The Extra U

i love british stuff. the pythons, the beatles, and screaming, "fucking hell!" in times of stress being just three examples of this (yeah. i know. veronica zemenova looks british but she's actually from russia or something so i chose to leave her out). i'm a bit of a freak over that british stuff. it amazes me that there's this whole other country on the other side of the world (or thereabouts, i live in los angeles and don't know a map from the front of my hand) that pretty much speaks the same language that we in the states do. like, if you were stranded in england and really had to use a bathroom you could ask pretty much anyone in the street where one was and they could tell you what you needed to know. you wouldn't have to point or do some lame ass charade-type dance or whatever. you could ask a simple question and get a simple answer and yet, it's an entire different country! how cool is that?

of course, in england they have different slang terms for things but the basics are pretty much the same. "geezuz! i really gotta take a leak!" wouldn't be all that hard for a native to understand.

they spell some things in ways other than our own as well. like "color" is spelled with an extra "u". it's spelled "colour" over there. lots of words have an extra "u". "neighbour" and "mould" are the only ones i can come up with off the top of my head.

given that our forefathers and mothers came from there (some of mine must have anyway. my last name is "armstrong" and i have been known to get a major league sunburn by sitting too close to a 25 watt light bulb) it seems as if we should be spelling things the same way that they do. well..to be honest we do spell things the same way that they do except for that extra "u" thing or, in our case a left out "u". i'm not going to mention the way that they spell "tire" as trying to remember it has given me enough of a headache already.

i guess at some point, maybe after the revolutionary war someone said, "alright! this stinking war's over! we beat those bastards bad and, just for good measure let's drop the letter "u" out of a whole bunch of words! that'll show 'em!".

everybody else said, "you betcher ass!", or whatever it was that people said back then and now we spell the word "colour" wrong.

really makes you think, don't it?

then again, i just smoked the scrapings out of my favorite pipe and there's a pretty good chance that i have no idea of what the hell i'm talking about.