Things that seem normal when you live alone.
March 28, 2012 6:26 PM   Subscribe

 
Then who are all these people, then?
posted by TwelveTwo at 6:27 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


This is totally untrue, isn't that right tiny stuffed donkey with the voice of William Shatner?
posted by The Whelk at 6:31 PM on March 28, 2012 [19 favorites]


I just spent way too much time trying to figure out how to type 'hee-haw' in a way that make it read like exaggerated Shatner meter.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:37 PM on March 28, 2012 [4 favorites]


Shatnerian Meter
posted by TwelveTwo at 6:40 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


I always close the bathroom door and since listening to Herzog tell a terrifying story about a woman alone in her apt, I also check each closet three times upon entering my apartment. But I'm paranoid. And I have NEVER spit out chunks of food like that. (Ok, I'm a liar as well as paranoid). And although I am wearing socks, I may or may not be wearing pants right now. And the only reason I would ever talk to myself in a British accent is because I may have just watched 7 seasons of Peep show in a row and need to say obviously a lot. Obviously. To myself. And the laundry on the bed...that's just...ridiculous! Who would ever sleep with their laundry?? (I have definitely not done that lately. Obviously).
posted by bquarters at 6:42 PM on March 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


Leaving the bathroom door open at all times? That's nuthin', I once rented a place that didn't even *have* a bathroom door and I didn't even realize it until after I moved in. Boo-yah. That's how pro I am at living alone. High fiving myself right now, awesome!

someone please love me
posted by the painkiller at 6:47 PM on March 28, 2012 [17 favorites]


I lived alone for 10 years before moving in with someone. She has never lived alone. This video feels oh so apt.
posted by aspo at 6:49 PM on March 28, 2012


Is it wrong that after watching this I decided to go ahead and finish the ice cream and not do the dishes?









........Wheeeee!
posted by Diablevert at 6:52 PM on March 28, 2012 [7 favorites]


It's all true. Defrosting chicken in the shower is the only thing here I haven't done...mainly because I hadn't thought of it. MetaFilter is for learning!
posted by TropicalWalrus at 7:02 PM on March 28, 2012 [15 favorites]


Back when I lived alone, I never opened the door to the bathroom.

Worked fine until the disposal broke.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 7:08 PM on March 28, 2012 [6 favorites]


Man. I've only gotten as far as the funny accents while talking to myself.

And laundry goes on the floor, not the bed. People do that?

But I never really had any shame to begin with.
posted by egypturnash at 7:10 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


I LOL'd. Quietly. I no longer live alone.

That being said, when SO left for a few months for fieldwork, I totally caught myself talking to the TV and nattering on to myself.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:12 PM on March 28, 2012


Oh no! My wife does all these things! Maybe I should give up the second job.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:18 PM on March 28, 2012


It makes you feel insane when you live alone and find yourself talking to yourself in funny accents.

It makes you feel ten times more insane when you live alone with two cats and find yourself having conversations with them in multiple funny accents.
posted by meese at 7:19 PM on March 28, 2012 [5 favorites]


Me and my plants are starting a reading group.
posted by pmcp at 7:26 PM on March 28, 2012 [20 favorites]


I'm way better at those things depicted in the video and I know it.
posted by quoquo at 7:36 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


The bathroom door question depends on whether I anticipate being more annoyed by having the cats in with me or meowing and throwing themselves at the closed door. Sometimes I just lock them on the balcony instead.
posted by jeather at 7:42 PM on March 28, 2012 [7 favorites]


I talk to myself in a British accent all the time.

I talk to everybody else in that accent also!

Maybe... maybe I have problems.
posted by Dreadnought at 7:46 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Why are all cats such potty pests? What is so fascinating to them about human elimination? CATS YOU BAFFLE ME. Although it is pretty hilarious to watch them stick their tiny paws under the door and scrabble frantically for the magical REMOVE VEXING FELINE BARRICADE switch.
posted by elizardbits at 7:48 PM on March 28, 2012 [25 favorites]


This is totally untrue, isn't that right tiny stuffed donkey with the voice of William Shatner?

If you have a tiny donkey that speaks in any voice other than that of Professor Hubert Farnsworth, you are a bad person.

It's the fridge that speaks with the voice of Shatner. And all the various unfortunately furry things inside it speak in the voice of Harcourt Fenton Mudd.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:48 PM on March 28, 2012


As someone who has lived alone for the past 10 years and is now facing the very real possibility of roommates due to economic reasons, this was both relevant and worrying because I *know* I have some serious I've-been-living-on-my-own-oblivious habits.
posted by smirkette at 7:53 PM on March 28, 2012


This is totally untrue, isn't that right tiny stuffed donkey with the voice of William Shatner?

Oh my, I just thought for the first time in probably 20 years about my older sister's stuffed donkey named Donkey Odee. Of course, neither of us knew how he got his name until much later. Wow. What a random memory.
posted by smirkette at 7:55 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


The bathroom door question depends on whether I anticipate being more annoyed by having the cats in with me or meowing and throwing themselves at the closed door.

My cats don't mind if I wander off for a pee - though they will come in to chatter at me - and neither does the elder dog, but the 8 month-old puppy has himself a RIGHTEOUS FIT if I close any door in the house. I haven't had an unaccompanied pee at home since October, and if I take a bath, he tries to pull me out of the tub, apparently thinking I'm going to drown. (At 8 months, he's about 55 pounds. Yeah. I have bruises.)

I don't otherwise live alone. There's a husband and two sons. The puppy refuses to be consoled by any of them, and will howl and cry and throw himself against the door if I close it. So, the bathroom door is open, else he'll batter it down.
posted by MissySedai at 7:58 PM on March 28, 2012


Mrs unSane & the 3 smaller unSanities are away for 9 days. It is day 2 and the bathroom door has not been closed, the laundry is on the bed and the rest of it is well underway.

The dog and the cat are looking at each other funny too.
posted by unSane at 8:06 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


When my Significant Otter goes away for more than a day, I sleep next to a pile of books that gradually expands to push me out. It's a worse bed hog than the Otter.

Waking up with paper cuts and hardback dents is way worse than laundry.
posted by misfish at 8:14 PM on March 28, 2012 [7 favorites]


What is a 'british' accent? I mean surely even USians can see a distinction between 'standard' english (by which I mean southern UK) and scottish?
posted by wilful at 8:25 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


When my kids talk in British accents I get really excited because when they're British, they have excellent manners and they do what they're told. My British kids clean their room, my American kids are kind of lazy little dicks a lot of the time.

So I actually expect that when they someday live alone, their houses will occasionally be spotless, and also they will serve really good tea.
posted by padraigin at 8:26 PM on March 28, 2012 [5 favorites]


What is a 'british' accent? I mean surely even USians can see a distinction between 'standard' english (by which I mean southern UK) and scottish?

I guess it's kind of the old Received Pronunciation thing, although we tend to switch back and forth into Cockney, because we are dumb. Do not even get us started on our Scottish and Irish because we'll be all Bono/Connery/Lucky Charms/Braveheart and it will make you cry.

But, whenever I can talk non-Americans into "doing an American accent" it always ends up being a hilarious hodgepodge too. I mean, The US is huge, we have accents up the yin-yang, but Europeans always come in somewhere around Chicago by way of John Wayne.
posted by padraigin at 8:32 PM on March 28, 2012 [14 favorites]


Oh man, you guys don't even know. I live alone AND work alone from home.

Every once in a while I find myself having to spend a few hours at a client's office. I always have to carefully coach myself ahead of time. "Don't fart. Don't burp. Don't hum those odd little bits of pop songs that come into your head. Especially don't hum in the bathroom..."
posted by ErikaB at 8:33 PM on March 28, 2012 [8 favorites]


I don't just talk to myself in a British accent. Some times there's a whole bunch of different ones.

It's fun. I always hope someone is eavesdropping.
posted by Dark Messiah at 8:35 PM on March 28, 2012


And as for the bathroom door, not only does it never close; I store a bunch of stuff behind it.

When friends are coming over, I always have to remember to move the mops and brooms and spare curtain rods out from behind it. Otherwise when they close the door, all that stuff falls out and makes a tremendous clatter and scares us all half to death.
posted by ErikaB at 8:35 PM on March 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


What is a 'british' accent? I mean surely even USians can see a distinction between 'standard' english (by which I mean southern UK) and scottish?

Of course, but "USians" usually don't bother with a distinction between British and English.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:43 PM on March 28, 2012


Europeans always come in somewhere around Chicago by way of John Wayne.

Plus over-enunciated R sounds where there are none at all. Idee-urrrr - who sounds like that?
posted by gompa at 8:44 PM on March 28, 2012


Going on the offtopic bit about Europeans & English in an accent:

One of my favorite people to talk to is a woman from Madrid. Her accent, when speaking English, is beautifully layered. Very simple words are spoken in her native accent. Slightly more complicated words, like "slightly", are spoken in an American midwestern (or flat) accent. Longer words or relatively complicated phrases are usually in a "BBC" accent. It's quite an entrancing effect and lays out her English learning history in a very clear way.

Slightly back on topic: When I was living alone, I'd usually skip the accent but would talk to myself in a heavily butchered form of English/British slang. "God, It's bloody cold out. And I'm just knackered in my knickers and can't be arsed to do anything about it. Cheers, mate, I'll have another." with the last bit addressed to the cat who's meowing at me for no reason I can fathom.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:44 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Laundry does not go on the bed! It goes on the TV so the cats can't get at it, then kind of in and around the nightstand then finally it's forgotten at the laundromat because you splurged for drop-off service finally but you forgot, you're just not used to this kind of decadence, you know? But the laundry's still there, thank god, and it stays neatly folded in the bag for a while because whee! Laundry tower! Until you wear it all again and it goes half-folded onto the TV so the cats can't get at it, then kind of in and around....
posted by greenland at 8:45 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


My bathroom door is currently stored under my bed. No one but me has been in my house since October. And now I know how to defrost chicken. Thanks Metafilter.
posted by bendy at 8:47 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh man, you guys don't even know. I live alone AND work alone from home.

I've been doing this for over a year now and the slide is reaching terminal velocity. There's some sort of trade embargo between my brain and my mouth when I have to speak to actual people. Most of the speaking I do here in the house is to the dog, in conversational French. I don't actually speak French, actually, just words that sound French. It's only a matter of time before I type the same words over and over on my macbook. All work and no play indeed.
posted by mochapickle at 8:48 PM on March 28, 2012 [7 favorites]


pffft. extroverts.
posted by eddydamascene at 8:51 PM on March 28, 2012 [5 favorites]


I was always criticized by my friends in college because the various things they could find in my bed. Clothes. Spoons. Tissues. Books. Scissors, etc. I'm glad to hear I'm not alone.


Though now that I'm thinking about it, they were roommates with me as well. Though they didn't mind my british accents.
posted by raccoon409 at 8:55 PM on March 28, 2012


man, i'm gonna be honest, i didn't know people closed the bathroom door when they lived alone. i thought that was like, a perk of living by yourself. i NEVER close my bathroom door when i'm alone. i'm terrified that i'll be peeing and a murderer will enter my apartment while that's happening, and since my door is closed, i won't know it until i open the door and come face to face WITH DEATH.

shut up, it could totally happen.
posted by kerning at 9:00 PM on March 28, 2012 [7 favorites]


I've slept in my actual bed about 5 times this month, and that's up from the normal.
posted by dirigibleman at 9:03 PM on March 28, 2012


Not alone, but we took the upstairs bathroom door off because the room is small, and left the downstairs one on. We might have company, you never know.
posted by bongo_x at 9:07 PM on March 28, 2012


Anyway, true confessions: I don't live alone, but I am a work-at-home parent. So a lot of this stuff is kind of just day to day living for me. And on those days when my partner decides to work from home through the morning, I'm VERY FUCKING SELF CONSCIOUS about my talkings to myself (in many accents), or the way I want to work (in no pants and snuggling in the laundry I'll fold later maybe). And we've been together for ten years but I still kind of want him to get the fuck out so I can have happy bathroom open door times without him coming in to ask where we keep the sugar or whether I want to, you know, wink-wink, before he heads into the office. GO TO THE DAMN OFFICE ALREADY.

I do not know how two-work-at-home couples do it. I'm so used to my weird-ass alone time that I'm damn near homicidal halfway through a week's vacation.
posted by padraigin at 9:14 PM on March 28, 2012 [11 favorites]


Even though I live with my SO, I'm currently on the couch, in just underwear, and a sheet. Because that's what seemed the most comfortable.
posted by persephone's rant at 9:41 PM on March 28, 2012


As someone who works from home and who has a partner who works from home a few months out of year, let me say you do it my developing cones of silence and odd boundries that are never spoken of, but aherered to religiously.

Also during the non work at home home you have to resist pouncing on your partner when they come home cause you're so desperate your human interaction you've created an elaborate mythology and creation epic for your throw pillows.

Also not being naked, that's just polite.
posted by The Whelk at 9:44 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


And we've been together for ten years but I still kind of want him to get the fuck out so I can have happy bathroom open door times without him coming in to ask where we keep the sugar or whether I want to, you know, wink-wink, before he heads into the office. GO TO THE DAMN OFFICE ALREADY.

*HOWL*

You have just described every day that Maus closes. When he opens, he's out the door by 8:10, and it's GREAT! Younger Monster is already at school at 7:30, Elder Monster is usually at work by 9, and doesn't bat an eyelash at me parked in the chair, Madonna cranked up, in my favorite jammies, and sometimes he brings me my coffee before he leaves. He even bought me jammies once, and called them work clothes!

But my husband on the days he closes? I can't get a damned thing done when he's home, and he has a terrible habit of getting up in my face if I'm on the phone with a client to demand to know who I'm talking to. He paces in circles and procrastinates and drags it out til the very last second, and by the time 11:35 rolls around, I'm screaming "JESUS CHRIST, GO TO WORK!"

I'm so used to my weird-ass alone time that I'm damn near homicidal halfway through a week's vacation.

Sing it, sister.
posted by MissySedai at 9:50 PM on March 28, 2012 [4 favorites]


HOW CAN ONE PERSON BREATHE SO LOUDLY I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DINT GO TO WORK SOON I WILL SEND YOU THERE IN PEICES What? No I think the red tie goes better with that outfit, you'd better hurry to miss the rush .
posted by The Whelk at 9:52 PM on March 28, 2012 [10 favorites]


When I watched this, I thought, "It's a shame that this video is so painfully fake."

But I guess...from reading the discussion, it's not that the video is fake. Nope. It's that I've very obviously never lived alone and the experience is utterly foreign to me.
posted by subversiveasset at 10:00 PM on March 28, 2012


Why are all cats such potty pests? What is so fascinating to them about human elimination?

Because you're peeing in their water bowl.

I'm an only child, lived alone for many years, and worked partially from home for the last 4 years. Now I work in an office, my husband works at home and OH MY GOD I AM NEVER ALONE WILL YOU PLEASE GO AWAY SO I CAN HAVE A GODDAMN CONVERSATION WITH MYSELF IN THE BATHROOM WITH THE DOOR OPEN, GUV'NOR???

Now he spends one weekend day at improv classes in a city two hours away. The UCB - coincidentally - is the thread that keeps me attached to my sanity.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:14 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh man, you guys don't even know. I live alone AND work alone from home.

So...have you got past the wanking stage yet?
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 10:35 PM on March 28, 2012 [5 favorites]


I don't live alone, but I work at home and go for weeks without interacting face to face with anyone but my wife (and our pets). I recently bought her a pretty nice, not-quite gym grade treadmill at about the same time that I finished a whole-house multimedia playback system (such that music or movies or broadcast TV can follow us around the house via networked audio and video playback devices, including tablets).

Once I started using the treadmill regularly, I realized that I have accidentally or subconsciously replicated a subset of the living conditions on Discovery in the film 2001. The obvious next thing to do is set up voice control for media playback and lighting conditions as I wander around inside my convincing simulacrum of a house on its long annual orbital path around the Sun. This has dramatically increased my interest in household maintenance activities; wouldn't do to suffer a hull breach.
posted by mwhybark at 10:38 PM on March 28, 2012 [15 favorites]


Wow, that's weird. Did I miss the part where she robot dances? Robot dancing is pretty much required for anyone who has lived alone for 6 months or more. Preferably while grabbing things from the fridge or perhaps cooking. Sound effects not required but I assure you they help. We must strive to spend our time as quality time.
posted by P.o.B. at 10:38 PM on March 28, 2012 [6 favorites]


Ex-girlfriend and I rented a place where the bathroom door was like a heavy fire door with a springed-hinge. The thing would close slam shut with the ferocity of that one in Panic Room. So we just jammed it into an "always open" state. Which was prompty forgotten about until we had a guest over and she was like "Um... so the bathroom door.... how do I...?"
posted by blueberry at 10:42 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Hee.








HAAAW.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:15 PM on March 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


Oh yes. I think one reason I haven't descended into the abyss of "laundry on every surface" is... Ms. Fussyspider.

Ms. Fussyspider wants her web to be neat and clean. As the place gets messier, Ms. Fussyspider gets crankier, until eventually she takes control of me and CLEANS. And she does it regularly enough that the is never an epic "CLEAN ALL THE THINGS" event.

Ms. Fussyspider does not have an accent, but she does speak in a different register than I usually do. Sometimes I'll have conversations with her.

(and one of these days I really need to do that comic book introduction to sorting algorithms starring her.)
posted by egypturnash at 11:38 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


I talk to myself in a British accent all the time. But then I'm British.

You guys know there's no such thing as an "English accent" too, right? I mean, do you mean Scouse? BBC? Geordie? Yorkshire? West Country? Brum? Manc? These are all wildly different accents.
posted by Decani at 11:43 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


My friend Shana told me that the word they use for their peeping-tom bathroom cats is "pooparazzi." I hope you like this word as much as I do.
posted by lauranesson at 11:49 PM on March 28, 2012 [8 favorites]


Someone explain the humidifier thing to me?
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:55 PM on March 28, 2012


Forget it. I figured it out.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 11:58 PM on March 28, 2012


I talk to everything, animate or in-. I figure that as long as I'm not following any particular religions, I might as well make up my own weird animism and pretend that all the objects around me have a personality and a motive force. It makes things more interesting, although it's embarrassing when they win arguments.

I will also spontaneously break into spastic little nerdy-white-boy dances or sing nonsense syllables for no reason. Mind you, I live with my wife and child and still do this. Heck, I even do it when I'm wandering the halls alone at work and feel only slightly embarrassed when I encounter someone else. (I have walked to my cubicle with my arms stretched out, swooping back and forth and going "Nyeerrm. Nyeeeeoooorrm. Ratatatatatat." My coworkers at this point pretty much ignore me, although every so often a new hire will ask if something is wrong.)
posted by Scattercat at 12:47 AM on March 29, 2012


Oh man, you guys don't even know. I live alone AND work alone from home.

Obligatory The Oatmeal cartoon.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:52 AM on March 29, 2012


Here's my living alone story.
I have my music to write to, which I blast at high levels because, ha ha, nobody's around. For a while it was a couple of tracks from Book of Mormon. Then one day at work, not even thinking about it, I opened my mouth and what came out was, "Hi! My name is Joseph Smith, and I'm going to fuck this baby! No, no Joseph, don't fuck the baby." That was problematic.
posted by angrycat at 2:54 AM on March 29, 2012 [5 favorites]


Wow, that's weird. Did I miss the part where she robot dances? Robot dancing is pretty much required for anyone who has lived alone for 6 months or more. Preferably while grabbing things from the fridge or perhaps cooking. Sound effects not required but I assure you they help. We must strive to spend our time as quality time.


Same goes for Michael Jackson impersonations. I went through a phase where I never got a shirt buttoned without moonwalking throughout the entire process. It's still one of my top reasons for preferring hard wood floors over carpeting.
posted by Kevtaro at 4:48 AM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]


My cats don't mind if I wander off for a pee

Of course my cats don't mind. They follow me. Then, depending on which cat it is, they do different things. George wants me to turn on all the taps at the exact perfect volume of water so he can drink from them, then wet his paws in them and rub them on me. Conrad wants to play kill the toilet paper with me. Matilda, feeling safe as I am around, decides it's drinking time and tries to stick her head into the toilet bowl. Usually she tries to go between my legs, but sometimes on my side. This is disturbing.

All of them like to drink out of the bathtub if I am in it (I try to fill it up a bit less so they cannot reach it). None have fallen in. Yet.
posted by jeather at 4:57 AM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]


My most bacheloriffic vice was probably the motorcycle parts in the bathtub.
posted by MarchHare at 5:02 AM on March 29, 2012 [2 favorites]


I also do all of the things in this movie (except the chicken in the shower, but now I'm gonna add it to the rotation because that's brilliant), and I live with my wife, who also does all of these things. In a way, it's almost worse, because hearing someone else in the next room around isn't enough to make me think "Hmm, someone's in the other room, better close the bathroom door," because 95% of the time it's not a problem, but then sometimes we have people over to play Eurorails and it gets awkward.
posted by Mayor West at 5:19 AM on March 29, 2012


jcreigh: "Maybe... maybe I have problems.

It depends. Are you, in fact, British?
"

Yes and yes.
posted by arcticseal at 6:09 AM on March 29, 2012


Both gingerbeer and I worked from home yesterday, and out housemate was home much of the day, and I was like, hmmmm. But gingerbeer stayed in the bedroom and was on conference calls and such pretty much all day - she had the conference call cat (Yorvit), and I had the puppycat (Roswell - he follows me everywhere, and also insists on playing fetch when I'm right in the middle of some complicated thing for work).

So yeah, I had to close the bathroom door. No British accents, though, even when I'm alone.
posted by rtha at 6:14 AM on March 29, 2012


I don't speak to myself in some 'ordinary' British accent, I jusht shpeak ash Shean Connery.

Feelsh shtrange to be doing thish at my workplacesh, shurprishingly.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:25 AM on March 29, 2012 [2 favorites]


You guys know there's no such thing as an "English accent" too, right? I mean, do you mean Scouse? BBC? Geordie? Yorkshire? West Country? Brum? Manc? These are all wildly different accents.

I'm sorry to report that this is mistaken. There is one English accent for use while living alone, and that is Dick Van Dyke's from Mary Poppins. You are permitted, incidentally, to stray from that character and context, though I am sometimes say things like "Mary, time for a jolly holiday, I mean a good rogering, what what?"
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 6:42 AM on March 29, 2012 [4 favorites]


OK, one last sanity check. Has anyone else, while living alone or working from home, moved about for a good portion of the day while pretending to be aboard a moving train or a rolling ship -- grabbing countertops and whatnot?

If not, will you consider doing it, both because it's fun and so I don't feel so awfully strange?
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 6:45 AM on March 29, 2012 [8 favorites]


I have lived alone almost all my adult life and have worked from home for over three years now. And I don't tend to talk to myself or store unorthodox things in the bathtub.

But I do find myself thinking a little too often of Manuel Cortés, the one-time Socialist mayor of a small Spanish town who had to spend thirty years holed up in his house in hiding from Franco's regime. When there was an amnesty and he was able to live openly again he could no longer stand to wear shoes.
posted by enn at 7:25 AM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]


The best part of living alone is not having cats. It makes waking up every morning refreshingly catfree
posted by MangyCarface at 7:54 AM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]


My husband is out of town. I may or may not be reveling in the ability to leave the wrappers of multiple chocolate products on the bedside table.

It's his side.

NOT ANYMORE!
posted by Madamina at 7:55 AM on March 29, 2012


Seems I live alone with my wife.

I can't even blame the year we spent both working from home, because we were at least as odd before.
posted by Iteki at 8:46 AM on March 29, 2012


What is a 'british' accent? I mean surely even USians can see a distinction between 'standard' english (by which I mean southern UK) and scottish?

You guys know there's no such thing as an "English accent" too, right? I mean, do you mean Scouse? BBC? Geordie? Yorkshire? West Country? Brum? Manc? These are all wildly different accents.

Why the concern for specifity in this area? It doesn't matter if someone is nattering to themselves in a way that sounds Cockney or Weegie or Scouse - they're still using a British accent.
posted by MUD at 8:54 AM on March 29, 2012 [3 favorites]


Some are sillier than others.
posted by TwelveTwo at 8:57 AM on March 29, 2012


You guys know there's no such thing as an "English accent" too, right?

My Dad, who is from England, has been known to tell other British expats they have a "BBC accent" just to piss them off. I don't exactly know what it means, but it works, every time.
posted by Hoopo at 9:22 AM on March 29, 2012


Has anyone else, while living alone or working from home, moved about for a good portion of the day while pretending to be aboard a moving train or a rolling ship -- grabbing countertops and whatnot?

Yes, but I have Meniere's disease.

sometimes in the bath i pretend i am caught in a terrible storm at sea, though
posted by elizardbits at 9:25 AM on March 29, 2012 [2 favorites]


Reading this thread makes me feel so mush less feral, somehow. I don't live alone but I work from home and Mr. Cardigan works some long ass hours. I have an alarm set to go off everyday at 5.30 pm to remind myself to put on clothes and brush my hair so that he doesn't come home to see me wearing only the couch blanket/throw thing with potato chip crumbs (or worse!) embedded in my curls.
posted by emilycardigan at 10:09 AM on March 29, 2012 [2 favorites]


Why the concern for specifity in this area? It doesn't matter if someone is nattering to themselves in a way that sounds Cockney or Weegie or Scouse - they're still using a British accent.
posted by MUD at 4:54 PM on March 29


I think it's simply that many Americans honestly don't seem to realise that there are many vastly different English accents. They seem to think everyone here speaks either like Hugh Grant or Vinny Jones. Which is why I am frequently asked where I'm from when I go to the States, and why almost no one who feels the need to ask gets it right when I say "Guess". They're more likely to think I'm South African or Australian than English, which, for a man who has a Grimsby accent softened by many years of living in London, is rather baffling and occasionally irksome.
posted by Decani at 10:49 AM on March 29, 2012


As an educated American and not just confirmed but in fact born-again bachelor, I am well aware that there are many different British accents. And I practice as many as I know, each in turn. Especially when I take it in my head to read Terry Pratchett books to myself out loud in the john. With the door open. My greatest failing is that I just can't nail down a Lancre accent.

I'm certain I'm butchering every single one, but who's going to criticize?
posted by darksasami at 11:24 AM on March 29, 2012


What's this about the bathroom door open being somehow a privilege of only those who live alone?

I guess you must not have old, old, old friends. Or alternatively, you must not be young right now, with young friends - young being 20-25.

So this one friend whom I've known since we were 18, feels petit bourgeois conventions should not get in the way of practical considerations. As so often, we're discussing some project he's doing, or I'm doing, or both of us will be doing together, and the animated discussion must not be interrupted. And therefore, as I move to the kitchen to make some coffee, he follows me, talking all the time while I'm grinding, pouring, pulling out mugs etc - well, OK, nothing wrong with that. But now I need to piss and I get up and out of the room, and he follows talking non-stop, and we keep walking until we reach the bathroom, I enter, and here, in a rare nod to convention, he does not follow inside, but stands hovering around the door... I'm thinking "well, I guess it's a natural function and we've known each other for close to 30 years", so I unleash a stream, and he's talking and I respond and we decide that indeed that lens cannot be used because there just won't be enough light and we need something faster, at least an f/28 at 24mm, but we need to increase the volume because of the slight distance and the noise as I wash my hands, and I dry my hands and start exiting the bathroom, and he turns around and now leads back into the living room and I follow and we're talking non-stop and we're back on the couch and chair and if you stopped him at that moment and asked him "hey, where were did we go just a few minutes ago?" he wouldn't remember, because all he's concentrating on is the conversation and doesn't even remember the bathroom, and if I closed the door it would have been an odd action like slamming the door in someone's face, and simply interrupting "hey, I gotta go pee" would have been so, well, disruptive and abrupt and downright uncouth, and I only live in fear as to what happens if one day I need to go #2, but somehow my bowels sense the gravity of the situation and I've never had that need transpire while in the midst of the Conversation That Must Not Be Interrupted. Open bathroom door when you're alone? AHAHAHAAH!
posted by VikingSword at 12:16 PM on March 29, 2012


My greatest failing is that I just can't nail down a Lancre accent.

Smash all your words together like a freight train except for a's, which are either drawn out like a sigh or puctionated sharp yelps
posted by The Whelk at 12:18 PM on March 29, 2012


The best part of living alone is not having cats. It makes waking up every morning refreshingly catfree

But you miss the very occasional time when you get to wake up and yell "I'm blind! Oh god!" until your yelling disturbs the cat who was sleeping on your face and you can see again.
posted by jeather at 1:37 PM on March 29, 2012 [2 favorites]


VikingSword: most men are ok with pissing in front of others. Urinals and all that. (Truth be told I've always felt that a good pee is worthy of a little quiet and respect, but that's just me.)

The true test is would you do the same when you gotta poop?
posted by aspo at 2:19 PM on March 29, 2012


I was feeling really smug about never using a fake accent when I talk to myself out loud. But then I remembered that I do have a habit of singing pop songs to my cats, except I replace all the English words with "meow" so that they understand.

(I don't get that comment about living cat-free. Who tries to smother you in your sleep with their own body? I mean, how would that work, without cats? Weird.)
posted by ErikaB at 5:39 PM on March 29, 2012 [1 favorite]


Lived alone for three years with a couple of cats. Definitely did most of these. Also though, I made up various songs about the cats. I have retained this habit and have now caught the missus doing it these days.

In fact, I realized that our new dog had become one of the family when I caught my self singing about how his face was stupid and also he was stupid.
posted by utsutsu at 7:28 AM on March 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I used to sing moronic little songs to my dog too, usually about the resonance/duration/bouquet of his farts ("captain fartypants, you idiot," for example). Special choruses were reserved for the times when his own farts awakened him from a sound sleep and frightened him badly enough to bark at his own ass while simultaneously trying to flee from this terrible threat.
posted by elizardbits at 8:12 AM on April 2, 2012 [2 favorites]


I do this stuff and do not live alone. (Well, okay, not a British accent. For one thing, I'm not good enough to compete with the real ones all around me now that I am living over here. But NO ONE can beat me at the ridiculous voices I *do* use.)

Yeah, I feel sorry for my husband too.
posted by Because at 1:17 PM on April 3, 2012


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