‘Give a call, we’ll talk, no big whoop’

While in college I stayed on campus during Christmas Break my junior year. I needed a Speech class and decided to pick up those credits during a Short Course.

For three weeks ~ two hours a day, four days a week ~ I studied Rhetoric.

Rhetoric \ˈre-tə-rik\ noun - the pursuit of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion

I loved these Short Courses because they were usually taught by the most outrageous profs, were rarely remotely related to the class syllabus, and were total crip courses.

One particular class, we spent the entire two hours telling dirty jokes ~ the nastier, the better ~ and exploring religious humor.

I suffer from retrograde amnesia in regards to the worst of the dirty jokes. All I can remember is that it involved duct tape, a hamster and a punch line that spoke of explosion prevention ~ and it was one the prof told. The funniest religious joke involved a Bishop visiting a poor monastery and a sonofabitch fish the brothers served for dinner.

On another day, we played a wussy version of Truth or Dare. There was no actual daring involved. A lone student sat inside a circle of classmates while being asked a question by each of the people sitting in the perimeter chairs… ANY QUESTION. The monkey in the middle had two possible ways to respond:

1) refuse to answer and be viciously good-naturedly ridiculed chided
2) answer the question with COMPLETE honesty 

None of this lying by omission, it was either all or nothing. Very few of us flat rejected a question. No one asked me something I would not answer.

So here we are… the real reason for this post. Next week I will mark my first blogaversary and in recognition of that one-year milestone, I am opening the floor to questions. I will begin answering your inquiries on July 16 ~ my official one year mark. For this particular post I will suspend replying in the comments section, and instead answer your questions on my frontpage.

It’s feast or famine. I’ve either meme’d myself to death and left no piece of Tara trivia unsaid, or you will fill my comment boxes with juicy nuggets of narcissistic love. I’m hoping for the love nuggets.

I’ll follow my ol’ collegiate Rhetoric class rules… I will either decline to answer (feel free to taunt my cowardice, but remember my kids and in-laws read this so keep it as clean as possible) or I will provide you with way too much information ~ not that I haven’t already.

Here’s something to get you started:

‘Opalstorm is neither an opal nor a storm. Discuss’