Dark Shadow's Surprisingly Well-Lit Random Banter #217

[Teddy]

I have been sitting on a mountain top for four days now. I have twenty to go. There are only five other people up here with me, one of whom I'm already almost fighting with. I think I might completely lose my mind. Oh well at least the views are nice.

Okay, now I'm in equal parts curious and concerned. Exactly what strategic value does that mountain top have to warrant such hardships?

The problem here is that people in the military come from all over the US. You would have gotten exposed to a bunch of different American dialects. Worst of all, the US military has its own weird way of talking, and this varies by branch. Here in the Marine Corps is the only place I've seen it acceptable to answer a question with "ERRRRRR", or to refer to certain kinds of legal punishment as a "ninja punch" . No doubt the Army also has its own idioms, though I'm not familiar with them. So basically, you got a strange mix of almost every American dialect that exists, sprinkled with the odd slang that comes with military culture.

Our military isn't particularly large, and more important, I've never been in it, so I can't speak about how language works inside of it (despite working for the defense industry). I did, however, grow up (and still live in) what could be considered the cooking pot of Swedish accents, and interestingly enough, that means I'm in the fairly unique position to be able to claim I speak Standard Swedish without anyone contesting me. It's actually pretty funny to see, because when I do so, people do want to contest me, but then realise they have no examples to bring up.

In case anyone was wondering

... okay so

I had a seizure last night, so now I'm in the hospital. Today I had an MRI that showed I've got a tumor in my head.

We don't know for sure yet if it's malignant or benign (currently they're thinking the latter) but either way I'm gonna need surgery to remove it and likely be here for a week or so for recovery. Surgery's Wednesday.

Oh dear, that sounds scary! Here's hoping for a complication-free surgery and a swift recovery!