pronounced WOO-BIN

In case you were wondering...

2008-11-22T17:05:00.002-05:00

....pronounced WOO-BIN has been turned into a recurring feature on the new Armagideon Time.

What is a man?

2008-10-31T16:15:00.003-04:00

I'm not the type of person who throws around the term "favorite" lightly. My interests are in a constant state of flux, and today's treasure could very well end up in the day after tommorow's discard pile.

There are a few constants, though, and if I was forced at knifepoint to pick a "favorite videogame of all time," the honor would go to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Even a decade after its release, the game's mix of classic 2D platform action/exploration and RPG elements can keep me captivated for hours at a stretch. Everytime Halloween season comes around, I set aside whatever overhyped next-gen title I'm playing at the moment and dedicate myself to some old-school monster whacking at its finest.

The game isn't entirely flawless, though. Konami did a lackluster job in localizing the title for English-speaking audiences, which is most painfully apparent in the voiceovers which accompany SOTN's big dramatic moments.

The worst of the lot occurs during the prologue mini-level, which recaps Richter Belmont's confrontation with Dracula at the end of Dracula X, the previous entry into the series. What was supposed to convey high drama and theological commentary, ended up sounding like outtakes from the worst LARP session ever.

With no small amount of goading from fellow Castlevania fan Chris Sims, I decided to deliver my own hyper-localization of the dialogue exchange in honor of Halloween.

Townsylvania!

About That Thing

2008-10-29T08:37:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the hiatus. AT's Halloween Countdown and the end of October "consolidays" have stretched me to the limit.

Tune in Friday for a special Halloween post.

Of Late I Think of Kilby Street

2008-10-22T12:00:00.001-04:00

Welcome to scenic Hammond Square!
I once got into an argument here with a hopelessly lost traveller. He thought it was smart to piss off the only guy out and about and willing to help him at two in the morning, and responded to each step of my directions back to the highway with a sarcastic comment. I eventually quit trying and sent him off on his merry way in the opposite direction he wanted to go. For all I know, he's still doing circles around Winchester Center like an automotive Flying Dutchman.

That stray thread of memory has nothing to do with today's topic, in which my old neighborhood gets some police blotter recognition.

Hammond Square! (Sorry about the rustling newspaper sounds and pops on the microphone. I was too preoccupied with thoughts of Fable 2 to manage even my modest standards of quality control.)

Do You Cay-ah?

2008-10-20T19:10:00.000-04:00

Missing Persons - Words
Featuring Dale Bozzio's unmistakable Medford accent.

Special Delivery

2008-10-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

The street is in my blood.

(Okay, it's actually gravel in my kneecaps, the legacy of a bad scooter wipeout on Beech Street in 1987.)

An Important Message!

(The source material.)

Resurrection Mary Sunshine

2008-10-15T00:00:00.007-04:00

When I was a sophomore in high school, I paid a visit to a book liquidation warehouse that briefly occupied a back corner of the East Woburn industrial park on Washington Street. Any hopes I had concerning stacks of beautiful and cheap books were quickly dashed upon stepping inside the place.

I'm hardly retail manager material, but even so I have to question the logic of renting a few thousand square feet of space for the purpose of shifting dozens of pallets of programming guides for the TI-99/4A and hundreds of copies of the 1968 edition of the Kelley Blue Book. I ended up leaving with just two remotely interesting items plucked from the dollar bin (though I've since regretted not picking up the coffee table book about The Spinners I saw there).

One of the books was an "encylopedia of modern wars" so unashamedly Anglocentric that it dedicated sixteen column inches to the Great Franco-Anglo Slapfight of August 17, 1662 while summarizing the American Civil War as "The North fought the South over slavery and the North won." The other book was the 1974 edition of The Hitchhiker's Field Manual, subtitled "The Complete Guide to Hassle-Free Thumb-Tripping in North America."

The title and publication date say it all -- the book is a handy source of freak-friendly information on thumbing it (which is to transporation what Russian Roulette is to gun safety) across Nixonian America, full of such nuggets of practical wisdom as "beware of rednecks with axe handles" and "don't try to bribe an Idaho state trooper with a dime bag."

The manual also features a detailed state-by-state breakdown of hitcher-friendly and hitcher-adverse locales. (Berkeley = Good, Alabamba = Bad.) It was this cryptic passage from the entry covering Massachusetts that convinced me to purchase the book:

Freaks Beware!

It would be so nice

2008-10-13T18:44:00.002-04:00

I'm enjoying my holiday weekend. You should, too.

I'll be back on Wednesday with cautionary information for the freaks of thirty-five years ago.

We're all fine here now, thank you.

2008-10-10T16:30:00.000-04:00

When my brother was down in Albuquerque doing geological field work, he went to catch Star Wars at a local theater. The kid behind the ticket counter couldn't figure out what movie my brother wanted to see. Weird, huh?

Thanks to the indispensible audio wizardry of Kevin Church, we have two flavors of awesome to choose from today.

Classic Version

Retrologist Mix

Regarding Henry

2008-10-08T14:35:00.004-04:00

As a poet, philosopher, and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau had, and continues to have, a tremendous impact on well-off college kids who wish to dabble in the low-risk non-comformity game and grow unflattering facial hair. His works have inspired countless well-meaning souls to cast off the shackles of society and appreciate the simple pleasures of life -- such as Toyota Priuses, Whole Foods-brand hummus, and comfortable Birkenstocks.

On weekends, his many of his acolytes can be found puttering around the shores of Walden Pond in Concord, two towns over from Woburn. There they can engage in rapt contemplation of their spiritual father and connect with the natural beauty he so eloquently expounded upon...before driving back to their McMansions and luxury condominiums. (The fields and forests that used to occupy those spaces should have gotten better publicists, I suppose.)

Me? I'm more of an Albert Camus guy, if you hadn't already guessed. Apart from the flicker of kinship I feel for a fellow local with a penchant for hyper-wordiness, I've never understood the allure of Thoreau's work, none of which manages to exceed the profundity of his sublime deathbead pronouncement, "Moose. Indian."

However mean your life is...

Spoken like a true overprivileged armchair philosopher....

Divided by a Common Language

2008-10-06T00:00:00.001-04:00

It sounds perfectly clear to me, so the problem must reside with you rhotic-dependent types.

Mail order malaise!

Keeping the Faith

2008-10-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

I've recently begun to have second thoughts about the stated purpose of pronounced WOO-BIN. While there is a certain nobility to recording and presenting a slowly vanishing accent for posterity, I have the nagging feeling I ought to be doing more. Instead of taking notes as a historic indicator of regional identity fades into the long night, perhaps I should take a more proactive stance.

Perhaps I should move from passive archivism to active evangelism. It would be a Sisyphean task, to be sure. I harbor no illusions about its chance of success, yet if it holds back the rhotic tide of accent-neutral blandness for a few extra moments it would be victory enough.

All I require is a suitable vector for my plans, and I believe I have found it -- the audiobook format. What better way to proselytise than under the guise of passive entertainment? And what better way to reach a massive audience than by taking advantage of the huge market for quasi-softcore vampire fiction?

I am fortunate to have connections in the scene. The renowned Christopher J. Sims, whose Solomon Stone series is easily the gold standard of the vampire-fiction-written-by-comics-blogger subgenre (not that his competitors have set a high bar in that regard), courteously granted me permission to use an excerpt from his magnum opus for my test run.

Stone Me Deadly

-------------------

On a less megalomaniacal front, pal Thirdmate of the HMS Impossible has started up The Old Swampers' Almanac, a new blog dedicated to the lore and custom of the wild, wooly, and oh-so-historic South Coast of Massachusetts. Check it out.

None But the Bright and Shining Moon Can Say

2008-10-01T00:00:00.001-04:00

October has begun, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better place to enjoy the spooky season than New England. We've got the foliage, we've got centuries old churches and cemeteries, and we've got the willingness to capitalize upon a historical horror brought about by pettiness and superstition!

Y'know, I'd take the spooky set's arguments about showing the proper respect to the victims of the witch trials more seriously if these same people weren't flocking to Salem to open souvenir stands and mystical boutiques aimed at dunning wads of cash from eager tourists.

Blessed be the revenue stream!

In any case, here's another macabre marketing pitch that is much nearer and dearer to my heart...

Good Evening!

Ye Olde Standby

2008-09-29T00:00:00.001-04:00

It had to happen eventually, and present circumstances being what they are, it might as well be now.

The Classics

Train in Vain

2008-09-26T00:00:00.008-04:00

Something important was lost when the MBTA got new trains for for the Red Line. While the robo-announcer's voice is always chipper and intelligible and courtesously reminds you to remember your belongings when exiting the car, I miss the personal touch that a real, weary human voice (amplified by the tinny PA system) provided.

Consider this my tribute to the world that was.

All aboard!

(My wife claims that the automated turnstile didn't double charge her Charlie Card during her last inbound trip from Quincy Center, so my info may be out of date. The last time I rode south of the Dot, it was to have a root canal procedure done, and the less I think back on that experience, the better.)

Threat or Menace?

2008-09-24T00:00:00.003-04:00

If you follow my other blog on a regular basis, you might have noticed that I tend to make a lot of references, directly or indirectly, to comic books. With pronounced WOO-BIN, my intentions were to adhere to a clearly defined focus -- regional matters, provincial observations, and, of course, my occasionally impenetrable Boston accent -- instead of the stream of consciousness meanderings that characterize Armagideon Time.

Comics, an easy fallback topic and frequent crutch, were not to be featured here unless they were specifically germane to the subject at hand...such as fulfilling a request by one Michael Sterling of Ventura County, California. "Mikester" asked to hear my dulcet tones applied to the opening captions of 1990's Spider-Man #1, the Todd McFarlane production that proved that being a fan-favorite artist is no substitution for actual writing skills.

Comics fans being comics fans, however, the comic sold a shitload of copies and played no small part in instigating the "hot" artist-driven boom (and catastrophic bust) cycle of the 1990s comics market. "ADVANTAGEOUS," indeed.

So here you go, my dramatic recitation of Todd McFarlane's unforgettable contribution to literature....

Advantageous!

...and if my slapdash effort fails to sate your appetite, here's a Kevin Church remix that oozes with the kind of ambiance that you just don't get with a Karaoke Revolution pack-in USB headset and a freeware audio editing program.

Advantageous Remix!

Kevin also put his unparalled talents to use in whipping up this rave-tastic repurposing of my inaugural audio sample.

Gee Scarlett (Remix)

I couldn't ask for better internet friends.

Waxing Poetic

2008-09-22T00:00:00.003-04:00

The Bay State has a rich poetic tradition, from Anne Bradstreet and Phyllis Wheatley to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Emily Dickinson to Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath.

All are wonderful in their individual ways, but there is one piece of verse concerning this fabled region that stands above all others. It speaks to my soul as few works are able to, perfectly capturing a the essence of a place both geographically and spiritually familiar to me.

Here's an excerpt...

Modern Poetry

...though it pales in comparison to the complete genuine article that no person of culture should be without.

Proppah Parenting

2008-09-19T00:00:00.003-04:00

While the rest of the country might claim that we Bay Staters are culturally out of step with Good Ol' American Values^TM, the following recitation, taken from an item in the September 17 edition of the Daily Times Chronicle, reveals that we are less removed from the mainstream than certain parties would have you believe.

The Importance of Family Values

Notes: Nahant is a beachfront community in Essex County, approximately ten miles east of Woburn.

Hart ( or "Haht") Street runs parallel to the Middlesex Canal between Hammond Square (my old stomping grounds) and Central Square.

Non-rhotic Geography

2008-09-17T00:00:00.001-04:00

The lion's share of local news personalities, with the exception of sportscasters or muckraking political commentators looking to maintain a populist veneer, adopt at least some form of the (depressingly bland) General American accent. R's roll off their tongues with practiced ease and their use of glottal stops and low vowels has been willfully suppressed.

Blood will tell, however, and what has been bred in the Bay State will come out whenever city and town names need be enunciated. It's the easiest way to tell the natives from the out-of-towners, as the former can't help pronouncing "Worcester" as "WOOS-TAH" and the latter strain mightily to keep from saying "WUR-CEST-ER." It's a trivial thing even among my list of petty irritations, but whenever I hear local place names rendered in accent-neutral Nebraskanese, I get a sensation similar to the feeling you get when you bite down on a piece of tinfoil.

"Woe-burn," my ass.

As a modest way of remedying the problem, I present this brief lesson in geographical pronunciation. Newscasters take note.

"Heading out from Boston, you will find Somerville, Revere, Everett, and Medford."

"Gloucester, Danvers, and Peabody are on the North Shore."

"Down on the South Coast, you can visit Dartmouth, New Bedford, and Fall River." (It's also where Comrade Thirdmate is currently berthed.)

"In the northwestern suburbs, one can find Billerica, Haverhill, Winchester, and most importantly, Woburn."

The Wikkid Truth

2008-09-14T14:00:00.004-04:00

If you have been following my other ongoing project for any length of time, you've probably noticed that I have a strong sense of regional pride -- for Massachusetts, for Boston, and especially for Woburn, the middle-ring suburb that sits ten miles northwest of the Hub, astride the interchange between I-93 and I-95.

My pride isn't a matter of blind parochial chauvinism born of sports rivalries and narrow-focus bias. I'm well aware of the faults and follies of the region and its residents, but despite the occasional (okay, frequent) bouts of teeth-gnashing and directed torrents of profanity, I find those idiosyncracies to be part of the total endearing package. We're an impatient breed of inveterate complainers who stick it out today for the sake of finding something else to complain about tomorrow. Taxes, bad roads, local politics, the fortunes of the various home teams -- we are spoiled with objects of potential ire.

Yet despite the inferiority complexes and grousing, I wouldn't leave this place if you paid me. I'll take a nonsensical tangle of streets based on 17th century cowpaths or a treacherous rotary over a neatly laid out road grid any day. We don't need logic or transparency. We've got character born of nearly four centuries of history.

...and that brings us to the subject of the Boston accent, oft imitated (and mocked) by outsiders, but rarely duplicated successfully by the same. Rooted in Colonial Era English and filtered through the various immigrant groups (especially the Irish) that settled in the area, it is more than just a broad impersonation of Kennedy-speak (and honestly, only the Kennedys talk that way) or a vaguely Brooklynese patois featuring dropped r's and liberal use of "wikkid." It is a creature unto itself, my native tongue, and the most obvious manifestation (next to aggressive driving habits) of our shared sense of regional identity.

Which is why it pains me when I hear my nieces and nephews speak in the generic accent of Nickelodeon sitcom characters. Within the space of a generation, the global media village has made massive in-roads in panel-beating regional speech patterns into flat neutrality. While previous incursions by exotic dialects into the region, like the 80's "val-speak" fad, have been handily assimilated into the local accent ("Oh my Gawd, he bahfed in the back of my cah!"), this new strain, aided by the decline of regionally-based media, has been steadily supplanting the native one.

"Are you cutting keer-its?" Maura's nice asked her recently. "No, I'm cutting kah-its," was Maura's reply.

I accept that one man swinging a rusty sword will not hold back the incursion. What I can do is present to you, my dear readers, a sampling of audio clips spotlighting the glories of the Boston accent as applied to a variety of material, and offer it to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So feel free to email me any requests for things that you wish to hear rendered in the language of bean and cod.

Our inaugural clip comes courtesy of a suggestion by a Mr. Christopher Sims of South Carolina, whose unhealthy fascination with (and hysterical laughter over) my pronuciation of "Star Wars" livened up many an XBL multiplayer session and was the true inspiration for this project. The context behind the choice of material can be found here.

Gee, Scarlet!

Short, sweet, and right to the point. See you on Wednesday!