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Now Accents?
Great Cicero’s bleeding adenoids, have we come to this?
Linguist Dr Rob Drummond, who works at Manchester Met University, argued using accents for comedic effect in sitcoms like Fawlty Towers, where Andrew Sachs famously portrayed a clumsy Spanish waiter called Manuel, promotes ‘lazy stereotypes’ and can be ‘pretty damaging’.
Damaging to whom, exactly?
While my native accent is pure Johannesburg WASP (often mistaken for British in America, but never in Britishland), I love doing accents. While some are not so good (my Texas twang fools absolutely nobody), my Indian-, French- and even German-accented English are all pretty good. (Afrikaans-flavored English, of course, is second nature.) My Scottish accent is passable outside the U.K., but nothing beats my Australian — I’ve fooled even native Aussies into thinking I was pure Ocker, and having armed myself with some Strine slang, it’s unbeatable.
And if I live somewhere for any lengthy period of time, the native accent is easy — when I lived in north Jersey, even some of my NJ buddies could be fooled when I called them up and asked in my best Hoboken Nasal, “Yo, howya dooin’?”
So now I can’t do accents anymore, in case someone is “damaged”?
Fuck that.
Ideal Gun
It all started, as so many of these things do, with a letter from Mr. Free Market which contained this pic:
Now I’ve owned the top two (CETME 7.62x51mm NATO and H&K P7 9mmP). I didn’t like the P7 at all — that squeeze grip chamber loading thingie made my hand shake from the effort of actuating it — and as Dean Wormer famously said:
So I sold it after only a couple of months.
The CETME was a different story altogether. I loved shooting it — preferred it to the G36 and FN-FAL, for that matter — but it was the lightweight C model which, although it could handle the 7.62mm NATO cartridge, really preferred the .308 Win with lighter bullets. (From memory, I only ever used the 120gr.) So it was spendy to shoot, and in any event I’d just picked up my first AK, so I sold the CETME too a short while afterwards.
As for the bottom two guns… well, that’s a different story. Amazingly, considering my handgun preferences, I’ve never owned a Walther P-38 (although I’ve owned a couple of Luger P-08s), but as it shoots the 9mm Europellet anyway, it’s not a serious object of desire other than as a WWII-era gun. (That’s not to say I’d turn one down as a gift, of course; but I’m pretty much out of collecting WWI and WWII-era guns nowadays.)
What about the rifle?
Let’s just say I’d get a StG-44 in a very rapid heartbeat, IF I could afford both it and the ammo it shoots (7.92x33mm or 8mm MP). And that one in Mr. FM’s picture, with the Haenel 4x scope? Oh be still, my twitchy trigger finger.
And for that matter, that scoped CETME also makes parts of my body tingle.
Which got me to thinking (always a dangerous thing when it comes to guns), and I came up with this question:
If money were no object, the gun was available, and ammo was both cheap and plentiful, O My Readers: what rifle would you choose to get?
I asked the question of both Doc Russia and Combat Controller, and I’ll tell you their (and my) choices tomorrow.
Here are the rules: you get to pick one gun, and one gun only; no “top 3” or “1a” or any of that jive, and no crew-served weapons like the Browning Quad 4. One rifle, of any era, and yes, full-auto is permitted.
See y’all tomorrow.
Today’s Earworm
Old Bowie (mostly the chorus, of course).
Whenever people tell me that Bowie’s music sucks, my response is always the same: “He changed music; [your favorite band] just played it.”
Nine times out of ten, I’m correct.
Empathy
Seems like even the lawyers are getting sick of it:
Even though he’s a lawyer, I’m on his side.
In my own case, when once threatened with punishment for contempt of court back in Seffrica, I snarled: “Contempt doesn’t even begin to cover what I feel for this court.” The judge looked somewhat startled and my lawyer put his head in his hands; whereupon the judge started laughing and let me off with a R50* fine — which my lawyer paid because I refused to.
Fuck all of them, black-robed assholes.
*Back then, fifty rands was almost half a month’s rent for my downtown apartment.
News Roundup
…which is even more trivial and stupid than usual.
…which makes me wonder: considering that pretty much the only people in Hollywood not socialist are James Woods, Kelsey Grammer, Adam Corolla and Nick Searcy, which one has gone over to the Dark Side?
…and considering that the Mafia, Black Hand and MS-13 are not active in Sweden, who could these gangs be? Swedish right-wing militants? Disaffected Swedish film students? Oh, wait…
…yup, the riots against the Communist Cuban government have all been caused by something Trump did. FFS, this chick is stupidly evil.
…[insert Polack joke here] Or maybe it’s because Polish adding machines only go up to five?
…and yet, feminists still want to serve in combat because they’re strong enough.
…personally, I can’t see why they aren’t issued with Tasers. On the other hand, there are those unruly passengers who insist on three sugars for their coffee… best not.
And some INSIGNIFICA:
…and we need to know all this… why?
…actually, it sounds as though it’s more likely because you’re self-centered, boring and unpleasant.
…wait: you mean that the much-beloved BritGov fucked up a simple clerical task?
…and I think that the muggers should be extradited to Oman to face trial for murder.
Finally:
