This is a completely random feature wherein I introduce you to some Alaska words. Today's entry is Suicide Fishing Run.

suicide fishing run - n., where someone (let's be honest a man) gets off work in Anchorage on an evening in the summer, drives down to the Kenai, about a 3.5 or 4 hour drive, fishes all night (remember in the summer we have almost complete daylight so "night" is pretty light), and then drives home in the early morning to make it to work the next day. This apparently works better on the buddy system as one of you can drive down while the other sleeps and you reverse it for the trip back up. Apparently this is not uncommon behavior for Alaskan men.

I've been behind on posting, so I give you the Alaska vocab, slang, jargon, and lingo I've learned since my arrival.

a big dump - n. a large amount of snow, usually in one sitting, has nothing to do with the bathroom like I thought at first
Example I've heard: We're hoping for one more big dump to extend the ski season.

the Lower 48 - Proper noun, capitalized. This is the 48 contiguous states (ie everything but Alaska and Hawaii)
Example I've heard: Elizabeth just moved here from the Lower 48.

the Outside - Proper noun, capitalized. Anywhere not Alaska. This is used by longer term Alaskans. This is very indicative of their attitude up here. The rest of the country/world seems not to care about Alaskans. Watch CNN headline news, we're not on the ticker, neither is our time zone. We almost never make the news. There are some amazing stories I've heard from post-9/11 days. As a result Alaskans have a very frontier-independent attitude and everywhere else is the Outside.
Example I've heard: I'm trying to get Outside this summer to go shopping.

the Interior - Proper noun, capitalized. The inside part of the state of Alaska. Large parts of it are hard to get too and very much less settled than the parts along the shore. Fairbanks is technically in the Interior, but is one of the larger cities and is considered to be sort of the gateway to the smaller less accessible communities.
Example: We're going hunting in the Interior.

the Bush - Proper noun, capitalized. All the wilderness areas of Alaska. Many of these communities can only be reached by plane, seaplane, or boat (in the summer). Sometimes by roads. They usually make it in only a few times a year to a bigger city (ie Anchorage or Juneau). Thus Bush ordering is available. Most people in these communities depend upon planes for supplies. (Which caused some serious problems in the days immediately after 9/11 when all planes were grounded.) Schools are small or non-existent (the state runs a satellite program for kids). Some really rugged types live out on their own in cabins, no real communities, and mainly hunt and fish for their existence. Alaska is one of the only states that allows sustenance hunting and fishing for their residents on special lands and most public lands. (I'm allowed to harvest a ton of meat/fish as a resident, even as a non-rural resident.) Rural residents eat on average a pound of wild meat a week (or day, can't remember, looked up the stats last week and forgot them, it's one of the two). And that was a long and rambling definition.
Example: signs posted all over in stores Bush shipping available

break-up aka Spring Break-Up aka Spring Thaw - n. Usually just called break-up, it is in the Spring when everything melts. In Kansas City where I am from, we would get snow/ice have it a week maybe two, and then it would warm and stuff would melt. This does not happen here. The snow/ice stays around for months until it finally melts. They grade the snow in the parking lots and many of the roads so there is up to 6 or 7 inches (literally) of packed snow/ice on all surfaces. It melts, or at least the top layer does, but it freezes either because it dropped temp at night or because the layer below caused it to refreeze. Then you have a layer of very slippery ice on top of everything instead of snow/cut up stuff with good traction. My car does okay in it. I do not. It is so dangerous to walk. My apartment parking lot was a disaster zone. I was taking baby steps across a store parking lot and laughing with another woman as we tried desperately not to wipe out, no traction, nothing to grab, very treacherous. They sell these things that slip over your shoes and have grippers (they look like arctic explorer gear) for you. I heard a rumor the city is giving them to employees, but nothing has panned out. After the melt and form really bad ice (seriously like walking on fresh zamboni'd ice rinks), then you get the swamp, mush. I have rubber boots (very awesome rubber boots I got for Christmas) that I have been wearing every day and carrying my shoes in my bag so I don't get mush all over my shoes/socks/jeans and be wet all day. Actually we're getting close to being done with break-up. For now at least.
No example really

There are more and I will get to them in a future update. Hello from the slightly less frozen North!

When I lived with Heather (aka huckleberrycake), I tried to explain the bless your heart thing. Basically in the South it has a number of meanings. It's this expression (especially used by Southern women) that you toss in right before you're about to say something mean about someone. I've actually heard someone say, "bless her heart, she's a little bit trampy". You can also use it to cover your contempt or distate for someone. Lest you think it is all a way of masking rudeness, sometimes you say it to someone as a genuine offer of pity and occasionally as a thank you. For example, one year as a historical re-enactor, my job at the historic house I worked at was to (in my full period regalia) bring hot cider to the various people who were wandering the gardens or waiting in the bitter cold for entry to the house. I got a lot of bless your hearts that day as a thank you.

Heather didn't believe me until she actually moved here (here being Kansas City which isn't really deep South but has several distinctive markers that are Southern such as bless your heart). Within the first week of living here, she's heard a lot of bless your hearts.

And to confirm it more, I found this entry in Urban Dictionary that says what I've always known it means.

And yes, I catch myself tossing out an occasional bless your heart.

Thanks to a good school system, a couple of especially aggressive teachers, and prolific reading habits, I have aquired a better than average vocabulary. I don't go around flaunting my word smith abilities, but I am comfortable with "big words". I recognize and understand them when I hear and see them, and I use them in my own writing and speaking.

Quick Linguistic Note: In linguistic terms (and this also pops up in ed classes), there is what is known as an active and a passive vocabulary. Your vocabulary is the sum total of all the words you know and understand. Your active vocabulary is the words you actually use in your writing and your speaking. Your passive vocabulary are the words you understand, they're part of your lexicon, but for whatever reason you don't use them frequently or at all. Active is what you use, passive is what you have and don't use. Typically an adult's passive vocabulary is twice as big as their active vocabulary. The person who is often the most impressive vocab wise (or perceived as the most arrogant know-it-all) may not actually have a bigger total vocabulary than you, they just have a larger percentage of their words in their active vocabulary. Also words can go back and forth between the two as your usage changes.

Okay, back to the point at hand: I know the word copacetic. I recognize it, I understand it. The other day one of my coworkers used it and I got to thinking. For whatever reason, I have never used that word, other than two sentences ago. I don't know why. Usually even when words have slipped back into my passive vocabulary, at one point I took them out and tried them on for size. But never copacetic. I don't like that word, and I don't know why. Perhaps because I think it sounds really 70s and cheesy.

And a general message: I have occasionally seen/heard people making fun of someone who uses a more advanced vocab word and mispronounces it. My father had a really good attitude about that. He used to tell me that all that meant was that person had only ever read the word, not heard it pronounced. This means that the person was reading, absorbing what they're reading, and trying to incorporate it into their daily life. They were trying to improve themselves and we should always respect and admire that. I used to do that as a child, read a word and then mispronounce it when I tried to use it. Now I tend to look up pronunciations because of that fear, and a desire to put my linguistics education to use by showing off my ability to read phonetic characters.