Corn pone accent
This video is making the rounds (sorry to link to Twitter, but it’s natively TikTok and I don’t even have that). It’s a woman doing a variety of Southern accents by way of explaining the Southern accent.
I’m not sure I agree with her thesis that a Southern accent is a English accent slowed down (also, she does a bad English accent). Though I have always been told the Appalachian mountain accent is an Elizabethan accent frozen in aspic. It’s strange and contains a lot of very old-fashioned sounding linguistic constructions.
She does a pretty good job shifting the accent westward. My stepmother’s accent was near the beginning – old Nashville. She sounds like Scarlet O’Hara. Hey, she called me the other day. Eighty-seven and still driving herself to the liquor store to buy wine.
Somewhere toward the end, I heard my original accent, which I have lost (to Uncle B’s disgust). I would describe my current accent as American neutral with a Southern vocabulary and a hint of Rhode Island. The Southern comes back when I am drunk, angry or talking to my cousin on the phone.
She’s absolutely right about Louisiana weirdnesses. My grandfather from Baton Rouge apparently had a Cajun accent (he wasn’t Cajun, but he had the accent). And my mother, who went to boarding school in New Orleans, said they sounded like Brooklyn. We can blame the Mississippi River for that.
I can think dozens of Southern accent variants, but thinking about it…that must be true for all accents everywhere. There’s certainly a difference between New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. And between Suffolk, Sussex and Yokshire. Though the old accents are all vanishing now, thanks to TV.
The illustration is what happens when you feed AI the start phrase “corn pone accent” – I suspect we have ourselves a corn pony here. I tried “Southern accent” at first and all it gave me was a picture of a porch. I was oddly offended.
March 8, 2023 — 8:29 pm
Comments: 12
Gimme that old time leak detector
I had a visit from Southern Water at the office this morning. Seems there’s a water leak on the path that runs past the building and they were looking for the origin. I had to fetch keys and open up storage rooms so they could test the pipes.
Funny pair. It was an older woman, graying at the temples, and a young man who was on the phone the entire time. I don’t know if he was doing something important related to finding the leak or if it was a kids these days situation.
She had a device with a wooden cup shape at the top and a long thin metal rod. Like the picture above, except her wooden bit was larger and look like it had worn down over decades of use. I thought it was solid, but the description I found online says it’s hollow. Anyway, it’s flat, not pierced in any way at the top and the pipe is solid, too.
It works like a giant stethoscope. She held it against a pipe and she could hear if water was flowing through it. She let me fiddle with it for a while and frankly I want one now.
I tried to find it online for you, but I didn’t know what to search for. I used all kinds of combinations of sono- and aqua- and probe and meter and I finally found it and do you want to know what it’s really called? Do you? I swear to dog, it’s called a Water Listening Stick. They’re about £35.
Here’s the article that picture came from, about a young man who is a leak detector in Cornwall. Here’s a more general article about what water sounds like leaking out of pipes (but using the sort of electronic equipment you’d expect). It’s oddly interesting.
We weren’t the leaker, by the way. She said they’d find the pipe, put a stopcock on it above the leak and turn it off. Then they wait to see if anyone yelps about their water being cut off. There’s so much stuff down there, apparently, that it could be a pipe that hasn’t actively carried water to anyone in a hundred years.
And now you’ve learned something utterly useless. Good weekend!
February 24, 2023 — 6:25 pm
Comments: 10
Want to go
You see, Pratts Bottom and I have a history. When I first met him, Uncle B had a house in London and, a few years later, bought a small holiday flat on the coast. Whenever I came over, we’d more or less immediately pack up and head South.
I enjoyed that trip, in a way. It was neat watching the transition from urban to rural – which happens surprisingly quickly. Not too far from the urban nightmare that is modern London you find yourself among rolling hills and sheep.
One of the places we passed on the way was Pratts Bottom – or a signpost to it, anyway. And I always said, “please, can we stop and have tea in Pratts Bottom?” and then I’d laugh like a drain. Probably because I was jetlagged.
We never did have tea in Pratts Bottom and we probably never will. It’s a long way to go if you’re not going on to London.
Note it is in Orpington, where the excellent Orpington chicken originated. When I was first shopping for chickens, my first choice was buff orps. They are, however, gigantic. Gazing upon them and thinking of his garden, a tear formed in the corner of Uncle B’s eye.
That’s how I ended up with bantams. The chicken seller rather acidly said, “oh, I thought you were looking for real chickens.”
February 23, 2023 — 8:02 pm
Comments: 10
Hm. Not really my style.
Etsy wants me to know this thing is so hot right now. I gather it’s a “super sized statement bag” – whatever that is. It’s blue, anyway.
I knew the wonderful website Regretsy was no longer with us (2009-2013). After a little poking around, I regret to inform you that an archive of it has never been put on the internet. The URL points to a coming soon placeholder, but no way to know how long it’s been there.
Not that this bag is Regretsy-worthy, it just put me in mind of one of my favorite reads, back in the day.
If you missed it, Regretsy was a delightful blog featuring the weirdest things found on Etsy. According to Wikipedia, when April Winchell started the site in 2009, she got 90 million hits in four days. What a thing to walk away from!
There’s a Regretsy-themed Reddit group, but it hasn’t been active in two years. There’s a small selection of posts curated here. There are other bits and pieces scattered across the web. But mostly, it’s gone – unless April decides to post the archive some day.
Oh, and so is Raquel Welch after a short illness. No, nobody had her.
February 15, 2023 — 7:54 pm
Comments: 4
Happy V-Day!
This big rusty pile of anchors is a memorial to the tens of thousands of souls who drowned off the Kent coast. The anchors are all at least 200 years old and were dredged up from Goodwin Sands, a bank off the coast that has claimed 2,000 ships. More than 10,000 have been lost along the Kent coast alone.
The anchors gently deteriorated in the overgrown garden of Bleak House (yes, that Bleak House) until they were brought here to make this memorial.
“Here” is the parking lot of the Pilot, the bestest fish and chips we know. You can see a marker for it near the tip of Dungeness in this very interesting maritime traffic tracker. It’s at the far end of our day trip territory, but we have a meal here every few years.
Folks, it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten myself insensible, but I did so today. That was a big ol’ pile of crispy fish and chips (and the inevitable peas, for some reason).
Long time readers may recall that Valentine’s Day is our anniversary. This is only #14 – not exactly a milestone – but worthy of a field trip and a fish coma. We’re romantic like that.
February 14, 2023 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 5
Weasel drinking a martini in the rain
Those were the keywords I gave the AI. It’s okay. I note weasel is lacking in back legs, and I’m pretty sure that’s a decapitated bunny holding the melted martini glass.
I have a thing to go to tonight, so I shall fob you off with the announcement that Pablo had Burt Bacharach in the Dead Pool. I didn’t even know Burt was alive.
That means NEW DEAD POOL TOMORROW. Be here or be wherever you wish to be instead.
February 9, 2023 — 5:23 pm
Comments: 4
Aw, that’s a nice idea
It’s an international movement…the repair cafe! You bring your broken junk in and old duffers fix it.
I suppose, technically, old duffers fix the machines, old biddies sew up the teddy bears and young whippersnappers sort out the computers. Principle remains.
I mean, yes…it has its origins in sustainable blah blah help the planet blah how dare you blah blah. I’m willing to overlook that because I love the idea.
I just stumbled out of a Zoom meeting into Gin O’Clock. I’m off. Watching the SOTU tonight, are we?
February 7, 2023 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 16
Joy and wonderment
Yesterday I did my taxes, today I threw out the Christmas tree. Hey, it’s early for us – we traditionally wait for Candlemas (we’re neither of us Catholic, just super lazy).
This is it. This is the absolute bottom of the year to me. After Christmas and before Valentine’s. Things start to look a little hopeful halfway through February, but now it rolls on day after day, gray and dark and damp.
Happy Burns Night everyone. I shall give the neeps and tatties a miss, the haggis a wide berth and go straight to the whisky.
January 25, 2023 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 9
Can’t talk. Doing taxes.
My taxes aren’t onerous, as you might imagine, but it’s always nerve wracking to interact with government.
I love the chummy “tell us about you.” Oh HMRC, I like barbecue and long walks on the beach. And puppies.
I have actually come to a screeching halt because it asked me for a line item from my P60. I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what a P60 is, but I guess it’s something the accounts people send me. I take pretty good notes every year in self defense and I don’t see any mention of a P60.
I’ve sent payroll a note.
January 24, 2023 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 6
It’s a chickenspiracy!
Okay, here’s one of the stranger conspiracy theories on offer. The woman in the video at the beginning of this thread says she’s been keeping chickens for thirty years and her chickens have never completely stopped laying in Winter. But this year, she didn’t get a single egg after October.
Until she switched from commercial chicken food to a mixture of corn, sunflower seeds and commercial goat food. Now they’re laying again.
But that’s backed up by tweet after tweet down-thread and some reposted Facebook threads saying the same thing. Lots of backyard chicken keepers say their hens stopped laying in September/October this year while eating commercial layers pellets. Not enough protein, some speculate.
A few years ago, one of our neighbors gave up keeping a few pigs for market. The government had mandated that commercial pigs be raised on commercial pig food. No more kitchen scraps. That was a red flag for me at the time, because it meant the government effectively controlled the price of pork.
It didn’t occur to me it also gave them an avenue to put something in the feed and hence the food supply. You know, tell the manufacturers that thus an such a chemical was a required de-wormer. Like something to make pork taste less awesome, or statins or a vaccine or an anti-fertility drug.
Okay, okay…I’m getting carried away. But who puts anything past the bastards now?
My chickens? My fancy little hens never lay from October to March, though they did stop earlier then usual this year. I’d be surprised if the conspiracy hopped the pond and contaminated a good old British brand like Marriages.
January 23, 2023 — 8:14 pm
Comments: 9