Living In the World, Not on It

How many different kinds of “American English” are there? Apparently, there are enough variations for someone to have produced one of those little internet quizzes. Therefore, I thought I’d produce this week’s silly little Saturday Six based on the topic! Thanks for dropping by and I hope you enjoy this week’s set of questions! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a link to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! 1. Do you think you have the same accent as most of the people who live...

1) If you were a villain in a movie, what would your catch phrase be? Where do you come up with these questions? I haven't the faintest idea... Um, how about "In these shoes? I doubt you'd survive." 2) Marc and Angel Hack Life recently posted a list of "10 Things To Stop Caring About Today." What is something you care too much about that you wish you didn't? My not working any longer. 3) On Tuesday, NBC announced that it was canceling its new show "Playboy Club," making it the first cancellation of the TV season. What show do you hope is next for cancellation? H8R, New Girl, The Jersey Shore, and so many more. The Jersey Shore should be the first to go, of a certainty. Goodness me, who wants anyone to think that these morons are indicative of real New Jersey or New York people. Quite frankly they are all totally fake. Totally stupid. No one would miss them, any of them. 4) Many media outlets have been asking this question a lot t...

Remember this morning's lofty goals? Not happening. There is no way to find enough topics - and the time - to put up as many meaningful posts as I'd like. The days are too long and tonight has proven to be the standard in full-moon fare. Don't misunderstand; you don't need just crazy people to make the full moon nights what they are. Sometimes it is all medical, sometimes it is all substance abuse, most of the time it is a mix. It's just more. So tonight we had one medical call and one CO alarm, which undoubtedly the fire district at the scene is still playing with - people do the strangest things. I'll just leave it there. CO alarms are normally a show-up-and-get-dismissed-immediately kind of thing, but tonight we were standing there talking and talking while the firemen were in and out and doing things. This is a standard stanby at a scene where the firefighters have the work. Still, that is about 90 minutes of my life that I will never get back. Guess that be...

This was the most thoroughly amusing - and abjectly frightening - article: 'Bush tops English Gobbledegook Poll Posted Wed Sep 9, 2009 11:45pm AEST Former US president George W Bush topped a poll of the worst examples of mangled English, followed closely by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Rumsfeld. French footballer-cum philosopher Eric Cantona and former US president Bill Clinton also produced prime examples of gobbledegook, according to the online poll of 4,000 people inspired by the Plain English Campaign. Notoriously language-challenged Mr Bush romped to the top accolade for his: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Second came bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-California governor Schwarzenegger, who during an election campaign in 2003 minted the puzzling: "I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman." The rest of the top 10...

Sometimes the best thing in the world is a small but really funny incident. One of my coworkers stopped in to see me this morning and we were catching up on various bits of news. We were discussing an issue and he said something about a person being "obtrusive" and I said, "Is 'obtrusive' a word? I know in trusive, and obtuse, but not obtrusive." He looked at me and told me to google it, so I did, and there it was: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obtrusive: "Main Entry: ob·tru·sive Pronunciation: \-ˈtrü-siv, -ziv\ Function: adjective Date: 1667 1 a: forward in manner or conduct b: undesirably prominent 2: thrust out : protruding " We both began laughing upraoriously as we both had the same thought - he said, "Finally! I've tought you a new word!" We both had a great time laughing over that. Usually I'm the one criticising - I don't mean to, but I can't help myself - if he gives me something to read, I'll go...

..but I'm a little rusty on my Asian-based languages, ha, ha. I went onto ebay, where I'm awaiting the end of a bid, and decided to take a look at my listed feedback. I had been listed as 181 and now today I'm up to 184. So why not see what glowing feedback I was listed. Ah, ha... one of the vendors, in Hong Kong, left this message on the feedback line: 谢谢你！欢迎你下次光临。好运气! I have no idea what that means. There's a little green plus sign next to it, indicating a positive response to me as a buyer, but they might have said I'm a one-eyed buying wonder who overpaid for the product, which I couldn't hold that against them. What do I know? I didn't pay that much, certain not anything unreasonable, but they are the ones laughing to the bank, not me. Still, I imagine I'll be happy with the product, when it finally arrives. But I am still mildly curious as to what the above hieroglypics mean. It certainly looks pretty!

1. What commonly-used word in speech annoys you the most? When did you hear it last used? The word now . My mother used to use it as a "motivational tool" when I lived at home. Once I moved out of the house, I became immune to following her orders to do things around the house - I now have my own dishwasher to empty and such - but nothing could piss me off more than her saying it with that demanding tone! And she did it this afternoon! Friggin' woman makes me crazy! 2. Which commonly-used word annoys you the most when you hear it mispronounced? What’s the most common mispronunciation you hear for this word? Oh, this is my major pet-peeve time. People who pronounce "ask" as "aks" - that just pushes me right over the edge of sanity! I can't take it and it is a terrible physical effort to keep from correcting this. When we were interviewing for office positions I heard about six of the 20 candidates we met with say that and both of us cringed. I even ...

Yes, drug. What are you thinking when you read that word? Don't tell me, let me guess... marijuana. Cocaine. Meth amphitamines. Herione? How about pills? Hydrocodone? Oxycontin? Something in a the 'pams? Lorazipam, Clomidapam? Possibly lithium? I know what you weren't thinking. Drug - the past tense of drag. I bet you didn't know that. Neither did I until I worked at USII and it showed up in a disciplinary report. Ye gods. "So-and-so drug a pallet across the warehouse..." Say what? Yes, that's right. Apparently the past tense taught in school, dragged , is not actually correct. Whoops. How did I miss that? This was a supervisor. How does anyone learn such appalling language skills? How does this go on? Shouldn't someone hear this and say something? I managed to not say anything, biting holes in my tongue all the while. It was a physical effort. Not to mention the first time I read the report I had to close my office door so that someone wouldn't wa...

This was a good weekend! Yesterday I was up around 0630, really got out of bed closer to 0800, had breakfast, then got in the shower, dressed and picked up my mother around 1230 to visit Ray. I had his shirts and had stopped at the store to get him some crackers the previous night. We left ten minutes later and got to the rehab place around 1245. We took Ollie and went outside to a small area that they had for the "inmates", and Ma and I sat in the plastic chairs, and Ray sat on the wall. The chairs were too low - when one has hip surgery, one is supposed to sit higher than the level of their knees, but not lower. The chairs would be okay for someone 5'10" but not 6'4" with long legs, like Ray. He's not disproportionate like some men, with a long torso and not so long legs. Luis is a little more like that. Some guys have very long torsos, a look I don't like. Longer legs look better. Anyway, we had a nice time sitting outside and talking and then at ...

Please let me live and educate someone - anyone! I seem to be surrounded by the unbelievably stupid. They are everywhere. On the telly especially, I suppose - the television attracts really abysmally stupid people. Without writers, this was underscored by the incredible amount of the incredulous - all serving themselves up for the lowest common denominator! I sound like Charles Emerson Winchester III (brilliantly played by David Ogden Stiers, one of my personal favourites - see Doc Hollywood ) from M*A*S*H, but honestly it is staggering how dumb John Q. Public is. I am always saying that television panders to the lowest common denominator, which is really low. And reality shows are the living proof. Tonight we watched Wednesday night's episode of Wife Swap - talk about the lowest common denominator! This is it. They find one family that is intelligent, has an overdeveloped sense of micromanagement of their kids and a big house - usually immaculate. The other family is usually uned...

If you speak English, you know words from at least a hundred different languages. That's because English has borrowed words from languages everywhere, and continues to do so. All living languages borrow, though not to the same degree. Each new word brings its own color to the mosaic of the language, just as each new person does to a population, making it richer and vibrant. We see words derived from Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, etc. every day, but this week we'll look at a few words from languages that are not so well known -- Javanese, Coptic, Tamil, Shelta, and Hawaiian -- and also learn a little about those languages. lahar (LAH-har) noun An avalanche-like mudflow composed of volcanic debris and water, originating on the slopes of a volcano. [From Javanese lahar (lava). Javanese is a language spoken on the island of Java, Indonesia. It has about 80 million speakers.] adobe (uh-DO-bee) noun 1. An unburned, sun-dried brick made of clay and straw. 2. Silt or clay deposited by...

This is not where I'd go to learn to speak any language properly - least of all English!

Yes, you should immediately worry... I'm actually reading the voting ballot that is mailed out to us constituants of the 4th District. So here it is: 'STATE PUBLIC QUESTION No. 4 Constitutional Amendment Concerning the Right to Vote for Certain Persons' (Ready for this? It is a show-stopper...) 'Shall the amendment of Article II, Section I, paragraph 6 of the Constitution, agreed to by the Legislature, revising the current constitutional language concerning denial of the right to vote by deleting the phrase "idiot or insane person" and providing instead that a "person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting" shall not enjoy the right of suffrage, be adopted?' (Huh?) 'INTERPRETIVE STATEMENT Approval of this amendment concerning the denial of the right to vote would delete the phrase "idiot or insane person" and replace that phrase with "person who has be...

The English language is a beautiful and rich language, and it was long before today's youth showed up to butcher it. Oddly enough, the language, like a living thing, changes and evolves as time moves along. Sometimes it seems to move in a good direction, and sometimes, not so much. But it changes whether we will it or not. What kills me, though, are euphemisms. You have to love a language where a sexual organ or money qualifies for an inordinate amount of euphemistic words and phrases to describe it. And there is a clear relationship between the importance of the word and how many euphemisms it rates. Money, vaginas, penises and breasts are absolutely at the top of the list of words with the most euphesims. Let's keep it clean; terms for money: Moolah Dough Coinage Buck Bread Bacon Cabbage ace bean (as in bean counter) boffo (abbreviation of box office, referring to money collected at theatres) bone buck bullet case note clam coconut dead presidents fish frogskin greenbacks liz...