Get This!

So my grammar class is one of the funniest, most interesting classes I've ever taken.  Yeah, there are lots of boring parts, like diagraming, but I just ignore those aspects of it.  Anyway, we had a class on phonetics on Tuesday - which come to find out has always been one of my favorite topics, and I didn't even know it!  Bro. Hunt was going through the anatomy of the throat and mouth.  I thought it was really cool, and it made me a little giddy or hyper or whatever you want to call it.  Either way, I was probably having way too much fun in the class for me to be considered normal, even for an English major.  

Bro. Hunt said, "Let's all make the B-flat sound."  A girl near the piano hit a B-flat and we all om-ed together.  "The B-flat," he continued, "is the most commonly occurring sound in nature.  That is why Buddhists make that noise when they meditate."  I thought for a second, and being the somewhat corny wise-crack I can be sometimes, I said, "So the world really does want to B-flat."  

C'mon, you know it funny, and I do too, but I did not expect to get the reaction out of the class that I did.  Bro. Hunt gave a good chuckle and my friends who sit around me, but the rest of the class just erupted in laughter.  In fact, it made such an impression that on Wednesday I was in Craigo's, not working, but waiting to talk to someone, and a customer on her way out stopped and said, "Aren't you in my grammar class?"  I looked at her and said, "Sure," as I shrugged.  "You made the joke about B-flat, right?"  I smiled. "Oh yeah.  I guess I am."  She laughed again.  "I told that joke to my mom," and she made a gesture to one of the women that was with her.  

Wow.  I'm even funnier than I realized!

Halloween - FUPA Fighters!

Mike calls a person with a lot around the middle a FUPA Fighter.  FUPA stands for Fat Upper Pelvic Area.  I know, I know... it's weird.  So we decided to go as FUPA Fighters Bill and Barb Schwartzky.  (Those are our alias' we use on a regular basis, but now they have faces!)

Here are some pictures just in case you were wondering how they turned out.

Mike and me at his grandparents' house in Utah.

Barb and Bill at Comic Frenzy for Halloween.

Rhyme and Rhythm

So, I just got the email inviting me to read my poem Rhyme and Rhythm at the Pre-Professional conference coming up next week.  I submitted Rhyme and Rhythm along with two other poems, Insomnia (which is on here somewhere) and Psalm of Resolve - which I wrote in seminary years ago.  Rhyme and Rhythm was written in high school for a class.  I had to create an anthology of 30 poems - ten from the text, ten from outside sources, and ten of my own.  

Rhyme and Rhythm

Poetry from the heart

doesn't have to rhyme.

All it needs is an easy flow,

a little Rhythm to push it along.

But if you're uncomfortable 

With a free-verse ditty,

You can put in a word

To make it quite Witty.

Then again I know some people

who prefer not to rhyme.

They like the beat-nick Feel,

like the pound of a drum.

But others, I know,

Would like it much better

If the poem could Rhyme

With a word or a letter.

-February 5, 2003

Wish me luck!