Nerd

It is 10:46AM. I am in my pajamas, in bed, with an empty mug of coffee beside me, and a rip-roaring case of coffee breath. My project this weekend is to write my yearly syllabi which entails:

1.) 10th Grade English
2.) 12th grade English
3.) 12th AP English

Do you know what this means? This means for the last two hours, I have been giving myself a slam-bang-quick-'n-dirty education of all the literary terms I'm supposed to already know about.

HAHA!

That was an example of situational irony, my friends.

In the process, I am learning some new words. I just learned the most WONDERFUL new word, and it's put me a delicious mood. The word is:
mellifluous

Isn't that beautiful?? It means:
1 : having a smooth rich flow: a mellifluous voice
2 : filled with something (as honey) that sweetens

Say it. It FEELS like honey. Mellifluous was used in part to describe the literary term "euphony," which is basically the opposite of cacophony, which is ANOTHER great word. Cacophony is pots and pans banging together. Euphony is, "the pleasant, mellifluous presentation of sounds in a literary work." Ah! Like chocolate in the springtime! Like doves in the larder!

(I have never been in a larder.)

I love words. I lovelovelove words. I remember coming across "ameliorate" for the first time in Jane Eyre and thinking, "What is that word?? What is this fantastic word?!" It means, in fact, to improve, or, to make better.

Another word that must be mentioned is travesty. People misuse this all the time-- they interchange it with "tragedy," but that is NOT WHAT IT MEANS. "Travesty" means a gross misinterpretation. Sarah Palin's understanding of the Health Care reform bill is a travesty, for instance. But Hamlet's death is not a travesty; that is a TRAGEDY. Romeo and Juliet could be considered both though. They misunderstood the state of things, and whoops, there goes the poison.

People sometimes ask me to describe my sense of humor. I hem and haw and say things like, "I think 'The Office' is hilarious..." or, "I love witty humor," but what makes me laugh the MOST is silly word play things. Like, this blog of Annie's, I found HILARIOUS. I once "got back" at a friend for misspelling my name in an email with a return email that had EVERY WORD MISSPELLED. Eye thot eye wuz da funnyest gurl inn da wurld. Stil, eye reed dat emale an dye laffing.

I don't think my friend found me quite as amusing as I did.

I love reading puns, but think they are sort of lame when spoken. It's just harder to be witty when you make a spoken pun-- the speaker always has to pause, and open their eyes wide, and let their mouth hang open in a grin until everyone "gets it," and then it's usually a process of congratulating the speaker for being so "clever" (even though the pun was probably kind of cheesy to begin with), and then you as the hearer make a secret rolling of the eyes, usually because it probably took you a second to catch on, and the second of confusion makes you feel slow, which makes you want to secretly roll your eyes, which makes you dislike spoken puns entirely.

We are talking about YOU here, this is not necessarily what happens to ME.

When a pun is in written form, then you, the reader, can squint at it for a moment, GET it, and then congratulate yourself on being astute and witty and clever. And then you can congratulate the writer for being astute and witty and clever, and you don't have to deal with any open mouthed grin because the writer did it very stealthily and covertly with a swish of his pen, or more accurately, with a swipe at his keyboard, and so everyone feels clever and witty which is lovely. The only person who doesn't feel clever and witty is the person who didn't get it at all, who continues to read the story happily, oblivious, slightly befuddled, but probably more interested in what's for dinner anyway.

My favorite joke involves a whale noise, because! When you expect the whale to actually SAY something! It just groans and makes whale noises!!! Hahaha!

Yesterday I made up a word. I was talking about something being inexplicable, "and yet it turned out to be entirely... plicable."

And then I LAUGHED and LAUGHED, because, plicable is not a word?!?!! "Plicable" is the END of a word! But plicable was understood!! Which was HILARIOUS!!



Well. Anyway.

I'll be done.

(This is why I'm an English teacher.)

(Even if I DO have to look up literary terms on the internet.)