And now for a rant. A minor, piss-ant rant about something rather insignificant, but a rant nevertheless, about something that's been very slightly nettling me for a long while now.
It's about my name. My last name, you see, is Sprague, which is pronounced 'sprayg', rhyming with 'plague'. Funny thing is, only about 20% of people seem to realize this - and most of them have known a Sprague before. Now, of those who get it wrong, most of them say 'sprawg', rhyming with 'frog'. At least I understand where that particular mispronunciation comes from - namely the Czech city of Prague. (Which is really pronounced more like 'prahg' than like 'prawg', but I'll just chalk that one up to American pronunciation). The ones that confuse me are 'sprewg' and 'spreeg'. I have no frelling idea where they get those from. Seems more like minor dyslexia to me! Or I get called 'spra-goo' or 'spraaaaaaaaaaag', with a really drawn-out southern accented American short 'a', or I get 'sprags' 'spragist'. No, I'm not sure where those extra letters come from either. The one that should irk me, but doesn't, is 'sprahg-way'. I got that all the time when living in Italy. Of course, it makes perfect sense given Italian orthography. Oh, then there's 'sproodle' (yes, rhyming with noodle.) and 'bray' - but the guy who calls me 'bray' has such a strong accent that I forgive that one.
Why does this drive me nuts? I'm not sure. You'd think, after hearing this for oh, 24 years now that I've been aware of it, that I'd be used to it. And I am used to the 'sprawg' pronunciation. It doesn't bug me. Unless, that is, you know it's not pronounced like that, but you do it anyway, because then you're just being a childish, nettlesome douchebag. It's 'sprewg' and 'spreeg' that just irk the daylights out of me. An 'a', in American English (and every other English dialect, for that matter), never sounds like a long 'e' or like a Spanish 'u'. It just doesn't. Now, there is a 'u' in there, and the fact that it's dangling on the end confuses some people, but for chaos' sake, it's not the fourth letter. Learn to read, people!
Ok, </rant>.
Monkey-futtering shag-arsed FUCK! Blithering, brainless spunk-gargling shit-smoking fucknuggetrous blue-balled cuntweevil! Perkele! Why the electric, explosive fifty-fucking-stage pukeskunk hell do I keep getting fucking 500 Internal Server Errors about 85% of the time that I try to post anything here? In case you couldn't tell, it's really fucking frustrating!
I think it's the fault of the gorram MS ISA Server proxy I'm stuck behind. Vittusaatana...