Lester Matthews

            On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the ninth verse of "Sans blague" (No Joke) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for "Trompe d’érection" (Missed Erection) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French and English and then uploaded it to Christian's Translations to prepare it for blog publication. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I've been in the morning in thirteen days. 

            I left for English in the World class at 10:20. There was no one waiting outside the classroom when I got there for several minutes. I peeked inside the empty classroom next door and was surprised to see Tiana sitting there. When I said "Hi" she felt the need to explain that she just wanted a place to sit. 

            Professor Percy talked about accents. Syllable timing has two or more, one more stressed than the other kind. Higher, louder, longer. Most varieties of native English have stressed timing. 

            Listen to Mr. Oxford. 

            Guyanese creole is common. 

            I said I couldn't find the link for Peer Scholar to submit my essay for peer review. She said there is an unassuming text box at the bottom. 

            Olive Senior became a journalist, won a scholarship, and studied journalism in Ottawa. We talked about Senior's story, "The Boy Who Loved Ice Cream". 

            I said ice cream is foreign and hybrid. It is both frozen and not frozen. 

            Rare and temporary. 

            Both Benjy and his dad are separated from Benjy's mom. 

            I say both Benjy and the father have a fear of what they desire. 

            We talked about phonetics. 

            Fricatives have impeding airflow. 

            There is a talking IPA chart.

            Imitating US accents. The "r" in "girl" after the vowel. 

            Better vs bedder. The British say "be(glottal)er". 

            North American English uses the "r" in "park". The UK used to. 

            Wells lexical sets. 

            "Bath" and "trap", only "Bath" is softened in the UK. 

            Microsoft Word has IPA symbols. 

            "Bass" used to be "baers". "Cuss" comes from "curse", "hoss" from "horse", "ass" from "arse". In the 18th century "r" started to disappear first in East Anglia. It was considered a bad thing at the time.

            The first two pronouncing dictionaries were published by former actors. 

            Rhotic accents with "r" and non-rhotic without. Dropping the "r" became upper class. In the US it was the opposite. Dropping the "r" was considered lower class as in New Yawk. If a girl dropped her "r" in a film noir she was likely bad. There is less status in "New Yawk". 

            We took a break. 

            I asked about how "aunt" deteriorated into "ant" and she said she didn't know but there must be studies. 

            A survey online determines your US accent. 

            "Nyooz" vs "news". 

            The English Language in Canada by Boberg. 

            The US uses a softer "a" than Canada. 

            I mentioned the episode of Star Trek in which the doctor mispronounced Data's name with the other pronunciation of "data". 

            Viet Nam "am" vs "awm". 

            If it's a foreign word we tend to pronounce it as the Brits do. 

            Most say "nooz". "Nooz" is newer and spreading even in England. We still say, "church pew" and not "church poo". "Nyooz" was pronounced just a few generations ago. 

            One person's speech changes over time. Queen Elizabeth's annual speeches changed over the years. 

            "Latin" vs "laten". "City" vs "cidy". Most say "cidy". 

            Some say "ligh" with glottal instead of "light". "Pork" and "port" are said the same with a glottal. 

            "Pew" is not "poo" because it is bilabial. "Duke" is "dook" because it is alveolar. 

            Exonormative standards: Canadians who think they should use British pronunciations. 

            The "fawth flaw" in New Yawk department stores. The higher-class stores pronounce the "r" and the middle class even more. Social stereotypes and values are indexed in pronunciation.

            Professor Percy let it drop that she's 58. 

            In North England, they say "stroot" for "strut". "Youf" for "youth". 

            Perception contextualized. People in England hate Birmingham accents.

            If you know the stereotypes you can appropriate them. 

            Native English is called stress-timed on syllables more stressed than the other but non-native are syllable-timed. Caribbean speech is often syllable-timed. In the Senior story "stan" for "stand". 

            Before she left Professor Percy apologized to me for not having a better answer about "aunt".

            When I got home I tried to find out where I could go to vote. Several websites claimed to have that information but none did. There is no reason why the specific voting station for one's address couldn't be placed on a website but it seems it wasn't. Finally, I just decided to go to Mazaryk-Cowan Community Centre. I looked up who was trying to be mayor and saw that the homeless guy Kevin Clarke was running so I decided to vote for him. 

            At Mazaryk-Cowan it was the wrong place. I was sent to 20 West Lodge and went the wrong way to get there. It took me more than an hour from when I got home from class to finish voting. I was pissed off because I've lived in the same place for twenty-five years and always get a voting card in the mail, but I got none this time, even though my neighbour Benji did. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before a late lunch at 14:45. 

            I took a late siesta from 15:15 to 16:45. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 17:04. 

            I wrote the Exit Slip survey for todays class. 

            I tried again to go to Peer Scholar to resubmit my essay for peer review but I still could not find a link. I took screen shots of the assignment page that is supposed to show a link and sent them in an email to Professor Percy. She got in touch with a tech helper who suggested that I try a different browser, so I tried Microsoft Edge and it worked. But I did a search to see how to do it with Chrome and found that if I switched to Incognito it worked. 

            I re-read the parts of Beowulf that deal with Grendel to get a handle on him for my essay. It's obvious to me that he's a class revolutionary. I started looking at the passages on Grendel's mother to understand more about Grendel through her. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last piece of roast pork with a beer while watching episode 24 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Milburn Drysdale is approaching the date of a skeet shooting competition between his bank and that of another. With his crack shot vice president Drysdale has won the trophy for the last two years against Billy Hacker and his partner, but suddenly his VP gets sick. Then when he visits the Clampetts and finds Jed and Jethro winging flies off the property wall with rifles at 61 meters, he decides to hire Jed as his new vice president. 

            At the skeet shooting club, Jed and Jethro can shoot each clay plate with a rifle when the traditional firearm is a shotgun. Granny can take down two at a time with a shotgun. Elly doesn't like using guns but she can shatter the flying plates every time with her slingshot. 

            Jed gets the idea that Drysdale hired him to really serve as his vice president and so he goes to work at the bank. Hacker goes to see Jed at the bank and discovers that Jed without knowing it has been hired to be a ringer in the competition. When the bank chain owner Mr. Pendleton finds this out he says Jed has to be let go. He tells Hacker that he can pick any employee he wants to be Drysdale's partner. Granny has come to the bank to bring back the bank jacket that Pearl let out for Jed to wear. But while talking to the vice president's secretary she sees dust on the desk and insists on cleaning it. Just then Hacker walks in and when he sees who looks like an old cleaning lady he thinks he's really won against Drysdale. He chooses Granny to be Drysdale's partner and of course loses on the day of the competition because Granny never misses. 

            The secretary was played by Laura Shelton. After winning a contest to appear on a game show she won a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse where her classmates where Gene Hackman and Rue McClanahan. Another classmate was Carl Monson, who she later married. Together they founded the Curtain Call Theatre co-op. 

            Mr. Pendleton was played by British actor, Lester Matthews, who played Paul Ames in Werewolf of London and Jerry Halden in The Raven in 1935, Sir Ivor in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938, and The Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers 1939. He appeared in over 180 films and TV shows. 

            For the fourth night in a row I found no bedbugs.