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Monday, February 2, 2015

I Hear Illiterate People.



Yesterday afternoon, Scotto and I absconded to the air-conditioned bedroom because it was one  of those fudging hideous 37 degree days with 80 per cent humidity. 


He watched one of his painful ‘Robot’ movies while I had a bit of a nana nap with the dogs. 

Scotto is one of the few thousand people in Australia who discovered a loophole and can access Netflix directly from the United States. It’s legal, even if it sounds dodgy.


The funniest part about the U.S. Netflix is we see their advertisements. They have to read out the warning leaflets every time they advertise medication. 

You might have a thirty second commercial for sinus tablets and the first ten seconds is about how the product works but the rest of it is: Warning, this medication may cause headaches, tingling in the extremities, dizziness, nausea, disorientation, confusion, sleep-walking, night terrors, seizures, paralysis, heart arrhythmia, stroke, aneurysm, cancer, death or adult acne. Please check with your doctor before taking.
I’d never take a fudging Panadol again if I had to listen to that all the time.

I hate robot movies. They’re so fudgingly, mind-numbingly boring. I can tolerate the odd alien and grit my teeth through yawn-inspiring zombies, but robots just have zero personalities, don't you agree? 

Yeah... Auto Whatever!


I couldn’t get to sleep though, so I lay with one eye open, ogling the screen suspiciously.

“That actress is copying Melanie Griffith,” I murmured.

“What?” grumbled Scotto.

“That actress is using the same silly, lispy, 
Marilyn Monroe-style baby talk, as Melanie Griffith does,” I said in disgust.

“It is Melanie Griffith,” said Scotto.

I looked closer and it bloody well was. Except it was the zombie version of Melanie Griffith; post a shite load of plastic surgery.

Now if I was Melanie Griffith I wouldn’t have spent all that money on my face before first seeking out the services of a speech coach. But that’s me. 

I make Scotto put the captions on for most movies we watch because I can’t understand a bloody word they say and I’m not just talking about movies from the U.S.

Australian television’s just as bad.

Some voices really annoy me. Teenagers lately have begun to pronounce i as in ‘pig’ as ‘pug’.

What the hell’s that about?

“I pucked up the thungs on the floor and put them in the bun.” they say as they flick their hair and sashay off to the pub.

Why are they doing it? Where does it come from? It’s not an Australian accent. Sometimes they even do it to an ‘a’ or an ‘e’.

“Thunks. I’ll see you later thun,” they mutter as they walk out the door staring at their iPhones.

No wonder they have so much trouble with their bloody spelling.

The other thing I’m going to be a cantankerous old bi-artch about is the use of adverbs. People keep leaving the ‘ly’ off their adverbs.

“I finished as quick as I could.” “He ran up the field real slow.” “People need to choose their words more careful.”

If I was having a conversation with a friend I wouldn’t even notice it but when it’s a journalist or a politician it makes me shake my head and sigh heavily… see what I did there?

Scotto yells at me in irritation every time I scream out “LY!! For fudge's sake! He played brilliant-LY …not fudging brilliant, you IDIOT!” when we’re listening to the sports on the telly.


Am I being a painful wanker or is the English language going down the tubes real quick?


Linking up with Jess at Essentially Jess for #IBOT!