Going to the Ci-Tay

In a couple of weeks, I'm having a long weekend in The City. I live near Boston, and when going there, it's generally understood that "I'm going to Town" means Boston. Likewise, when you tell anyone here you are going to "The City" they usually assume that you will be heading to New York City. However, if you say you are going to "Beantown" for Boston or "The Big Apple" for New York, natives to those areas will cringe.

As a native daughter of California, when I go back home, I go to "California". Here in New England, most people will greet this news with, "Oh, so you're going back to 'Cali'?" as I swallow back the bile that has surged up my gullet. Like two more syllables would kill you...Fuck! I assume that is the feeling that New Yorkers and Bostonians get when faced with "The Big Apple" and "Beantown", or how San Franciscans feel when their town is referred to as "Frisco" (which for the record, among Californians is "The City" while Los Angeles is far, wide, and no matter how you slice it, "LA"). It seems silly that these things should matter, but they all create a visceral response in natives. Curious. It seems that we all have insignificant things we need to cling to.

I'm also planning a trip to California this summer. I spoke with a friend of mine from "back home" who is a linguist and she says my accent is changing. It's clear that I need to recharge my Californian tongue. Not that there is anything wrong with the Boston accent, but on a lady, it just sounds low-brow and trashy. I am many things, but low-brow and trashy I ain't. So off I will travel to the Golden State where the letter "R" is a reality of language, intensifiers include "killer", "ripping", and "rad" not "wicked" and anyone can be called "dude" with a straight face (which for the record, makes me giggle on the inside). And so you don't misinterpret what I mean by a "California accent", I'm not talking about speaking Vally Girl. I don't speak in "likes" and "oh-my-gawd-Becky's". Anyhow, it will be nice to hear people speaking proper English not this railer colloquial New England spewing, but some fully kind local jargon from the west coast. (I'm bracing for the barrage from the Brits)

And speaking of "killer", the collective media is cumming all over themselves more than they have since September 11, 2001. Payday has arrived thanks to the unstable tendencies of an Oriental gunman in Virgina. The moral of the story, perhaps higher education is not always the best call. For that matter, perhaps leaving the house is ill advised. How long do you reckon we will have to hear interviews with people who are neighbors of someone who's child attended Virginia Tech and is alive and well, but we still have to see their hyperbolic emoting over people they don't actually know? Then there are all the other higher learning institutions across the country on high alert and camera crews ready in wait for the media glee of a chain reaction of catastrophic killings to unfold. Cynical? Perhaps.

Gads! Don't ever let me near a computer before I get coffee down the pipe.