Singing in the dead of night

This started out as something else. Something about Twitter, Tweets, twights, twats (sorry, it's just too tempting) and other things I can't get used to. Not so much the three-or-four-syllable "communications" that people fling at each other, using splng tht lvs a bt t b dsrd. It's the whole concept of alarmingly shorter and shorter attention spans resulting in messages that have been reduced to a nanosecond-long chirp.

Worse than that: like the frog in the pot, the water temperature gradually increasing until the frog is quite contentedly cooked, nobody seems to notice or particularly care what we have lost.


Anyway, tweets. Why tweets? Somebody (now probably massively wealthy) thought up this idiotic avian name. Couldn't be more idiotic, unless it was Cow Pat or something. Airbrained. Lightweight. Imagine Keats ("My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness. . .") twittering, tweeting Ode to a Nightingale. Shakespeare ("Love tweets not with the eyes, but with the mind/ And therefore is winged Twitter painted blind") chirping like the bloody chirper he actually was ("chirper" being a nasty name for a blithering Englishman).

"You'll have to learn how to do it," my husband says to me, "because you won't be able to survive if you don't." That's worse than sex. I'll have to do it, as if it's some dire and unpleasant bodily function you nevertheless can't avoid. But what alarms me is what fun everyone else is having, doing something I just bleepin'ly dread.


So anyways. Somebody had the bright idea that we should all become birds, and just twitter and twatter, nitter and natter at each other all the day long. Birds chitter and chatter, but they also kill. They evolved from dinosaurs, more directly than any other living species. In fact, they are now known to be the only direct descendents. Dinos ran around with feathers on, you see, long before they learned how to fly. I can't imagine how creepy that must have been.

Given the shrill vocalizations of most birds, including Jasper my addle-headed lovebird who must think he's a full-sized Amazon parrot, those dino-birds must have been deafening. They probably had the same cold round beady black eyes my pet bird has, those scaly feet (some remnant of lizard scales, no doubt). My bird feels a strong attachment to me, but that's because he's convinced I'm either his mother or his mate. Without the steady flow of seed mix, he'd completely ignore me.

So anyways. What am I getting at here? Nothing much. Why not Bark-bark or Neigh-neigh or Worm-bluggh (or whatever worms do to communicate)? No, it had to be Twitter.


I'd call that Twittiotic.

Tweet, tweet-tweet, tweet-tweet

What? HWAET!

Oh Lor', here comes anodder one-o-dem lessons she loyks to gie' us which is mos'ly opinion. If you've been following this long choo-choo train of thought which started with Dennis Potter's landmark TV series The Singing Detective, I've been exploring English dialects, and now find myself at the mother lode: Beowulf, which scholars tell us (and they're lying) is the first great poetic work of the English language.

English language, you say? Just look at the cauldron of oatmeal you see below (way, way below: I somehow had a lot to say today). It's so garbled and Germanic, I only included a tiny snippet. The first "word", hwaet, which really should be followed by an exclamation mark (if such things existed then), was once demonstrated to me by an English professor. He walked into the classroom, stood at the front of the babble, and said, in a resonant English-teacher voice and with the greatest of authority:

"HWAET!"
The room stopped dead.

He pronounced it more like waat. Like two boards, long pieces of wood slapping together. It worked. This little syllable is remarkable, because it can mean so many different things:

"Come and listen to my story 'bout a man named (Beowulf)".

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale. . . "

"Ahhhhhhh, shaa-daaaaaaaaap!"

It means pay attention, listen. It means, as an informal speaker might say, "So." Or "Anyway." "Right." "As I was saying. . . " "Listen up." "OK then. . ." (except much more dramatic: how many of these Old English bro's really understood literature?).

I won't even try to get into Beowulf, it's too long and impenetrable even translated into "normal" English. I took a Chaucer course years ago and it was fascinating, mainly because the prof was fluent in Middle English and recited Canterbury Tales in a gusty, careening voice that somehow made it understandable. For all that, I guiltily bought a line-by-line translation, Middle English on left, "normal" on right, in order to pass the course.

As you can tell, I'm more fascinated than proficient in the study of language. Sometimes just the thought of it, the very thought of it, gives me the shivers. I've also made a semi-formal study of anthropology at university level, and one of the subjects that comes up repeatedly is the development of language. More so than tool-making or even planting crops, it marks the threshhold we crossed into becoming fully human.

Here's what I larr'nd. There were many hominid strains (humanoid, in anthro jargon), many of which died out under plague or warfare. There were so few people (or near-people) in the band, it wouldn't take much. Evolutionary dead ends. But how many of them developed language, and what did it sound like?

Why does every human culture invent language, and how does that come about?

What was the first word? The first sentence? What did early hominid/humanoids feel compelled to name? Did they name themselves first?

Early anthropology texts assumed language developed to aid men in communication during the hunt. No mention was ever made of the inconsequential task of bearing and raising children, not to mention gathering food for meat shortages (hunter-gatherers, remember?). And the meat shortages could go on for months, even longer. Would humanity even be here without all those nuts and berries?

And you know what it's like when a bunch of women get together, my God! The jabbering never stops.

Maybe language developed to break up fights between the men. Come on, you guys! Can't we all just get along? And Leonard, get away from Penny once and for all.

Somehow or other, and this is the part that eeries me out, some upright-standing apes, not much more evolved than gorillas or chimps except for their opposable thumbs, began to grunt and yell in a meaningful way. Maybe it started out with a call, a "hey! Look over there, Hairy-butt, an antelope." (Or was it hwaet?).

Maybe it was "no, I don't have stretch marks, but my boobs are getting huge," or "Get off me, Hairy, I have my period."

Or, "Hey, Gronkette, let's go out and save humanity by gathering a few nuts."

So slowly, or maybe not so slowly because I believe evolution happened in bursts (a theory known as "punctuated equilibrium"), language evolved, and it was probably different in each little pocket of humanity that was bumping along the rocky road of evolution. I don't believe anyone was thinking in terms of tablets or apps or whatever-the-fuck they are (I'm hopelessly behind here), just surviving day by day, trying to get their basic needs met.

It was a long, long way from grunts and gossip to hwaet, and it's been a longer way, it seems, to the murdered grammar and twisted syntax I've sometimes analyzed on this blog. The language is being shredded, devalued, and slowly but surely, school kids are less and less aware of the cultural deeps they come from. Who will teach them references to the Bible (too archaic) or Chaucer (too weird), or even J. Alfred Prufrock or Howl? It's all going away. In its place will be the lols, WTFs, tweets and twats, and other mindless verbal monstrosities that drove me away from Facebook, probably forever.

Oh OK then, I'll shut up, and here is a snippet from this Beowulf, if for no other reason than to show you how many different ways a few lines of literature can be interpreted. NOW do you see where human misunderstandings come from?

Beowulf, the great Anglo-Saxon epic poem by an unknown author, was composed some time between the 8th and the 11th centuries. The text exists in only one manuscript which dates from about the year 1000. The poem was largely unknown until the first printed versions of the poem were published at the end of the eighteenth century. Soon, short English translations of various parts of the poem began to appear, and within a few decades, in 1833, the first full-length English translation was published.

Since Beowulf is written in Old English, the earliest known form of the English language, one might assume that it would be easy to translate, at least easier than works printed in languages more substantially different from modern English. Yet looking at the many translations of Beowulf that are available in bookstores and libraries, it's immediately apparent that they have important differences in language, form, and style. This immediately raises the questions: Why are these translations so different? And how can I decide which, if any, is the "best" to read?

To begin answering these questions, let's look at the opening lines of the poem. The boxes below contain the original Old English version and my own literal (word-for-word) translation.

ORIGINAL Hwæt. We Gardena in gear-dagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

LITERAL What. We of the Spear-Danes in old days of the people-kings, power heard, how the princes brave deeds did.

Next, in the following boxes, look at how four modern translators have rendered these lines.

R. M. LIUZZA Listen! We have heard of the glory in bygone days of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes, how those noble lords did lofty deeds.	BURTON RAFFEL Hear me! We've heard of Danish heroes, Ancient kings and the glory they cut For themselves, swinging mighty swords!
SEAMUS HEANEY So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of these princes' heroic campaigns.	MICHAEL ALEXANDER Attend! We have heard of the thriving of the throne of Denmark, how the folk-kings flourished in former days, how those royal athelings earned that glory.

You'll note that the differences begin with the translated versions of the opening word of the poem, Hwaet. This word, literally translated into modern English, means What, but its Old English meaning is somewhat different. In Old English, when stories were told orally by a storyteller, the word Hwaet was used to get the audience's attention at the beginning of the story in the way that a phrase like Listen to this! might be used today. Translators know that just using the word What wouldn't make much sense to modern readers, so the four translators above have chosen words which they hope will convey a similar meaning.

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

Green side up! and other Newfie expressions

Well and I just got another rejection, folks'ee, so I dun feels royt crappola. Anyannowhut? I thunks I gwenna poot summoradat funny-ol' speech up here. This time, Canajan speech-eh?

I hate getting rejections. They are the death of hope. I have published two novels already which were almost universally acclaimed, and recently a relative said to me, "But I thought if you had a book in print already, the publisher would automatically print all your other books."

I thought this novel would sell, I really did, I thought it was my best work ever. Jaisus and sometime' I t'ink I gonna joust dee.

This is pastiche, of course. The purists would hate it. It's Margaret-ese, a gumbo. But I am interested in Newfoundland speech, what there is left of it, I mean. I suppose it will slowly erode away like averr-body say. But I am most fascinated by derivations from unexpected sources, like French: not so much French words but sentence construction, syntax. So here goes another Wiki, but I'll try to keep it brevver, lads:

Some examples of Newfoundland English:

• Eh b'y: To agree with what someone is saying.
• Where ya to?: Where are you?
• Stay where you're to/at Oi'll come where ya're at/to.: "Wait there for me."
• Get on the go: "Let's go" (also, a common euphemism for partying, on the go by itself can also refer to a relationship- similar to a dating stage, but more hazy.)
• You knows yourself: Responding to statement in agreement.
• Yes b'y: Expression of awe or disbelief. Also commonly used sarcastically to mean "yeah right".
• Luh!: this is used to draw attention to something or someone, often by pointing. It is a variant of "Lo!" or "Look!"
• G'wan b'y!: meaning, "No, really?" or "Are you joking?"
• Oh me nerves: To be agitated or annoyed by something or someone
• Ducky: Common term for friend or buddy (more often referring to women than men)
• Scopie: A nickname of a bottom feeding fish often found around coves
• Rimmed/Warped: To be deformed or distorted in a unusable fashion. Often used to describe someone who is seen upon as weird or an outcast (i.e.: She's rimmed, b'y).

• Scrob/Scrawb: a scratch on one's skin (i.e.: "The cat gave me some scrob, b'y" falling into disuse in lieu of scratch)
• Gets on/Getting on: used to refer to how a person or group behaves (i.e. "You knows how da b'ys gets on" / "How's she getting on?")
• On the go: To have something processing ("I've got an application on the go") or be in a relationship ("I've got a girl on the go")
• What are ye at?: or "Wadda ya'at b'y?" : "What are you doing?"
• Wah?: A general expression meaning, "what?" The length of the vowel sound varies.
• Me ol' cock: meaning, "buddy" or "pal" : "Whacha got, me ol' cock?"
• You're some crooked : "You are grouchy"
• Mudder : "mother"
• After: A preposition similar to "have." (i.e.: "I'm after sitting down" for "I have sat down.") also used like "trying" (i.e.: "whaddya after doin' now?" for "what are you trying to do?")
• Puttin'in: Referring to young women, from "putting in"

It's not so much what they say as how they say it, which is mainly t'ru da nowse. It's impossible to replicate the vowel sounds except with those infuriating little upside-down things, which not only do I refuse to use, but I don't even have the bally things on me toype-riter anyways. Royt turkeys they are, dem speechyfiers.

Maybe I should always write this blog in dialect. Me own dialect, so that NO ONE will oonder-staand it. Might I sell my bewk that way? Can't doo no worrsse din I am royt now, canna?

(Oh, and. The title refers to an old joke. Man hires a landscaper and his crew to spruce up his yard. Keeps on hearin' the feller shoutin' "Green side up! Green side up!" The guy comes around the corner and sees a bunch-a Newfies layin' sod.)

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

Avast, me 'earties! The persistence of archaic dialect

Who knows 'ow I gets meself into dese t'ings! Maybe my rough Irish background, but that's pretty much disappeared into time. No, I think it's my second viewing of Dennis Potter's quirky 1986 BBC-TV series, The Singing Detective. This is a surrealistic take on crime drama set mostly in an open hospital ward, where the protagonist Philip Marlowe is literally rotting away from a hideous skin disease. In his delirium he invents elaborate detective stories that keep him from going completely mad, but interlaced with these are dire and disturbing scenes from his tortured boyhood.

It's the speech from the boy's coal-mining village that interested me most. At first I thought it was Welsh, because of those strange dipping and rising cadences and the oddly percussive contraction of syllables, the missing vowels usually written with an apostrophe. But it turns out to be a thick West Country dialect from southwest England (though the exact location is never revealed). Philip's Dad is a simple coal miner, his wife a glamorous London type who was drawn to marrying him who-knows-why. The dinnertime conversation is almost disturbing, it's so weird and hard to follow. At times I wished it had captions.

So I had to Wiki it, and since it was just too long I've included some highlights. The article doesn't say whether people still speak that way (since the boy's story unfolds during World War II). Perhaps. And it was tantalyzing to read that people living in the outports of Newfoundland have retained certain expressions that may be medieval in origin. Time does not touch these things.

The prediction has always been that everyone will eventually speak standard American English, flat across, but I wonder. Speech is such an enigmatic, personal thing, and it's persistent. I hope we still retain a few eerie thee's and thou's

Some traits of West Country dialect:

Some of the vocabulary used is reflective of English of a bygone era, e.g. the verb "to hark" (as in "'ark a'ee"), "thee" (often abbreviated to "'ee") etc., the increased use of the infinitive form of the verb "to be" etc.

The final "y" is pronounced /ei/. For example: party /paːɹtei/ silly /sɪlei/ etc...

In Bristol, a terminal "a" can be realised as the sound [ɔː] - e.g. cinema as "cinemaw" and America as "Americaw" - which is often perceived by non-Bristolians to be an intrusive "l". Hence the old joke about the three Bristolian sisters Evil, Idle and Normal – i.e.: Eva, Ida, and Norma. The name Bristol itself (originally Bridgestowe or Bristow) is believed to have originated from this local pronunciation.

In words containing "r" before a vowel, there is frequent metathesis - "gurt" (great), "Burdgwater" (Bridgwater) and "chillurn" (children)

In many words with the letter "l" near the end, such as gold or cold, the "l" is often not pronounced, so "an old gold bowl" would sound like "an ode goad bow".

The second person singular thee (or ye) and thou forms used, thee often contracted to 'ee.

Bist may be used instead of are for the second person, EG: how bist? ("how are    you?") This has its origins in the Old English - or Anglo-Saxon - language and is the form adopted as standard in modern German ("Du bist").

Use of male (rather than neutral) gender with nouns, e.g.: put'ee over there ("put it over there") and 'e's a nice scarf ("That's a nice scarf").

An a prefix may be used to denote the past participle; a-went ("gone").
In other areas, be may be used exclusively in the present tense, often in the present continuous; Where you be going to? ("Where are you going?")

The use of to to denote location. Where's that to? ("Where's that?"). This is something you can still hear often, unlike many other characteristics. This former usage is common to Newfoundland English, where many of the island's modern-day descendants have West Country origins — particularly Bristol — as a result of the 17th–19th century migratory fishery.

Use of the past tense "writ" where Standard English uses "wrote". e.g.: I writ a letter ("I wrote a letter").

Nominative pronouns follow some verbs. For instance, Don't tell I, tell'ee! ("Don't tell me, tell him!"), "'ey give I fifty quid and I zay no, giv'ee to charity inztead" ("They gave me £50 and I said no, give it to charity instead"). 

There is a popular prejudice that stereotypes speakers as unsophisticated and even backward, due possibly to the deliberate and lengthened nature of the accent. This can work to the West Country speaker's advantage, however: recent studies of how trustworthy Britons find their fellows based on their regional accents put the West Country accent high up, under southern Scottish English but a long way above Cockney and Scouse.

The West Country accent is probably most identified in film as "pirate speech" – cartoon-like "Ooh arr, me 'earties! Sploice the mainbrace!" talk is very similar.^[13] This may be a result of the strong seafaring and fisherman tradition of the West Country, both legal and outlaw. Edward Teach (Blackbeard) was a native of Bristol, and privateer and English hero Sir Francis Drake hailed from Tavistock in Devon.

Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance may also have added to the association. West Country native Robert Newton's performance in the 1950 Disney film Treasure Island is credited with popularizing the stereotypical West Country "pirate voice".^[13][14] Newton's strong West Country accent also featured in Blackbeard the Pirate (1952).^[13]

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

Monster Mash: Caitlin's 8th birthday

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

Cartoons from HELL

This is better than the Flintstones!

Monster Chiller Horror Theatre!

This lacks in technical quality (turn up the sound a bit), but is pure nostalgia and a reminder of how good these guys were, especially together. We miss you, John!

The worst PMS in recorded history

Ah, Carrie! Carrie, my girl. I think she may have been (in part) the inspiration for Mallory, the protagonist of my second novel (Turnstone Press, 2005):

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319991041&sr=1-1

(Buy it today!)

Except that this gal really knows how to get her revenge.

I watched it for the second time a couple of weeks ago, and this time it struck me not so much as a horror or suspense film as a comedy. A very black one, to be sure. From the first time we see the "popular girl" Amy Irving plotting to humiliate Carrie and pound her into the ground, we know some awful vengeance is brewing. Carrie is already "making things happen". When the bucket of blood lands on her and her eyes turn to stone, we know we're in for a real treat.

I'll SHOW those people. And I won't even need to commit suicide to do it (too often, the tragic result of extreme bullying). Her eyes fly open into that blank wallpaper stare, her fragile little body becomes as menacing as a space alien's, and she Walks Among Us, wreaking havoc at every step.

This is the ultimate revenge fantasy for every high school nerd who ever suffered humiliation at the hands of the social powerbrokers.  She even burns a whole lot of people to death and blows up John Travolta (always a cherished fantasy of mine), but not before rolling his car about seventeen times.

Toying with them, she is. What she does to her mother is even more excruciatingly funny, and she ends up like that saint in the painting, what's his name anyway, with all the barbs and arrows in him. But what I like is that little screech, like something out of Psycho, every time she unleashes another lethal projectile. 

This movie is based on a story by Stephen King that he supposedly dumped in the garbage during a moment of frustration. It reminds me of the story of J. K. Rowling writing Harry Potter on a napkin in Starbucks while living on welfare. In other words, it didn't happen, but it SHOULD HAVE because it will give all unpublished writers a sort of hopeless hope.

There's a sequel called The Rage: Carrie 2. Don't bother. It istars a completely unknown actress with no charisma whatsoever (and who remained that way), unlike Spacek who went on to do Coal Miner's Daughter (won an Oscar for it, I believe) and a multitude of other things. Her acting chops are obvious here, as she appears to be ignoring everyone. She inhabits another level of reality, the level of Get Those High School Bitches and Bastards And Annihilate Them For What they Did To Me. 

Watch this, it's a hoot, and it's just in time for Halloween.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225


(Look at this, too, then buy one, or two.)

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

The scariest thing you've EVER SEEN!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BynOanQSj94

NOTE: this video wouldn't embed, but the link to YouTube should work. Really, this half-minute kind of sums up the whole thing.
I guarantee you, this is the scariest, creepiest, most Godawful thing you've ever seen in a movie. As with so many horror classics (like Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, which scared the giblets out of me), I watched this as a kid sleeping in the den on the pullout bed. This was a special treat and only allowed on non-school nights, which was great, because all the best creature-feature films were shown on Friday night.


I am sure I watched this with my older brother Arthur providing running commentary. We both burst into a sort of terrified "auuuuuugggghhhhhh" (not "ewwwwwwww": it hadn't been invented yet) at the "reveal", which only lasts a fraction of a second.

Mr. Sardonicus is probably William Castle's creepiest film. He was the master of horror schlock, and in this one he came on at the start and said the audience could choose between two endings.: "thumbs up" (Sardonicus lives!), or "thumbs down" (bye-bye, smiley face!) Only one ending was made, of course.

When we first meet Mr. Sardonicus he's living in the standard spooky old castle wearing an eerie-looking mask. I remember a sultry woman with a heaving bosom (hey, do you think I remember the whole thing after 46 years?), and a horrible scene in which some sort of Igor-esque servant (played by Oscar Homolka: with a name like that, what else could you be but an Igor?) carries a covered bowl into a room. The door closes and we hear Godawful sucking sounds.

Later on the story leaks out: Mr. Sardonicus use-da be a regular sorta guy, but his Dad won a lottery and was mistakenly buried with the money. Well, Mr. S. was thrifty and decided to dig the old man up. On seeing the decaying, reeking corpse crawling with maggots, his face spazzed into the "winning smile" you see here, and, just as Mama warned us, it froze that way.

He looks like a dead fox or something, just bloody sickening! You can have your Paranormal Activity 3, your endless Halloweens, even your parade of "Stephen King's. . . " (Carrie, Thinner, Pet Sematary, etc. etc. etc.) This nanosecond has to be one of the greatest, most disturbing moments in horror.

What I particularly like about this clip is that you can hear someone reacting in the background with an "auggghhhhhhhhhh." (Some things never change.) Watch it, yes - but don't watch it alone.

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

Where Disney stole his stuff

I saw a documentary on TV years ago that talked about European influences on Walt Disney's animation. To make a long story short, he stole everything. These ghostly riders are from Murnau's 1926 masterpiece, Faust. Compare and contrast to Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia: except that these guys are a lot scarier. How did they do this, I wonder? Special effects were all manual then, but surprisingly creepy. Those horses, Jesus! (It took me years and years to track this clip down. I still can't find the documentary anywhere. I think it was originally in French.)