Manager: Tyson tore ligament in knee in first round of loss

From sfgate.com:

(07-31) 09:53 PDT LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) --

Mike Tyson tore a ligament in his left knee in the first round of his shocking knockout loss to Danny Williams, his manager said Saturday.

Shelly Finkel said an MRI showed a complex tear of the lateral meniscus, and that Tyson couldn't even walk on the leg Saturday. He said Tyson's ex-wife Monica, who is a doctor, read the results.

"That's why he couldn't throw the right hand the rest of the fight," Finkel said. "I was screaming at him to throw it, but he couldn't."

Tyson was dominating the first round, rocking Williams with shots to the head, but late in the round motioned toward his knee and grimaced. Finkel said Tyson refused to make an excuse and wanted to continue fighting.

Williams ended up knocking Tyson out with a series of punches in the fourth round that left Tyson sprawled on the canvas. Tyson appeared as if he could get up and continue, but made little attempt to get up.

"In retrospect I wish he had said something and said he couldn't continue," Finkel said.

After the fight, Tyson's trainer, Freddie Roach credited Williams with fighting a good fight, but said Tyson was hampered by the injury.

"It's kind of hard to pivot and throw some shots without your left knee," Roach said. "But Danny Williams surprised a lot of us."

Finkel said Tyson was downcast after the fight, and that it would take some time to decide when -- or whether -- to resume his career. The fight with Williams was to be the first in a series of comeback fights to help Tyson pay off $38 million in debt.

Tyson earned some $8 million Friday night, but would keep only $2 million of that if a bankruptcy reorganization plan is approved. That plan, however, was contingent on Tyson fighting seven times in the next three years, which now appears unlikely.

"We'll have to see how emotionally he's hurt from this as opposed to physically," Finkel said. "We need some time to tell."

Promoter Bob Arum, who had planned to offer Tyson a four-fight deal worth some $100 million if he looked good, said that deal was now off the table.

For Tyson to continue, Arum said, he would have to fight for a few hundred thousand dollars a fight to build his record back up before becoming a contender again.

"Certainly it's a different Mike Tyson than there was in our estimation last night," Arum said. "If he's going to continue in the ring it's got to be done on a completely different basis. He's got to fight C and D fighters and build his confidence. You can't put him in with legitimate heavyweights."

Tyson's fight drew a crowd of 17,253 to Freedom Hall, most thinking they would see an early knockout of Williams, whose biggest claim to fame was that he was the former British heavyweight champion.

But, after a shaky first round, Williams fought back and turned the tide late in the third round as Tyson appeared to tire. The fight was a free-for-all, but Williams was stronger and fresher and landed a series of unanswered punches in the fourth round before Tyson went down and the fight was stopped at 2:51 of the round.

"The main thing was to get past the first two rounds and give it to him," Williams said. "I knew he would tire and he did. I just kept punching and punching."

-TIM DAHLBERG, AP Boxing Writer

  ¶ 12:51 PM

  Danny Williams knocked out Mike Tyson in round four of a heavyweight fight in Louisville

From sportinglife.com:

Danny Williams knocked out Mike Tyson in round four of a heavyweight fight in Louisville.

Danny Williams was first into the ring for his clash with Mike Tyson at Louisville's Freedom Hall.

There were no obvious signs of nerves on the face of Williams who warmed up while his opponent was introduced.

Tyson was given a rapturous welcome by a near sell-out 17,000 crowd and prowled about in his trademark all-black shorts as announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr made the introductions.

Williams' immediate goal was to avoid a fast first round exit - a fate which had befallen almost half of Tyson's previous 50 victims including the last - Clifford Etienne - who hung around for 49 seconds last year.

Williams threw first with a left that missed and was unfazed when Tyson bullied him back into a corner to trade.

The underdog managed to land a good right-hand before getting out of danger and attempting to get to the centre of the ring.

But Tyson landed a crashing four-punch combination which ended with a left hook which wobbled Williams.

The Briton did brilliantly to hold on under more Tyson pressure with Tyson almost entirely reliant on crashing left uppercuts.

Williams wobbled his way back to the corner at the end of the first round but he had already exceeded many expectations.

That was not enough for Williams who went on the attack early in the second and landed a superb straight left which briefly stopped Tyson in his tracks.

As the crowd roared their approval Williams then came off equal again following a frantic exchange with his back against the corner post.

  ¶ 10:42 PM

  I've finished writing the outline for HAUNTED. I'm typing it in now. I'll refine it, and next week, I should start bothering agents. I'm taking my time because I feel like I want to rush things, which could be bad.

Sometimes, I get a bit of spam at the ole' Yahoo account that makes me laugh so hard that I want to click the link inside. But I don't. And don't you ever click their links either! But I will share the text.

No reason to be in a clear ice cream or goose. Lakeisha is dumb it could fly up in the air and hit your nose.

That is neat we could try around a silver bottle of JD or maybe a donkey but hey, stray bullets can kill. Dachshund: Half a dog high by a dog and a half longCara saved me from in a plasticy bread or a doggy you can fall over. No occifer, I'm not under the akafluence of incoholRound and round she goes for a elbow or also swordfish dont let it hit your shnoz. Abiade is going insane and you can shove that. This guy was spotted near a cart or a dog ok silly?.Working hard is like around a stack of books it could fly up in the air and hit your nose. Virgil is sweet it could tip you.

A man was seen seeking a blue rat or else. Its up to Bunny but I bet they near a canine or ok maybe a black olive. Science does not remove the terror of the gods Of all the things around a cucumber you find yourself back at the start again. 95% of all statistics are nonsense

I heard you were around a sandwich or also cigar kinda like when you find a soda. I do not think you will accept my help, as I'm waiting to kill youSleeping around is not unlike in a tuna or ok maybe a kicked open door heh.. Go figure. Become a programmer and never see the world!Heard from Andy that you were seen seeking a soft pot to piss in and you can take that to the bank. Andy is not all there it can bounce back and kill you. I saw you in a rockhard yard.This is good maybe we could try in a beercan. While submerged I saw you on top of a chicken fingers.Paul saved me from around a flower or bowl. I saw you somewhere near a fishsticks ok silly?. Nadine is out of their mind or whatever. Heard from Tamara that you were seen around a plastic bag or also bridge and dont stand too close. Tamara is headin the wrong way and you can shove that. A friend (Sabrina) told me you were beside a salsa or a steps in addition I like rack mount systems and carrots and also computer's.A guy was spotted seeking a blue guitar. I th in k my Har d dis k is Fr agm ent ed ! ! If your underwater in a spacey carton or just a hand.This is cool we could try seeking a napkin. Fletcher was seen somewhere near a spotted place to put it. Network management is like trying to herd cats.

Heard from Ralph that you were seen seeking a cheese you find yourself back at the begining again. I am free of prejudices. I hate everyone equallyA salsa was spotted for a lettuce or cap but alas drink are better. Guns don't kill. Fast-moving projectiles do.

Well, I'm amazed. This spammer could work for the New York Post.

  ¶ 6:57 PM

  Seasons Wilted
http://www.seasonswilted.com

Seasons Wilted, an online zine, has published my short story, "The Homosexual Card Game: A Review of the June 11th Horse Junkies Show."

Seasons Wilted focuses on movies and music and have interviews and contests. Check them out, and while you're there, read my story. You'll never guess what it's about. Here's a direct link to the story:

"The Homosexual Card Game: A Review of the June 11th Horse Junkies Show"

  ¶ 11:23 PM

  “If life be but a dream, better dread the waking,” - The Gump.

The next TRANSFORMERS movie will be live action. There's just something inherently wrong with that. It will be produced by Steven Spielberg, and he plans to shape the story. I don't know if that's wrong yet. If he can reconnect with the Spielberg of The Goonies and E.T. (the untinkered version), then this could be good, or at least, not so bad.

I love the TRANSFORMERS. My favorite toy growing up was Optimus Prime. My toy did not survive my growing up. I would love to have another one. If anybody out there has one, contact me.

You know that part in that old movie where that dude goes, "Rosebud. Rusebud." I'll be going, "Optimus. Optiums."

I am looking forward to senility.

  ¶ 1:01 PM

  Somebody out there has tried to send me the My Doom virus. Shame on you Windows user. Who ever sent it used Outlook Express 6. Update your anti-virus software and take care of your problems people.

  ¶ 1:35 PM

  Well, I've finished a list of agents to bother for HAUNTED. I'm currently working on an outline to send with queries. I hate doing outlines. I never do one before I write anything. Oh well.

Later today the Democratic Convention begins. Oh joy. I'm sure we'll get hours upon hours of useless speculation. But then again, when the Republican Convention begins, we'll get hours and hours of terrifying speculation. Terrifying in sense that Dumb-dee-dumb-dumb Bush might get reelected.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee. Fool me once... shame one me... Fool me twice... we won't get fooled again," - George W. Bush

  ¶ 1:20 AM

  Telegraph | News | Jerry Goldsmith Dies at 75

From telegraph.co.uk:

Jerry Goldsmith, who died on Wednesday aged 75, was one of the most prolific and versatile composers for Hollywood films and television shows; his 300 or so scores, which ranged from films such as Chinatown, Patton, Planet of the Apes and Basic Instinct and programmes from Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, The Man from UNCLE, Dr Kildare and The Waltons to Star Trek: Voyager, brought him 17 Academy Award nominations.

Goldsmith was particularly adept at dissonant music for action, horror and science fiction pictures, but his flexibility made him equally capable with romances, comedies and mainstream dramas. He won only one Academy Award - for his menacing score for The Omen in 1974, and in particular the song Ave Satani - but his work has been a regular fixture of the awards; his Fanfare for Oscar has been used at every ceremony since 1998.

Jerrald Goldsmith was born on February 10 1929 in Los Angeles. His father, Morris, was a violinist and his mother Tessy played the piano, which young Jerry took up at the age of six.

He was not, however, of an academic bent, and when he was nine, his father removed him from school and hired tutors to educate him at home. Jerry went to several of the best music teachers in Los Angeles, including Jakob Gimpel for piano and the composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco for lessons in theory and counterpoint, and practised five hours a day.

He had intended to study for a career in classical music, but after seeing Hitchcock's Spellbound, Jerry was so impressed by Miklos Rozsa's score that he enrolled in his classes in film composition at the University of Southern California. Goldsmith also attended Los Angeles City College, though he did not take a degree.

In 1950, he joined the music department of CBS as a clerk, but was soon given a chance to compose, writing one score each week for the radio programmes Romance and CBS Radio Workshop. He soon moved into television work, producing music for Hallmark Television Playhouse (1951) and General Electric Theatre (1953) before scoring the Westerns Gunsmoke (1955), Have Gun Will Travel (1957) and Wagon Train (1957).

That year, he produced his first credited score for a cinema release, the Western Black Patch, though his debut for the big screen had, unacknowledged, come with the score for Marilyn Monroe's 1952 film Don't Bother to Knock.

In 1960, Goldsmith was hired by the composer Alfred Newman to provide scores for television thrillers at Revue Studios and, two years later, he wrote the cinema score for Lonely Are the Dead, an unusual Western starring Kirk Douglas. The same year, Goldsmith also received his first Oscar nomination for John Huston's Freud, in which Montgomery Clift played the psychiatrist.

Thereafter, Goldsmith was in demand in Hollywood, and produced an average of six scores a year during the next decade; of them, he received Oscar nominations for A Patch of Blue (1965), with Elizabeth Hartman and Sidney Poitier; The Sand Pebbles (1966), with Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough and Candice Bergen; and Planet of the Apes (1968). For the last, Goldsmith insisted on wearing a monkey mask while working on the music, and emphasised the other-worldly aspect of the plot by getting the brass players to dispense with the mouthpieces on their instruments, and by asking the bass clarinettist to play his part without blowing the notes, leaving only the clicking of his fingers.

It was typical of the experimental techniques which Goldsmith was to use on subsequent pictures. Steel mixing bowls, glass rods, bells submerged in water and a 15ft-long percussion device known as a blaster beam were all dragged into service in his work, and during the early 1970s he was amongst the first composers to explore the use of the synthesiser - though he always retained the ability to write for large orchestras.

Planet of the Apes was the first of his collaborations with the director Franklin Schaffner, with whom he later worked on Patton, in which George C Scott played the general; Papillon, an account of Henri Charriere's prison experiences, with McQueen and Dustin Hoffman; and The Boys from Brazil, a preposterous thriller about an attempt to clone Hitler, starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier.

In 1974, his haunting music for Roman Polanski's Chinatown - in which many of the most dramatic moments were economically accompanied by bass piano chords - won him another Oscar nomination, as did his music for John Milius's Wind and the Lion the following year. After The Omen and Logan's Run (both 1976), Goldsmith was practically never out of work. In 1979 he wrote the score for Alien, Ridley Scott's first-rate science fiction movie (memorably summarised as "Jaws - in space") and also began working on Star Trek, producing the music for the first of the films based on the television series. He wrote four more, and won an Emmy for his theme for the television series Star Trek: Voyager in 1995.

In the 1980s, he wrote music for more than 40 films, of which the most distinguished were Poltergeist; Twilight Zone: The Movie; Gremlins; Legend; Under Fire and Lionheart; he also turned out the scores for the Rambo films. During the 1990s he was more industrious, producing the soundtracks to The Russia House and Total Recall (both 1990); Not Without My Daughter and Sleeping with the Enemy (both 1991); the absurd but amazingly popular thriller Basic Instinct (1992); Malice and the thoughtful adaptation of John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation (both 1993); First Knight (1995); the highly-regarded film noir LA Confidential (1997); the high-octane Harrison Ford vehicle Air Force One (1997) and the successful CGI romp The Mummy (1999), among some 50 or so scores.

Goldsmith also wrote a cantata, Christus Apollo, with words by the science fiction novelist Ray Bradbury, and was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Fireworks: A Celebration of Los Angeles (1999). He was often a guest composer with notable orchestras. He lectured at UCLA's Music Department and adapted three ballets from his music: Othello (1971), now in the repertoire of the National Ballet of Australia; A Patch of Blue (for San Francisco Ballet, 1970) and Capricorn One (for BalletMet, Colombus, Ohio, 1989).

He received seven Emmys for his television work and had more than 200 recordings to his name. He received numerous honours and his manuscripts were donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Jerry Goldsmith married, first, the singer Sharon Hennigan, with whom he had three daughters and a son, Joel, also a film composer. He married, secondly, the lyricist Carol Sheinkopf, by whom he had a son.

I have several soundtracks by Jerry Goldsmith. I love his work, especially the (in)famous LEGEND soundtrack.

  ¶ 8:18 PM

  I've begun a list of agents for HAUNTED. Things are about to get very interesting. I still haven't decided if I'm going to fix DEAD LOVE next. I really didn't want to touch it unless I had something new to offer it. Well, I do. For some reason, I thought it'd be harder to have that something new. But nope, that was the easy part.

From Distrowatch.com:

It's no secret that many of the security holes in Windows are a direct result of Microsoft's decision to co-mingle Internet Explorer's code base with that of the operating system. This is the very opposite of the traditional modular approach of Unix programming. The deeper you integrate a program into the operating system, the likelier that a programming bug will have far-reaching ramifications that no one foresaw. It also means that fixing one simple bug could trigger a whole new slew of bugs. Thus when a security exploit is discovered in Internet Explorer, Microsoft's programmers (who by all accounts are actually quite good at their job) are forced to spend a huge amount of time testing to make sure that their patch won't create a worse problem than it solves.

In view of the above, one would expect that Microsoft would be expending an effort to make Internet Explorer more modular, but according to this story published at OSNews, the exact opposite seems to be taking place. The author, Roberto J. Dohnert, participated in an online chat with the Internet Explorer development team, and was told that IE would be integrated even more tightly into future versions of Windows. This is, no doubt, great news for developers of anti-virus software and computer security consultants. Indeed, one can almost hear the champagne bottles being uncorked at the corporate headquarters of major anti-virus vendors. As someone once said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

However, Mr. Dohnert took his arguement one step further and suggested that IE's continuing security problems might lead to it being abandoned totally by users. Personally, I doubt that. I have many Windows-using friends who have suffered repeated virus attacks - their email address books have been hijacked, their machine was made into a spam zombie, and their hard drive became a repository of warez, all without their knowledge. And what did they do about it when they finally discovered the problem? Nothing. As long as they can boot, surf the web and send an email to grandma, everything is fine. Downloading and installing a security patch is just too much trouble.

I would have said "As long as they can boot, surf the web, and look at porn, everything is fine." But is this true Windows people? Are you really like this? Silly, silly Windows people.

Condoms are free at the health department. Here: www.grisoft.com

  ¶ 1:08 PM

  I finished making changes to HAUNTED: THE SECRET OF THE HANGED MAN last night. It is time to move on to the next step.

What is the next step? Well, mostly you sit around not really knowing what to do and second guessing every single word you wrote down and... wait, that's not it. The next step is writing agents and publishers. I'll be doing both... and a probably a little to great deal of the not knowning and second guessing as well. But this is the business. I'm looking less forward to having to go to the post office a lot more than the potiental rejection letters.

I haven't made up my mind on what I'm going to be doing next writing wise. I may fix DEAD LOVE, the other novel, the one that came before HAUNTED. I know I'l probably write a few short stories that have been backing up in my head. There's also the script to WT For Short that needs to be edited, and the other novel that I am writing. There is a lot to be done. This is why I need a clone or some kind of monkey that can type and do Southern dialog.


  ¶ 4:55 PM

  Why is the ocean blue? It's because fish pee is blue.

I just finished making changes to Chapter 9 of HAUNTED. Tomorrow -- which is later today, Sunday --, I hope to get Chapter 10 out of the way. Then edit the Prologue and Epilogue. Then HAUNTED will be ready to share.

I keep typing Epilogue and then Prologue. That was the order they were written in. Strange.

This is the largest thing I've ever edited. Chapter 5 took the most time because I switched some things around. I've learned a lot and gained a lot more confidence. Nothing wrong with that.

Oh well. Tobe Hoopers's Lifeforce is on cable. Mitalda May awaits.


  ¶ 12:28 AM

  "A man can find his own folly and needs not the help of another fool." - me.


  ¶ 2:55 AM

  Who shot Nice Guy Eddie?


  ¶ 3:26 AM

  Rootkit Hunter
http://www.rootkit.nl/projects/rootkit_hunter.html

From the Rootkit Hunter FAQ:

1. Q: What is Rootkit Hunter?
A: It is an easy-to-use tool which checks machines running UNIX (clones) for the presence of rootkits and other unwanted tools.

2. Q: What are rootkits?
A: Most times (they) are selfhiding toolkits used by blackhats/crackers/scriptkiddies to avoid the eye of the sysadmin.

And it works on Linux and Mac! How cool is that? Windows folk... I'm not sure what you should do. Rootkits are all over the place and are easy to install. I searched around on Google for a moment. I'm probably not using the right keywords, but most of what I found were "how-to's" and articles warning of window rootkits. The only thing I could find that might help windows people is this:

http://www.rootkit.com/project.php?id=20

It's better than nothing.

  ¶ 2:27 AM

  ABC 33/40 E-WARN: SVRBHM From ABC 33/40 E-Warn:
WUUS54 KBMX 122106
SVRBHM
ALC127-122130-

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BIRMINGHAM AL
406 PM CDT MON JUL 12 2004

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BIRMINGHAM HAS ISSUED A

* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...
NORTHEASTERN WALKER COUNTY IN ALABAMA

* UNTIL 430 PM CDT

* AT 406 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING NICKEL SIZE HAIL...AND
DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED 13
MILES NORTHWEST OF SUMITON...OR ABOUT 8 MILES NORTHEAST OF
JASPER...AND MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 15 MPH.

* THE SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WILL BE NEAR...
SUMITON AND 6 MILES NORTH OF DORA BY 430 PM CDT

LARGE HAIL...EXCESSIVE LIGHTNING...AND DAMAGING WINDS ARE LIKELY.
TAKE COVER IN A STURDY SHELTER UNTIL THE STORM PASSES.

CALL 1-800-856-0758 TO REPORT SEVERE WEATHER.

LAT...LON 3403 8712 3393 8730 3369 8714 3381 8692

$$



WWWW

E-Warn is a free public service from the ABC 33/40 Weather Center
and Pizza Hut. Order from Pizza Hut online anytime:
http://www.pizzahut.com

To sign up for other ABC 33/40 E-Warn products, or to unsubscribe, go here:
http://www.jamesspann.com/ewarnmain.html




  ¶ 4:13 PM

  ABC 33/40 E-WARN: SVRBHM From ABC 33/40 E-Warn:
WUUS54 KBMX 122043
SVRBHM
ALC127-122100-

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BIRMINGHAM AL
342 PM CDT MON JUL 12 2004

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BIRMINGHAM HAS ISSUED A

* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...
NORTHEASTERN WALKER COUNTY IN ALABAMA

* UNTIL 400 PM CDT

* AT 342 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING NICKEL SIZE HAIL...AND
DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR
CURRY...OR ABOUT 11 MILES NORTHEAST OF JASPER...AND MOVING
SOUTHEAST AROUND 15 MPH.

* THE SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WILL BE NEAR...
8 MILES NORTH OF SIPSEY BY 400 PM CDT

LARGE HAIL...EXCESSIVE LIGHTNING...AND DAMAGING WINDS ARE LIKELY.
TAKE COVER IN A STURDY SHELTER UNTIL THE STORM PASSES.

CALL 1-800-856-0758 TO REPORT SEVERE WEATHER.

LAT...LON 3400 8728 3399 8727 3400 8717 3400 8711
3394 8711 3392 8709 3389 8710 3388 8700
3380 8711 3398 8731

$$



WWWW

E-Warn is a free public service from the ABC 33/40 Weather Center
and Pizza Hut. Order from Pizza Hut online anytime:
http://www.pizzahut.com

To sign up for other ABC 33/40 E-Warn products, or to unsubscribe, go here:
http://www.jamesspann.com/ewarnmain.html




  ¶ 3:50 PM

  Celtic Influence on Southern Talk

I've decided to research a small bit of language, more precise, Southern Talk. Yes, the Celtic influenced the way people in the South talk. And I say “talk” instead of “speech” or “speak” because the Celts would use “talk.”

Let's briefly touch on some Old English and Celtic merging. The English language borrows from many languages. I learned today that the English word “cross” comes from the Celtic “crois.” And I mean cross as in symbol, not to mark something out. Old English borrowed three types of words from the Celtics, words associated with conflict and battle, loans taken over after settlements which usually meant place names, and words associated with Christianisation, “crois” for example.

America... yeah, us over here on a bigger island. There were a lot of immigrants coming to America from Europe. Most Irish-Scottish people arrived as indentured servants. That includes my family a long, long time ago. I believe the European aspects of my family were Irish and Black Dutch who married into the Creek Nation. But who doesn't have a little Irish and Native American in them these days?

The French had a good bit of land in American before 1763. They gave up their rites in the Treaty of Paris. This freed up the Appalachian lands. And when the Irish-Scottish people finished their indentured servitude, the found most lands too expensive to buy. The Appalachian lands, now open to America, was cheap. The Irish-Scottish moved right in with the Native Americans there. With them, the Irish-Scottish people brought their music and language, both of Celtic origin. Their music would become Country Music in America, which is popular and celebrated. Their language, however, is not all that well respected and often looked down upon as being ignorant or white trash.

The Appalachian lands run from Maine to Georgia. And there are parts of it that touch Northern Alabama. While I live near the middle of Alabama, some of the language has clearly made its way to me.

Before, I mentioned the use of “talk” over “speak” or “speech.” Another example, and a popular phrase down here, is “a fixing to.”

From Lorien Hightale's article “Celtic Influences on Appalachian Speech”:

“How about "a-fixing"? It turns out this isn't a simple matter of an accent. In Gaelic, sentences like this one (the "present progressive") are constructed with a particle ag and a form of the verb known as the verbal noun. Ag is almost always pronounced as just `uh' (the "schwa" sound). From this we get phrases like "a-going" (ag dul). Furthermore, this is a common way of expressing the simple present tense in Gaelic. So, "I am wanting" is very much a Gaelic, and Southern Appalachian, way to say "I want." Why "I'm a-fixing" instead of "I'm a going"? Because in Gaelic, intention to do something is expressed with the word dean, which means "to do," "to make," or sometimes, "to fix."”

I use “I'm a going” all the time. Most people here do as well.

Also from Lorien Hightale:

“"That's the guy what was walking down the street."

In Gaelic, there is one relative particle, a, which does not distinguish between "who," "what," and "which."

"Myself and John are going."

The word féin, though often translated as "self", is used much more broadly in Gaelic than in many dialects of English.

"Tis I who saw ..."

The relative construction is commonly used in Gaelic to vary sentence order, giving Is mise a chonaic ... rather than Chonaic mé

"in your face"

This idiom happens to literally translate the Scots Gaelic nad aghaidh.

"He kisses on me," and "She pets on the cat," rather than "kisses me" and "pets the cat".
In Gaelic, you put a kiss or a pet on something (cur pog ar).

In a similar vein, "He put the scare on them."

Emotions are almost always "on" a person in Gaelic (Tá bron orm translates literally to "I have sadness on me"), so it makes sense that someone put them there.

"Who with?" rather than "With whom?"

There is "no object version of interrogative pronouns" in Gaelic, and question words almost always begin sentences. So you just have to say "Who with?"

"There is not but one."

There is no world for "only" in Gaelic, and this idiom is the normal way of saying "There is only one."”

I've only briefly touched on Celtic influences on language in the Appalachian lands and the South. In fact, its something that I've only learned about a few days ago while searching the net for Celtic information. There is more to learn. And what I've found out has given me more to love about Southern language and dialect. After all, I “talk” it every day. And when I write, most of my characters are Southern and take full advantage of our language here. And I think they always will.


Sources:

A Short History of Appalachian Traditional Music by Debby McClatchy
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/appalach.htm

Celtic Influence on the English Language by Claire Lovis
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361Lovis.htm

Celtic Influences on Appalachian Speech by Lorin Hightale
http://www.leyline.org/cra/1999beltaine/app_language.html

  ¶ 7:22 PM

  "Have you seen her lips? It's like a Baboon's ass on her face," - Lois Griffin on Julia Roberts.

Where did Old Dora go? I've figured some things out. In the 70's, Bruno's came. Bruno became Food World. They didn't want to go to Old Dora and buy land. They bought cheap land two miles north-west of the place. Well, they needed a fire station in case they place went up. So they built that half way between Old Dora and Food World. You add in City Hall and new Police Station, you've got a shift in town focus. Businesses followed. Around that time a drive-in opened up in Sumiton, the town across the street. The theater in Old Dora couldn't compete with ultra-cheap prices. The theater closed down. The butcher's shop couldn't compete with Food World (then still known as Bruno's). It closed down. Soon the bank had to be moved. Alabama power needed a larger building. The Dora Ford Motor Company was now useless. Mining had quit around here. The Railroads tried to sell the Depot to the City. They turned it down. The Depot was torn down.

Now, there is one business left just on the edge of Old Dora, James' Lumber Company. And I think they came after the collapse of Old Dora.

Today I took another tour of Old Dora. What I was really searching for was the sewer system. Back in 1912 or so, a huge system was put in. The tunnels are six feet in diameter. They stretch all over Old Dora and there are plenty of legends of people hiding things down there. There certainly were enough robberies in the old days to support this.

Somewhere in the 80's, all but one entrance -- all that the city knew of -- to the sewers were sealed up. There is one still open. I know where it is today. I looked inside. Water, cool and clear, pours out of it. It is no longer used as a sewer. There is a new one for that, a much smaller system. Soon I hope, I want to go inside the sewer system. It goes all the way up to all the buildings of Old Dora. It may even come up and out at the Mission House, which is still standing and used to be a Church.

The old buildings. Some still stand. The Dora Ford building is collapsing on itself, more so than the last time I was in it. There's the Mission House, which people have saved. Then there's Carl's Furniture and Appliances store, which I remember being in as a child. Then there's the old Bank. The vault is supposed to still be inside because it was too large to move. And then there's the old Masonic Lodge building. It's still there. The doors are off and you can see the floor is almost completely gone. It's very small, but I've learned that there were two hallways to it, one that most folks never saw.

Here's where it gets interesting. The road loops around to the back of these buildings. There is still a power line running to one of them. There's even a meter that's running. Take a guess which building the line still runs to. The Masonic Lodge. The same building where if you step through the front door, you fall through the floor to somewhere below. Did I mention that the entrance to the old sewer system is not too far off from it? Did I mention that it's supposed to run right under it and toward the old Church?

I'm sure there's a lot more to all this. I hope to find out, too. There's something unsettling about Old Dora. Today, I looked again at where the old, clay tennis courts were, where the library sat, and where the old water works building is hidden behind a dozen trees. There are so many forgotten things.

If Old Dora moved because of Bruno's (Food World), the same is happening again. Wal-mart is just up the road. Wal-mart is killing Food World. Wal-mart is killing small businesses. Wal-mart kills. They entice you with jobs, but pay less and work you harder. The only good thing about them is that they'll hire anybody, which as a consumer, is a bad thing. I don't want to be left alone with most Wal-mart employees. Why would I like them around my underware and food?

I wonder in ten years what's going to happen to Dora. Are we moving again? I wonder if most towns drift. The sign that says Welcome to Dora on the South side is off by about twenty five feet. It's been moved North. I know this because it's supposed to line up with the road to Second Baptist. I used to cut the grass there as a child. Now, according to the sign, Second Baptist isn't in Dora anymore. According to my maps of Dora, Dora extends well past Second Baptist. Well, it did at one point, somewhere in the past.

  ¶ 3:01 PM

  A Matrix & Ghost in the Shell comparison

Want to know where The Matrix was stolen from? I'm not saying everything in The Matrix came from Ghost in the Shell. But when you look at scene comparisons, you can tell more than a handful of ideas were ripped off.

Ghost in the Shell was made about five years before The Matrix. And before that, Ghost in the Shell existed as a comic book.

  ¶ 2:23 AM

  Wednesday was not the best of days. There was a pretty big storm come through during the afternoon. I didn't know how bad things were until later. Power is out in places. Trees are down.

While over at a friend's house, I started thinking of Old Dora. Dora used to have a street lined with businesses and shops. Then something happened. Old Dora is pretty much shut down. There are a few houses, most falling inward, around the railroad track. There's only one track now. There used to be four.

Somewhere in the past, the town shifted north by a mile or so. The jail, city hall, and the fire department moved. The railroad station closed down. Maybe that was it. There was a lot of fires at the turn of the century, but every thing seemed to have been rebuilt. Even the high school, which was on the outskirts of Old Dora, moved north a mile. The school burned down in the '80's. I woke to watch it burn out my window. I live about 100 yards from where it sat.

Oh well. I'm sure a lot of towns have lots of weird things like this. Let's see. There was Salem and Amityville. And that place where that priest fell down those stairs. Lot's of towns.

  ¶ 1:00 AM

  ABC 33/40 E-WARN: SVRBHM From ABC 33/40 E-Warn:
WUUS54 KBMX 072147
SVRBHM
ALC127-072230-

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BIRMINGHAM AL
447 PM CDT WED JUL 7 2004

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN BIRMINGHAM HAS ISSUED A

* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...
WALKER COUNTY IN ALABAMA
THIS INCLUDES THE CITY OF CORDOVA

* UNTIL 530 PM CDT

* AT 445 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING NICKEL SIZE HAIL...AND
DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR
GOODSPRINGS...OR ABOUT 8 MILES SOUTHWEST OF CORDOVA...AND MOVING
EAST AT 20 MPH.

* OTHER LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO
PARRISH.

STRONG DAMAGING WIND...AND LARGE HAIL ARE LIKELY WITH THIS STORM.
TAKE COVER IN A STURDY SHELTER UNTIL THE STORM PASSES.

CALL 1-800-856-0758 TO REPORT SEVERE WEATHER.

LAT...LON 3373 8739 3361 8737 3362 8717 3379 8713

$$


WWWW

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  ¶ 4:53 PM

  Alf has a talk show.

  ¶ 1:01 AM

  I just saw a news report on MSNBC. There is no proof that over the counter cough medicine works. I feel so cheated. I had to swallow the most horrid stuff growing up. Now, I've learned it was for nothing. The stuff doesn't even help you sleep.

  ¶ 3:52 PM

  Finally, the long, strange weekend is over. It was strange and long.

John Kerry has picked John Edwards as his running mate. Good. Edwards seems new. People like new because it's exciting. Kerry seems old. People like old sometimes because it makes you think they're wise.

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 over the weekend. I liked it, but it was also preaching to the choir. There were a lot of new things in it that I didn't know. For one, the name of Bush's friend on his military records. I believe it was Bath. The White House, for some unknown reason, blacked the friend's name out. It turns out that the Bath fellow is the guy who handled the Bin Laden Family money. Bath is also the guy who has bailed Bush out every time he's run a business into the ground. And do you want to know how much Saudi money is in the US? Enough for their building in Washington to be guarded by the Secret Service.

Follow the oil. From a pipeline through Afghanistan to the second largest deposit in Iraq, there's a huge trail of oil.

What bugs me a lot is that sometimes I think the people in charge think like this: if war brings up a natural gas and oil pipeline through some countries, makes the second largest deposit of oil available to us, or brings another Democracy to the middle east, then there's really no harm in killing a few innocent people and lying to the entire world. And by innocent people I mean Iraqi civilians and US, English, Australian, South Korean, Mexican, and Japanese troops. Yeah, we'll bring one really bad man to justice. But there are a lot of bad men in the world. Hello, North Korea and Cuba!

You know they impeached Clinton for lying about what "is" means. "Is" was oral sex. I'm pretty sure what Bush has lied about, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, is like anal sex. Ever since he took office (he wasn't elected), he's been giving it to us up the ass.

  ¶ 3:07 PM

  ABC 33/40 E-WARN: SLSAL From ABC 33/40 E-Warn:
WWUS64 KBMX 042031
SLSAL


BULLETIN - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED
AREAL OUTLINE FOR SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH NUMBER 553
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BIRMINGHAM AL
330 PM CDT SUN JUL 4 2004

...SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH NUMBER 553 IN EFFECT UNTIL 900 PM CDT
AND INCLUDES 22 COUNTIES IN THE FOLLOWING PARTS OF ALABAMA...

ALC033-059-077-079-093-133-050200-
...NORTHWEST...
COLBERT FRANKLIN LAUDERDALE LAWRENCE
MARION WINSTON

$$

ALC043-083-089-103-050200-
...NORTH-CENTRAL...
CULLMAN LIMESTONE MADISON MORGAN

$$

ALC019-049-055-071-095-050200-
...NORTHEAST...
CHEROKEE DEKALB ETOWAH JACKSON
MARSHALL

$$

ALC057-075-050200-
...WEST-CENTRAL...
FAYETTE LAMAR

$$

ALC009-073-115-127-050200-
...CENTRAL...
BLOUNT JEFFERSON ST. CLAIR WALKER

$$

ALC015-050200-
...EAST-CENTRAL...
CALHOUN

$$




WWWW

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  ¶ 3:37 PM

  USATODAY.com - Actor Marlon Brando dies at 80

  ¶ 11:52 AM

  I think there's something queer about Graham Norton. I had to watch his show tonight because Jennifer Tilly was on there... looking really pretty.

The Prologue and Epilogue for HAUNTED: THE SECRET OF THE HANGED MAN are now written. I've already typed them in. They need to be edited, but they're not much. I may put that off until I've made all the changes to HAUNTED.

When editing, I take a notebook and go through the story making notes like 12.1 or 155.7. That means page 12 first note and page 155 seventh note. I keep these notes in a notebook. Often, they're additions or rewrites. I have amassed more than a few for HAUNTED. I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to make the changes.

When finished editing HAUNTED, my tired, drained brain is thinking of editing an even older novel I have around here somewhere, one that'll require more than just a few little changes. We'll see.

  ¶ 12:26 AM