Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Fencing: extra points

Nigel was a local yokel at the North American Fencing tourney in San Josie. Across the back of his conductive fencing vest it says "Bess", writ large. Others did better for themselves in this department.
Extra points can be gained in this department. I think it's Sammy Hagar who says of the small town cruising scene, "Extra points for tall cans". He has a lot more categories, and his milleu is more in line with Nigel's last martial outing, paintball. Fencing ain't paintball.

2 extra points for anything ending in "-sky", "-ov", or expecially "-ow". Double for retaining "-ovna" if you are a woman fencer. One extra if your coach speaks to you in Russian.
2 extra points for having a drippingly German name. Keller or Kramer don't count.
The same cannot be said for extreme franquismes, as Quebecois are as abundant as lost fencing gear at one of these: no points.
Exception for German: names misspelled via Cyrillic, Hebrew, or both. Example: "Shumakher". Worth 10 points. Here, even such workaday Ashkenaz names as "Goldstein" get you 2 points.
3 extra points for having an identifiably Japanese name of more than 5 apparent syllables.
One point for "Nguyen". None for having one of the Korean names so common that your jacket needs a first initial. Same goes for "H. Brown", incidentally.
Point for "i" followed by "j".
One point for having what my friend Ms. Crittenden-Lundin [or t'other way round?] calls "one of those stupid hyphenated names.
No extra points if your name ends in "-well", "-ham", or "-ford". You don't need no extra points, ya waspy bastard!
Double all previous points if your name is unpronounceable w/o out average mortals committing linguistic mayhem. Actual example: "Snytsheuvel".
Oh, and, lose all points if your dad is the only one at the entire event wearing cammies _and_ has your name on a mil. name-tape across his ass.

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