Speaking Birb

So a friend turned me on to an article that said, in part, that teen girls are the real driver of language change. Shakespeare, not so much. Teen girls are were it's at. They make the modifications to language.

It takes about a generation for the language patterns started among young women to jump over to men. Uptalk, for example, which is associated with Valley Girls in the 1970s, is found among young men today. In other words, women learn language from their peers; men learn it from their mothers.

The new language then misses a generation. The new words are passed on to the babies of the original girls.

So, I thought, if this is true, then Lolcat (2007) must have millions of young speakers. They learned it natively from 2007, making the youngest native speakers eight, and a large number of pidgin speakers between eight and fifteen. So what language are the teenage Lolcat speakers using?

It turns out the predictions are correct. Young people raised on Lolcat are modifying their native Lolcat speech and speaking Birb.  It's even less like English than Lolcat. I can speak Birb easily enough, since I follow @ProBirdRights but its corollary  Rate-my-reptile is a little tough to parse at first.

No problem. I can read it and sometimes write it. On the other hand, there are millions of people out there who purport to write English but don't know the difference between "lay" and "lie", which pisses me off a lot more.

Skrillex Academy (video)

Hilarious parody of the Whiplash trailer, focusing on the travails of a recruit in the Skrillex Academy. And I *like* EDM.



Here's the original for reference.

The Kills - Live in Detroit 2015-08-01 (Video, HD)

Thanks to uploader VideoGremmie, seven songs from the Kills show from last week, in Detroit at the St Andrews Hall.

Details: THE KILLS perform U R A Fever and Future Starts Slow to open up their concert at Saint Andrew's Hall in DETROIT on SAT August 1, 2015. Shot in high definition in AVCHD mode using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS30 using 'P' mode in ISO 3200 with 1/60 min shutter speed.

He or she is in a good position in the audience as well, and has great sound levels. 

Fully recommended!



Edit: 7 songs, not the whole show.

Why Live Nation gets all your money

If you have a million dollars to invest, this Kramer segment will delight you. If, on the other hand, you want to go to concerts, this will explain why you have to pay a shitload nowadays and yet not quite get what you want. It's refreshing to hear CEO Michael Rapino explain how and why they charge for everything, and why they need to own every festival.

By "refreshing" I mean it's a call to action. Short watch, high payoff for this video.

Also it's funny to hear the tremble in Rapino's voice as he's obviously unused to being broadcast.

John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin in Simon Napier Bell documentary

Here from swinging, fab and cool London is a 1966 excerpt from a doco about Simon Napier Bell, one of the quintessential British music managers/movers&shakers.

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It's a scant minute and a half, but manages to include a shot of John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame) in a soundproof booth at 33 seconds, and a shot of Big Jim Sullivan (with a beard) a few seconds later.

Tune is Endlessly Friendlessly Blue by Rory Fellowes.

Watching this, it's almost like being in happening London when it was happening!

Trelawny

This is the Trelawny, my Veiled Chameleon.

When he has nothing else to do, he blesses his surrounding with this "Live Long and Prosper" hand-signal he does.

I bought him from a pet store (which is not recommended, but I did) as he was half-price due to "growing too fast to be sold as a baby".  He was four months old, so now he's about six months old and is still growing fast.

He has more personality than all my other lizards put together, and it's sometimes hard to remember he's only six months old. He's explored much of the house, and agitates early on in the morning to get out of his cage and go and explore.

It's not true that chameleons change color to match their surroundings (although they can do brighter and duller versions of their colors - the photo above is "average" for Trelawny).  However, they can change shape drastically. Above he's very thin and tall, like a tropical fish.  He can also do long and skinny, "look at me I'm a leaf" and a couple of other shapes.

Here he is sitting on his ladder in the window, admiring the trees outside.

And here he is at a slightly younger age, with the characteristic curly tail.