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I mean, I coulda just looked in my pants to make sure I still had my penis, but I’m lazy and don’t want to take my laptop off my lap.
Sometimes I really love “History of the English Language”, like Tuesday, when Dr. D handed out a worksheet on the “Merlin (Maryland) Dialect.” It’s a printout from the internets, and I’d like to highlight it here because it is oh so very true. Bonus points to non-native speakers or current residents of the Greater Baltimore area who can translate this post’s title (translation provided at the bottom).
The Merlin Dialect is spoken by a mixed population which inhabits a triangular area on the western littoral of the Chesapeake Bay, bounded roughly by a line commencing at Towson’s Toyota, then westward to the Frederick Mall, thence following the western border of the cable TV franchise and the string of McDonald’s along Route 50 to the Bay.All of these lands and the natives thereof are known as the Land of Merlin. They divide it further into semi–tribal areas called “Cannies” (e.g., Ballmer Canny, PeeGee Canny, Muntgumry Canny, Hard Canny, etc.).
The dialect area is centered on a market center called Glimburny, there the people come on weekends to trade their goods. Because of the numerous words and phrases common to both Merlin Dialect and modern English, linguists have long postulated that there is some kinship between the two.
Speakers of Merlin Dialect are all able to understand standard English from babyhood, chiefly because of their voracious appetite for television. However, they invariably refuse to speak standard English, even with outsiders who obviously cannot understand a word they say.
Ballmer — The City of Baltimore, also known as “Balmer” or “Baw Duh More.”
Merlin — Our State
Arn —- What you do to wrinkled clothes
Bulled Egg — An egg cooked in water
Chest Peak — A large body of water nearby
Downey Owe Shin — Summertime destination “down to the ocean”
(such as Ayshun City)Flicktid — A word only Merlin natives have ever heard of or
used. Possibly deriving from the word “afflicted” taken from standard
english (ex. “Shut up. Yor jist flicktid!)Hi Hon — How we always say “hello”
Hode Ooon — When a secretary puts you on hold.
Holluntown — Highland Town
Nap Lis — Capital of the state of Merlin
Oreos — Our baseball team
Payment — That strip of cement that you walk on
PohLeese — Those guys in uniform that git ya when you’re speedin’
Share — What you take in the morning to get you clean
Sem Elem — Seven ElevenAllanic — an ocean
Duddeney — “He sure does, duddeney?
Err — a time measurement of 60 minutes
Mudnlaw — the woman who’s married to your fodlaw
Natty Boh — Beer
Warshnin — our nation’s capital
Wooder — what you wrench your hands with
Yerp — Eurohands or wash your dishes
Merlin: she raider boskle from Droodle Park to dantan Ballmer wither oz clazed
Standard: She rode her bicycle from Druid Hill Park to downtown Baltimore with her eyes closed.
No, really, it’s a very serious class.
To be specific, The Queen, Night At The Museum, and Deja-Vu. Do I have to warn you of spoilers? I would hope not.
What a great movie! Tony Blair’s the newly elected Prime Minister, and Helen Mirren is the Queen of England when Diana, no longer an HRH but still the Princess of Wales dies in a car accident in France. It’s a clash of culture with the fate of the largely symbolic English monarchy hanging in the balance — Blair represents the modern factions pushing to undo the crown, the Queen, of course, represents a long and proud tradition which finds itself forced to bend to the will of the people.
There’s not a lot of action - it’s a character piece, and a wonderful one at that. Highly enjoyable.
Or, to be specific, three nights at the museum. It’s dumbed down (family movie), but a fairly interesting story - long story short, a magic Egyptian tablet causes the wax- and stuffed-figured population of the New York History Museum to come to life at night. New night guard Larry (Ben Stiller) has some trouble adjusting to the problems of controlling the museum’s population, which becomes especially problematic when the old security guards decide to rip the place off.
Yeah, it’s a movie “for the whole family”, but it’s on the entertaining side (although, to be blunt, if the skeleton of a T-Rex started chasing me around the museum trying to play catch, I’d say “oh holy mother of fuck” instead of “gee wiz”). But it’s entertaining, and funny, and I know when I was a kid I would’ve loved this film. It’s quite worth watching, and gee golly if I didn’t just get all smiley at the end.
It's as smart or stupid as any action movie you're likely to see. I think it was Will Riker who once said "quantum mechanics makes my head hurt", but I think they covered all their bases in this quasi-sci-fi movie about time-travel -- why people won't survive a trip through time, and the "branching" alternate universe they create when they do send Denzel back. There's a giant plot hole in the film I saw, and I hope I can explain it:
So Denzel gets all concerned when a woman -- Claire -- washes up on the beach after a ferry is blown up by a domestic terrorist. Except he's able to determine she wasn't on the ferry when it blew up. Using technology that can look four and a half days into the past, he's able to determine that the terrorist killed her after arranging to buy her truck to transport the bomb onto the ferry. Denzel is able to track the terrorist back through time by a phone call the terrorist uses to call Claire to arrange to buy the truck. From there, Denzel tracks the terrorist to the ferry, but is unable to identify him. He attempts to send a note to himself back through time so that early-Denzel can see it and stop the terrorist. Unfortunatly, early-Denzel doesn't: his partner does, goes to the ferry, and engages in a shoot-out with the terrorist which results in Denzel's partner getting shot. Now present-Denzel gets all pissy: "we caused Claire to die!" Why? Because the terrorist's own truck has bullet holes in it, and he can't use it to transport the bomb. Clearly, the implication is that the terrorist now arranges to buy Claire's truck and kill her so that he can use her vehicle since his has a few .40 bullet-holes in it. Well, wait, but he was already arranging to buy Claire's truck ... I mean, hell, it's a plot hole big enough to drive a ferry through.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm an Amazon.com associate, so clicking on those links and buying off Amazon will put some dinero in my pocket.
