e_o_i_asks epitome of incomprehensibility When was a time someone pointed out a ridiculous mistake you made, and you didn't mind? Why not? 140425 ... e_o_i And now I'm too lazy to tell the whole story today. It involves imaginary trees. 140426 ... quetzal the warning light for low tire pressure came on in my truck. it was the driver's side back. i pulled into a sunoco, plopped four quarters into the air machine and filled it back up, noticing a worn spot on the tire where a leak might exist. four days later, the light dinged on again. so i do have a leak. pull into a sunoco, plop four quarters in, fill it up, go back to work. load it with mulch all day. four more days pass, light dings on. repeat. a month passes, repeat. why don't i just pull into my tire guy's shop? good catholic family-owned. take them a half hour to patch it. cash. go forward to the call of spring. is it a ridiculous mistake? maybe i'm just fascinated by the need for air, the four days of safety, the ding of dependence, the process of sustainment. it's how i live my life. 140427 ... e_o_i Ah yes. It was the cheerful green trees. First year university, poetry workshop course, and the class had an assignment to write about a work of art. I chose a neo-cubist forest landscape. The trees were mostly hard-edged - if I had to get into a fight with a tree, I wouldn't pick one of these - but there were some softer-focus lighter green trees either in the background or foreground, I forget which. I wrote my poem, complete with a snarky reference to Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled," but I found it difficult to describe the painting itself. How should I say, for example, that the lighter green trees gave the impression of a (metaphorically) lighter mood? I thought: "Well, it's a more cheerful shade of green," so I wrote "cheerful green trees." When I got the assignment back, my prof had underlined those three words and, next to them, sketched the outline of a tree with a happy face inside. No comments, just the smiling tree. It was such a happy tree (albeit not green) that I couldn't help smiling too. As a teenager I was kind of competitive and didn't take criticism well. If he'd written "These words sound silly together" I might have been mad, but with the tree I got the point. And it made me laugh. In a story-perfect world that would be the exact incident that prompted me to take myself less seriously, and maybe it is in retrospect, but at the time I don't know if I thought about it that way. Cheerful green trees, though! 140430 ... raze this wasn't so much a mistake i made as it was a random amusing thing that happened, but your story reminded me of the time i doodled a bunch of faces on a high school science test, knowing i wasn't going to get a good mark, and when i got the test back i saw the teacher had embellished some of my faces and made them look even sillier. i didn't do well in her class, because i never did well in any science class, but i found that kind of endearing. it was probably the moment i decided i liked her as a teacher. 140430 ... e_o_i Do you have (a) favourite film director(s)? Coming from a more of a books background, I find it easier to think about directors than actors (there are so many actors, too). The cool thing about film, though, is that it's such a collaborative process. I don't think you can say movies are definitively better than books, or vice-versa. Their strengths and weaknesses are just different. Anyway, I guess if someone asked me this question I'd say Stanley Kubrick and Jane Campion, but then I'd doubt myself and think "Am I just picking those two because they're safe answers - because both are somewhere between popular and experimental, both are fairly well known, and because I'm not a movie expert?" The Piano is brilliant, sensual, melancholy, and mysterious, and Barry Lyndon is an underrated classic - one out of few "historical" (albeit fiction-based) films I've seen where the characters don't keep talking in a grandiose way as if they're always making speeches. To my little eyes/ears at least. Other people's turn! 140501 ... raze that's a tough one. for some reason i have a much easier time coming up with favourite films than favourite directors. but a few definite favourites, off the top part of the head place: takeshi kitano, for the line he walks between brutal and beautiful when he's at his best (as in "sonatine", "hana-bi", and "dolls") john cassavetes, for the sometimes almost unbearable emotional realism and the feeling of watching life happen in all its messy glory werner_herzog, for what can only be described as his werner herzog-ness david lynch, for the dream-like surrealism and the unexpected tenderness (most pronounced in "the straight story", but present in most of his other films too, in moments) shinya tsukamoto, for the fascinating grotesquery wim wenders, for the cinematic poetry of "wings of desire" and "paris, texas" terrence malick and david gordon green, for the gorgeous eye candy satoshi kon, mamoru oshii, and hayao miyazaki, for anime goodness orson welles, for the audacity ingmar bergman, for the slow-but-right stateliness lodge kerrigan, for the willingness to follow troubled characters unflinchingly with his camera so the viewer might begin to understand what they're going through takashi miike, for being insane and diverse enough to jump from uncomfortably graphic and violent "action" films, to quiet, moody, character-driven pieces like "blues harp" and "the bird people in china", to an absurd comedy-horror film with claymation and dance sequences, and back again john waters, for the joyful depravity and hilariously over-the-top acting i need to think of some female directors... 140502 ... quetzal sofia coppola comes first to mind. and then lucy mulloy, because i recently saw, "una noche," a_film_you_should_see. sarah polley, kelly reichardt wes anderson, paul thomas anderson, hitchcock, lars von trier, robert bresson, tarkovsky, truffaut, godard, paul greengrass...so much talent all around us. 140502 ... quetzal in quetzal's_question_of_the_moment i added jim jarmusch and would also like to include darren aronofsky, spike jones, and jonathon glazer. 140503 ... no reason aronofsky and jonze, yes, and some of the above, and also edgar wright 140505 ... e_o_i Thank you genuinely for all that interestingness: I see people not only watch moveis, but know about 'em! I feel happily humbled and informed. I think it also inspired last night's dream - I read some yesterday before bed but was too tired to reply. David Lynch, now. Inland Empire was a strange viewing experience, partly because of the context: with some MA classmates, and with the light contrast skewed to chiaroscuro (in non-fancy terms, the light lighter and the dark darker) because one guy insisted that's how Lynch prefers his movies to be viewed. Let's call this guy Wall. Brilliant but generally easygoing, a fan of Wittgenstein, he left before the film started to go see the Muppet Christmas movie with his girlfriend. It's some time from now, but you can't just leave in the middle of a David Lynch film, he explained, and I'm kind of looking forward to the muppet movie. Laura Dern was brilliant as a line-blurrer of fiction and reality (there was a movie within a movie) - you got a feeling that she wasn't just a victim of circumstances but was deliberately making them weirder. Although often, too, she and the other characters seemed trapped, in warehouse spaces and in fish-eye lenses or blue filters. ...Question: are there any words you particularly dislike? and why? I'll share later, for fear of lengthily ranting. 140505 ... e_o_i spell check ("Moveis" indeed.) 140505 ... raze i thought that was some of laura dern's more impressive acting work too. and i like the story about lynch trying to promote the film (and dern's chances at an oscar nomination) with a live cow and a folding chair. i can find something to appreciate about most words, i think, but "dolt" has always struck me as a pretty unimpressive one. of all the unpleasant things to call someone, it must be one of the least pleasing to the ear. it sounds like the shout of a choking walrus or something. 140505 ... quetzal vis-à-vis 140506 ... e_o_i "Dolt" sounds like a mix of "colt" and Homer Simpson's "D'oh!" so I imagine it's like calling someone a young, foolish, and perhaps reckless horse. Similar how the insult "ass" can be seen as a combination of the word for donkey (donkeys being seen as stupid) and of the human posterior (it appears spelled as "arse" in British English; you can see it in Chaucer spelled "ers") which over the course of history (e)merged into identical spelling. Ass sounds funnier than dolt, though; I agree dolt is awkward to say. Vis-à-vis? I kind of like the sound of it, and it's shorter than "according to" (I think that's what it means.) It's fun to say: veezavee veezavee Visa V fee savvy veezaveezaveezavee Hmmm. Maybe gets annoying after a while, economical as it is. 140507 ... e_o_i Oh yes. Speaking of ass, sort of, my dual answer is the problematic pederast. The latter's an old-fashioned word, but I'm an old-fashioned bird. The weird thing about "pederast" is that it can mean both a gay man and a child molester, which puts both of them in the same boat, and they don't belong in the same boat. English-speaking history hasn't been very kind to gay men in general. Let's not make things worse by comparing apples and pedophiles. But I won't call it "problematic" because I dislike that word too. At least when I was in university, it seemed to be an academic way of being wimpy and vague. If you wanted to say that something was bad, but maybe not always bad, maybe you wanted to hedge your bets a little and say it was potentially bad, you'd call it "problematic." Vis-à-vis moi, the cure isn't to avoid the word altogether, but to explain WHY you think something's (potentially) a problem. ...To be fair, my supervisor had the same problem with me using the words "negative" and "positive" in my MA project. Not only were they wimpy and vague, but he made the point that "Getting a positive test for cancer wouldn't be good, would it?" Cheerful green trees, all over again... But an old friend, whom I identify in memory as "Chris from music class" came up with a good problematic definition. To paraphrase: "It's a machine, like a photocopy machine, that makes problems. Like, 'Oh, this is too simple? Run it through the problematic a few times.'" (raze reminds me a bit of Chris.) 140507 ... e_o_i Question: If you could rename a place, any place, what would you call it and why? 140507 ... raze (now i kind of want to write a latin-pop song called "i am reminiscent of music class chris") that there is a thought-provoking question. i don't know what my answer would be (though i think it would be entertaining if places were given names that described what they were in blunt language, à la "the invention of lying"), but i'm reminded of someone else's volunteered answer. years ago i had a friend who told me about meeting a foul-mouthed, boisterous welsh girl in a bar, and the verbal thesis she gave on why she thought "world" wasn't a good enough name for the world. she thought the world should be renamed betsy. i'd forgotten about that for a long time, but this question brought it back and made me laugh at the possibilities a world named betsy would open up. "welcome to the real betsy". "as the betsy turns". "you're in my betsy now". 140508 ... red ribbon obviously curios. no explanation necessary. 140508 ... e_o_i DOES it need to be explained? I don't know. I guess that's what makes allegory difficult, making things align without making everything too obvious. I think you could do something very interesting if you steered away from making the "mad scientist" yourself. The garden descriptions are compelling: they remind me of the public garden plots in Dorval near Westwood Hill. (If I only know my own corner of the Betsy, I don't know anything because Betsies don't have corners. Betsy is a sphere.) Myself, I like Turtle Island, but of course that isn't my idea. It's just a better name than North America, although I don't quite see it being shaped like a turtle the way Italy is shaped like a boot. Oh, and speaking of small animals (boots are small animals sometimes), I think the only way that the adjective "Canuck" makes sense is if Canada were renamed Canaduckia. That way you get the uck part, plus ducks. If you had to go completely vegan, what animal would you turn into a plant? 140509 ... raze due to its versatility, i would probably vote for chicken. and if chicken were a plant, i imagine it would be called something like "clucking vine". oh, the salads you could make... 140509 ... red ribbon it makes me happy to know you've been reading curios. your compliments, insight, and suggestions are appreciated. the story has a previous life of its own. writing it feels like dictation coming from a former self. your new question is interesting. it makes me think immediately of laetiporous, or "chicken of the woods." but that's just a shelf mushroom that tastes like chicken. there's zebra grass as well and pigweed, but that's still not what you are after. i have soaked dried apricots in water and had a friend call it monkey brains, ew! watermelons are striped like tigers. how about a melon with black, yellow, and white stripes? let's call it a shere khan! 140510 ... e_o_i (Maybe everything is an allegory and I should reassure you I'm not dying. At least, I don't think so.) Rather silly question on my part. I think shrimp. Because they already taste like they should be the fruit of some plant, fleshy buds along a stem like brochettes. (But this was a serious thing a while ago, what to eat: for a year and a half I didn't eat meat, but then I moved to a place with other people where I'd have to get my own food except for some suppers, usually weekends, when I was invited to eat with the people who made it. And it was easier for them if I wasn't picky. But now I am here, and it's easier on the environment to eat things that need less energy to feed and transport. My oldest cousin and his girlfriend are into the sustainable lifestyle - they plant lots of local garden food where they live, which is in the country in Ontario, and he has a license to hunt deer, so that's what they do usually for meat. But you can't exactly hunt animals in the Montreal suburbs. Hunting plants, yes. Dandelions for free, and sometimes berries.) 140516 ... e_o_i Oh. No question? Name one benefit and one drawback of having and/or being around small children. (Not phrased as a question because I used up my question mark quota on the first line. They just don't dispense question marks like they used to - must be the Conservative government's austerity program. At least I like the word "austerity" - it's a rather pretty word.) 140516 ... raze benefit: limitless imagination drawback: sharp teeth 140516 ... e_o_i Good one! I find little kids marvelously generous with information. Show-offy, maybe, but it's often better than keeping ideas and thoughts locked up jealously, as many adults do. The people I rented my room from while I was writing about American poets and doing other reprehensible things had two kids. The girl was four then and the boy just a baby. I was eating lunch at their table, reading Vision Fugitive: Ezra Pound and Economics or some such, when I heard little J. talking about dinosaurs. I said, not so much to be friendly, but because it just occurred to me, "You know, I don't remember what a stegosaurus looks like." J. doesn't answer, but goes into the kitchen. Then her mother Françoise comes out, laughing. "J. just ran up and told me, all worried, 'Kirsten doesn't know what a stegosaurus looks like!' She was very concerned. She wanted you to look at this" - "this" being J.'s dinosaur placemat. So I ate lunch with two-dimensional dinosaurs. The stegosaurus, by the way, is the one with the diamond-shaped spikes on its back. Bad thing? Germs. Kids are very effective disease-carriers. A flu hit me December 2011: I didn't like having a temperature of 103 F (made me dizzy and I panicked, thinking I was dying; this was before the whole hitting-one's-friend-with-a-wineglass-while-having-an-argument-with-a-completely-different-person incident, so I wasn't suffering from well-deserved Post-Traumatic Something, but I'd had a few panic attacks earlier - plus there's the whole Fahrenheit-Celsius conversion thing: I hope I didn't really ask, "What's that in NORMAL temperature?" ...and now I'm using unjustifiably weird punctuation, the kind I was warned against in Creative Writing class. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I'm no James Joyce, nor his lesser multiKulchurally fascist cousin, Ezra $ [Americanized]. Was that the end of the sentence?) Oh, and the next fall the stomach bug; I comforted myself by saying, "You've never really lived until you've had vomit come out your nose" - which seemed like a slogan at the time. The colds I didn't mind so much. ... Never mind about me. What about dinosaurs? What do you think, like, dislike, ponder, etc. about them? 140521 ... quetzal i remember when my daughters were little they were into an archaeology phase. they asked me to construct a dinosaur skeleton out of stones and then bury it so they could slowly dig it up as if they were world class archaeologists. i wish it was still there but i collect and use stones like an addict. so they are already serving some purpose in someone's garden somewhere. at the ski school over the years i have met many little boys who could name and describe every dinosaur ever categorized. and then there's that dinosaur scene in "tree of life." first time i saw it, i thought it was peculiar and a bit wonky, but on repeated viewings it seems to fit. i like the whole idea of birds being evolutionized dinosaurs. especially chickens. birds feet are trippy. 140522 ... e_o_i I heard this recently: What is the fastest-running dinosaur ever? The answer is an ostrich. And other superlatives relate to birds, too: the smallest dinosaur (as far as people know) is a kind of hummingbird, and the most intelligent one a raven. But the biggest so far is a kind of sauropod whose bones were discovered recently. The National Post shows a picture of a man lying next to its dug-up femur (the worker appears to be squinting as well as grinning - the sun's probably very bright) right here: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/20/godzilla-move-over-scientists-in-argentina-uncover-bone-of-what-could-be-the-largest-dinosaur-ever-discovered/ They call it a titanosaur, but that seems to be a generic word for a big dinosaur rather than its official name. The record-setter before it was the Argentinosaurus - since this one was also discovered in Argentina, it could be Argentinosaurus 2! But no. Scientists have more imagination than that. When I was tutoring yesterday I mentioned this discovery to one of my students (a girl in grade four). At least I tried to. What came out of my mouth was, "They've found the largest dragon so far." And she said, "But I thought dragons weren't real!" ... So so so so. Have you ever made a discovery that shocked or surprised you, but that other people already knew or didn't think was a big deal? 140523 ... quetzal not sure if this qualifies but your lovely question reminds me of my childhood. walking along an unpaved driveway littered with bits of colorful broken glass, i would stop at a telephone pole and study the metal numbers and steel clamps imagining them to be parts of my secret world. suddenly it's a gumball machine! 140524 ... e_o_i Blurk. I haven't thought of this for a while, but I remember what my answer to my own question was going to be. ... I was 11 or 12. I was at a building with my father and brother - I can't remember if it was my school, or the basement of the library building where he works, or somewhere else - and we were staying there to eat supper. Since the women's washroom was out of order, I went to wash my hands in the men's with them, and I saw something I'd never seen before. They looked a bit like the pictures of bidets I'd seen in this illustrated encyclopedia (evidently people in illustrated encyclopedias have fancy bathrooms with special butt-washing appliances). So I asked what they were, and my brother started laughing at me. "They're urinals, of course - didn't you know that?" I didn't. Somehow that bit of knowledge had escaped me, or if I had seen them before, I didn't think they were very widespread. I was old enough to figure out what they were for without an explicit explanation - the "urine" part tipped me off - but I found it a bit horrifying that boys would pee in front of each other. At that moment I was very glad to be female, and wouldn't trade the convenience of being able to stand up to pee (without it dribbling down your leg) to the horror of being expected to do this in front of others. Also, it was annoying to see my little brother so smug - apparently I thought smugness was my right only. And now I think of this and my reaction makes me laugh. And wonder why I was that innocent. Of course I knew that boys had penises, although I also remember thinking that people (male/female pairing) would have to have sex lengthways - that is, with one set of legs fitting into the other rather than one person on top of the other - in order for their genitalia to connect. I didn't realize that erections made other positions possible (and indeed more likely), although I'd had a basic sex ed class in fifth grade, before I'd gone to the strange Christian school. ... On a more serious note, there were the World War 2 Japanese bombings. I was in fifth grade when I heard that this thing had happened. It was a whole unit in history class; we read Sakura and the 1,000 Paper Cranes, and the Japanese teaching student who came for an exchange was somehow part of this. I wonder how she felt about it. She also taught us haikus. I'd heard of WW2 because Grandpa had fought in it - serving mostly as a mechanic rather than seeing active combat, but still - and of the Holocaust in particular because people in my first school made terrible jokes. (I learned that you couldn't drink orange juice labeled "from concentrate" because the pulp was from people killed in concentration camps. I learned later that this wasn't really true - after having a horrified Mom punish me for repeating such a thing.) But that was something the enemy had done. Those Nazi Germans. Other people. It was harder for me to accept that people on "our side," "even Americans," would do something as horrible as drop nuclear bombs on cities. Historical perspective helps, to a point: you can argue that, by using nukes and forcing a surrender, they were averting a more bloody ground battle, and they didn't know then that the aftereffects would last for so long, or that nuclear fallout even caused cancer at all. But does targeting civilians with the most powerful type of bomb yet created sound fair? Yeah. It's something hard to think about as an adult, too. But it was harder to understand it in grade five, when the world was divided into good and bad guys... though when I played Lego with my brother, you could easily change a good guy into a bad guy or vice versa by swapping heads: bad guys had frowny faces, good guys had smiley faces and no wrinkles. Besides Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Asian scene doesn't seem to figure into most basic North American accounts of the war very much. Do a bit of research, though, and you'll find other horrors like the Nanking/Nanjing Massacre; the photographer I met said his parents were children in China during these Japanese-against-Chinese battles, and that his father turned that into a blanket prejudice against all things Japanese, which was why it was hard for him to find good anime growing up. (And I was prejudiced because I saw Sailor Moon as a kid and assumed all Japanese animation was that lazy, which isn't true.) No, self, stop it. Be serious. Stay on the point. Basically the point is that in a war that big, it's hard NOT to be doing something horrible at some point. ... I should ask another question. Hm. What question should I ask? 140726 ... e_o_i Well, that's a dumb question. Here's a real one: What musicians - living or dead, individual or in groups - would you like to hear play together? (Be as impossible or possible as you like.) 140728 ... Sleepy Rambling TK The Mamas & The Papas Wilson Phillips The Bangles and Andrew Lloyd Webbers Somehow create a time warp so they could all collaborate together at the height of each of there careers. When I discovered Wilson Phillips I listened to their tape non-stop on my walkman until the tape broke. Day in and day out I'd ride my bike in palpable solitude through the two conjoined apartments or explore the dense wooded area behind the apartments and always over and over playing in the background of my life would be Wilson Phillips. I imagined somehow that if I listened to their songs often enough I could etch them into my very being. This was before the poetry book. Before Wilson Phillips I listened to the oldies station that played on the radio and I genuinely loved that music, completely shunning all other music. Honestly as much as I hate to admit it I was quite a snob about my oldies music. If it wasent oldies then it wasent music (which is where the The Mamas & The Papas come in, besides John Phillips and Michelle Phillips meeting there grown daughter Chynna Phillips out of sequence of time would certainly be interesting in the very lest). Then I discovered Wilson Phillips and never in my young life had I ever been so moved by music. They sang to me of a future I'd yet to live but daydreamed about intently. As for the Bangles that was when I was living with my fathers grandparents. After he had gone to prison. After living in the woman's shelter. This was both one of the darkest and happiest points in my life. Yet I dident know about the happy part until years had passed and I was able to look back on my life. As corn ball as it is The Bangles were the band I could count on to make me feel better. It wasent till some time later that I learned to truly appreciate Andrew Lloyd Webbers genius when it came to the Phantom of the Opera (he's obviously done some other amazing stuff that I like but Phantom will always always be my favorite hands down), even though thanks to my grandmother I'd gotten to see it preformed live when I was in 3rd grade. I enjoyed it at the time but it wasent till later that I could toughly appreciate it. Although if I threw Webber into the musical punch bowl that would most certainly make things even more interesting (and so the deed has been done) I'm not quite sure if that was the kind of answer you were looking for, I don't know if my answer meets your questions required perimeters yet it is the answer you have none the less. 140728 ... raze that's a good one. i'd want to hear miles_davis and jimi hendrix jam on something. those two were friends, they had plans to work together, and then jimi died before it could happen. while the music miles made with pete cosey and john mclaughlin might give some indication of the direction things could have taken, it isn't quite the same. it would be cool to hear mary margaret o'hara and tim buckley improvise something together. two of the most fearless vocal explorers to inhabit (barely) the pop / rock world. i've always felt they were kindred spirits who never met because one was dead before the other was fully-formed. chaotic cut and paste jazz band: bill evans, bud powell, and duke ellington on piano; mingus, jimmy garrison, and scott lafaro on bass; elvin jones, art blakey, and max roach on drums; john_coltrane, charlie parker, and dexter gordon on sax; miles, lee morgan, and mark isham on trumpet; eric dolphy (in pensive mode) on bass clarinet; arthur russell on cello; oliver schroer on violin; gary_burton on vibraphone; lenny breau and chet atkins on guitar; and to make it really ridiculous, these people singing: the 1971 version of sly stone, the 1982 version of kate_bush, any incarnation of van morrison from the 70s, and a pre-1974 harry nilsson. sharon van etten and chan marshall duetting on a dark, grimy, radically retooled version of "i've got you under my skin". and just to sit and listen to karen dalton sing her version of "the sun ain't gonna shine anymore" by the walker brothers would really be something. though my chances of hearing it in my lifetime are dicey at best (a recording exists, but who knows if it'll ever see the light of day), i can almost imagine how slow, sad, perfect, and broken-sounding it would be. 140728 ... TK Typo: Timeline 140730 ... e_o_i You guys these are wonderful answers - I'd want to hear that. I don't know why I'm writing in verse. I'd been thinking vaguely of Philip Glass and Kraftwerk - The Model and Metamorphosis 1 go together quite well melodically (I was doing a bit of a piano mash-up yesterday when I had a nice piano available) - or something not nearly as exciting. 140804 ... e_o_i What edible plant have you recently discovered? (Me: milkweed, when the pods are green. I'm at my aunt's house in the country around Kingston where things like that grow. I just peeled the white insides out of the pod, washed them and ate them; you can eat the pods, too, but they're better cooked. And cooking will soften the stringy part on the inside (I had to pick out some strands at the bottom) so that, a "foraging" book tells me, they're almost like melted cheese. It doesn't seem to be really foraging when they're growing at the edge of a garden, does it? Anyway.) 140804 ... e_o_i To add to the answer, years later: seed pods of radish plants when soft. (I'm letting some dry to see if I can plant the seeds in the spring. They might not grow. But then again, they might.) 210916 ... e_o_i Very very short sociolinguistics experiment for y'all! 1) Do you pronounce the words "marry" and "merry" the same? 2) Birthplace and/or town currently living, if you're comfortable divulging 211217 ... nr 1. nope. marry rhymes with gary, and merry rhymes with dairy. 2. you know this, but toronto! 211217 ... raze yay! new e_o_i questions! 1. i have to side with the esteemed vanderfookin here. in his indispensable (and sometimes indefensible) tome "the denunciation of mispronounced faith", he writes: "when one is to be wed during the christmas season, one leans into the e with quiet abandon. when one is feeling festive, one can only disembowel the nearest vowel with curious aplomb." i think that pretty much covers it. 2. both of those places are the same for me: the exotic land of windsor, home of the peace_fountain, mackenzie_hall, and wish_management. 211217 ... kerry (yay for sociolinguistics experiments!) 1. yes? merrily is pronounced like "merry," but otherwise "marry" and "merry" are the same. 2. birthplace is atlanta, currently living in philadelphia. 211217 ... tender_square 1. when i say them aloud, they sound the same to me, i don't hear a difference in the vowels. 2. i was born in windsor, home of the penis bushes (my mind is still in tea_bag territory), and i live in ann arbor, michigan. 211218 ... unhinged 1) yes 2) i was born in a suburb of cleveland ohio and i now live in seattle washington 211218 ... e_o_i 1) Same as nr and raze 2) Montreal area for both And thanks very much, that's interesting! The raising of /æ/ (the short a sound) is common in a lot of dialects of North America, making it sound like /ɛ/ (short e) before certain consonants. One of my sociolinguistics readings said that this pattern was less common in Quebec English than in Ontario English, but in my experience Ontario is all over the map about /æ/ before /r/, even among people from the same city. David (from the Toronto area) pronounces "merry" and "marry" the same. He also pronounces "catch" like "ketch" which results in some mutual teasing (I'm the other way, making "ketchup" sound like "catch up"). Short a-raising before a consonant like t is rare, at least according to a thorough but yawningly long 2007 article by William Labov. He was talking about dialects diffused from NYC English. ...aaaand that article is something I'm citing in my essay, but how people pronounce "merry" has zilch to do with my schoolwork. It was fun, though! 211220 what's it to you? who go blather from