Category: language

anniversary present, anniversaries past

Today is John’s and my 7th wedding anniversary. A couple of months ago, on October 24th, we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. Let me explain. John and I have been married twice. To each other.

John and I started dating (or whatever you want to call it) on New Year’s of 1992. We got engaged on December 31st (New Year’s Eve) of 1993. Then for several years, we talked about planning the wedding, but each time we started the plans, there was some sort of obstacle. Work schedules were hectic. Money was tight. Crucial family members were planning to be away on long trips. We once got as far as picking a date, only to find that John’s niece had just announced her own wedding the same weekend across the country. We didn’t want to compete for family members to attend, so we opted not to schedule for that date. For several years, when someone would ask when we were ever going to get married, we’d say, more or less jokingly, “some time before the year 2000.” We weren’t really in a hurry to get married.

At the end of 1999, I was planning to quit my job soon to have a bit of time off before starting grad school. Which meant, among other things, I’d be losing my health insurance benefits. We’d talked about maybe having a civil ceremony, in part so that I could get on John’s health insurance plan, and then later schedule the party wedding where we’d be able to include family and friends. But we hadn’t acted on this plan. Then the last week of December, we decided to make good on our threat to get married before the year 2000. We thought we’d wait till the last possible day to squeak in our wedding before 2000. (Which also coincided with the anniversary of our engagement.) We found a Justice of the Peace in a nearby town who was available to marry us in her home on December 31st. We applied for our marriage license in our Town Hall, and duly went for our blood tests. And so the morning of December 31, 1999, John and I were married. The only ones there were John, myself, and the Justice of the Peace. In her living room. No other witnesses. (Massachusetts doesn’t require them.)

We told close family members, but the plan was to schedule the more ceremonial wedding before we made a wide announcement. We expected to do this within the year. But. Time passed. As it is wont to do. In fact, several years passed. And we more or less casually told people about our marriage along the way. People pretty much no longer expected us to have the “big” wedding. But I was determined. I wanted my party. A ceremony. Food. Music. And I wanted to have our loved ones with us to share in our celebration.

So, on October 24th, 2004, John and I got married again. This time with our friends and family with us.

This past October 24th was, therefore, our second wedding anniversary. It was both the anniversary of our second wedding, and the second anniversary of that wedding. (A nice little example of syntactic ambiguity where both parses apply…)

second wedding anniversary tree

This is not about “ass”

As may be painfully obvious to me some day as I look back on these early posts, I am new to blogging. Today, I’ve learned an interesting lesson.

It turns out, Technorati has something to learn about compound words, and perhaps about metaphorical usage. You see, a compound does not necessarily equal the sum of its composite elements. Someone writing about, say, the Whitehouse is not talking about the color white and houses. We all know that.

I’ve recently been writing posts about women (real-life and fictional characters) in film, TV and other entertainment industries whom I have admired. I feel that these women “kick ass,” in the metaphorical sense. I have been terming such women “kick-ass women.” A compound with a hyphen. Much like “dog-ear.” An expression, which I’m sure you know, refers neither to dogs, nor to ears. To dog-ear a book is to fold down the corner of a page (or pages) of a book to mark your place. You see, it’s a compound term, as well as a metaphor. While there may be some visual resemblance to the floppy ears of a doggy, we’re not talking dogs, and we’re certainly not talking ears.

Anyhow, I just pinged Technorati last night, after discovering that my blog wasn’t getting hit by their search engine. And I have 3 new hits for the Technorati tag “ass.”

In a way, it kind of amuses me that folks looking for porn will stumble across my site. ‘Cause they’re not gonna find any here. Of course, now someone will probably find this post by searching for keywords “ass” and “porn.” I’m screwed. Oh right, let’s add “screwed” to the mix. Perhaps with all this talk of compounding, we’ll even get “pounding” thrown into the mix. Oh right, we will now. (Oh crap, I just realized I’ve also used the word “doggy.” Nooo!)

Pants!

Today marks a momentous occassion. I am wearing pants! Okay, I’ve worn pants in the past. Actually, that is what is momentous. I am wearing pants from my past. (PPP: Pre-pregnancy pants.) (And by the way, I’m referring to pants in the US vs. the UK sense.)

I like the word pants. I actually like saying the word pants. It’s one of those words that begs to be repeated. Pants. For example, in a discourse on pants, I would hypothesize that speakers would be less inclined to use pronouns to refer to pants than, say, other entities in the discourse. Even if the word pants had just been mentioned, I would still say “pants.” Consider the following pair of examples:

Speaker A: Have you seen my glasses? I need them.
Speaker B: I see that you are not wearing them. When did you last see them?

vs.

Speaker A: Have you seen my pants? I need my pants.
Speaker B: I see that you are not wearing pants. When did you last see your pants?

I consider the word pants to be an inherently funny word, and I know I’m not alone here. (A friend of mine considers pants to be the funniest word of the English language.) And I’m remembering a sketch from a short-lived show called The Vacant Lot called “Pants! The Musical.”

There is apparently a tradition (according to Wikipedia) of substituting the word pants for other words in lines from Star Wars. Here are some of my favorites listed on the cited website:

3. We’ve got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.
6. I find your lack of pants disturbing.
12. Lock the door. And hope they don’t have pants.

It’s like MadLibs, but all pants!

When discussing pants, it’s also important to pronounce pants properly. I produce pants with very strong aspiration on the [p]. There seems to be a bit of difference in the vowel, too. I’ll plan to make some recordings so that I can do a bit of pants analysis.

Of course, pants is not the only inherently funny word. (I hope to collect some of them.) My favorite is actually squid. I try to use the word squid whenever possible. (And actually in some cases where it is not possible.)

Enough of this for now. I must get on with my pants. My squid is calling.