One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

So, last Thursday night the Savannah College of Art and Design hosted a lecture by Stanley Fish (if you find yourself bored by this sentence, it may be in your best interest to skip down a paragraph or two. Or maybe you might want to skip this post. In fact, maybe you should just find a new blog to read)(Just kidding, that was a joke. Mostly).

Dr. Fish is one of those big-shots in the world of academia. He's served as a dean at all kinds of fancy, top-notch schools and runs a blog through the NY Times called the Opinionator. He's an old man, Stanley Fish, and he blogs a whole heck of a lot better than I do. But that's okay.

Anyway, so last Thursday night my professors all but physically force my classmates and me into this lecture. For a while I seriously considered dressing head to toe Jimmy Buffett paraphernalia and wearing some kind of fish hat in honor of the speaker's name, but I couldn't find a hat and I am lazy, and slightly terrified of a certain female professor who was really, really excited about hearing Fish speak, so I didn't.

The lecture was decent. Good ol' Stan started with a fun little anecdote of why he loves the city of Savannah. Apparently a hundred years ago, he and his current wife "ran-away" on a road trip to Savannah for a little romantic weekend. At the time, they were both married to different people. Nice.

So, the point I'm taking forever to get to is that Fish was presenting on this idea of how to construct good, solid sentences. And in the midst of his speech filled with examples of subject/object placement and the advantages of strong verbs over weak adverbs, Fish says something like this:
I love sentences. I keep a list of my favorite sentences and constantly look for new ones to add every day.
Well, what a brilliant idea, Fish! I, too, love sentences. In fact, his speech inspired me to start my own favorite sentence list. Hopefully this inspiration lasts longer than my dream journal phase, or my P-90X kick.

Here it is, folks. Feel free to add your own favorite sentences!

Sentences Amber Loves List

**Note: unlike Fish's favorite sentences list, mine focus less on strong form and perfect grammar, and leans more towards humorous content.

1.) "I am an excellent housekeeping. Every time I get divorced, I keep the house." Zsa Zsa Gabor
2.) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
3.) "Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh man....I could be eating a slow learner." Lyndon B. Johnson
4.)I like cats too, let's exchange recipes.
5.) "Cheese… milk's leap toward immortality." Clifton Fadiman
6.)He is not a bad dancer; he is overly Caucasian.
7.) "There were a lot of times when we were alone, but I never really thought we were." Bill Clinton

A Bit of Background on the Egg

I hate eggs.

Well, that's not entirely true for two reasons. The first is that, on occasion, I do enjoy the white part of a hard boiled egg (not to be mistaken for boiled egg whites, which I do not like). The second falsifying statement is that I am not "hating" anything because of a certain February 1st resolution I made to give up hate and rage. It's only February 2nd and already I feel like this month is going to be longer than the Lent where I gave up chocolate.

But back to my main point: I am not a huge fan of eggs. Why then, one may ask, have I chosen to name my blog after an egg dish? Well that's a great question.
And one to which I really don't have an answer.

Here's the thing--I feel like there is something communal about eggs. Something about the smell of eggs simmering in a frying pan at a dirty, greasy diner gives me that 1950's, Rockwell America image. The idea of scrambled eggs just screams FORUM! to me, and that's what I want this blog to be, a forum of ideas and a place of communal gathering.

Okay, maybe that was taking the Rockwell idea a little too far. But the fact of the matter is that in his article "Start Your Blog in 7 Easy Steps" Andy Hayes says that naming a blog is one of the most important steps, and I want a blog that Andy Hayes would like because he is a writer who gets published in magazines like The Writer and I want to be a writer too, so (gasp for breath here) an egg name seemed like the best way to go.

So I did it. I named my blog The Scrambled Egg.

And then I felt like a poser. Honestly, how am I supposed to portray myself as this witty, straight-shooting blogger when the name of my blog isn't authentic because I don't even like scrambled eggs! It would be like writing under a fake name (okay, granted, that technique worked for Mark Twain and countless other successful authors...) or acting like I know all kinds of great egg recipes for the scrambled egg lovers of the world. And I don't. In fact, most people hate my scrambled eggs.

So that's how I came up with The Poached Omelette. I've never had one, never seen it listed on a greasy diner menu, but I'm pretty sure that if I had the opportunity to try a poached omelette, I'd like it. And, dear reader, that's about as honest as I can get on the subject of egg-dish preferences.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading my maiden post. I hope it would make Andy Hayes proud, but mostly I hope it adds a little egg-citment to your day (yeah, that's right, I just did the lame egg joke).