I notice a lot of people are viewing my "Going To Sleep" post. I hope no one takes it too seriously. It's just a post.
Maybe I should start writing "How To" posts. I've already written one about how to microwave soup. And I wrote another one about what to do with cherries you buy at a farmers market. That's about all I know.
If you examine all the steps involved in doing anything, you suddenly realize it's a lot of work.
I like to write limericks. Sonnets too. And Haiku. I like the rigidity and structure of it, and I can't explain it because rigidity and structure is otherwise against my nature. Havent written any in awhile. They're a lot of work.
I also like words - what they mean & where they come from. How they're used - especially colloquially and dialectically. I made that word up.
I also like puns. Right now I'm trying to figure out a good pun with "menopause". I'm working on the idea of a small dog with "mini-paws", but I need to flesh it out.
I don't like quotes. If you throw quotes at me, they will be deflected.
As Winston Churchill said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. (I know, I know, it was FDR, not Churchill. I'm just wondering who, amongst those who are reading this, had a quick impulse to point out the mistake. No need to comment, you know who you are).
I do not have a "Type A" personality. I'm pretty far from a Type A type person.
William Rufus had a red beard supposedly. The "Rufus" gives it away.
I'm pretty sure if William Rufus and I had crossed paths in one of the royal forests, he would have killed me.
I didn't realize I had any problem with authority until I joined the Army.
I don't have a favorite television show. Or a favorite book (not really), or a favorite song.
It is hard to find unique stuff.
Why does every small town have one weird person who walks everywhere, crosses personal boundaries with impunity, gets into arguments with postal workers and is pretty much on the far side of crazy?
I doubt I'd make a good sociopath, because I'm pretty good at empathising with people. So I can strike that off my list of possible career choices. Just something else I'll never be.
I don't think I'd make a good psychopath either. I'm not really sure what that is.
I don't like to shave. But I don't like having a beard. Man, it's tough.
Once in college I took a class in Latin, and I remember thinking that it was really different from what I was accustomed to.
A rock has more mechanical aptitude that I do. Engines, machines and so on usually bore me and I don't care much about how they work. My motto: if it needs fixing, hire somebody. The results will usually be much better.
If I have to pull a string to start it, I don't want anything to do with it.
And Smoky the Dog has finally stopped barking.
Showing posts with label Social Commentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Commentary. Show all posts
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Sunday Thoughts
Just another post of a short series of stuff.
I still like twitter better than facebook, I think (still) because it's more anonymous. In twitter I literally only know a handful of people I follow or who follow me - a half dozen (it was so hard not to type half a dozen) at most. In facebook almost everyone I follow or who follows me are family or friends. I don't want family and friends finding out about the real me. I mean, who would?
Are there degrees of identical-ness? I made a comment the other evening that two items were "barely identical", which seemed silly at the time. Its like being barely pregnant. However, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Everything that is identical is just barely identical, because if one minute thing was different, they would not be identical.
Still not comfortable with the difference between affect and effect, no matter how many times it gets explained to me.
I still continue to read, but I'm behind in updating my reading in this blog. And heaven help me, I picked up another Robert Ludlum book, but only because someone literally left a bunch of books on our porch (we have kind of a reciprocal agreement going - I think).
Here in Western North Carolina, we're on the edge of a storm. I believe it is passing to the east of us, and heading north, which means it will be bad for those in it's way. Here it is just overcast, cool, off and on sprinkles, and a very lazy day for Pickles the Dog.
I tweeted about this yesterday. On TV there is a show about million dollar rooms. Some guy was bragging about how he'd spent over a million dollars just on the entry foyer to his home. Another had a $250,000 bullet proof window in one of his rooms. And here I am happy as a clam when I sell a postcard for $5.00.
Sheesh.
Actually a couple of weeks ago we sold a CDV for about $50.00, and I was 10 times happier than a clam - even though it's possible it was worth quite a bit more than that.
It's interesting he felt the need to have a bullet proof window. But this is the USA so it figures. And I bet, just like in the case of identical-ness, or even more so, there are different degrees of bullet proof-ness. What I'm saying is, it all depends on how badly someone wants to shoot a bullet though his window. Since this IS the USA, I'm sure there is a gun and a bullet for the job, no matter the window.
We continue to move postcards from eBay to Etsy - more on that grand experiment later.
I miss having a cat. I'm not sure a cat would mix well with Pickles though.
Enough. Done.
I still like twitter better than facebook, I think (still) because it's more anonymous. In twitter I literally only know a handful of people I follow or who follow me - a half dozen (it was so hard not to type half a dozen) at most. In facebook almost everyone I follow or who follows me are family or friends. I don't want family and friends finding out about the real me. I mean, who would?
Are there degrees of identical-ness? I made a comment the other evening that two items were "barely identical", which seemed silly at the time. Its like being barely pregnant. However, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Everything that is identical is just barely identical, because if one minute thing was different, they would not be identical.
Still not comfortable with the difference between affect and effect, no matter how many times it gets explained to me.
I still continue to read, but I'm behind in updating my reading in this blog. And heaven help me, I picked up another Robert Ludlum book, but only because someone literally left a bunch of books on our porch (we have kind of a reciprocal agreement going - I think).
Here in Western North Carolina, we're on the edge of a storm. I believe it is passing to the east of us, and heading north, which means it will be bad for those in it's way. Here it is just overcast, cool, off and on sprinkles, and a very lazy day for Pickles the Dog.
I tweeted about this yesterday. On TV there is a show about million dollar rooms. Some guy was bragging about how he'd spent over a million dollars just on the entry foyer to his home. Another had a $250,000 bullet proof window in one of his rooms. And here I am happy as a clam when I sell a postcard for $5.00.
Sheesh.
Actually a couple of weeks ago we sold a CDV for about $50.00, and I was 10 times happier than a clam - even though it's possible it was worth quite a bit more than that.
It's interesting he felt the need to have a bullet proof window. But this is the USA so it figures. And I bet, just like in the case of identical-ness, or even more so, there are different degrees of bullet proof-ness. What I'm saying is, it all depends on how badly someone wants to shoot a bullet though his window. Since this IS the USA, I'm sure there is a gun and a bullet for the job, no matter the window.
We continue to move postcards from eBay to Etsy - more on that grand experiment later.
I miss having a cat. I'm not sure a cat would mix well with Pickles though.
Enough. Done.
Monday, February 20, 2012
If its Monday, it must be about the separation of powers.
I have nothing to write about, so be warned. This is one of those posts - I have no idea where it will go.
I walk a lot with the dog, and lately I've noticed the dog pays a lot more attention to vehicles when they approach, especially from behind. I'm not sure why that has started, and I'm not sure how to stop it.
Yesterday it snowed. Today the snow is gone. Just the way it ought to be.
I find as I get older, more and more people get seriously ill, and more and more people die. I don't like it.
I dont think Pickles the Dog understands the thermal properties of sun shining through a window. But she knows it's warm - she's as bad as a cat for seeking out the sun.
I can't remember the dream I had last night, but I know I had it.
I am currently reading "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy. Many, many pages devoted to a description of a person dying a painful death. He sacrificed his life for a drawing room.
A drawing room, of course, is not a place where one would expect to find crayons, at least not in a solidly middle class household in 19th century Russia.
Today is president's day, so now I shall expound on government:
The systems of checks and balances set up by the founders to replace the Articles of Confederation after the Revolution has ensured that the United States is a relatively conservative place, politically. I don't know if that was their intention or not, but I wouldn't put it past them. These were very intelligent & very wealthy people, for the most part, and I give them credit for knowing what they were doing.
I dont pretend to understand British politics, but it seems that in their Parliamentary style of government, whatever the House of Commons, lead by the Prime Minister, says, goes. There does not seem to be a separation of executive and legislative powers.
In the USA, that's not the case. The legislature, in the person of the House of Representatives & the Senate, have to agree on a bill - which in and of itself tends to moderate things. The President has executive powers and can veto a bill, and it's not easy to override. But even if a bill comes out of Congress and the President signs it, it can be challenged in the courts and the Supreme Court can potentially overturn it, and it seems they have pretty much the last say. The only way to override the Supreme Court is to amend the constitution, a process that takes quite a bit of effort and time, and involves not only the US Congress, but the State legislatures. Its not often that amendments are attempted, and almost all of them fail. Which I guess is as it should be.
With our system government, it seems like a miracle that we have anything like Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, or anything in place to protect workers, but we do. Its not surprising at all that we don't have a national health insurance, that we are only one of two or three nations on earth that don't use the metric system, and that there is no large scale nationwide mass transit network.
I'd love to be able to take the train from Valdese to Asheville, spend a few hours & come back, but I can't. Railroad passenger service between small towns and small cities just doesn't exist, and that is not an accident or an oversight.
Economically, though, we're a giant, even now, even in these times. The country generates enormous wealth.
Militarily, we're also a giant, an extremely powerful nation able exert its power pretty much anywhere on the planet it takes a notion to.
Part of this is due to our size and location, but a lot is due to the fact that the USA is fairly conservative when compared to most other industrialized "western" nations. And that is because we have a system of government that makes change difficult.
The founding fathers set up this system of checks and balances in the Constitution in order to protect against "tyrants". When they thought of a tyrant, they were thinking specifically of King George III, and what they considered the unfair control of markets & taxation. And when the USA finally became independent, it ultimately set up a system of government which which separated the various functions of government and was quite radical in the 18th century. I think it's still quite radical today. But whether it was intentional (I tend to think it was), or an unintended consequence, an abrupt radical change on a nationwide level is generally not in the cards. The checks & balances, the separation of legislative, executive & judicial powers installed to keep too much power from residing in one person, insures that it doesn't happen.
I suppose. I'm just thinking.
I walk a lot with the dog, and lately I've noticed the dog pays a lot more attention to vehicles when they approach, especially from behind. I'm not sure why that has started, and I'm not sure how to stop it.
Yesterday it snowed. Today the snow is gone. Just the way it ought to be.
I find as I get older, more and more people get seriously ill, and more and more people die. I don't like it.
I dont think Pickles the Dog understands the thermal properties of sun shining through a window. But she knows it's warm - she's as bad as a cat for seeking out the sun.
I can't remember the dream I had last night, but I know I had it.
I am currently reading "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy. Many, many pages devoted to a description of a person dying a painful death. He sacrificed his life for a drawing room.
A drawing room, of course, is not a place where one would expect to find crayons, at least not in a solidly middle class household in 19th century Russia.
Today is president's day, so now I shall expound on government:
The systems of checks and balances set up by the founders to replace the Articles of Confederation after the Revolution has ensured that the United States is a relatively conservative place, politically. I don't know if that was their intention or not, but I wouldn't put it past them. These were very intelligent & very wealthy people, for the most part, and I give them credit for knowing what they were doing.
I dont pretend to understand British politics, but it seems that in their Parliamentary style of government, whatever the House of Commons, lead by the Prime Minister, says, goes. There does not seem to be a separation of executive and legislative powers.
In the USA, that's not the case. The legislature, in the person of the House of Representatives & the Senate, have to agree on a bill - which in and of itself tends to moderate things. The President has executive powers and can veto a bill, and it's not easy to override. But even if a bill comes out of Congress and the President signs it, it can be challenged in the courts and the Supreme Court can potentially overturn it, and it seems they have pretty much the last say. The only way to override the Supreme Court is to amend the constitution, a process that takes quite a bit of effort and time, and involves not only the US Congress, but the State legislatures. Its not often that amendments are attempted, and almost all of them fail. Which I guess is as it should be.
With our system government, it seems like a miracle that we have anything like Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, or anything in place to protect workers, but we do. Its not surprising at all that we don't have a national health insurance, that we are only one of two or three nations on earth that don't use the metric system, and that there is no large scale nationwide mass transit network.
I'd love to be able to take the train from Valdese to Asheville, spend a few hours & come back, but I can't. Railroad passenger service between small towns and small cities just doesn't exist, and that is not an accident or an oversight.
Economically, though, we're a giant, even now, even in these times. The country generates enormous wealth.
Militarily, we're also a giant, an extremely powerful nation able exert its power pretty much anywhere on the planet it takes a notion to.
Part of this is due to our size and location, but a lot is due to the fact that the USA is fairly conservative when compared to most other industrialized "western" nations. And that is because we have a system of government that makes change difficult.
The founding fathers set up this system of checks and balances in the Constitution in order to protect against "tyrants". When they thought of a tyrant, they were thinking specifically of King George III, and what they considered the unfair control of markets & taxation. And when the USA finally became independent, it ultimately set up a system of government which which separated the various functions of government and was quite radical in the 18th century. I think it's still quite radical today. But whether it was intentional (I tend to think it was), or an unintended consequence, an abrupt radical change on a nationwide level is generally not in the cards. The checks & balances, the separation of legislative, executive & judicial powers installed to keep too much power from residing in one person, insures that it doesn't happen.
I suppose. I'm just thinking.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving (in the USA) is November 24th this year, and I don't really have any thoughts about it. Maybe that's because I'm a man, or maybe I'm just empty of thoughts. But I have no real thoughts about it, so I thought dig around in my brain and see what I could find.
When I was a young child in eastern Kentucky, Turkey was not part of our Thanksgiving tradition. I'm not sure why that is, but I'll put forth a hypothesis and maybe it will fly.
My thinking goes like this. My grandparents, all four of them, were 19th century people. They were raised by people firmly rooted in the 19th century, and those traditions and values were passed on to them. Land and farming were very important to them. They grew their own food - not only tons of vegetables, but fruit too (especially apples) and they also raised cattle and pigs. Big pigs. And sometimes rabbits. There was always a mule about, and it's basic function was for plowing. Grandpa plowed behind a mule, just like people had done in the "old timey" days.
They weren't completely self-sufficient, they'd buy flour, sugar, coffee, stuff like that. But virtually everything else, they grew or raised. It was very hard work - I don't think I ever appreciated how hard they worked. I remember Grandma saying they worked "like dogs" and they kept at it until they hit their early 80s and just could not do it anymore.
I don't remember either set of my grandparents raising or hunting Turkeys. I'm not sure there were any Turkeys around to hunt anyway. I don't know what they raised before my time, fowl wise, but I never remember them raising any winged creatures other than yard birds - sometimes referred to as chickens.
They did, however, raise hogs. And hogs were slaughtered & butchered when it was cold, and I recollect that the main dish at my earlier Thanksgivings was ham - so I have a feeling I was eating one of my grandparent's pigs. It may have been one from the previous season, they had a smoke house & electricity so they could store stuff for long periods. I don't know. I just know that Turkey was not part of the Thanksgiving meal. To this day Turkey is not something I really look forward to.
I've seen the Norman Rockwell paintings so I know Turkey had be firmly established as a traditional Thanksgiving food by the time I sprouted forth. But it wasn't traditional for my family, and I suspect it wasn't for almost everybody around there at that time. It was different back then.
I suppose this counts as a Thanksgiving thought.
When I was a young child in eastern Kentucky, Turkey was not part of our Thanksgiving tradition. I'm not sure why that is, but I'll put forth a hypothesis and maybe it will fly.
My thinking goes like this. My grandparents, all four of them, were 19th century people. They were raised by people firmly rooted in the 19th century, and those traditions and values were passed on to them. Land and farming were very important to them. They grew their own food - not only tons of vegetables, but fruit too (especially apples) and they also raised cattle and pigs. Big pigs. And sometimes rabbits. There was always a mule about, and it's basic function was for plowing. Grandpa plowed behind a mule, just like people had done in the "old timey" days.
They weren't completely self-sufficient, they'd buy flour, sugar, coffee, stuff like that. But virtually everything else, they grew or raised. It was very hard work - I don't think I ever appreciated how hard they worked. I remember Grandma saying they worked "like dogs" and they kept at it until they hit their early 80s and just could not do it anymore.
I don't remember either set of my grandparents raising or hunting Turkeys. I'm not sure there were any Turkeys around to hunt anyway. I don't know what they raised before my time, fowl wise, but I never remember them raising any winged creatures other than yard birds - sometimes referred to as chickens.
They did, however, raise hogs. And hogs were slaughtered & butchered when it was cold, and I recollect that the main dish at my earlier Thanksgivings was ham - so I have a feeling I was eating one of my grandparent's pigs. It may have been one from the previous season, they had a smoke house & electricity so they could store stuff for long periods. I don't know. I just know that Turkey was not part of the Thanksgiving meal. To this day Turkey is not something I really look forward to.
I've seen the Norman Rockwell paintings so I know Turkey had be firmly established as a traditional Thanksgiving food by the time I sprouted forth. But it wasn't traditional for my family, and I suspect it wasn't for almost everybody around there at that time. It was different back then.
I suppose this counts as a Thanksgiving thought.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Saturday Thoughts Nov 5, 2011
Time once again for some thoughts. Don't really have any, but here goes.
This is North Carolina, it should be 70 degrees or so right about now, but it's not. That bugs me, I like warm.
We go back to standard time very early tomorrow morning. I'm not going to worry about it. Daggone people messin' around with time, like they're some sort of Einstein wannabe or something.
I dont think time really exists anyway. Clocks and calendars measure days and hours, but days and hours are not time. Days and hours are measurements of the passage of something we call time, but really isn't time.
Gravity does exist, however, and it freaks me out. So strong, yet so weak. How can it hold the moon and not crush me?
I don't even have an inkling of an understanding of the universe.
I dont even understand why, no matter where you are on planet earth, the ground appears to be below your feet and the sky appears to be above your head.
I have found that the most interesting things are frequently the things that didn't seem interesting at all at first glance.
Thru the medium of television, I've discovered that we could easily afford a home in a backwater village in southern Italy (especially if we could live without heat). Bergen, Norway is a completely different story. I don't think we could buy a place there, at least not without some sort of job. And you'd surely need heat, though maybe not a/c., not sure.
In Minnesota, there's a joke about a Norweigan (Or Swede, take your pick) who loved his wife so much he almost told her.
Pickles the Dog thinks that she is a good dog. She also thinks that she is a pretty dog. Righ now she is where she always is this time of night - zonked out on the couch. She barks if she hears something unusual, so that's worth the price of dog food.
I don't like shaving.
I love rhubarb pie. No strawberries please. Putting strawberries in rhubarb pie is like putting coconut in banana pudding. Don't need it. Even more importantly, don't want it.
Fine grit sandpaper is a phrase I could live without.
This is about all the time (rather what we call time) I have to think of things this evening.
This is North Carolina, it should be 70 degrees or so right about now, but it's not. That bugs me, I like warm.
We go back to standard time very early tomorrow morning. I'm not going to worry about it. Daggone people messin' around with time, like they're some sort of Einstein wannabe or something.
I dont think time really exists anyway. Clocks and calendars measure days and hours, but days and hours are not time. Days and hours are measurements of the passage of something we call time, but really isn't time.
Gravity does exist, however, and it freaks me out. So strong, yet so weak. How can it hold the moon and not crush me?
I don't even have an inkling of an understanding of the universe.
I dont even understand why, no matter where you are on planet earth, the ground appears to be below your feet and the sky appears to be above your head.
I have found that the most interesting things are frequently the things that didn't seem interesting at all at first glance.
Thru the medium of television, I've discovered that we could easily afford a home in a backwater village in southern Italy (especially if we could live without heat). Bergen, Norway is a completely different story. I don't think we could buy a place there, at least not without some sort of job. And you'd surely need heat, though maybe not a/c., not sure.
In Minnesota, there's a joke about a Norweigan (Or Swede, take your pick) who loved his wife so much he almost told her.
Pickles the Dog thinks that she is a good dog. She also thinks that she is a pretty dog. Righ now she is where she always is this time of night - zonked out on the couch. She barks if she hears something unusual, so that's worth the price of dog food.
I don't like shaving.
I love rhubarb pie. No strawberries please. Putting strawberries in rhubarb pie is like putting coconut in banana pudding. Don't need it. Even more importantly, don't want it.
Fine grit sandpaper is a phrase I could live without.
This is about all the time (rather what we call time) I have to think of things this evening.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Friday Night Thoughts
That time again, writing something just to write something.
As in most other places in the world, it is October in North Carolina, and if the wind is blowing and you're in the shade, it almost feels crisp. Otherwise it's just as humid as it was in August, just not as hot.
I am convinced that dogs see things that don't exist, then get scared and bark at them.
Cats also see things that don't exist, however they don't get scared, they just stare. Nature of the beast.
I still like twitter better than facebook, it seems more anonymous, even though it isn't.
Here is a short list (out of a much longer list) of foods I don't like: butter, mayonnaise, cheese, yogurt, tomatoes, steak, peas, peaches, pears, artichokes, cauliflower, mustard, onions.
Not sure what the difference between x-factor and the voice is, but I could live without either of them.
I thought I'd make a joke about Herman Cain's 999 plan just being 666 upside down, but when Michelle Bachmann made the same joke, I was glad I didn't. Now I'm sorry I even thought about it.
Last night I had a dream, I woke up & tried to remember it, but it just dissolved. I could see it dissolving and there was nothing I could do. I couldn't remember anything, and I tried hard.
I can talk myself out of mowing grass without any problem at all. I did it today - it needed another day to dry out. That's the ticket.
Even though I was in the Army at the time and that put a bit of a damper on things, I really liked living in Monterey, California.
As much as I disparage Kafka, I really liked the unfinished story about Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor. How on earth could anybody think of something like that? Where does that come from?
As in most other places in the world, it is October in North Carolina, and if the wind is blowing and you're in the shade, it almost feels crisp. Otherwise it's just as humid as it was in August, just not as hot.
I am convinced that dogs see things that don't exist, then get scared and bark at them.
Cats also see things that don't exist, however they don't get scared, they just stare. Nature of the beast.
I still like twitter better than facebook, it seems more anonymous, even though it isn't.
Here is a short list (out of a much longer list) of foods I don't like: butter, mayonnaise, cheese, yogurt, tomatoes, steak, peas, peaches, pears, artichokes, cauliflower, mustard, onions.
Not sure what the difference between x-factor and the voice is, but I could live without either of them.
I thought I'd make a joke about Herman Cain's 999 plan just being 666 upside down, but when Michelle Bachmann made the same joke, I was glad I didn't. Now I'm sorry I even thought about it.
Last night I had a dream, I woke up & tried to remember it, but it just dissolved. I could see it dissolving and there was nothing I could do. I couldn't remember anything, and I tried hard.
I can talk myself out of mowing grass without any problem at all. I did it today - it needed another day to dry out. That's the ticket.
Even though I was in the Army at the time and that put a bit of a damper on things, I really liked living in Monterey, California.
As much as I disparage Kafka, I really liked the unfinished story about Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor. How on earth could anybody think of something like that? Where does that come from?
Friday, September 16, 2011
Friday Evening Thoughts - because it's all I can think of
I'm surprised at how much I don't know.
I created about 1000 credit card sized, laminated, edited cliff note versions of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" in case I run into anybody in Valdese who needs to know what an actual Nazi is. Not really.
A few minutes ago I used a pair of scissors to pry apart some chocolate cookies that had melted together. It was not a good decision, and please don't tell my wife.
I find I'm cynical sometimes, but I'm not cynical enough to be a political cartoonist. Also, I can't really draw.
Whenever there's a movie about a dog, somebody's going to die.
Whenever there's a movie about Christmas, somebody's going to die.
I suppose I'd rather watch Bachelor Pad than be water boarded, but I'd have to think about it. No I don't. Somebody call Dick Cheney and let's get it over with.
I believe the worst day of summer was Sept 2nd or 3rd - it was hot & humid, then there was an afternoon thundershower, and then it got hotter and more humid. I'm thinking about that now, because it's 45-50 degrees cooler, and I'm pretty sure I don't like it.
If I had 1.9 million dollars in cash to spend, I could think of a lot of things to do with it other than buying a house in Costa Rica.
When I read over some of my older posts, I cringe. I suppose one day I'll read this and cringe.
I created about 1000 credit card sized, laminated, edited cliff note versions of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" in case I run into anybody in Valdese who needs to know what an actual Nazi is. Not really.
A few minutes ago I used a pair of scissors to pry apart some chocolate cookies that had melted together. It was not a good decision, and please don't tell my wife.
I find I'm cynical sometimes, but I'm not cynical enough to be a political cartoonist. Also, I can't really draw.
Whenever there's a movie about a dog, somebody's going to die.
Whenever there's a movie about Christmas, somebody's going to die.
I suppose I'd rather watch Bachelor Pad than be water boarded, but I'd have to think about it. No I don't. Somebody call Dick Cheney and let's get it over with.
I believe the worst day of summer was Sept 2nd or 3rd - it was hot & humid, then there was an afternoon thundershower, and then it got hotter and more humid. I'm thinking about that now, because it's 45-50 degrees cooler, and I'm pretty sure I don't like it.
If I had 1.9 million dollars in cash to spend, I could think of a lot of things to do with it other than buying a house in Costa Rica.
When I read over some of my older posts, I cringe. I suppose one day I'll read this and cringe.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
I Think I Remember Mrs. Apple
I may have my facts wrong, right down to people's names, but I think I remember Mrs. Apple.
One day Mrs. Apple was driving her jalopy down the road, her jalopy being defined as something on the order of a Model T, and of course it broke down. But she wasn't worried, she lived in a nice friendly place and she knew it was only a matter of time before some nice young man would stop and help her. So she sat down on a small retaining wall in the front of someone's house and ate an apple and waited. People stopped, but no one could figure out what was wrong with her car, so she just told them thanks and they went on, confident that eventually someone would be able to figure it out. Well eventually Mr. Brown, a nice young man who drove a delivery truck & wore some kind of uniform, stopped and looked, and he's the one who figured out that Mrs. Apple had run out of gas. They both laughed and he gave her some gas and they went on their way.
In my life, especially when I first started owning cars, I've had a few occasions where my automobile has decided to strand me on the road somewhere usually due to its advanced age and a lack of money to keep up a proper maintenance routine. Each time that happened I always thought about Mrs. Apple, and how things never seemed to work out for me like it did for her. And I wished, for a time at least, that I could have lived in Mrs. Apple's world, where everybody was nice, and everything always turned out fine.
One day Mrs. Apple was driving her jalopy down the road, her jalopy being defined as something on the order of a Model T, and of course it broke down. But she wasn't worried, she lived in a nice friendly place and she knew it was only a matter of time before some nice young man would stop and help her. So she sat down on a small retaining wall in the front of someone's house and ate an apple and waited. People stopped, but no one could figure out what was wrong with her car, so she just told them thanks and they went on, confident that eventually someone would be able to figure it out. Well eventually Mr. Brown, a nice young man who drove a delivery truck & wore some kind of uniform, stopped and looked, and he's the one who figured out that Mrs. Apple had run out of gas. They both laughed and he gave her some gas and they went on their way.
In my life, especially when I first started owning cars, I've had a few occasions where my automobile has decided to strand me on the road somewhere usually due to its advanced age and a lack of money to keep up a proper maintenance routine. Each time that happened I always thought about Mrs. Apple, and how things never seemed to work out for me like it did for her. And I wished, for a time at least, that I could have lived in Mrs. Apple's world, where everybody was nice, and everything always turned out fine.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Tuesday Thoughts
This must be the era of strange dreams for me, I seem to have them every night.
I took my pickup truck in for its North Carolina state inspection today. There were several other people in the small waiting room chatting with each other. As I listened I thought this could easily be Kentucky. Had I been in the same situation in South Dakota, I probably would not have thought that.
Yesterday Ricky Skaggs, John Glenn, Nelson Mandela & I had a birthday (along with about 1 in every 365 people or so on the planet). I wonder if any of them thought about me, 'cause I thought about them.
If you happen to read this, your life is just that much different that it would have been had you not read it.
When you're driving and you see other people in other cars, do you ever wonder what their lives are like?
In the same vein, if you go to a restaurant with someone, do you ever wonder how different your perception and experience would be if you had sat where the other one was seated? In fact it could change the perceptions and experiences of every person in the place. Maybe just a little, maybe a whole lot. Who knows?
Pickles the Dog is goofy. No two ways about it.
Back when my life was spent in a cube, I was prepared to lead a worker's revolt against motivational speakers & writers. Now I don't care. Stephen Covey, you're safe. From me at least. Good luck to ya.
So ends my Tuesday thoughts.
I took my pickup truck in for its North Carolina state inspection today. There were several other people in the small waiting room chatting with each other. As I listened I thought this could easily be Kentucky. Had I been in the same situation in South Dakota, I probably would not have thought that.
Yesterday Ricky Skaggs, John Glenn, Nelson Mandela & I had a birthday (along with about 1 in every 365 people or so on the planet). I wonder if any of them thought about me, 'cause I thought about them.
If you happen to read this, your life is just that much different that it would have been had you not read it.
When you're driving and you see other people in other cars, do you ever wonder what their lives are like?
In the same vein, if you go to a restaurant with someone, do you ever wonder how different your perception and experience would be if you had sat where the other one was seated? In fact it could change the perceptions and experiences of every person in the place. Maybe just a little, maybe a whole lot. Who knows?
Pickles the Dog is goofy. No two ways about it.
Back when my life was spent in a cube, I was prepared to lead a worker's revolt against motivational speakers & writers. Now I don't care. Stephen Covey, you're safe. From me at least. Good luck to ya.
So ends my Tuesday thoughts.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Lightening Thoughts
How many thoughts can I think of in 5 mins? Here goes.
I notice I put my left shoe on before my right shoe in the morning. I forced myself to put my right shoe on first this morning & it felt weird. I'm right handed, so I don't understand.
Today I realized that I've lived in Valdese, NC for so long that I think Hickory - 20 miles east and 10 times larger - is a big city.
Dogs, bless their hearts, are dumb. And the human race is better off because of it.
I mowed grass a few days ago. Now the grass is growing again. Argggh.
I had a dream within a dream last night. I'd wake up and say I had a strange dream and someone else would say, "that was me, I caused you to have that dream". I watched all this from a corner of a room & never questioned why someone would be sitting at the edge of my bed directing my dreams. Dreams are like that.
If I could type faster, I could probably write more stuff.
And I hate it when I have a minute to go and I can't think of anything.
Times up.
I notice I put my left shoe on before my right shoe in the morning. I forced myself to put my right shoe on first this morning & it felt weird. I'm right handed, so I don't understand.
Today I realized that I've lived in Valdese, NC for so long that I think Hickory - 20 miles east and 10 times larger - is a big city.
Dogs, bless their hearts, are dumb. And the human race is better off because of it.
I mowed grass a few days ago. Now the grass is growing again. Argggh.
I had a dream within a dream last night. I'd wake up and say I had a strange dream and someone else would say, "that was me, I caused you to have that dream". I watched all this from a corner of a room & never questioned why someone would be sitting at the edge of my bed directing my dreams. Dreams are like that.
If I could type faster, I could probably write more stuff.
And I hate it when I have a minute to go and I can't think of anything.
Times up.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday Thoughts
Just trying to get back in the habit of writing something. Sometimes when you write, thoughts happen.
I like twitter better than facebook, I'll have to think about why.
My dreams last night involved speedboats racing down a busy highway. Also, I managed to solve a complex problem, but I can't remember what it was.
Ever catch a dog sleeping when it should be working? Humans react similarly.
Dogs work? Pickles' job is to look out the windows & warn us if any cats are around.
Didn't watch the Oscars last night - pretty much forgot all about them.
Did watch part of a Starz version of a Hallmark movie - substitute Henry Winkler for Kevin Klein & take out all the 4 letter words & it could have been a Hallmark Christmas special. You know, where someone always dies on Christmas eve.
Very warm and very windy this morning in beautiful Valdese, NC.
I'm getting my rear-end kicked in some stupid strategy type computer game, and for some reason it irritates me.
The end of February is nigh. The season of grass mowing approaches.
I can think of a lot of reasons why the Mayan calendar ended on the 2012 winter solstice. Most likely they figured that was far enough, though if they had become a dominant civilization the world would be facing some real calendar related issues in the not too distant future.
I like twitter better than facebook, I'll have to think about why.
My dreams last night involved speedboats racing down a busy highway. Also, I managed to solve a complex problem, but I can't remember what it was.
Ever catch a dog sleeping when it should be working? Humans react similarly.
Dogs work? Pickles' job is to look out the windows & warn us if any cats are around.
Didn't watch the Oscars last night - pretty much forgot all about them.
Did watch part of a Starz version of a Hallmark movie - substitute Henry Winkler for Kevin Klein & take out all the 4 letter words & it could have been a Hallmark Christmas special. You know, where someone always dies on Christmas eve.
Very warm and very windy this morning in beautiful Valdese, NC.
I'm getting my rear-end kicked in some stupid strategy type computer game, and for some reason it irritates me.
The end of February is nigh. The season of grass mowing approaches.
I can think of a lot of reasons why the Mayan calendar ended on the 2012 winter solstice. Most likely they figured that was far enough, though if they had become a dominant civilization the world would be facing some real calendar related issues in the not too distant future.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Saturday Thoughts 2-5-2011
It was a cold damp and mystic dog walk this morning. Lots of etherealness everywhere. Tons of firmament. Sharp noises cut through the air, I assumed made by the winged animals, though for the most part I did not see them. I could hear occasional howling behind fences. People passed us by in their mobile self contained artifical climate pods. We trudged on.
I've come to the realization that there are lots of things I'll never experience.
What is socially acceptable in the dog world, is quite frowned upon in human society.
For thousands of years, people have been buying things and reselling them at a profit. How on earth did that come about?
Every person you've ever heard of, now and throughout history, is just a tiny tiny fraction of all the people who've ever existed. The best most people can hope for is to have their name remembered by their great-grandchildren.
Sometimes I look out at our property and wonder what I could do to make it look more rednecky.
Once I witnessed a local deputy-sheriff in Ashland Kentucky being yelled by a secret-service agent. That's not something you see every day. I'd wager most people on this planet have never seen that.
I've come to the realization that there are lots of things I'll never experience.
What is socially acceptable in the dog world, is quite frowned upon in human society.
For thousands of years, people have been buying things and reselling them at a profit. How on earth did that come about?
Every person you've ever heard of, now and throughout history, is just a tiny tiny fraction of all the people who've ever existed. The best most people can hope for is to have their name remembered by their great-grandchildren.
Sometimes I look out at our property and wonder what I could do to make it look more rednecky.
Once I witnessed a local deputy-sheriff in Ashland Kentucky being yelled by a secret-service agent. That's not something you see every day. I'd wager most people on this planet have never seen that.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
My .02 on Huckleberry Finn
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug. There is a reason he used that word.
I read Huckleberry Finn the first time when I was 11 years old. I read it on my own, not part of a school assignment or anything, complete with all 200 + instances of the 'n-word'. At age 11, I knew well enough that I should not go repeating that word amongst my classmates. I new it's connotations and history. Much later I read Huckleberry Finn to my son, the very same book I had read as a child, one chapter at a time when he was quite young - much too young to grasp the finer points. When I read this to my son, I did exactly what this person who is publishing a revised version is doing - I substituted the word "slave" for the "n-word". But here is the difference - my son was 5 or 6 years old at the time, an age when kids repeat everything they've heard. I'm pretty sure he wasn't old enough to understand that he should not go slinging this word around the playground.
By the time people are old enough to read this on their own, they should be able to distinguish between differences in usage and connotations of words in the mid-19th century and the early 21st century. They should have a grasp of context.
The book was published in 1884, and is set some 30-35 years earlier, in the 1850s. It starts in Missouri, a state where slavery was legal at the time, and ends in the deep south, mainly because Huck and Jim fell asleep and missed their intended destination of Cairo, Illinois. (In reality, Jim probably would not have found much sympathy in Cairo, Illinois, but that's reality, and Huckleberry Finn was fiction). But anyway, along the way there are all kinds of people, descriptions of Mississippi River life, humor, and some astute social commentary.
Huckleberry Finn may have been the first major novel to make use of dialect, or at least the first American one. I think I read somewhere that Mark Twain used 7 dialects for his characters, but I'm not sure. When I read it at age 11, I had no trouble understanding most the language used. Much of it was very similar to the way my grandparents spoke, and even though I didn't use most of the words or phrases in my everyday speech, they were very familiar to me. I didn't realize it at the time, but this gave me a bit of an advantage in understanding this book. Anyway, Jim, the uneducated slave, spoke differently than Huckleberry who had a little bit of education forced upon him. Huck spoke slightly differently than Tom Sawyer, who attended school more regularly. Huck's father was as uneducated as Jim, but spoke differently than either Huck or Jim, because he had a different background. They all spoke differently than the Widow Douglas, who tortured poor ol' Huck with manners and religion. And none of them spoke as articulately as Judge Thatcher, who was quite well educated. (An aside: I always thought Judge Thatcher may have been a bit of a crook. Can't prove it, but in the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Huck had come into a bunch of money as a result of an encounter with Indian Joe, and in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Judge Thatcher seemed a little too agreeable to manage Huck's 'fortune').
What I'm getting at is that Mark Twain wrote the book with the characters speaking American English as it was spoken in by various strata of society in Missouri in the 1850s. I am sure the "n-word" was used at that time by people of all races without a second thought. I don't know that it had the same connotations or meanings then that it has now. I do know that the connotations and meaning it has now are not good.
Writing dialect, getting it right and being consistent is difficult. If you remove this word from the book you weaken part of the author's attempt at authenticity and reality. It skews the portrait of life in the 1850s.
Does it matter? Maybe not. It won't change people's lives one way or another. Neither will painting a Hitler mustache on the Mona Lisa, but I hope no one does it. However, I think if you can't handle reality in literature you should stick to sit-coms on TV, where (sarcasm alert) they'd never ever dream of using stereotypes or offensive language.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
An Examination of a Bad Joke
Introduction
This is an examination of a bad joke. I know it's a bad joke because I thought it up not too long ago, and I've never thought up a good joke in my life.
The Joke
Q: If E.T. were very religious and landed in Italy, what might he do?
A: Phone Rome.
Cultural Background Required
In order to grasp the intricacies of this joke, you need to have certain levels of knowledge.
First, you need to be able to at least read and understand English, and an ability to speak it would be even better. If you're reading this, chances are you meet that requirement.
Second, you need to know who E.T. was. This of course was a movie about an extra-terrestrial (an alien from outer space), who found himself marooned on Earth for awhile. He was a gentle sort and it was a nice movie. It would help immensely if you've seen the movie, but that is not absolutely required.
Third, you need to understand Western cultural traditions enough to know that a very religious alien who found himself in Italy would probably try to contact the highest echelons of the Roman Catholic church. Those people reside in the Vatican, in Rome.
Fourth, you'd have to know that after the movie, in North America at least, all kinds of bumper stickers and signs sprang up for awhile with the slogan "E.T. - Phone Home".
Fifth, in English, Rome rhymes with home, thus the punchline, hilarious or not.
Why This Works in English
This works in English precisely because Rome rhymes with home, so an English speaker may find some spark of humor in that, assuming they have the cultural background listed above. In two other languages I'm somewhat familiar with, German and Russian, it doesn't quite work. That is because the German word for Rome (Rom), does not rhyme with their word for home (das Haus or zu Hause or something like that). You run into the same problem in Russian. In Russian, Rome is Rim (or something similar) and home is "doma", or maybe "glavnaya", probably depending on if you're taking about a physical place or state of mind. I'm not fluent in either language, so I don't really know. But in neither language does their word for Rome rhyme with their word for home, so they fail miserably to hark back to North American bumper stickers popular before most people alive today were born.
In Conclusion
This is not a good joke, but it requires a deceptive amount of knowledge and specific cultural experience to even begin to groan.
This is an examination of a bad joke. I know it's a bad joke because I thought it up not too long ago, and I've never thought up a good joke in my life.
The Joke
Q: If E.T. were very religious and landed in Italy, what might he do?
A: Phone Rome.
Cultural Background Required
In order to grasp the intricacies of this joke, you need to have certain levels of knowledge.
First, you need to be able to at least read and understand English, and an ability to speak it would be even better. If you're reading this, chances are you meet that requirement.
Second, you need to know who E.T. was. This of course was a movie about an extra-terrestrial (an alien from outer space), who found himself marooned on Earth for awhile. He was a gentle sort and it was a nice movie. It would help immensely if you've seen the movie, but that is not absolutely required.
Third, you need to understand Western cultural traditions enough to know that a very religious alien who found himself in Italy would probably try to contact the highest echelons of the Roman Catholic church. Those people reside in the Vatican, in Rome.
Fourth, you'd have to know that after the movie, in North America at least, all kinds of bumper stickers and signs sprang up for awhile with the slogan "E.T. - Phone Home".
Fifth, in English, Rome rhymes with home, thus the punchline, hilarious or not.
Why This Works in English
This works in English precisely because Rome rhymes with home, so an English speaker may find some spark of humor in that, assuming they have the cultural background listed above. In two other languages I'm somewhat familiar with, German and Russian, it doesn't quite work. That is because the German word for Rome (Rom), does not rhyme with their word for home (das Haus or zu Hause or something like that). You run into the same problem in Russian. In Russian, Rome is Rim (or something similar) and home is "doma", or maybe "glavnaya", probably depending on if you're taking about a physical place or state of mind. I'm not fluent in either language, so I don't really know. But in neither language does their word for Rome rhyme with their word for home, so they fail miserably to hark back to North American bumper stickers popular before most people alive today were born.
In Conclusion
This is not a good joke, but it requires a deceptive amount of knowledge and specific cultural experience to even begin to groan.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Saturday Thoughts.
I have glasses now. For the first time in my life I'm expected to wear glasses all the time in order to see things clearly. Without glasses I cannot read. Also, without glasses things don't start looking completely in focus unless it's a large object way out in the distance somewhere. The moon would be a good example. I can see the moon clearly, without glasses. I've had them since Wednesday, they are no-line "progressive" bifocals, and I'm not used to them yet. Things are better than yesterday, but I've realized to my horror that I have to look directly at something for it to be in focus. Most of my life I've had very good vision, it'll take me awhile to get used to this.
Had Thanksgiving dinner at some friends house - they have a big chocolate Lab, still a puppy. Friendly dog, but even though he's still a puppy, he's somewhat calmer than ol' Pickles. And that's good, 'cause he's a big dog. Not that Pickles is small, but he's big. Pickles gets exercise - she's just a high energy dog. She could go all day and still want to play afterwards. She's also a very funny dog, if you pay attention. Some of her dog humor will go over your head if you dont.
I've been to lots of places in my life, but I've never been to the Fiji Islands. Or Iowa. Not sure how I missed Iowa.
I like how movie Fred & movie Ginger always seems to work things out.
North Carolina turned a tad cool-ish yesterday evening & this morning. It was fairly warm up to then. Of course, cool and warm are, as always, relative terms. This is what feels cold to me. 50 degrees and breezy. Almost all the leaves are off the trees now. It took 'till almost December for that to happen, but finally it has. That also makes it seem colder.
Now, my first and only generalized observation about women. They like to move things around.
I dont know where the saying loose as a goose comes from, and I dont know what it means.
Every what the BBC program Hercules Poirot? Ever seen him in bed asleep? Ever try to sleep like that? It's not comfortable.
Time is made up. It is not real. Clocks and calendars do not measure time, they're just a standardized measurement of the earth's rotation around the sun, broken down in to agreed upon units. From seconds to centuries, it's all made up. Just something so humans can wrap their brains around the fact that things change. And change also is not time. Change may be entropy, but it's not time. I'm not sure time exists.
I am positive that I'm here, right now though. What I'm not sure about is if I'm also somewhere else, a different universe so to speak, living out the results of a different life choice.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Had Thanksgiving dinner at some friends house - they have a big chocolate Lab, still a puppy. Friendly dog, but even though he's still a puppy, he's somewhat calmer than ol' Pickles. And that's good, 'cause he's a big dog. Not that Pickles is small, but he's big. Pickles gets exercise - she's just a high energy dog. She could go all day and still want to play afterwards. She's also a very funny dog, if you pay attention. Some of her dog humor will go over your head if you dont.
I've been to lots of places in my life, but I've never been to the Fiji Islands. Or Iowa. Not sure how I missed Iowa.
I like how movie Fred & movie Ginger always seems to work things out.
North Carolina turned a tad cool-ish yesterday evening & this morning. It was fairly warm up to then. Of course, cool and warm are, as always, relative terms. This is what feels cold to me. 50 degrees and breezy. Almost all the leaves are off the trees now. It took 'till almost December for that to happen, but finally it has. That also makes it seem colder.
Now, my first and only generalized observation about women. They like to move things around.
I dont know where the saying loose as a goose comes from, and I dont know what it means.
Every what the BBC program Hercules Poirot? Ever seen him in bed asleep? Ever try to sleep like that? It's not comfortable.
Time is made up. It is not real. Clocks and calendars do not measure time, they're just a standardized measurement of the earth's rotation around the sun, broken down in to agreed upon units. From seconds to centuries, it's all made up. Just something so humans can wrap their brains around the fact that things change. And change also is not time. Change may be entropy, but it's not time. I'm not sure time exists.
I am positive that I'm here, right now though. What I'm not sure about is if I'm also somewhere else, a different universe so to speak, living out the results of a different life choice.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Aint that tweet - an observation
I use twitter, and I like tweetdeck, sort of, because I see tweets in real time even if I'm on another application. I "watched" a couple world series baseball games like that.
Anyway, I set up columns to follow things I'm interested in, and a couple of things I keep coming back to are the #amwriting & #amreading people. I assume these are writers and readers. I like doing both, (but I'm only really semi-good at reading) so I follow them as the mood strikes.
My observation so far (completely non-scientific with no attempt at verification) is that the #amwriting people tweet a LOT more than the #amreading people. I suppose that's reasonable.
Anyway, I set up columns to follow things I'm interested in, and a couple of things I keep coming back to are the #amwriting & #amreading people. I assume these are writers and readers. I like doing both, (but I'm only really semi-good at reading) so I follow them as the mood strikes.
My observation so far (completely non-scientific with no attempt at verification) is that the #amwriting people tweet a LOT more than the #amreading people. I suppose that's reasonable.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Accents
When I was young I didn't realize I had any kind of accent. I could not hear it in myself or others, even when I was removed from my native Kentucky environment. When I was 11 years old, I found myself living near Glasgow, Montana, the definition of the middle of nowhere. It was there that I had perhaps the first inkling that I grew up speaking a different way than most of the people I was surrounded by. I still could not hear it - the people there sounded normal to me and I thought I sounded normal to them. Even when we took trips up to Saskatchewan, I couldn't hear any difference in speech. Maybe I wasn't paying attention, or maybe I was a child.
Children are like that.
The inkling about my speech pattern came from 2 sources, one at school and one back home. I was sitting in a 6th grade math class way up in the frozen tundra of eastern Montana, a class taught by a very strict teacher I didn't like (Mr. Bach - pronounced just like the musician), when I was called on to answer a math question. I was very quiet & I never volunteered, so he actually called on me. It just so happened that the answer to the question was "nine". Mr. Bach made me repeat "nine" 3 or 4 times, because he couldn't believe what he was hearing. And you know how kids in a classroom are, they start to giggle and stuff. I remember I finally spelled "n-i-n-e" which just made things worse. I didn't realize that he understood me perfectly well, he just thought the way I was saying it was odd.
Anybody familiar with North American English knows that most native speakers born & raised south of the Ohio River tend to elongate and flatten out words with a long "I". It's like a marker, and if you're losing a southern accent without realizing it, that is apparently one of the last things to go. Apparently in Montana that kind of speech was a novelty.
A little later, when we had gone back home for a short visit, an aunt told me my accent was changing. I'm sure it was, but I didn't have a clue.
From that point on, I felt like I was in a speech pattern no mans land, though I still wasn't particularly conscious of my way of speaking. In the South people thought I came from the North, in the North they thought I came from the South. When I was 16 or so and my father had been transferred to Germany, I remember asking one of my friends one day where he thought I came from. Without hesitation, he said Tennessee. That was actually pretty close, the speech patterns in the area of Kentucky I come from are extremely similar to the patterns in eastern Tennessee (or Western Virginia, or western North Carolina).
At some point I began to be able to hear accents in other people. When I went back home, the accents were so strong they'd knock me over, and I began to understand what my aunt had meant when she told me my accent was changing. The people back home hadn't changed, I had.
Here are ways of speaking I never lost, no matter how long I had lived away from Kentucky. I've always said "you all". I've always had a great tendency to say "I reckon" instead of "I think" or "I guess so". It's just so familiar to me. I elongate and drag out words with a long "I" in them (nine, time, fine, mine, dime, night, fight, delight etc). I've always had a tendency to place an accent on a first syllable of some words that others might not (IN-surance, UM-brella). Depending on my level of anitmation (which is generally pretty low) I can easily turn one syllable words into multiple syllable words. Words as simple as "this" and "that". There are probably other things going on I don't realize.
Speech wise, I do not feel out of place living in western North Carolina. People who lived around here all their lives may or may not know I'm from somewhere else, but they certainly won't think that I'm from Pennsylvania or anything like that. It's not hard to find people around here who are from way north of the Ohio River, and speech wise it's very noticible.
You people from Iowa don't think you have an accent? Guess what - you do. And it's very strong. Same to you all in Montana.
Children are like that.
The inkling about my speech pattern came from 2 sources, one at school and one back home. I was sitting in a 6th grade math class way up in the frozen tundra of eastern Montana, a class taught by a very strict teacher I didn't like (Mr. Bach - pronounced just like the musician), when I was called on to answer a math question. I was very quiet & I never volunteered, so he actually called on me. It just so happened that the answer to the question was "nine". Mr. Bach made me repeat "nine" 3 or 4 times, because he couldn't believe what he was hearing. And you know how kids in a classroom are, they start to giggle and stuff. I remember I finally spelled "n-i-n-e" which just made things worse. I didn't realize that he understood me perfectly well, he just thought the way I was saying it was odd.
Anybody familiar with North American English knows that most native speakers born & raised south of the Ohio River tend to elongate and flatten out words with a long "I". It's like a marker, and if you're losing a southern accent without realizing it, that is apparently one of the last things to go. Apparently in Montana that kind of speech was a novelty.
A little later, when we had gone back home for a short visit, an aunt told me my accent was changing. I'm sure it was, but I didn't have a clue.
From that point on, I felt like I was in a speech pattern no mans land, though I still wasn't particularly conscious of my way of speaking. In the South people thought I came from the North, in the North they thought I came from the South. When I was 16 or so and my father had been transferred to Germany, I remember asking one of my friends one day where he thought I came from. Without hesitation, he said Tennessee. That was actually pretty close, the speech patterns in the area of Kentucky I come from are extremely similar to the patterns in eastern Tennessee (or Western Virginia, or western North Carolina).
At some point I began to be able to hear accents in other people. When I went back home, the accents were so strong they'd knock me over, and I began to understand what my aunt had meant when she told me my accent was changing. The people back home hadn't changed, I had.
Here are ways of speaking I never lost, no matter how long I had lived away from Kentucky. I've always said "you all". I've always had a great tendency to say "I reckon" instead of "I think" or "I guess so". It's just so familiar to me. I elongate and drag out words with a long "I" in them (nine, time, fine, mine, dime, night, fight, delight etc). I've always had a tendency to place an accent on a first syllable of some words that others might not (IN-surance, UM-brella). Depending on my level of anitmation (which is generally pretty low) I can easily turn one syllable words into multiple syllable words. Words as simple as "this" and "that". There are probably other things going on I don't realize.
Speech wise, I do not feel out of place living in western North Carolina. People who lived around here all their lives may or may not know I'm from somewhere else, but they certainly won't think that I'm from Pennsylvania or anything like that. It's not hard to find people around here who are from way north of the Ohio River, and speech wise it's very noticible.
You people from Iowa don't think you have an accent? Guess what - you do. And it's very strong. Same to you all in Montana.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Just a little motoring
It's a beautiful fall day here in the foothills. I always wondered why there is both a foothills region and a Piedmont region in North Carolina, since Piedmont is French for foothills, I think. You see & hear "foothills" everywhere - on the news, names of businesses and so on. Secretly (or not so secretly), even though they say we're in the foothills, I'm pretty sure we're in the Piedmont. There are actual mountains to the south, west & north of us (I know they're there, I can see them out the kitchen window), and we're in an area that is anything but flat, but is not in the mountains, which spells Piedmont to me.
I got off topic before I even got on topic. Maybe it's the pre-topic. Think of it as pre-boarding, or pre-ordering, or all those other "pre" things they tell you you're doing before you actually are, hoping you never stop to think that it is impossible to do something before you actually do it. It's a marketing thing to try to make you think you're special, take my word for it. OK, that's off topic discussion number 2. Enough!!!
The real topic: I went for a ride today in the little red mustang. I shifted gears with abandon, flew up and down hills (only going airborne a couple of times) careened on two wheels around curves on these narrow, twisty, country Piedmont roads which frequently co-exist within sight (or hearing) of I-40. I laughed maniacally & rudely pointed at all those drivers plodding along on staid, old I-40, driving from here to there in relative safety, speed, comfort & respectability. How boring! Leaves are starting to change, the air is clear & crisp, the mountains are beautiful and it was good to get out and about & careen around curves.
Hmmm. So I wrote almost twice as much about things I didn't mean to write about than the thing I did mean to write about. Interesting.
I got off topic before I even got on topic. Maybe it's the pre-topic. Think of it as pre-boarding, or pre-ordering, or all those other "pre" things they tell you you're doing before you actually are, hoping you never stop to think that it is impossible to do something before you actually do it. It's a marketing thing to try to make you think you're special, take my word for it. OK, that's off topic discussion number 2. Enough!!!
The real topic: I went for a ride today in the little red mustang. I shifted gears with abandon, flew up and down hills (only going airborne a couple of times) careened on two wheels around curves on these narrow, twisty, country Piedmont roads which frequently co-exist within sight (or hearing) of I-40. I laughed maniacally & rudely pointed at all those drivers plodding along on staid, old I-40, driving from here to there in relative safety, speed, comfort & respectability. How boring! Leaves are starting to change, the air is clear & crisp, the mountains are beautiful and it was good to get out and about & careen around curves.
Hmmm. So I wrote almost twice as much about things I didn't mean to write about than the thing I did mean to write about. Interesting.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
The last day of August
Unless something unfortunate happens, always a possibility, in a few hours I will have made it to the end of another month.
There's a last time for everything. Earlier today I was wondering when he last time I used a permanent working out house. Not a porto-potty or stuff they stick up at work sites and large gatherings, but a structure used because the house did not have indoor plumbing. This wasn't an out of the blue rumination......I was listing some comic postcards on eBay where outhouses were the theme, and it got me to thinking.
I don't know the exact date, but it was probably in my late teens, at my grandparents house on Montgomery Creek in Knott County, Ky. I'm pretty sure I didn't realize it was my last time and even if I had I have no idea what I would have done differently. No type of ceremony comes to mind.
I assume this is not my last August, but we'll have to wait a year to find out. If I knew for a fact it was my last August, I doubt I'd change anything. I could light a candle, I guess, but why bother.
There's a last time for everything. Earlier today I was wondering when he last time I used a permanent working out house. Not a porto-potty or stuff they stick up at work sites and large gatherings, but a structure used because the house did not have indoor plumbing. This wasn't an out of the blue rumination......I was listing some comic postcards on eBay where outhouses were the theme, and it got me to thinking.
I don't know the exact date, but it was probably in my late teens, at my grandparents house on Montgomery Creek in Knott County, Ky. I'm pretty sure I didn't realize it was my last time and even if I had I have no idea what I would have done differently. No type of ceremony comes to mind.
I assume this is not my last August, but we'll have to wait a year to find out. If I knew for a fact it was my last August, I doubt I'd change anything. I could light a candle, I guess, but why bother.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
