Southern Engineering
Last night I took Victor out to Monica's Aca y Alla for his birthday dinner. They were doing half-price food (every Tuesday, Dallas folks), so it ended up costing far less than I had expected. It was very yummy Tex-Mex, and the margaritas were tasty. Perhaps too tasty...

A coworker and I were discussing colloquialisms yesterday. I mentioned that in college I had written a paper on the dialect spoken in the Appalachian mountains. I really enjoyed researching that paper, especially learning about how many of the "improper" forms of words that people use there are actually leftover alternate forms dating back many hundreds of years. These words were brought over by immigrants, particularly the Scots-Irish. Anyway, the other interesting thing I learned was that a pocket of Appalachian people moved to the Ozarks, which is why some of that same dialect has persisted there. You know, where I grew up. Anyway, I found one of the words discovered through my research to be really funny... and then I heard my own father use it! The word is "antigogglin," which means crooked. He used it while trying to put gas in his truck when the gas hose was all tangled up (or antigogglin, as he called it).

Anyway, here's a fun list called "AR-bonics," which mentions some of the other words and phrases found in Arkansas. We did use a lot of them in my family, including "yonder," "cattywompus" (or as my dad liked to say, catassywompus), and "pee-waddlin" (a variation of "pee-waddin" found in this list). And I know I've said it before, but I sure do love the rest of that site. Oh, and Ryan... he mentions your old workplace Backyard Burgers in the list!

Finally, a poll for everyone! Let's say you could join any of today's rock or pop bands. Who would you choose? What would you do? My choice is Belle and Sebastian. I'd play flute and tambourine. Yes, I know that they already have members that do that... but this is a fantasy, remember? Please put your answer in the comments.