growing up, so didn't take long for me to die--bisected by Othello's scimitar. Yes, bizarre, but let's be honest: Othello could totally take Hamlet. And there is something oddly sastisfying about typing ">kill claudius with flute, >kill claudius with nailscissors," even if it's all to no avail.

I'm addicted.

Hamlet-Libs: There's More Madness than Method

I'm sure you've done this before, but a good literary mad-lib always makes me giggle.

Hamlet's Soliloquy
To curse, or not to curse -- that is the delight:
Whether 'tis nobler in the foot to embrace
The scissors and roses of yellowing goldfish
Or to take arms against a fjord of flags,
And by billowing end them. To extinguish -- to smile;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural needles
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a thirst
Devoutly to be wish'd. To extinguish, to smile;
To smile -- perchance to kiss: ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of agony what dreams may frown
When we have billowed off this mortal snakeskin,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The cinnamon sticks of despis'd rapture, the law's delay,
The angst of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy strokes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a raging wire coat hanger? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and fall under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after desire --
The undiscover'd glacier, from whose bourn
No mechanical engineer returns -- tears the will,
And makes us rather slap those ills we have
Than rage to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make gardeners of us all,
And thus the weeping hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the purple button of thought,
And sparrows of vivid pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of dormouse. Earnest you now!
The chastised Michael! -- Nymph, in thy books
Be all my shelves remember'd.

(What a plea to end on!) If you want to play (you know you do!), go to Crazy Libs and scroll down to Classic Stories. Feel free to post any particularly great warpings in the comments.

An Odd Odyssey

Here's a little game. If you know all the answers, get a few wrong anyway--more fun that way. (P.S. It's more entertaining to pick Odysseus.)