Small world: At my uncle's house this weekend, I was speaking to my uncle's wife's brother, who lives in Minnesota. Turns out he is very good friends with the uncle of a girl I went to high school with (in Virginia Beach!) and a boy my sister dated in junior high!

This was almost as weird as the day I was at the Mall of America in Minneapolis and saw a parking sticker for my Virginia Beach high school on the car in front of me.

More small world: I moved to the DC area in the middle of 8th grade. I was assigned a lab partner in my earth science class, and he turned out to be one of the twins I used to play with from down the street when we lived in Jacksonville, FL, 8 or 9 years earlier.

I always thought Mark Twain did a great job in Huckleberry Finn of getting across the jist of the characters' vernacular speech without sacrificing readability. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Robert Louis Stephenson, especially in "Thrawn Janet", a wonderfully moody and macabre little ghost story, made almost illegible due to the thick Scottish brogue with which several of the characters speak.

Seriously, here's an actual snippet:

The minister was weel thocht o'; he was aye late at the writing--folk wad see his can'le doon by the Dule Water after twal' at e'en; and he seemed pleased wi' himsel' and upsitten as at first, though a' body could see that he was dwining. As for Janet, she cam' an' she gaed; if she didnae speak muckle afore, it was reason she should speak less then; she meddled naebody; but she was an eldritch thing to see, an' nane wad hae mistrysted wi' her for Ba'weary glebe.

small world: 15 years ago, I was on the grounds of the governor's mansion in Hokkaido, Japan, watching an outdoor Noh theater performance, when I ran into a woman who had been friends with my older brother in nursery school, but had moved away in second grade. She walked up to me and asked, "Do you know [Lou Janus]," to which I answered, "Know him? He's my brother."

pet peeve: I actually really like that. But only in dialogue. Most stuff should be read out loud anyway. It often forces you to read out loud, or at least move your lips when you read. This is good. Not only do you retain more, you get a better sense of the author's voice when you steer it through your own. And you get a sense of how the author hears people speak.

But I read a lot of plays, and this is an excellent way for a playwright, who knows what the accent or dialect sounds like, to make up for variations in actors' knowledge and training -- it's often far more excruciating for the audience to hear an actor's rendition of Bayou Belle than it is for the actor to learn the lines as written, even if they're written phonetically.

But it's true, it all depends on the writer; some have the ear for it, and some shouldn't bother.

Small world: in 1996 I was on a train going from Copenhagen waaaay out to a remote place called Thisted to visit a friend. I was alone in the train car & then an American couple sat down. Halfway through the trip, we began to talk. Turned out the wife was a classmate of mine in 7th & 8th grades, although we hadn't been friends. I had moved away from the area in 9th grade & didn't keep in touch with anyone. I went all the way to Denmark to find myself updated on what all of the girls from my Brownie troup were doing as adults... she still kept in touch with everyone. Freaked me out.

Pet peeve: FLAKY PEOPLE. They're driving me ballistic.

small world: when I went to England to study for my junior year abroad at University of East Anglia in Norwich, the woman in the department registrar's office noticed my last name and said, "Cody? Any relation to..." Having heard enough Buffalo Bill (and Wild Bill) comments to last a lifetime, and being jetlagged, I interrupted and said, "nope, no relation to Buffalo Bill."

"Oh, I wasn't going to say Buffalo Bill," she said. "I was going to ask if you were any relation to the Cody brothers from Casper, Wyoming."

"Yeah -- one of them's my dad!"

Turns out she'd gone to grade school with my father and uncle back in the '40s/'50s (she said my dad was the first big crush she ever had!) before moving away, and eventually marrying an Englishman. She then immigrated to the UK and hadn't seen anyone from Wyoming in decades... till I walked in the door.

small world: I recall, as a teen, traveling 5 hours with my mum to the big city to meet with a financial planning firm regarding something-or-other. Coincidentally, the financial planner we met with went to high school with my dad and briefly dated one of his friends.

small world--I met exogenous at a meetup a month or so ago, and found out that he (and his partner? girlfriend? woman?) live two blocks away. They came over for a homemade-wine tasting Saturday. Turns out the not-quite-mrs-exogenous is work-friends with one of my ex-wife's best friends, who was in town and staying with us the day the now-ex and I broke up 10 years ago.

On a similar subject, I've had some amazing small-world issues with dating. I've met women through online ads and via Single Volunteers of DC, never through friends or such things, but there has usually been some amazing connections. Let's call them girlfriend 1, 2, 3, and 4. Girlfriends 1 and 2 knew each other, and had dated the same guy before me, who I also knew. Girlfriend 3's ex-husband lived on the same block as girlfriend 2, and the two girlfriends had several mutual friends.

Girlfriend 4 lived about 100 yards away from me (as did girlfriend 3, actually), but the most amazing thing there was that she, years before meeting me, had introduced my ex-wife to her now-husband, and had several mutual friends with me. Again, we met via a match.com ad that didn't mention our neighborhood or anything. And this wasn't in some small town--it was in Washington, DC.

Small world: checking my MySpace account the other day and just two clicks away from me was Armoured-Ant.

Pet peeve (current): using "have" instead of "has", eg: "Microsoft have issued a bug fix". I'm just as guilty of doing this as the next person, but it's currently annoying me.

Small World: I was once hosting a table of agents for my company at the Sheraton Copacabana, a Paddy's Day bash we had invited the key people to.

Some Irish oilmen ( I know, I couldn't make this up) were at the next table, just in from a platform off the coast near Rio.

One guy came over to me a little the worse for wear and said in the thickest Cork accent "You're Stewart Joyce's sister! I'm Whizzer"
From our small barrio in Cork City, Eire to Rio de Janiero in 25 years! I was utterly gobsmacked.
Our agents were utterly charmed and thought Ireland is so small we all know each other (which is not very far from the truth)

Pet Peeve: People who shoot the messenger. I just informed some people of major problems many of the hospitals are having in my region and they got upset that I was being critical!!! AARGH!