Wednesday, July 19, 2006

my voice

I don't really have my own voice. I have Douglas Adams'. The majority of my sayings tend to come from his books. I read the repeatedly at an early age and they are just a part of me. Lately I have been getting a lot of "Why are they buildign that Mommy?" questions from DS1. Constuction is booming in this area, we can't go anywhere without running into an excavator or dumptruck or shell of a building. There are only so many good factual answers to his question and after a bit just respond. "It's a Target. You've got to build Targets" which is from Hitchhiker's Guide "Its a bypass. You've got to build bypasses" I've also been known to stop an endless flood of questions by saying "42". The boys now realize Mommy has give them the Ultimate Answer & no more questions are necessary. I'll make comments about "having the sort of day that would make St Francis of Asissi kick babies.", refer to broken items as "the alleged *item*", answer complicated math questions with "A suffusion of yellow" and mention that "people are a problem".

I also quote old movies, like Clue - "So he says, but does he know?" and "but look what happened to the cook."

It's really amazing how often the opportunity to use things like that come up IRL. Not so much online. But one of the 'requirements' of my coven is that you have read everything by Douglas Adams or at the very least have watched lots of Monty Python. Not for religious reasons but so you can keep up with us when we start tossing around one liners & quoting things.

My own personal voice includes the work 'freaking' which is said in place of the less appropriate F word. I use a lot of contractions, drop final 'g's and have an accent in certain vowel sounds.

I don't tidy up my voice when I am writing very often. Usually just for clarity. Journaling is more thought than spoken word & there is a difference for me in those 2. I have a much larger mental vocabulary than spoken one and mentally my grammar is better. However my though process tends to ramble, whereas I am much more concise verbally. So often when I am journaling for a layout I will lean more toward my spoken voice than my mental voice. When I am journaling here I tend to stick with my mental voice - which should be obvious from the rambling nature of this post.