What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net
Northern. Whether you have the world famous Inland North accent of the Great Lakes area, or the radio-friendly sound of upstate NY and western New England, your accent is what used to set the standard for American English pronunciation (not much anymore now that the Inland North sounds like it does).
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Last week I attended my first HAB (Houston Area Bears) Meeting. I got a chance to meet some of the local guys during the meeting. I wish I could have spent more time with them, but there just wasn't enough time. I got a chance to at least meet 'Nard, whom I have been exchanging eMails with for nearly two years now. Mainly about podcasting. I need to get going with that, and I have the time right now, but I just don't have the where-with-all to get started. I suppose I just need to sit down with him and find out how to save the files and how to generate the feeds and all of that stuff. There just wasn't enough time to go through the many questions I had. At any rate, when I arrived there was an older gentleman whom I sat across from at the table. After I spoke to him for a few minutes and disclosed that I was originally from New Jersey, he said, "So, you're a Damn[ed] Yankee." I replied, "Yes, I'm probably the damnedest Yankee you'll ever meet!" We both laughed. The conversation went on about how things in Houston have changed since the 1940's. I find talking to older folks fascinating. If they are articulate enough, it's like looking through a time-door to the past. I love documentaries on how life was sixty and seventy or more years ago. It's fascinating. The interesting part is that the time has changed and life is so different now, but humanity has really not changed, no matter what the politicians want to repeatedly state to the contrary. Perhaps the biggest change is in an awareness of things that were not spoken about publicly. But people really aren't all that different from whom they used to be.
I came to the same conclusion after I did a bit of traveling back in my earlier years. When I was growing up I had this idea that people are so much different in other parts of the world. Then when I had a chance to travel I discovered something: Cultures are different. Religions are different. Politics are different. But, people are all the same. No matter where you go in this world, people are all the same. They have the same wants and the same desires. They want to basically live their lives in peace and not feel as though they are being stifled by someone else. People want to feel safe amongst their neighbors and have an overall sense of self-righteousness. I suppose over the past 25 years here in the USA, we have changed the most from that sense of following the "golden-rule" ["Do unto others as you would want done unto you," for those of you who do not know what the term, "Golden Rule," relates to.] Thanks to our shocking media and shocking politicians and shocking preachers, we have felt that we need to be "other-worldly" in that we have been told that we should not consider our neighbors, do whatever the hell we want and damn everyone else. We live in gated communities. We don't even know who our neighbors are, let alone even greet them. So we have fallen victim to the "Divide & Conquer," philosophy of military engagement. Only we have been the ones conquered. We have been divided up by those who would have us live in a state of terror. I am not referring to "Terrorists." I am referring to those who wish to control us like the cattle that we ultimately are perceived to be to them. Our Kings and our Clerics: Our Presidents and our Reverends. Those who tell us that we need to look to them for guidance. Those who tell us not to trust our neighbors. Quite the contrary, they expect us to call special phone numbers to report "Suspicious Activities." Those who repeat over and over, ideas that we should be wary of others because they will cause us to loose the notion of what our Political leaders and Clerics have told us is good for us.
But, oh, I am ranting, now. So rather than continue down this path toward schizophrenia, I shall end at this point. And any of you who don't know what that big word, "Schizophrenia," means, we have Wikipedia to help us out:
Schizophrenia (from the Greek word σχιζοφρένεια, or schizophreneia, meaning "split mind") is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality and by significant social or occupational dysfunction. A person experiencing schizophrenia is typically characterized as demonstrating disorganized thinking, and as experiencing delusions or hallucinations, in particular auditory hallucinations
