Aaaaand...look, distraction!

It looks like we're nearing the end of the month, which means a lot of people who are participating in NaPoWriMo will be done with their challenge to write a poem a day for a month.  I'm really excited to go through everybody's blogs and read what they've come up with, because that'll no doubt give me more ideas for my own poems.  Plus I'm really excited that I'm not the only one out there writing poems daily.  Is that selfish?  Maybe a little bit.

Anyway, Poem-A-Day April has been going really well.  I only fell behind that one weekend when I went to camp, but I caught up pretty quick because it was only a couple poems behind.  As for the zodiac challenge, that I've failed on.  I had every intention of writing them, especially because I have people who were excited to read a couple specific zodiac signs.  I'm really sorry!  I'll probably use the whole zodiac/horoscope thing as inspiration for random poems rather than a month challenge.  And there we go again, learning what challenges work and don't...

Poem-A-Day May promises to be exciting because every month is cause for excitement.  but I'm looking for a challenge.  Something that I can do weekly.  No ideas yet.  I'm thinking back to a couple older challenges, and one of them was to start one poem a week with "Where were you last night?"  That was a really neat concept because I got to play around with different ways of handling that.  Kinda similar to the challenge to write drunken poetry.  So I'm thinking I should find some sort of challenge that will be like that, because it might make me think more.  Or try forms.  Which might break my brain, but who knows, maybe I'd learn something?  Learning is good.

On Monday, I visited the Poetry Foundation downtown.  First off, I took the El into the city and then had to take another line north of the Loop.  Because I had a lot of time on my hands, it didn't ultimately matter, so that adventure was fun.  Except that I thought I could transfer at one stop, and it turns out that you can't, so after getting off the train and making my way onto the street level, I walked a couple blocks to another station where I had learned I could make my transfer.  Luckily it was a nice day.

Once I got to the stop where I needed to be, I went the wrong direction on the street and had to turn around, but I finally got to the building.  [this is where Brianna realizes that she's told this story in a previous blog post, oops?]  Anyway, it was closed until later.  So I went to Starbucks to get a drink.  That's when a woman came up to me and asked, "Did you just try to go to the Poetry Foundation?"  I shuffled my feet a little and said, "Yeah..." She was very nice when she said that they didn't open until 1 PM, and I was bashful about her having witnessed my embarrassing door-pulling from the other side of the gigantic glass windows.

Clutching my iced mocha of joy, I took the El back in the direction I had come from and met up with my friend for lunch.  He bought, because he's a nice person and knows that I'm unemployed.  It was underlined by the fact that he was on his lunch break from his job that he's pretty happy with.  I'm not going to hold that against him because he bought me lunch AND dessert.  Hey, I can't complain about a toffee cookie, that thing was delicious.  Actually, the whole sandwich was delicious.  There was cheese and vegetables and pesto, and yum.  I should have taken a picture that I could post here.  Darn.  Missed opportunity.

Yesterday, I visited my friend who's involved in drag shows.  She was looking for costumes for another show that she's going to do, so we went to a couple costume shops in Boystown and another shop that I shouldn't mention because this should be a family friendly blog, but let's suffice it to say that there was a lot of lace, silk, and rope.  Special rope.  Then we went to get food because Brianna had eaten a pocket of trail mix for lunch (and learned that M&Ms and the letter M are trademarked by Mars, Inc.  Though I feel like the letter M shouldn't be able to be trademarked...that shouldn't be allowed.).  All around it was a really good afternoon and it was really great to see her because I hadn't seen her in person for close to a year.  Craziness.

And then another friend came over and we watched Woman in Black.  It's a miracle I didn't have nightmares, but it was my idea, so...

I really should never complain about having no friends again [Brianna goes back through her post and sees how many times she mentions "my friend."].

And tomorrow, tomorrow I'm going to C2E2 with my friend (aha!) because she's going for her work.  Yeah, her work is paying for her to go to a comic book convention.  I suddenly find myself wanting a job that would do that for me.  That would be really exciting.  Anyway, I'm super excited because I've never been to a comic book convention, and I'm looking forward to shamelessly people-watching.  Because that's what I do.  Should I bring my TARDIS notebook?  Hm, the possibilities...

That's all I really have to say, so that's all, folks!

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

- Mark Twain

Advice

Q:  Hey, so what's up?

A:  Not much, just hanging out with people who are younger than me.

Q:  Oh yeah?  Can't find too many friends your own age, eh?

A:  You have no idea how severely unfunny that is.  In fact, these teenagers are actually pretty cool.  I've known them for a while.

Q:  So what's up with the title?

A:  I'm getting there!  Sheesh!

Last night I was giving advice to a friend.  Specifically, I was giving advice to a teenaged friend about boys.  Via text message.  While I was sitting in Baker's Square with a friend who I've known since high school.  Because I'm incredibly rude.  (I'd say you probably wouldn't believe how often I text other people when I'm out with real people...but like I said, you probably wouldn't believe it.)  Anyway, I'm not saying I know a lot, but I have good instincts, and I care about people.  So that's where all my texting was coming from.

My friend who I was eating pie with made the observation that I've been doing this for a long time.  I almost wish that I could have asked him dubiously what he was talking about, but I already knew what he was saying.  I've been collecting friends and surrounding myself with people who could benefit from my advice.  In high school, I "adopted" freshmen, and in college, I was adamant about wanting to work in a first year hall as an RA.  And now that I'm out of school, I'm helping out with my local Girl Scout troop.  My friend made the comment that I can be the "cool and hip" adult person in old TV shows that picks up the main character from the police station, gives them a lecture in the car about responsibility, and then the credits roll.  I immediately thought of Full House.  But I'm not really sure I can be Uncle Jesse.

This realization isn't really something that should come as a surprise to me.  It's just something that I do, kinda like breathing.  And obsessively checking Facebook even though I know that nothing interesting could have happened in the span of five minutes.

So I find myself thinking that this is something I'd like to do with my life.  In The Future, maybe.  I want to be able to give people advice, or help them when they're struggling with something.  And I think that's what draws me to residential life at universities, because I had such a great mentor while I was at school, and I'd like to serve as the same type of person for another student.  When I say I want to "help people," this is the capacity in which I want to help them.  I want to get on their level or be able to say, "I've been there," or "I care about you" and mean it.

And this is when I realize that this tendency toward "mentoring" the young is exactly why people think I would make a good teacher.  Not just because of the formal teaching aspect that would come as a function of my own knowledge and studies, but because I could also be that teacher that the students could confide in.

I'm not really sure where this takes me, but I do know that self-reflection is a big part of the job search.  At least, that's what What Color Is Your Parachute? tells me.  Because I'm a nerd.  Not the point.  Anyway, I'm sitting here thinking about it, and residential life just seems to make more and more sense.  It just feels like it could be a natural extension of the person I already am.  Hm.

"I always pass on good advice.  It is the only thing to do with it.  It is never of any use to oneself."

- Oscar Wilde

Goodness

Today I pulled a prompt from my magical prompt box, but the first one I pulled was: Name a time when you broke a rule or law.  Did you get caught, or did you get away with it?  I feel like this would be an unwise thing to write about on a blog where the proper authorities could conceivably find me.  So we're not going to do that one.  The short answer for the curious, is yes I have, but get caught, no.  I'd like to keep it that way.  Just ask me, and I'll tell you the story!

Anyway, one more time!

This is my mysterious full of orange slips with prompts on them.  Magical, yes?

Today's prompt:  Name one thing you feel brings out the good in people.

Laughter.  There are a number of different types of laughter, but most importantly is the laughter that actually makes people happy.  I find that happiness and laughter tend to bring out the good in people.  I say this because I enjoy surrounding myself with people who enjoy laughing and who enjoy making other people laugh.  Because laughter is a unifying experience, people tend to be more friendly once they've laughed together.  I remember going to poetry slams on campus and leaving with this warm feeling and being met with smiles from other people because we had shared something, and I feel like that's part of the "good" that comes out in people.  So laughter for one.

I think that also leaks into shared experiences.  Sharing experiences brings out a good toward the people in that specific context, which is good, and sometimes that also extends to good towards outside people.  I'm not sure if that sentence makes any sense, but it made sense in my head, so I'm leaving it.

Kindness.  Being shown it yourself brings out kindness in others in a sort of "pay it forward" type of attitude. Random Acts of Kindness Week is in February, and I've always wanted to do little anonymous random acts of kindness, but I always manage to forget, which probably says a lot about me, but we're not going to go there.

Feeling like someone cares about you.  This always makes me feel like I need to do something for someone else or let that caring person know just how much their care and concern means to me.  Just because it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Caffeine.  I'm only kidding.

Love.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about."

- Wendy Mass

A Letter to French Fries

Dear French Fries,

It's been a long time, but I'm sure you remember me.  My name's Brianna, and I'm the blonde girl with the glasses who gets random cravings for you.

Last night, the question was posed, "Where do you want to eat?"  My first answer was the cheeky answer that I always give because that's the type of person I am, "Preferably somewhere with food.  Delicious food."  And then I realized, "I have the weirdest cravings for French fries, so can we go somewhere that will give me fries?"

You are delicious.  I love when you're crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and golden.  Needless to say, I successfully acquired a plate of French fries along with my bacon cheeseburger because I am the most healthy person in the history of the world.  And naturally, I ate all of the fries first.

Can we talk about one thing that I'm not a fan of?  Why is it that you never taste as delicious when you're leftover?  And cold French fries don't taste particularly good either.  Is it because you've just renounced all your deliciousness once you spend a night in the fridge?  As an act of rebellion, do you perhaps say, "Too bad, fry-eater, we're not going to be as delicious the next day!" and then toss off the coat of tastiness?  I'm not really sure how that would work literally, but I'm sure you can probably find a way what with your wily temptations that get me to eat you in the first place.

Lucky for you, I've discovered that my downfall with second day French fries is warming them up in the microwave because that makes them soggy.  I've learned only now that if you warm up French fries in a toaster oven, they're still crispy.  Unfortunately, I don't own a toaster oven, so that leaves me to consume a quarter of my burger and the entire plate of fries when I go out.  Which is something I'm totally okay with, don't get me wrong.

Then I found this on my Pinterest...it was there all along!

Source: buzzfeed.com via Brianna on Pinterest

I highly doubt that any "healthy alternatives" will turn me off of plain old delicious and fatty potato French fries, but it definitely sounds like an endeavor that will be fun to experiment with, and it'll definitely give me something to do.

I love you, French fries.  Let's see if there are other versions of you that are even more delicious.

Cheers,
Brianna

"Blood may be thicker than water, but it's certainly not as thick as ketchup.  Nor does it go as well with French fries."

- Jarod Kintz

Complimentary, My Dear Watson

Here we are again, using a prompt from my mysterious prompt box.

Today's prompt: Write about some compliments people have given you.

I've been told that I have "presence."  I do enjoy the spotlight, so I'm glad that people think that I can command attention.  What's interesting about that is how I identify as an introvert, but I'm pretty okay at pretending that I'm an extrovert.  So when I get compliments about how people think I perform well or that I have a sort of charisma, I'm hugely flattered because that's not something I would naturally attribute to myself.

I have a poem about nerds that I wrote for my Stand Up Poetry class, and I particularly enjoy reading it because I get a lot of compliments on it.  Denise Duhamel said that she liked my title, "Nerds Do It by the Book," and Matt Guenette said that he wanted to steal the line "***SPOILER ALERT!***" from me.  It was the very first poem in my university's literary magazine one semester, and people came up to me on campus and told me that it was hilarious, that it made them want to read more in the magazine, that they read it aloud to their friends and everyone thought it was funny.  The biggest compliment that I got for that poem was a date, which was pretty awesome.

I also have a friend who told me I "fascinate" her and that I'm "pretty damn amazing."  I remember these compliments word for word because I wrote them down in a notebook, not believing that I could possibly be that awesome, especially not in the eyes of someone who I regarded so highly.  I may have kept those quotes written on the mirror in my room for some time because every time I thought about them, I smiled.

For my last compliment I need to tell you that in high school, I did a lot of theatre.  I feel like every time I talk about my theatre days I probably sum it up by saying that I "did a lot," but that's really just the prologue to this semi-story.

My junior year of high school, we did a production of The Laramie Project for our fall play.  For anyone who knows what the play/movie is about, you'll  know that it's a pretty heavy play for a high school to put on, but every other year we did a drama, and that was ours that year.  In summary that does little to no justice to the beauty of the story, it's about the murder of a homosexual student in Wyoming, and how his death brings together the community of Laramie.  It was a very small cast, so that meant everyone was playing about 4-6 different characters throughout the two hour show.  One of my characters was a friend of one of the murderers.  I played her as a drunk/high undereducated foul-mouthed bigot.  It was a good time.  Well at the end of the production during our pizza party, the senior class gives out unofficial awards to everyone in the cast and crew.  I received the award for, "Playing 'drugged out' a little too good."  And that was one of the best compliments I got for that performance.

"It's a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming."

- Oscar Wilde

Nothing New, Just Procrastinating

Q:  So what's going on?

A:  I am job searching.  When I say that I'm job searching, I really mean that I'm finding creative ways of using the Internet that doesn't involve searching for jobs on the limited number of job search sites that I've bothered for about a month now.  Procrastination is something that I'm very familiar with, so this is nothing new.

My most recent procrastination is Here's the Story, specifically their podcasts.  I don't usually listen to podcasts, mostly for unknown reasons.  I guess I just feel like I should be doing something else at the same time.  Even though I'm procrastinating, I'm a very efficient procrastinator who does lots of things while she's procrastinating.  So I'm writing this blog post while I'm listening to stories from Here's the Story and I just finished up writing Poem-A-Day things while listening to (guess what) stories from Here's the Story.  It's a really neat show and I'm having a lot of fun listening to the stories.  It's quickly becoming a goal of mine to go see this show in person, and I'm really excited about this prospect.

I've been knitting a Hufflepuff scarf for my friend while simultaneously watching Dollhouse.  I'm getting pretty far in both the television show and on the scarf, so far that I'm almost halfway through the second season and the scarf reaches from the floor to my neck.  I am 5'5''.  Having a lot of fun with the show, especially when I can marvel at the acting talents of those who play the dolls because wow.  Just wow.

Additionally, I'm also starting multiple projects relating to my poetry, which is really neat, but I'm not even sure which one to focus on because I'm excited about them all but I don't have nearly enough hands to do all of them at once.  So really they're all sitting on the chair in my room in a stack of poetic mess, doing about as much as I am with regards to my job search.

A friend of my mother's asked me on Saturday night, "So how's the job search going, Brianna, does it totally suck?"  I had no idea what to say to that.  Well, honestly?  Yeah, a little bit.  I haven't heard from anyone, and the ones that I have heard of have said, "Thanks but no thanks."  That's fair, I can respect that.  The short version is that I don't have a job.  No job for Brianna.  I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm a little dejected, yeah.  So...I'm procrastinating for now.  Really hoping that the procrastination blows over soon...because I need to get some stuff done.

"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done."

- Rita Mae Brown

30 Day Creative Writing Challenge

Alright, so I'm thinking I'm going to do a 30 Day Creative Writing Challenge that I stole from HERE.  I need some regular writing of things, possibly fiction, possibly poetry, possibly a little bit of both as well as some stream of consciousness-ish things.  So we'll see what happens.  These will start on January 1st.  Ready, set, GO!

Day 1: Re-write a classic fairy tale

Day 2: Write a fanfiction

Day 3: A story that takes place pre-1950

Day 4: A poem using the words: blue, mistrust, half, twang

Day 5: A story revolving around an object in your room

Day 6: Start your story with: “He glanced at his watch impatiently…”

Day 7: Create a superhero. Have he/she save the day.

Day 8: Write a prequel to that Superhero. Pre-Superhero life. Maybe their childhood.

Day 9: A story in 250 words or less about your favorite city

Day 10: Start story with: “She touched the little box in her pocket and smiled…”

Day 11: A story where the characters go without power for a day.

Day 12: Find 10 random words and create your own definitions.

Day 13: Begin with “I thought I saw…”

Day 14: randomly find someone in your yearbook. Create a story about their life today.

Day 15: Write about a stranger you see. Either their back-story or what they are thinking in the moment you see them.

Day 16: Go to iTunes, put your music on random. Write a story about the first song that comes up. (250 words or less)

Day 17: Use time travel in a story

Day 18: A story set in a ghost town.

Day 19: Write an obituary for a historical figure

Day 20: Use these words in a story: grandfather, photo album, post office, and folder

Day 21: He or she sees their crush in a library. describe the incident.

Day 22: Write a story based on a dream you had

Day 23: Describe/fictionalize a childhood memory

Day 24: Write a story that takes place 100 years in the future

Day 25: Write a story about a mythical creature.

Day 26: Write about the 30th picture on your phone or computer. Write about the story behind it, or make up the story behind it.

Day 27: Story taking place during a sporting event (any sport)

Day 28: Story on a ship. Past, present, or future.

Day 29: Story about space

Day 30: Story or poem about ice

Poetry Friday -- Love

This morning, when I woke up and thought about writing a blog post, I realized: hey, it's Friday!  Poetry Friday!  Then I didn't know what poem to write about.  I thought I might cheat and write about how (just like every year around this time of October) I'm considering participating in National Novel Writing Month.  I have yet to actually commit to doing it, well, let's be honest, I'd like to, but it's more a matter of committing to an idea than anything else.  Anyway...

Novels aren't the point, because today's about poetry.

Today I read Pablo Neruda's "Love," which I'm also going to type here because it took me an eternity to find it when I wanted to read it originally.  It makes me really want to be best friends with Pablo Neruda, steal his brain, and kiss him on the mouth.  Maybe not in that order though.

Love -- Pablo Neruda

So many days, oh so many days
seeing you so tangible and so close
how do I pay, with what do I pay?

The bloodthirsty spring
has awakened in the woods.
The foxes start from their earths,
the serpents drink the dew,
and I go with you in the leaves
between the pines and the silence,
asking myself how and when
I will have to pay for my luck.

Of everything I have seen,
it's you I want to go on seeing:
of everything I've touched,
it's your flesh I want to go on touching.
I love your orange laughter.
I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.

What am I to do, love, loved one?
I don't know how others love
or how people loved in the past.
I live, watching you, loving you.
Being in love is my nature.

You please me more each afternoon.

Where is she?  I keep on asking
if your eyes disappear.
How long she's taking!  I think, and I'm hurt.
I feel poor, foolish and sad,
and you arrive and you are lightning
glancing off the peach trees.

That's why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.

So I'm a sap.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am a complete and total sap, and they're either okay with it or they ignore me when I go into "sap mode."  I adore this poem.  I found quotes from it when I was browsing around Tumblr trying to decide if I want to get a Tumblr.  Then there was a gigantic Google search of epicness during which I found a bunch of other Neruda poems, none of them the ones that I wanted until I finally stumbled upon this one.  So I printed it out and it now lives on my bulletin board.  Basically it's awesome.

Anyway...I really love the third stanza.  The third stanza is the one that caught my eye originally and made me want to read the entire poem.  I love it.  Like a lot.  It's just about as good as chocolate covered strawberries and cuddly kisses.  It's so simple, and yet it's so swooningly romantic that I want to shake Pablo Neruda's hand and congratulate him for writing something so beautiful.  I don't know what "orange laughter" is, but I imagine it being something bright and delightful and sunshiney, and that makes me happy.

I like the idea that this poem takes on something that is so easily cliched because it's written about so much, and makes it new and fresh.  Sure, there are probably a ton of poems about how the speaker doesn't think they deserve the one who loves them, but this poem ropes in the element of luck and the consternation that the speaker will have to pay for having been so lucky in love.  This ups the stakes and makes things not so much about the self-deprecation of the speaker but more so about the elevation of the loved.

I have never heard spring described as "bloodthirsty," and I'm not quite certain how I feel about it.  But I am inclined to think that it has to do with the spring being most associated with love and "mating season" that it heats the blood, as it were.  These images of nature in the second stanza make me believe that the speaker's love for the subject is as natural as breathing.

"Lightning glancing off the peach trees."  Can we talk about how beautiful that is?  Sure, it's destructive in that lightning striking just about anything fries the "anything," but peach trees make me think of scent and fruit and delicious things and lightning is dangerous, but combined with peaches, it makes it all worthwhile.  Goodness gracious.  And I'm not sure how stars "flower," but yes.  So much yes.

PROMPTS:
1.  What is orange laughter?  Can you write something that either explains what this is or explores the idea of many-colored laughters?
2.  I dare you to write an un-cliche love poem.
3.  Write a poem in which the speaker self-deprecates in order to talk about their love.  Then find a way to twist that self-deprecation into an elevation of the love.
4.  Create an image of dangerous beauty.  What does it feel like, and what kind of emotions does it inspire in the speaker?
5.  Write about the bloodthirsty spring.  What's up with that?

"I love your orange laughter."

- Pablo Neruda, 'Love'

Poems for a Year

It dawned on me.  While I was writing my Poem-A-Day for today.

On September 1, 2012, I will have written a year's worth of Poem-A-Days.  

366 poems, because 2012's a leap year.

And as I had my pen resting on the loose leaf which in turn was sitting on the grainy computer desk, I thought the very profound thought of, "That's a lot of poems."  Then my brain proceeded to melt inside its casing and ooze out every possible escape route out of my head.  Now I have gray matter to mop up and tease out of the keyboard, and I still have the realization that I'm going to have written over 100 poems.  Over 200 poems.  In fact, I will have written over 300 poems and be well on my way to writing 400.  And that's huge.  If it was all about quantity, I would be on the road to writing myself an eternity's worth of poems.

The real truth of the matter is that it's actually about quality.  I'm not going to say that I think all my poems are awesome.  And I'm also not going to say that I think they're all trash.  Most of them are somewhere in the middle, and with revision, they can definitely be either "okay" or "superb."  Point being, I've got a lot of material to work with, and that thought is overwhelming.  I may never have to write an original poem again... And even after typing that, I realize that it's not true.  Of course I'm going to write more poems.  I'm not just going to say "These 366 are it, I'm never writing anything new ever again," because that would put me in a terrible place when I'm far away from the college life and I'm still revising poems about graduation stress.  So for the sake of keeping myself out of a time vortex, I will still write poetry even after this Poem-A-Day Project is done.

So I'll be done with this Poem-A-Day Project.  I realize that the year is a little illogical based on the fact that it goes along with the school year rather than the regular calendar year that normal people use, but part of me is alright with that.  The other part of me wants to call it Poem-A-Day 2012 and get it over with.  You know, just keep writing until January 1st.  I'm playing with this idea, I haven't decided yet.

And then there's another part of my oozed puddle brain that asks, "Are you going to keep going?"  Will I just keep writing one poem per day and keep going until some undetermined date?  Is there enough paper for that?  Should I change my system somehow?  Maybe I could use recycled paper instead?  Or my recycled notebooks....hm.  Should I keep going?  There are definitely perks to keeping up with the Poem-A-Day Project because it gives me some reliable way of expressing myself.  I know that if I have something that's on my mind, I can sort it out in a poem, or rant about it in poetic form.  And I still have so much to learn when it comes to imagery and form and making my poems actually sound pretty in addition to being silly.  It's been nice writing these poems during my last year of college because it gave me a way of remembering what was on my mind at the time I was writing that poem and what I was stressed or excited about.  I can look back and get right back into that mindset.  The cons all revolve around resources.  For paper and pens (because let's face it, are there really enough pens and paper in the world to sustain a Poem-A-Day Project for a Brianna who will live until who knows when?).  For ideas.  This is the biggest problem with my being at home this summer.  I don't see a lot of people outside of my family, and I don't get out very often, so I don't see a lot of new things.  So my poems are either really odd or really dumb because they're about the same eight things that I always write about when I'm at home.  And there's nothing really new going on.  Although when I start the job search...there will be plenty of material and ideas there, there have just gotta be.  And then there's my five month stay in Orlando, FL for the Disney College Program.  That HAS to be a goldmine for creativity.

So it's coming up, the end of one year's worth of poems for Brianna.  Will she continue till January?  Will she continue until some undetermined date?  Or will she just stop and call it a year?  The answers to come soon...

"I've written some poetry I don't understand myself."

- Carl Sandburg

Golden

So today's my birthday.  My golden birthday.  What does that mean exactly?  Well, it's a thing that little kids like to figure out based on your birthday.  It's really not an in-depth sort of analysis of personalities and dates or anything, it's merely based on the day of the month upon which you were born.  So.  For all of you who were paying attention or just extrapolating while I rambled, I'm turning 22 today.

After spending the majority of my childhood lamenting my golden birthday's distance from whatever present year I was at, it's finally here.  I'm finally turning 22.  I'm finally experiencing my golden birthday while my other friends celebrated their's earlier.  Figures, considering how close to the end of the month my birthday is.

Born on the 22nd as I am, I'm actually on the cusp of two zodiac signs.  Gemini and Cancer.  Although I identify myself as a Cancer (don't get me started on that whole "there's an extra zodiac sign" thing because if I have to call myself a Gemini, I may just expire from exhaustion).  As the beginning of this paragraph illustrates, I'm obviously extremely serious about the zodiac...only not.  I'm just a little superstitious.  Sometimes.  So far my horoscope hasn't predicted anything traumatic, so I'm okay with that.

My mom did send me this yesterday: http://www.netplaces.com/birthday-personology/june/june-22.htm.  So I read it, because these things interest me.  It's fascinating to look at things that explain your personality based on your birthday or your zodiac sign or the number of letters in your name, or whatever it is.  I find this intriguing.  Plus it's perfect fodder for coming up with characters.  Haven't done it yet, but it will happen!  It must happen!

I would definitely agree with this little linky that my humor may be a defense mechanism.  It goes along with the idea that I'm an introvert and every time I explain that to someone they laugh.  Because I look and act like an extrovert most of the time.  I'm really quite shy.  Promise.  Also, I am an idea person, so I like getting things started.  But with my writing endeavors, I sometimes leave projects unfinished.  Yeah...  The mention of money made me laugh out loud when I first read it because I'm so cheap.  It's kinda ridiculous how cheap I am.  But I'm not even as cheap as some of my family members.  Trust.  Yeah.  I don't know what's up with that, but I don't trust myself.  And it takes me a really long time to open up to someone and come out of my shell.  Half the time I don't even realize that my shell's there being all imposing and stuff.

Oh!  AND I have also resolved to look at the world from hereon out for exciting things.  I want to resolve that I will look at the world in wonder and be filled with interest for the things around me.  Because lately I've just been hanging out at home jaded and disillusioned, believing only somewhat jokingly that I have no friends.  That ends today!  I will find joy and wonder in the everyday!

Happy Birthday to me...happy birthday to me...

Things I Learned in Paris

From May 18th until yesterday, I was in Paris, France with my mother and my grandmother.  It was a kind of graduation gift from Grandma, and let me tell you right now that it was a dream come true.  Ever since I started taking French classes in 7th grade, I've wanted to visit Paris.  It's one of those things you have to do if you're learning French.  And even now, I haven't stopped learning.

1. Taking luggage on the Metro or RER is one of the worst decisions you can make if only because there will be complain-y people.  Haha, sure you're speaking French, but I can still understand you...
2. Ask the server for wine suggestions.
3. Tip is always included.
4. More people than you might think know and are willing to speak English, but they'll apologize for it.  I'm sorry my French isn't better, your English is infinitely better than my French and I'm in your country!
   
   

   

   La Tour Eiffel!

   
   
5. The Eiffel Tower is brown.
6. Never ever wear your un-broken-in character shoes on the first day of a walking-heavy vacation.
7. Band-Aids are pretty much the best things ever.  :^)
8. Croque-Madame and quiche Lorraine.  Yes please!
9. Steak burgers are infinitely better than regular burgers.
10. Timhotel is lackluster.
    
    
    
    Source: budgetsavvydiva.com via Brandy on Pinterest
11. Chocolate croissants.  Miam, miam, miam...
12. L'Arc de Triomphe is in the center of a star of streets and yet un-findable when tired.
13. The only public toilets are the shifty ones on the street.
14. When you really need to go to the bathroom and think, "Hey!  I'll just use this free museum pass to use a museum bathroom," none of the six nearby museums will be on the list of museums it can be used for.
15. At some intersections you have to take your life into your own hands because there are no "walk" signals.
    
    

    

    I'm going to miss these little walky guys...

    
    
16. "Don't walk" signals don't have feet.
17. Shakespeare and Co. is beautiful.
18. Gelato is absolutely delicious and eaten with little bitty plastic shovels.
19. Orangina, chocolat chaud, and wine.
20. Oh, it seems you bought your wares on Oriental Trading..."May I have 1000 chintzy plastic Eiffel Towers for $0.05?  Thanks!"
    
    

    

    Why thank you sir, I definitely wanted you and your elbow in my picture...

    
    
21. The Venus de Milo initially looks like a hologram.
22. The Mona Lisa is bigger than I originally thought it would be.
23. Sometimes the view from Sacre-Coeur or the Musee d'Orsay can suffice.
24. Little old ladies enjoy standing outside famous Gothic cathedrals and gesturing at the facade.
    
    

    

    "You see there's a tall bit, a not-so-tall bit, and another tall bit..."

    
    
25. There's a tall bit, then a not-so-tall bit, and another tall bit on Notre Dame.
26. Hausmann regulated building in Paris: carve the front out of stone, each apartment must have a balcony, the top floor needs to have one balcony all the way around, and windows in the roof.
27. Everyone in Louis XVI's family was vaccinated.
28. Never ever, ever take something being handed to you (paper silhouettes or clay pottery especially).
    
    
    
    Source: tumblr.com via Lexi on Pinterest
29. Scarves.  Leather jackets.  Big glasses.  Boots.  Lacey dresses.  Shorts and tights.  Converse.
30. 23 times.
31. Wild poodles only come out at night, and your mother will continuously insist that it wasn't real.
32. "First thing...and another thing..."
33. The line's not as long as it seems, especially when you have a pass that lets you skip it.
34. You need stamps to send postcards.  Wait, really?
    
    

    

    Ca c'est jolie!!!  C'est une maison a Montmartre!

    
    
35. Montmartre's a beautiful climb.
36. Not all Indiana Cafes are created equal.
37. "We're just going to give you drinks and we're going to ask you to pay first.  No, you may not have menus, because we refuse to feed you." (Bad day.)
38. Sleeping on a pallet at my mother's feet isn't that bad.
39. I am Marilyn Monroe in Paris.
40. Confirmed: my pajama pants and blanket make a laser light show in the dark.
41. Tour buses are imaginary.  Unless you don't have a reservation.  In other words...your tour?  It doesn't exist.
    
    

    

    The view from the cafe Le Dome.

    
    
42. Sitting at a cafe in the rain = :^D
43. French keyboards are insanely difficult to type on.
44. AltGr for @
45. Jury duty?
46. Walking crepes are delicious, and it's fascinating to watch them made.
47. Craft fairs may be deceiving...
48. You may be exhausted, but your RER train will stop the stop before your's and not move, forcing you to take a Metro back into the city to get to where you need to go outside of the center.
49. Daytime television is vastly more interesting than evening news programs.
    
    
    
    Source: google.com via Bonnie on Pinterest
50. "We'll always have Paris."
    
    
    "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
    - Ernest Hemingway

P is for Physically Fit

Q:  What's up with the "P is for"?  I thought it was just "C is for Cookie..."

A:  Well, C is for cookie.

Q:  That's good enough for me.  No, but really.

A:  In high school, we had this thing called the "Grad at Grad."  It was a list of goals essentially that my high school wanted us to have achieved by the time we were a graduate at Graduation.  No big deal, right?  Goals are good.

They introduced the Grad at Grad our freshman year with an acronym:  RIPLOC.

Religious
Intellectually Competent
Physically Fit
Loving
Open to Growth
Committed to Doing Justice

I'm still amazed that I haven't forgotten it yet.  That's the power of a good acronym, I guess.  Anyway, sophomore year we had to meet with a member of the faculty or administration and talk about our progress.  How were we doing with getting to the Grad at Grad.  Somehow I got paired with the Dean of Students.  The big important dean who got to call snow days or force us to come to school in a blizzard.  I'm pretty sure I bluffed my way through most of that interview, but I was honest about "physically fit."  I said something along the lines of "Well, I used to walk to the bus stop, but then it started getting cold...and I walk to all my classes..."  And left it at that.  I never took a gym class in high school because I took fine arts all four years.  I'm not 100% certain why those are equivalent, but I'm totally okay with that because I really never wanted to take a gym class.  So the dean said I should probably work on physically fit but  it seemed like I was doing well with all the others.

Did I work on it?  Not at all.  Unless you count singing and dancing at the same time in theatrical performances, which I wouldn't really count, no.

In college I had to take P.E.  Because we're a liberal arts school and they like making weird things required for graduation.  So I plotted to take the easiest P.E. classes ever.  Which I did: Fencing, Badminton, Fitness Walking, and Cycling.  Although to be fair, cycling was the most difficult and most rewarding one that I took.  I liked it a lot.  In the end, I never really ended up "physically fit."

Then last semester, my friend and I went to the gym to lift and do things in the weight room, but that petered off because I'm a wimp.  Although we did really well for a couple weeks, I have to say.  I was impressed with us.

Source: Uploaded by user via Brianna on Pinterest

So I'm still working on it.
Yesterday I stole my brother's bike and took a ride on the bike trail near my house to the library.  It was pretty awesome.  Once I got home I was hot, sweaty, and gross, but I felt fantastic.  Probably because I went into it with some measure of excitement and came home confident.  Or the music on the radio was just really good that hour.  Regardless, I'm doing it again today.

I'm really excited about my new-found activity because it's going to give me something to do.  If I'm perfectly honest, I've been a bum for these first two weeks of being a college graduate, and that just makes me feel like a piece of fungus hanging out on a slice of bread.  And that's not only gross, but can't be healthy.  So...resolving to actually get outside and do something?  Yes I am.  Is it optimistic that I'll stick with it?  Absolutely.  But hopefully I can.

"It takes four weeks for you to see your body changing, it takes eight weeks for friends and family, and it takes twelve weeks for the rest of the world.  Keep Going."

Feeling Bookish?

Today I compiled a list of all the books in the house that are begging to be given away.  When I say they're "begging," I mean that they're piled up in separate little mounds of literature, attracting dust like magnets attract metal filings.  There are at least tree piles in the house.  There's the one in my room of all the books that I either forgot to sell back to school or had the mistaken impression that I would read them again when I wasn't being forced to.  There's the one in the front room of the family books, so that's a mix of books from my parents and a couple from my brother.  Finally, there's the tiny pile in the office which I had no idea about until about half an hour ago.

So I wrote up this list, organized it all pretty in alphabetical order (by author's last name), and posted the list on Facebook.

I have a point to this, I promise.

Giving away books to my friends who have been "dibs"-ing them got me to thinking about how I wanted to put together that cafe/book shop.  Honestly, that's why I took those business classes, because it would be good to have some basis for setting up a business.

I'm thinking that if I end up working in a book shop or running one, I'm going to put bookmarks in the books.  Just little things that I make.  I have a bunch of bookmarks that I made when I had extra paint-splattered-ness from my door decs last year, so I could use those.  Of course, there would be a method to the madness.  I would always put the bookmark on page 42.  Because of The Hitchhiker's Guide.  And because I like the number 42.  It might also be fun to put sheets of stickers or temporary tattoos between the pages.  I know when I get books from the library I always think it's neat if I can find things from people who had taken out the book before me.  So wouldn't it be fun if it could be something that sparked inspiration or made someone smile?  That's why I'm thinking tattoos or stickers.  Because it's a little silliness that would prompt a smile.

In my book shop, I would also cover a wall in Post-Its.  Maybe I could have book titles and reading recommendations on the Post-Its, and when a guest comes in, they have to take a Post-It off the wall.  They wouldn't necessarily have to go looking for the book, but if it ended up giving them a place to start, that would be really cool.

I would also have reviews for books or recommendations on the shelves.  Maybe I could even rig a treasure hunt of sorts to send guests on.  I'm not sure how that would work, but maybe it would send them from book to book, either based on title or knowledge of the book or location.  I would want to create some way for the guests to get involved with the books on the shelves, make them come alive somehow, even before you open their pages.

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

- Jane Austen

Shakespeare and Boccaccio

Q:  So what are you up to nowadays?

A:  Well.  I'm sitting around worrying about The Future, spending time worrying about my business stats test instead of actually attempting to start studying for it, agonizing over my management "double-weighted" quiz that'll be on the same day as my stats test, and then I'm thinking a lot about Shakespeare.

Q:  That's nothing new, you might as well stop typing now.

A:  Yeah okay.

So I have a paper for my Shakespeare class.  I'm going to write it on Cymbeline, which I'm really excited about because it's a really weird play.  Not even the critics really know what to do with it because no one really knows what genre it belongs in.  Our book classifies it as a romance, so that means there's going to be love and shenanigans, no one's going to die, and everyone's going to live happily ever after.  Right?

Wrong.  There are at least two deaths, one of them being a suicide and the other one featuring a headless body that stays on stage for a little bit to cuddle with the female lead.

I also have a huge problem with the play being called Cymbeline after a secondary character because I'm still trying to figure out what his significance to the play is.  Mostly because I've given myself permission to not think about him up until now.

But I'm writing my paper about women.  And Shakespeare's source material.  Because it's a little known fact to people who know Shakespeare's stories but aren't familiar with the history behind them that Shakespeare never really came up with his own plots.  Due to copyright laws being nonexistent in Shakespearean times, he could pick and choose plots that struck his fancy from other people's works, and no one could say a word about it.  Better than that, if people recognized the source material they could gloat and talk about how clever they were that they actually knew where the plot came from.

A large part of Shakespeare's plot for Cymbeline centers around a wager that Posthumus (what a horrid name) makes with Iachimo based on the chastity of Posthumus' wife.  Because yes, you can be chaste when you're married.  So this plot actually came from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, which I learned through a very quick Google search while my school's library website wasn't working for me.  It's interesting that in the original story, the character upon whom Posthumus is based brags about how his wife possesses all of the best virtues that a woman can possess, and additionally the virtues that a knight or squire might possess.  Whoa, crazy!  I'm not sure if Shakespeare keeps this comparison, but if he doesn't, this is going to be perfect for my paper.  It's interesting that Boccaccio would go so far as to allow a character to bestow the virtues of a man upon his wife because I highly doubt that Boccaccio was a feminist in the contemporary sense.  Maybe he's saying that to show how absurd the character's bragging is.  "Anyone who would think to claim that women have the same virtues as men is clearly addled."  This seems plausible.

So it begins.  My lovely to do list unfolds:
- study for business stats in any manner possible
- study and read for management, pray that the questions aren't absurd
- write a paper for Shakespeare
- critique fiction

"I thought her

as chaste as unsunned snow."

- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, 2.5

Poetry Friday -- Vogon Poetry

So because I'm making up blog posts today because I was a slacker before and because I'm not really held accountable for the legitimacy of any of my blog posts, I'm going to write about Vogon poetry.

Today is Douglas Adams' birthday.  If he were alive today, he would have been 60 years old.  Douglas Adams is the author of the series that starts out with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Apparently it's called a trilogy even though it has five books because Douglas Adams was a wonderfully ridiculous man.  There's also a sixth book in the series written by Eoin Colfer (author of Artemis Fowl) fairly recently.

Fun fact: Douglas Adams wrote for Doctor Who.  Thereby further legitimizing my love for the British science fiction show.  (Even though Douglas Adams didn't write any of the episodes I've ever seen...)

Douglas Adams is one of the main reasons why I believe that the things I write might actually be considered popular one day.  If he can send a Chesterfield bouncing across an open field, then why can't I do whatever I want in my own writing?  Okay, maybe not whatever I want until I'm about as famous and well-known (because those are two different things, right?) as Douglas Adams.

So Vogon poetry.  According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the "third worst poetry in the Universe."  Listening to it read is something akin to torture.  Honestly, I think Vogon poetry is a little amusing, but it takes the form of nonsense verse.

I think there's something to be said about nonsense verse.  In some ways I feel like it can be used effectively when someone integrates nonsense with sensical things if only to give it some context.  I'm thinking of "Jabberwocky" and the idea that "the momeraths outgrabe" (I'm doing this from memory, so please don't punch me).  Also if there's a pleasing rhythm or sound to the nonsense verse, it's more likely to be appealing.  I get the distinct feeling that that's not the case with Vogon poetry, so I'm not holding my breath.

The description that the Guide gives it is (provided to me by Wikipedia):
"Vogon poetry is the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent, of his poem, Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning, four of his audience members died of internal hemorrhaging, and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council, survived by gnawing one of his own legs off... The very worst poetry in the universe died along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex... in the destruction of the planet Earth."

So Vogon poetry probably wouldn't be that bad if it had a rhyme, rhythm, or reason.  But because Vogons enjoy watching you squirm in pain and agony from hearing their verses...I find it difficult to believe that they would try to make their poetry enjoyable.

I found a couple Vogon related links that you might want to check out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml (I wrote one of these, and the first adjective should not have been "cheery."  Oops!)
http://www.whippersnapperpress.com/events (I'm really jealous that they have a Vogon poetry slam.  If I lived in the UK...I would be so there.)

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." 

- Douglas Adams

February 1st

Today is February 1st.
I had to check my calendar to confirm that it is indeed the beginning of the second month of 2012, but Amy Pond assures me that it's true.  (I have a Doctor Who calendar that I'm still really excited that I own...)  February.

This means that I've survived a whole month of 2012.  We all have.  I was a little concerned for a bit there, but we made it through.  That also means that I've completed the 5th month of my Poem-a-Day project.  Which is astounding when I didn't even think I'd do a second month once I started.  September was so difficult, I didn't think I'd have the energy to go on.  But I'm really glad I did.  Once I'm done with February though, I hit a milestone.  6 months of poem writing.  6 months worth of poems.  That's roughly...180 poems.  (I say roughly because on some days I wrote more than one poem, and February only has 29 days this year.)  Good grief, when I hit 200 poems...how weird will that be?

Because I've gotten this far, it becomes a question of how long I'm going to continue this project.  Do I have the energy and the stamina to continue for an entire year?  Well.  I'm going to try.  Although I realize that when I get home I'm going to have to do more than just laze around and do nothing because when I did that over winter break, my poetry was so awful.  I kid you not.  It was bad.  Because I did absolutely nothing over break aside from go to the grocery store with my mother and read and watch movies.  I didn't even make bulletin boards like I should have.  Anyway.  One year.  I'm shooting for one whole year of poetry.  We'll see how this goes.

This month (or at least for the next two weeks) people will be talking about Valentine's Day.  Which I hate.  I hate Valentine's Day.  Okay, maybe not "hate," but I do dramatically dislike it because it's all pink and frilly and cliche and full of candy.  Okay, the candy's the best part.  But that's not the point.  It's the principle of the thing.  I don't understand why people need one specific day to communicate their affection for their loved ones.  Why can't they do that daily?  Wouldn't that make it mean more?  Anyway, this leads me to believe that I should try my hand at typical romantic poetry.  I'm horrid at writing love poems, and I know because I tried.  I once wrote a love sonnet to a book.  When I had to write a love poem in my Writing Poetry class...I wrote one to a book.  (Noticing a theme here?)  So.  Because this is my 5th month of writing poetry, I'm going to set myself a challenge to write one love poem a week out of all the poems I'll be writing this month.  We'll see how this goes.

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red..."

- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Little Things that Make Me Happy

So (SPOILERS!) I'm making a bulletin board for February on Random Acts of Kindness.  I'm doing a lot of looking into things that make people happy and little bits of kindness and all that jazz, and I found a list of lists of things that make people happy.  Little things.  So I thought I'd follow suit and write up my own list of little things that make me happy.  In no particular order...

• Folded over potato chips
• Burnt popcorn
• Hugs
• Warm socks
• Cuddly old man sweaters
• Cuddling in general
• The smell of books
• Writing with a new pen in a new notebook
• Shopping for school supplies, even if I'm not actually purchasing anything
• Wind farms
• Black and white photographs
• Ruffles (not the potato chips)
• Getting in the car and turning on the radio to a song I know
• Dancing in the aisles at the grocery store
• Wax seals
• Stamps
• Finding change on the ground
• Walking in the fire lane
• Sitting at a campfire when it's just cold enough that the side of me facing away from the fire gets cold
• A good hair day
• Sudoku
• Baby animals
• When someone recognizes one of my references
• Opening the door before someone knocks on it
• Clean laundry smell
• E-mails or messages from a friend I was just thinking about
• Sunrises
• Being able to read the French on random labels
• Snail mail
• Riding a bike down the gigantic hill on the bike trail through the forest preserve
• Typewriters (the romantic old kind)
• Those bells that you can ring on the front counter of certain stores
• Fortune cookies

Favorite Lines

Q:  So what's your favorite movie quote?

A:  Um.  My favorite?  Of all time?  Do I have to pick one?

Q:  You mean you have more than one?  How do you know more than one movie quote?

A:  I watch a lot of movies...?

Q:  Fine...write a list...

A:  Awesome!  In no particular order...

1.  "I love this plan!  I'm excited to be a part of it!" - Dr. Venkman (Ghostbusters)

A big reason I love this quote is because it's so applicable to my real life.  I use it all the time.  It's always really great to see who gets the reference.  Luckily my boyfriend gets this one every time.  I get the feeling it's because we've seen Ghostbusters far too many times.

2. "Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." - Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)

This is a really good sign off for a yearbook.  I know this because I spent a good four years signing yearbooks with this quote.  Mostly because it's one of my favorite movies of all time, and also because it's insightful yet simple.  Besides, my uncle looks like Matthew Broderick.  Something I'll explain at a later date.

3. "But you know the thing about romance is people only get together right at the very end." - Love Actually

So this isn't one of my favorite quotes because I use it like the first two quotes, but I do quite enjoy this quote because it's so true.  It's said by the eleven year old adorableness who learns how to play the drums so the girl he loves will know he exists.  I adore that character and so there's really no reason not to like this quote...

4. "Inconceivable!" - Vizzini (The Princess Bride)

Classic.  This one shows up in casual conversation for me all the time, as do other quotes from this movie, but I couldn't quite bring myself to write "The Princess Bride in its entirety" as one of my favorite quotes.  This is my favorite movie of all time, and I can definitely quote it.  LOVE so much.

5. "She's safe just like I promised.  And she's all set to marry Norrington just like SHE promised, and you get to die for her just like YOU promised.  So we're all men of our word, really, except for Elizabeth who is, in fact, a woman." - Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl)

I love this quote.  I love this character.  So much.  So I have a friend named Elizabeth, and I was just dying for someone to ask me where she was so I could answer with this quote.  One day in Best Buy, someone finally asked me, and I may have made a scene as I was replying with this quote.  Elizabeth's reaction was also priceless.

6. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." - Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind)

I really wish this would come up in casual conversation more often, because then I would be as cool as Rhett Butler who really had a lot on his plate when it came to Scarlet.  Scarlette?  However you spell her name.  Yeah.  Famous line, really wish I could use it more often.  I think I may have used it properly once.  Hm.

7. "She doesn't even go here!" and "Four for you, Glenn Coco!  You go, Glenn Coco!" - Mean Girls

This movie is so quotable, which I never would have thought going in to watch it in the theatre back in the day.  But no, this movie is a lot more awesome than I thought it was back then, and these are definitely the two quotes I hear used/use myself the most often.  Or variations of these.

8. "It's just a flesh wound!" - The Black Knight (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Love.  So much love.  There's really nothing to explain here.

9. "It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark out, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Hit it." - The Blues Brothers

This is one of the few movies that my father will watch with me and my brother, so by default I love it.  I also frequently use this quote regardless of how far from Chicago I am.  Yup.  Used all the time.

10. "You stuck up, half-witted, scruffy looking Nerf herder!" - Princess Leia (Empire Strikes Back)

I couldn't resist.  I can't say that I use this quote, but I love it.  It's a fantastic insult, up there with the insults from The Princess Bride insults at the end of the movie, and if I ever get the chance to use this insult, I may do a happy dance.

Omen

"That's a good omen."

"It must be an omen."

"Bad omen."

Omens.  Based on the Oxford English Dictionary, and the random quotes that I put above, I've learned that "omen," is a really sort of ambiguous word.  It can mean whatever you need it to mean.  Okay, you probably couldn't replace "kerfuffle" with "omen," but you know what I mean.  When something has "prophetic significance," it can be an omen.  Which is interesting.  How many other words have that fluidity?  Sure, you can have a good dog and you can have a bad dog, but it doesn't hold the same sort of significance that "omen" does.  We know that an omen is something that happens that is supposed to predict good or evil happening, but the word has to be modified by an adjective.  Otherwise, it's just a "I'm not really sure if this is a good or bad thing" omen.  Which works too.

It's probably a matter of interpretation.

I also learned a little bit about "omen-animals," which is to say that I learned that they exist.  They're animals whose behavior or body parts are used in methods of divination.  Which is pretty cool.  And then there's also a specific entry for "omen-birds" which are probably different from regular omen-animals in some way, though I'm not really sure.  [This calls for more research.]

Thanks Google!  Oh Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet...surely a rock star pairing!

OH!  And this reminds me that I have Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's book, Good Omens, sitting on my bookshelf at school.  There it will sit until I move out.  I know it.  I've never read it, but it's on one of my immediate "READ ME" lists because of the fact that I own it.  [Actually, funny (not really funny) story, I went to Borders with a gift card that I discovered randomly in one of my purses, and I was all ready to spend this $15 I thought I had.  I bought Good Omens and Witch and Wizard because they were random, cheap, and I needed to own some Neil Gaiman.  I get to the register and the gift card only has a couple cents on it, and Borders hadn't started their "going out of business" sales.  Paid for them out of my birthday money.]  I'm really excited about reading it though because I have a friend who enjoyed it and was going to attend the Printer's Ball as a character from it...but that fell through.

So omens.  Definitely something that I could think more about.  Poetically?

Thank you to Sunday Scribblings for the prompt: Omen.

"There is no such thing as an omen.  Destiny does not send us heralds.  She is too wise or too cruel for that."

- Oscar Wilde

A Letter to Conflicts

Dear Conflicting Events,

Hi, hello, I'm Brianna.  You probably know me already.  I'm over-involved.  But this isn't about me.

Anyway, I'd like to take a moment to congratulate you on the number of events that you're holding on campus!  Really, it's awesome that you've got so much going on!  There's movies, speakers, game shows (though I typed "shoes" the first time, game shoes...hmm...), dances, programs...you've literally got a sampling of just about everything that's good in life.  You've even got free food.  And what college student can pass up free food?  What human being can pass up free food for that matter?

With so much going on, it's a wonder that you keep it all straight.  There are Facebook events, flyers, there's the campus event calendar, the planner...sometimes I wonder about who's responsible for creating all of these things and I wonder if it's all the same person, because I notice some inconsistencies.  Especially in the student planner versus just about everything else.  I swear whoever puts together the planner gets a totally different calendar than everyone else.  Which probably doesn't do much for their self-esteem.  Which is sad and depressing.

My problem is that I have friends.  That's not really a bad problem to have, but it becomes a problem when my friends are involved in planning things.  Or organizing things.  Or performing in things.  You get the idea.  It's a problem because I have friends that are just as involved as I am.  So I'm obliged to go to their events.  And they're fun events, don't get me wrong, but there are also eight other events going on at the EXACT same time that I want to go to as well.  Which makes me want to be able to split myself off into eight separate parts so I can be at all places at once.

And though that would be really cool, part of me wonders if that's just a little too much like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  Or cloning.

And I'm not really sure how people would react to that.

Plus I'm nice.  I like being there for people.  I like lending support.  And I like going to events.  I generally like people.  I say generally for a reason, but this post is not the time to explain that one.  But yes.  I generally like people, and people go to events, and I get to see them, and I have fun, and it's great.  But I inevitably have to say "no" to one person if I say "yes" to another.  And that pains me.  Because occasionally I'm a good person.  I don't really like disappointing people.  Not that I think that there are people out in the world who think, "Hm.  Who can I disappoint today?  I quite enjoy disappointing people..." but you understand what I'm saying.

Conflicting Events, can't you just create a wormhole so I can see into all the different events at the same time? That way I don't have to clone myself or split my soul or anything painful like that.  And everyone's happy!  Right?

Much love,
Brianna
The Over-Involved One