I really want to watch this documentary. It's called "American Tongues", and it catalogues a bunch of different pockets of unusual English dialects around the country. Here are a couple of clips of it that exist on Youtube:

Tangier, VA
Cajun

It looks like I can get it in this (interesting-looking) collection on Amazon for $225, or for $100 less on eBay. spike discovered that American Tongues on its own is rentable for $85.

...but now I'm out of ideas, and I'm not paying $85. Does anyone have a clever way of helping me see this thing? University libraries? The copy you already have sitting on your shelf?

Last night, dilletante and I watched Bon Cop, Bad Cop, an unexpectedly awesome bilingual Canadian cop buddy flick. One of the main characters was a francophone from Montreal and the other was a square English speaker from Toronto, though of course both were perfectly bilingual. A huge chunk of the movie was spent on the linguistic and cultural divide between the two (the square cop, for example, spoke French because he'd spent time in Paris, not because he knew anything about Quebecois). The movie split its time pretty evenly between French and English, and some of the language bits were funny enough to bring tears to my eyes. dilletante seemed to be laughing along with me, so you should see it even if you don't expect to understand all the French. :)

If you do speak both languages, though, it is wildly entertaining to hear so much code-switching. There were also several scenes where the French speakers mostly spoke French, and the English speakers mostly spoke English -- while having conversations with each other. This must happen all the time, but I've never had a relationship like that, and it felt so comfortable to watch that now I want one.

The Insight is so slick. Every time I see one on the road, I have to smile and look inside to see who's driving.

We watched "Near Dark" the other night - it's a fun, cheesy vampire movie that manages to avoid using the word "vampire". The female lead was a sexy straight chick with short hair. It occurred to me that you don't see many short-haired movie women who aren't lesbian, hard-assed, or both. The sultry straight babes always have long hair. Mind you, I think hard-ass dykes are also sexy, but it's a different role. I can't think of any counterexamples, other than "Near Dark" right now, and I'd like to be proven wrong.

One of the best parts of my day is kissing David goodbye in the mornings. It's a little ritual I'm completely attached to. I wake up first, stretch, drink water, read my email, feed the cat, get dressed, and walk back over to the bed where he's still snuggled under the covers asleep, like a sleepy little bed enchilada. I sit on the edge of the mattress, which usually wakes him up a little, and he makes those sleepy "mmf" noises and smiles and I kiss him and tell him to have a good day and he smiles some more and says "you too". Sometimes, his eyes don't even open. Then, out the door to work! It's a great way to leave the house all happy.