Picture Perfect

You miserable bunch couldn't get it together to comment in an educated fashion on one serious post of mine, despite it being there for a week and two days. I was going to leave it up for just one week, just to make you all suffer a little by witholding my posts, but also to encourge you to broaden your horizons. Oh, and also because I told Cat I would leave it for a week, so I had to prove my point. 

On the subject of Cat, I must say, I like it when she suffers every now and then. However, I simply cannot explain this immutable desire to relish in her frustration and anguish. Sadistic? I don't think so - I usually feel sorry for her at the end of it all and one may even catch me defending her on occassion. Shocking, I know. It's more of a healthy "I-hate-you-DJ/I-want-to-cut-you-open-from-head-to-toe-Cat" relationship.

Whilst I'm talking about people, I may as well enter a note about Natalie. Yes, you nat.
The first thing which comes to mind is that "nat" is actually the abbreviation for the National Aids Trust; important information for every student indeed. Remember, kids: just touching someone you don't know can give you AIDS.

Now armed with that social skills advice, we may move onto the second thing which comes to mind, a far more dastardly topic: shuffle around the letters of "nat" a little and you get "ant." My expose on Ant will come a littler later, first. Let us finish with Nat.

The reason I mention her at all, is because I would like to officially welcome her to the sordid bunch of people who are most unfortunate to be in the position of reading my blogs. I'm not quite sure why anyone bothers, but they do and that is that. So, whilst Nat and I have our differences (she has a fringe) we also have our things in common (a mutual hatred of Cat) and thus I would like to say, welcome to the select few, Nat!

Ok. Now Ant.
I heard Ant's voice for the first time last night and was privileged enough to hear one of his sermons. I must admit that by the end of the first sentence, I was already telling him over MSN that I disagreed with what his voice was saying. This snowballed into a fully fledged theological discussion, the details of which I shall spare you (judging from the response of the last blog, I'm sure you're all considerably happy about that). For the full details of Ant's voice, one may approach either Nat or Cat (their names are so similar), either of whom will be delighted to give you a play-by-play, sneering, jibing commentary on his accent. All I'll say is, Ant's accent betrays his stint in inner-city London. He saands laak ah roigh' Landanaah. Matt's accent, as I recall, is a standard English accent, well done to him.

At this point, it's noteworthy to mention I heard Nat's voice last night too. Ha, to all those who haven't. Her accent seems to be standard English too.

Whilst we're mentioning all these voices and accents, I think Cat has a fun accent. Not a funny one, a fun one. It seems to say "woooo, listen to meeee, you don't get to hear me every day, do ya?!" And it's true. Other than the occassional TV personality who's Scottish, when does one ever get to hear a Scottish accent (which isn't from Glaaahhhzgoooo)? Unfortunately, over the phone, I am not yet able to get her talking incessantly so that I may be able to hear her accent in all its Scottish glory. Cat, I also noticed that your accent sounds standard-English when you start talking, but slips into a Scottish one when you get into what you're saying. I can only guess that you try and hide your accent when talking to me! How dare you. This will not be tolerated.

On to Arty.
Though subject of much laughter in the UK (not really, hehe), the American accent is quite a good. Unfortunately, I hear it all the time on TV and oddly enough, most of my friends are actually North American. English accents in college are few and far between. We 'aff much of ze French accen' tu.

Anyway. If I were to rate my preferred accents, it would be thusly:
1) French, Persian and Scottish, joint place (I don't know if anyone has ever heard an Iranian speaking, but it's lovely and jumpy - not as pronounced as Mandarin, more casual-jumpy).
2) American (sorry, constant exposure to American accents has decreased it's value for me. I also resent that I am heard to say the words "movies" and "cell" more often now).
3) Standard English, Received Pronounciation and Grammar School Accents (GSA). Whereas these terms usually all mean the same thing, they do not in my blog. Here, I have used "standard English" to denote an accent which is commonly used in the South (NOT the Essex accent. Though SE is common in London too, London has so many accents I can't really generalise).

Received Pronounciation is that posh accent everyone makes fun of these days. Commonly called the 'BBC accent,' you may have heard those sorts of accents on the BBC up until about the late 1980's. This is taught in Public Schools (costly, privately owned schools, usually single sex, thus casting suspicion of latent homosexuality on about 70% of it's members. It is not uncommon for these places to be a boarding school, like Eaton, where we know beyond a doubt they're mostly gay. Ok, ok. Sorry. That's unfair. I meant to say "where they're all gay." OK! Fine. Sorry. No one's gay, except gay people. Happy? Bloomin' Political Correctness...can't even make racist/homophobic/sexist jokes anymore).

King's (or Queen's) English is not the same as RP. It blatantly is, but officially, the monarchs of Britain have their own unique accents.

Grammar School English is basically the same as the BBC accent and RP, but you'll never get me to admit that, ever. A grammar school, by the way, is a selective state school. It brings people affordable private education. Interestingly, the ex-head of the Labour party (Tony Blair) attended public school, whilst I, an ardant Conservative supporter, attended state-run and Grammar schools. If there existed a party which would maintain the current public spending (NHS, eduaction) and would renationalise the utility and travel companies, I'd vote for them, no doubt about it. Most unfortuantely, our balance of payments are most likely unbalanced.

Anyway! Accents.
So, in the world of my blog, Standard English is commonly spoken, standard English of the south. This is not RP, which is spoken by the likes of the posh people in London. Grammar School Accent, which in my world is less pronounced than Public School English (where the hell did I get my accent from?! Aside from my grandad, I'm the only person in my family to have a Grammar Schooly sort of accent).

SO.
Where does that leave us?

It leaves us, dear children, with the title of my blog: notepad. How on earth was it relevant to all this? It wasn't at all. Aside from the fact that my blog is my doodle pad, a notepad of sorts, if you will.

But today I was messing about with notepad. Amazing program it is! Did you know you can have borders? Page numbers? Date? Time? Headers? Footers? All that jazz. Also, it's possible to do all that on MSDOS. Wooo!

Yeah. Anyway, Nat and Cat are bugging me on MSN and making those damn "doo-dee-dum!" noises which is disturbing my rambling entirely. Plus, I want to finish a project today. So. Uhh. BYE!