Yay for the Boston Accent

There was a story in yesterday’s Boston Globe about people trying to essentially scour their Boston accents away.They fear people regard them as uneducated, or else they worry that the way they talk will prevent them from getting acting jobs because supposedly they sound so funny to everyone else in the country.Here's a video for you in this story by Globe reporter Billy Baker who attempts to use the accent-scouring technique he has just been telling about on his dad. You'll see what a dyed-in-the-wool South Boston accent really sounds like when you hear old Pops. (Gotta love the guy; he’s trying SO hard - right up until the end when he says "Now get the hell out of my house.")       

Cabin Fever Day Number 98? 99?

Still stuck in the house under mounds and mounds of frozen yogurt  or whatever that white stuff is outside, I can’t even remember the last time I was out. Lolled in the bed for three hours reading old New Yorkers but when I got up I got way up: wrote a week’s worth of diary entries, paid bills, got done refinishing this little  high chair,  repaired some nice dangly earrings with Superglue. (God I love superglue! And this time I only got my fingers stuck together for a very short time before I found the solvent...)Also trained my new speech recognition software so that it will stop writing 'dock' when I say dark,' and 'pock' as when I say 'park'. I mean why would anyone even be writing about pockmarks even though I have a few doozies myself from contracting  chicken-pox at the ripe old age of 25 from my sister Nan who got them at 27 by sharing a ski chalet with a field trip of middle schoolers. (My how we itched, childhood diseases being much more serious when you’re big! )I also went on the treadmill and didn’t almost break my neck this time the way I did the other day . And I watched half an episode of Glee and the last ten minutes of Cast Away, made a creamy tomato sauce with real tomatoes, drank two ounces of red wine (Weight Watchers R Me) and built a big fat fire in the fireplace, only burning the front of my sneaker a little.Also today it finally stopped snowing and instead rained, laying a coat of clear nail polish on top of all that frozen yogurt. So if we’re lucky we will have maybe all gone back out and rejoined the world today.Less moronic content from me let’s hope. But why not end with some nice moronic fun just this once and enjoy this delightful video showing what happens when things really go amiss with a treadmill routine:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCj2oTsY3_M](I chose this slowed-down version made by a German-speaking person (a) because you can’t hear all the swearing as clearly as in the American one and (b) because the soundtrack is Mozart’s Lacrimosa (meaning tearful) from the Requiem in D…… Witty German-speaking person ha ha !)

God Save the Queen, er, Pope

British Baby with Papal Flag

The media called it "a rousing encounter" that the Pope had yesterday with schoolchildren in the UK. He said among other things that maybe they would be saints one day if they played their cards right. Afterward, the BBC News Hour polled them to see what they thought. One child said it was the first time she’d ever seen the man. “He doesn't come here every day - it's not even like once a year!" (Just sayin, Your Holiness.) Another said it was a great honor indeed for him to be there and he wanted to thank his teacher Mrs. Williams for drawing his name out of the hat. (Only he said  'Mrs. Willy-ums'  in that cute English way.) The best was the third child who stepped gamely up to the microphone, then did a sort of verbal hiccup and went “What are we talking about again?” That happens to me all the time.You can't blame him if he had trouble following it all. I know the Pope is German and certainly he does better in English than most of us would do in language but when you listen to him you do kind of think Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes, no?[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7cJh302n0]