Chris

Idle Thumbs 166: Cyberpunk Cop-Killer

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I am of the strong opinion that the 'it's' is not just a dateline, but a dateline and a topical reference.

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Chris talked about how Wings of St. Nazaire is actually like those space sims from back in the day but I have to correct him - Wings of St. Nazaire is indeed like Wing Commander, which used sprites rendered at various angles to represent all the ships, but it's very different from X-Wing and TIE Fighter, which, even back then, were full 3d games using polygonal ships rather than sprites. This, incidentally, is why I was a much bigger fan of the Star Wars games than the Chris Roberts games - everything was much smoother, there was a far better sense of scale and of movement, and the capital ships particularly worked far better. Of course, Wing Commander could be far more detailed with its prerendered bitmaps than X-Wing could (X-Wing had to rely on just plain Gouraud shading, which meant the ships were the right shape but entirely untextured) so Wing Commander's screenshots were much prettier, but X-Wing played much better with its full 3d fidelity.

 

Very much this, although I have to correct you, too, by pointing out that X-Wing only had flat shading. Gouraud shading was one of TIE Fighter's improvments (which was then also used in the CD-ROM re-release of X-Wing).

 

Also, the capital of Azerbaijan is Baku.

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Danielle's great accent made me sad that I don't have any accent to fall back on, I just speak boring unaccented english.

 

It is a real shame the it's was flubbed. 

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Danielle's great accent made me sad that I don't have any accent to fall back on, I just speak boring unaccented english.

It is a real shame the it's was flubbed.

Everyone has an accent. There is no standard accent.

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Everyone has an accent. There is no standard accent.

 

Technically true, but a particular kind of Midwest accent is viewed as the most neutral of the American accents and the one that people are mostly likely to describe as being "not an accent".  It skews closest to the dictionary defined pronunciation for a lot of words, and so many accents are really defined by breaking the correct pronunciation in some ways.

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I also have no accent. Well, sometimes I slip into a southern-esque accent according to some friends but I've never heard it. ):

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There was a point where I started to gain a bostonian accent because I made fun of it so much when I lived in the area.  When I moved back to CA I found myself slipping into it even though it's not my natural accent.

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Technically true, but a particular kind of Midwest accent is viewed as the most neutral of the American accents and the one that people are mostly likely to describe as being "not an accent".  It skews closest to the dictionary defined pronunciation for a lot of words, and so many accents are really defined by breaking the correct pronunciation in some ways.

 

Exactly, this is what I was referring to when I said I don't have an accent. The accent is called Generic American, and is the closest thing to no accent since it is closest to dictionary phonetics and lacks regional characteristics. It is a standard accent, if any can be called that. It is also uninteresting. 

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It is also uninteresting. 

 

Of course the advantage is that I find it relatively easy to slip into most other regional American dialects, something someone with a thick Bronx accent can't do.  Like hearing someone from New York try to do a Texas accent is hilarious.  I tend to pick up little bits of other people's accents within a few minutes of a conversation, not even meaning to.  It also makes it really easy to pass as a Canadian when I've traveled internationally, which has been convenient sometimes. 

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There's an accent and a lot of rural colloquialisms in my hometown that I managed to avoid entirely by mostly ignoring the locals and being so into reading and film growing up.

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I can only assume if you combined Danielle talking in her natural accent with Jake pretending to be a Pig, Sean & Chris would explode with glee

 

Please. Jake doesn't pretend to be a pig, he channels his porcine side.

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Like hearing someone from New York try to do a Texas accent is hilarious.

 

So, did you watch and hate Michael Rapaport in Justified, too?

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Of course the advantage is that I find it relatively easy to slip into most other regional American dialects, something someone with a thick Bronx accent can't do.  Like hearing someone from New York try to do a Texas accent is hilarious.  I tend to pick up little bits of other people's accents within a few minutes of a conversation, not even meaning to.  It also makes it really easy to pass as a Canadian when I've traveled internationally, which has been convenient sometimes. 

 

True. I also have a tendency to unintentionally pick up bits of an accent when I am around people speaking with one, which is a bit strange

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Combining this week's discussion of Jaws with last week's discussion of goddamn Sonic fanart:

 

 

 

 

(yes, the entire movie)

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Was the shark from Jaws named Jaw?

Was Jaws originally titled, "Jaws Checks In"?

Thanks for that, I was trying to find that clip but I needed Jaw's Checks In, to get the youtube episode to come up. It's nuts that it was a full 101 episodes ago.

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Danielle you are my favorite Thumbs. Every other Thumbs you're second favorite.

 

The Harry Potter discussion was merely one jewel in the crown of this crusted episode. However, I am shocked so many people aren't familiar with Harry Potter outside of Internet Memes. It's one of those things I just assumed everyone either actively sought out or was unable to avoid (see: Me and Twilight). I didn't know Dumbledore was gay, or if I did I didn't internalize it as a Harry Potter Fact.

 

I am from just south of Philadelphia, but I definitely do not have a Philly accent. I feel like my accent is mostly neutral, but I know for sure that there are some distinctive things that aren't Generic American. I know there are little word/sound choices in my speech that I HATE and wish I could remove. I also sometimes slip into a stereotypical New York Jewish accent even though I have never lived there. My grandmother, bless her heart, vehemently denied she had a regional accent when it came up in conversation one time. She is from Iowa, has lived there all her life with summers in Minnesota, and has the most adorable Midwestern old lady accent.

 

I am curious, do non Americans or non-native speakers find it easier to parse through certain American dialects more than others?

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So I checked out Coming Out Simulator 2014 last night. I still haven't fully processed it in my head. I'm straight but have enough LGBT friends to have some awareness of how coming out can go terribly wrong (there are some positive outcomes thank goodness). This was the closest I could get to experiencing it first-hand I guess. At the very least, the game exists to help give people who would react badly SOME perspective.

btw I'm writing this on my 3DS because my PC died this morning and is irreperable. Which means no Idle Thumbs content for a while.

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Was the shark from Jaws named Jaw?

Was Jaws originally titled, "Jaws Checks In"?

I won't lie, I spent a good chunk of that discussion in Jaw's Grasp hoping some one would sneak this one in. But, alas.

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I am curious, do non Americans or non-native speakers find it easier to parse through certain American dialects more than others?

 

For whatever reason, American accents generally seem to be easy to understand for me (I'm Irish) while there's some Irish accents that can make me pause when they're extra heavy.

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I am curious, do non Americans or non-native speakers find it easier to parse through certain American dialects more than others?

For whatever reason, American accents generally seem to be easy to understand for me (I'm Irish) while there's some Irish accents that can make me pause when they're extra heavy.

 

Unlike different British English accents, there's very little cultural or regional pride tied up in the different American English accents, so virtually everyone who has one of the latter is trying their best to minimize it, if only subconsciously. I've given myself a fairly clear Midlands American English accent, but I can and do revert back into my Texan drawl, which really is only mildly there, and if I bother to use the full dialect, at least the parts of it I bothered to learn, I can make myself pretty incomprehensible to the several Brits in my department.

 

I worked so damn hard in grade school and junior high to lose my accent, because My Fair Lady taught me that sounding like you were from someplace different made people look at you askance, and it's served me well in all my occupations, but I really wish I'd spent the time to be able to speak more like where I come from, since that's something in which I've gradually grown a bit of pride as I've aged.

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Unlike different British English accents, there's very little cultural or regional pride tied up in the different American English accents,

 

I feel the need to draw on my cultural pride to point out that we're not British English, we're Hiberno English (basically Irish English), The distinction is important because we have many phrases to describe drunkenness.

 

The actual reason is that we do have a non english language, so that's influenced the way we talk in English (creating things like the stereotypically irish "Oh, going to do that are ya?"). But this was all entirely nitpicky, because I imagine the same rules of your point apply. Rather than feeling like we should be homogenous people take a lot of pride in their individual region accents.

Like Cork.

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Combining this week's discussion of Jaws with last week's discussion of goddamn Sonic fanart:

 

 

 

 

(yes, the entire movie)

 

1.  That video has 15 million views. 

 

2.  How bad would Sonic in Jaws 3D be?

 

 

So, did you watch and hate Michael Rapaport in Justified, too?

 

I've never actually watched that show, even though it seems like it would be something I might like. 

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