All posts from February, 2006

I just got an email this morning from my friend E-M:

So on an episode of Law an Order tonight, [Vincent D'Onofrio] was interviewing a nanny who had to “redd up the room.” He then promptly asks her, “You’re from Pennsylvania. ‘Redding up a room’ is a phrasing that’s found in Western Pennsylvania.’” We then later discover that she was from, and institutionalized, at a mental institution for children in Meadville.

Hm. Sounds like somebody over at NBC’s been reading my blog. I totally know that mental institution, too– it’s called “First District Elementary School.”

(PS: Don’t forget to click on my Interactive Pocahontas Window…)

Space-maniac Catherine Bujold redecorated her entire apartment to resemble the set of Space: 1999. I can’t tell if this borders on insanity, or genius. Sample her commitment here:

Above are the pictures of the UNIBLOC 4 DINING UNIT in yellow. This piece has certainly been the hardest to get and without a doubt the most expensive. But at last it was delivered on September 15th 2004 and it’s a dream come true. Now I have to have it gel coated in white sometime in the future so it will look exactly like the one used in Space : 1999.

To most “right-thinking” people, that sort of white molded plastic is the epitome of bad taste, yet most of it costs a mint– new or vintage– and I shudder– nay, rhapsodize– to think what her entire pad must have cost. Now all I need is a million, billion dollars so I can do this, too.

(Or, I suppose I could just use cardboard spray-painted white and say it’s the set of Doctor Who.)

Conservative talk-radio host Sean Hannity wants to get you laid.

I always feel like a dork reposting links from BoingBoing, because it’s one of the most heavily trafficked blogs on the web. But, this is so funny I can’t resist: it’s a London Tube Map modified to show what the Underground might look like if London’s transit board decides to “sell” sponsorship of stations. I know that New York is considering such a thing, and I seem to remember Citizens Bank putting their logo on State Street station in Boston. Some of my favorites here are “Channel 4ingdon,” “Old Spice Street,” and of course, “iPoddington.” Link

I was driving around with my friend Randy the other day, and I said something about a place where they had good hoagies, and my friend said “oh, is that a Pennsylvania thing?” It’s weird because I always thought of “hoagie” as the most normal and obvious word for a “submarine sandwich.” It also reminds me of my pissy ex-boyfriend who used to berate me for constructions such as “these dishes need washed” and “we need to redd up this room,” or my high school friends in Central New York who never knew whether I was talking about “Don” or “Dawn.” And let’s not even get into how I say “lawyer.”

So I did a little hunting around on Wikipedia, and apparently I speak Pittsburgh English, although I actually grew up about 120 miles to the North. Here are some things that particularly resonate with me:

• Unlike other Midland dialects, /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are merged as /ɔ/; cot and caught are homophones (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006: 59–60, 271).
• babushka (accent on the second syllable) n. bandana or headscarf. Occasionally refers to an elderly woman or your grandmother, based on the commonality of wearing a headscarf.
• buggy n. shopping cart
• chimbley n. a chimney. From Scots English.
• chipped ham (pronounced “chipp’tam”) or chip-chopped ham n. very thinly sliced ham for use on sandwiches.
• crick n. creek
• cue-pons n. coupons
• hoagie n. a submarine sandwich, always served toasted.
• n’at contraction “and that”. Means, “along with some other stuff”, as in, “Yinz wanna go dahn ta Isaly’s n’get sommadat square jumbo n’at?” (Do you all want to go down to Isaly’s and get some of that square baloney, and a few other things?)
• pop n. a soft drink.
• pronounciation n. pronunciation
• redd up v. intermediate step between tidying and cleaning ‘ Yinz better redd up this room ‘
• worsch wash
• n’ya mean? “Do you know what I mean?”
• Dependent verbs containing “to be” in standard English lack it in Pittsburgh English thus ASE “the cat wants to be let in” corresponds to Pittsburgh “the cat wants let in” or “the cat wants in” and standard “the car needs to be washed/the car needs washing” to “the car needs washed.” This grammatical structure is a calque from Scots Gaelic, which historically had major linguistic influence in the region.

All of these things, I remember either saying myself of hearing around me as a kid. My mother took great pains never to let me say “chimbley” or “worsch,” although some of my relatives said those (also in our church it was sung “worsched in the blood of the lamb.”) Ending every sentence with “n’ya mean?” is a bad habit I sometimes have and something my Grandpa Sheckler was infamous for. We were too far North of Pittsburgh to pick up the yinz/y’uns habit, thank God. (ie. “you ones,” sort of like “y’all.”) And yes, I never really thought about it before, but it has been an awfully long time since I saw chip-chop ham for sale anywhere…

But, the next time somebody criticizes my bad grammar for saying “the dishes need washed,” I’ll just point out how it’s “a calque from Scottish Gaelic.” So there.

You just can’t make this shit up!

Unfortunately the hotel is now facing destruction, and the United Nations refuses to list it as an International Landmark. This is also not the first time I’ve heard of housing being made from old shipping containers.

But really… who could resist a hotel room with a built-in reel-to-reel tape deck?!

…[Schultz] said I’d rushed to judgment, and there wasn’t anything racist at all in pointing out that there were no black players in the NHL.

The thing is, there wasn’t anything funny about pointing it out either.

The Johari Window was invented by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram in the 1950s as a model for mapping personality awareness. By describing yourself from a fixed list of adjectives, then asking your friends and colleagues to describe you from the same list, a grid of overlap and difference can be built up.

In other words, help contribute to my narcissism by clicking this link and choosing the five or six words you think describe me best.