Mission accomplished…

Un par de jours sans bloguer- toujours rien a declarer. Still having nowt to write never stopped me before. Sita told me off for writing ‘me and jose went’ instead of ‘jose and I’ a couple of posts ago, so here we go with some of my writing tics. I got an A in my GCSE English Language and I was a TEFL teacher for long enough to know which rules I’m breaking on a daily basis. For what it’s worth, it helps to read this blog with a slight somerset burr. Top 10 Grammatical Rules I give short shrift to:

• 10. Subject/ Object pronoun difference. Bert’n’me couldn’t be arsed.
• 9. Using the subjunctive in conditional clauses. If I was you I’d use more sugar.
• 8. Ending sentences with prepositions. Hot, sticky climes are summink I’ll not put up with.
• 7. Capitalisation. some days not. Other days yes.
• 6. Spelling. Some words I can’t spell first time with and not having a spell checker to hand, I’ll just shove in more letters until it looks right. N.B. doesn’t necccasserilly always work.
• 5. Overcompensation for Americanisms. It’s been an ongoing battle against MS Word for it to recognise English spelling as default. Not just things like colour, centre and Yours Sincerely (instead of Sincerely), but the subtler ones like travellers (with 2 Ls) and realise (with an S). For me, no words end in -ize.
• 4. Sentence fragments. Quote from the Simpsons. Lisa has made a grammar robot:
  

  Lisa: Almost done. Just lay still.
  Linguo: Lie still.
  Lisa: I knew that. Just testing.
  Linguo: Sentence fragment.
  Lisa: ‘Sentence fragment’ is also a sentence fragment.
  Linguo: Must conserve battery power.

• 3. Overuse of ‘…’ … Not antigrammatical, but surely bad grammar… Just how my brain works I’m afraid… In conversation I’ll do the same… trail off each sentence into mumbling. So that’s what they’re there for…
• 2. The Jean Teasdale school of parenthetical asides (and consequently where to put the punctuation.). ?
• 1. Starting every other sentence with I. Well, it is a personal blog called self-absorbtion central, and I know not everyone wants there actions engraved forever in hypertext on teh internets.

So there you go. If you notice any others, feel free to comment them if you find yourself with nowt better to do today.
Happy birthday Ms Butler and Valentine’s to the rest of you. Happy B-day Guadalajara too, 464 today!

Swedish disaster site.

And broadband. Even if you don’t know “Omi” check out all the other videos to see her and her little brother dance to hipster indie beats.
Fair play- It’s a little dodgy posting pix & videos of kids on the interweb and our mates have taken down the video. Which is a shame, but completely understandable. If you’re ever in Central/North California, look out for toddlers dancing to the likes of Spoon and Art Brut, you won’t regret it…

I saw this nice little animation about what Skype is and how you use it. I got the English accented one, maybe ‘cos of the settings on my computer, or maybe it’s just standard issue. Anyway, if you haven’t got it yet, you need:

• A computer, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux
• ANY internet connection (ideally broadband, but dial-up’s fine too)
• a microphone (cheap from Radio Shack or Target or Tandy o Gigante) or maybe your laptop has one built in somewhere…
• Speakers/headphones
• OPTIONAL: A USB webcam for the full-on Livin’-in-the-future-OMFG!-I-can-like-totally-see-you-talking-on-my-screen
  experience

Then you head over to skype.com, download the appropriate version and follow the simple instructions. Add contacts, such as “gwynfisher” and you’re away. No excuses now. You know who you are. And are generally Mac users, strangely…

So back to the minutae of my life, let’s not forget what this blog’s all about after all…

This is our letter box where we receive our bills and letters from banks, credit card agencies and Interpol addressed to Carmen Malagon (previous occupant shrouded in mystery… apparently wanted by every financial institution in Jalisco. When the phone rings, if it’s not someone requesting a song for the Top 40 Radio Show whose number’s one digit off of ours, it’s a bank trying to catch Ms Malagon by surprise. I’ve told them she doesn’t live here anymore, but they’re determined to catch us out and have her answer one day…)

Here’s our spanking new barbecue, $10 or 5 pounds 70 pee from Soriana. Note the charcoal is actually charcoal, practically log-sized pieces. None of your oh-so-dainty briquettes in Mexico, nosiree. Gert big chunks of trees they be. And I didn’t even use parafin nor firelighters to get it going. It’s nice to be BBQing again and it keeps me away from the interwebs and channel 40 for a while. Only the onions (‘campay’) were bought for cooking, the rest are objets trouvés from the fridge/freezer defrosting session.

Yesterday evening was going to involve doing some filming for Propaganda but we’ve misplaced our video camara. Which isn’t good but it will turn up somewhere. It’s a big house and though we’ve few belongings there’s a couple of places still to go. Jose’s sort of on his Semana Santa break so the plan is to go and film on Thursday and if we’re lucky there’ll be lots of people nailing themselves to crosses and whipping themselves. Seriously. Some people go to doctors who tell them whereabouts on their hands they can ‘safely’ put nails through without smashing your bones apart. Then they use sterilised nails and hang from crosses (using string). And I thought Easter was all about eggs and bunnies. You live and learn…

I was listening to The Adam and Joe Show on XFM which I burnt for myself off of YouKayNova.com and it got me all homesick again. They were talking about telly and countdown and the new series of ‘look around you’ and there were adverts that were vaguely amusing and they played proper pop songs and stuff I hadn’t heard before but wanted to know more about and had irreverent conversations about things that don’t matter and the prices were all in quid and and and and. anyroad i’m missing Somerset’s green and pleasant charms. {{popup kingstonarialview.jpg kingstonarialview 390×267}}Here’s an aerial view of me village about 5100 miles from here…
& had a tough day at work… to top it all off.
moan, moan, moan. Here’s a fun link to reward you for reading all that rubbish. Guess the dictator or sit-com character. It took about 20 questions to work out I was Daisy from Spaced then 15 to divine that I was Generalisimo Francisco Franco. The days simply fly by…