11.04.2007

Pirate's Booty; or, Swag Redux

Swag (swåg) n. Slang Stolen property; loot. [Prob. of Scand. orig.]
-> this particular definition comes from my trusty wee American Heritage dictionary, 4th edition. This is not to be confused with another meaning:
(n.) An ornamental drapery or curtain draped in a curve between two points. We're not even considering international meanings or swag as a verb. For our purposes, SWAG is a promotional item or a gift.

Anyhoo, my swag consisted of 4 moderately sized blankets. One. Two. Three. Four... that's a few too many for carry-on convenience. The women who regulated the initial airport security check-in area were none-too-pleased with my attempt to quickly walk past them with my 4 bags carrying 4 blankets. Not that they knew it, but the size of the plane didn't really care much for those blankets either. Before I could make it past security I had to stuff the blankets into a giant plastic bag given to me by one of the ladies who stopped me at security. I sat on the bag to squish it down to an even smaller size*. Needless to say, I boarded the plane without seriously wounding anyone with my blankets... though a few were bumped, methinks.
boarding

In other swag news, I was promised a jacket of some variety for speaking at the event. I have a vision in my head of those weird 80s paper jackets that you could decorate yourself.


* Side Note: I wrote in the "Edit Html" mode and blogger kindly finished my "incomplete" (non)attempt at html.... ". .... Interesting. Very intersting. It's still isn't showing up. Hmmm, what kind of nerd an I turning into?

3 comments:

Dolce Vita said...

No wonder none of us knew what swag is. This concept is foreign to academia.

Ah, to be a pirate instead of a land-lubber....

Cabiria said...

Swag = stuff we all get. :) I love that corporations have adapted pirate language to their purposes, it's so appropriate. Nice swag!

Matto said...

And here I thought it was "schwag" or "shwag." I've been pronouncing it wrong all these years...I'm mortified.