Remember Remember...

My November bulletin board

On a note completely unrelated to The Future...I'm required to make a bulletin board each month for my job. I have to cover this gigantic mammoth sized bulletin board with information and fun things.  I'm trying to keep my boards related to British things because my hall theme is Harry Potter...  So for November, I made a board about Guy Fawkes Night.  Mostly because I really enjoy V for Vendetta and I wanted an excuse to learn more about where it came form originally.

The board includes:
- The Conspirators (of The Gunpowder Plot)
- The Plot (reasons behind it, etc.)
- Impressions on Pop Culture (which gave me an excuse to talk about V for Vendetta)
- Lasting Impressions (Bonfire Night, etc.)
- Comics and pictures featuring Guy Fawkes or related things

What do you want?

I honestly don't know.

I have no idea what I want to eat for breakfast let alone what I want to do with my life.

So if I had to pick?  If I absolutely had to pick something because the rest of my life depended on it?  Would I be able to answer?  Would I be able to come up with something?  Let's see.

I want to be happy.  This has to be the broadest thing that I could ever think of, but there it is.  My ultimate goal in life is to find happiness and retain it.  It'd also be really nice if the people around me could also be happy.  I'm concerned about the people around me for all the obvious reasons in addition to the fact that I love them a lot.

I want to be able to have fun and not have to hide it.  I'm convinced that people get to a certain age and then they're not allowed to admit that they're having fun.  I like to think that they're not allowed to admit it because the alternative is that they're just not having fun at all, which is way too depressing to think about.  If anyone can tell me what age you have to be to be ashamed of admitting when you're having fun, I would really like to know because I'm concerned that I'm reaching that age, and in order to be taken seriously in "the real world," I might just have to renounce my ability to show when I'm having a good time.

I want adventures but I want safety.  Sometimes I'm daring, but more often than not, I play it safe.  I don't take risks.  I don't walk the edge.  I walk squarely in the middle and I get out of people's way when they come running towards me.  The adventures I have are under strictly controlled circumstances because I don't do spontaneity.  But at the same time, I want that.  So I'm conflicted there.  I want to explore, but I want to have the luxury of keeping a map in my pocket so I can consult it if I get lost.  I want to learn new things about where I'm at, but I want to have some place to call home so I can go back when I'm lonely.

I want to read.  For fun.  All the time.  I want to read everything I can get my hands on, even the dry and boring books because then I'll have something to complain about.  I want to read poetry out loud on street corners and draw the stares of tourists but it wouldn't matter.  Mostly because I would be having fun.  (See above.)

I want to write awful fragments of stories and random lines of poetry that never make sense together.  I want to write them all down, shuffle them up and hide them away in my writing box.  I want to keep them secret.  (Though I realize writing about them here kind of negates that secret bit.  Oh well.)

I want to fall in love.  I want to be able to open up to someone and trust them not to run away, but if they do, I want a broken heart.  I would want to feel the loss.

I want to feel.  I want to help people.  I want to do something worthwhile.  I want to make an impression.  I want to make my family proud.  I want to get so mad that I yell in public places.  I want to make a scene.  I want to walk until I'm completely exhausted.  I want to re-read my favorite books eight billion times.  I want to read Shakespeare aloud.  Somewhere.  I want to go everywhere and nowhere.

I want to live.

"With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future.  I live now."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Secret Secret

"Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin

Okay.  So if you have a secret, you should keep it to yourself.  Simple enough.  Right?

But there's always the option that you can tell two dead people.  Which would be nice.  I can imagine myself going to a visitation and kneeling down next to the coffin and whispering in the ear of a corpse a particularly juicy secret about myself.  For me, I have to tell someone.  I have to tell my secrets or my news to someone.  So telling a corpse?  Might work.  But then I'd have to find a second corpse.  So I'd have to go all the way to the cemetery and find a name that I like and talk to the gravestone.  Which I wouldn't have too many qualms about, if it was light out.  That would be fine.  Dark and I are not friends.  Not usually.
So two people are dead, and they know.  Easy as pie.  Simple as that.  Problem solved.

But what if you tell two living people?  Is Benjamin Franklin suggesting that I kill those two people so my secret's safe?  This doesn't sound very generous on the part of that founding father of ours.  Well, one of the founding fathers.  Anyway.  Killing people doesn't sound like a very good way of keeping a secret, especially considering murder becomes a second secret.  And then I have to tell someone about that, and then it's just a long chain of murder and death and secrets and complications, and that's just messy.  And irritating, I'm sure.  Not that I've ever killed anyone before, but I would imagine it's both difficult and annoying.

Then there's the issue of the undead.  What if the people that I told secrets to (and then killed) or the corpses I confided in became zombies?  Or vampires?  What if these people could speak again?!  What then?!  Granted, zombies probably wouldn't be as articulate as vampires, and vampires probably wouldn't care about my trivial secrets when they have their own bloodthirsty vices to conceal, but what IF these people did care?  What if they rose from the dead with the express desire of sharing my secrets with the world?  What would happen then?  Well, if I follow Benjamin Franklin's advice, I should probably kill them.  And then there's another cycle of killing and death and secrets!

What I'm getting from this?  Either don't have secrets or don't tell them to anyone.  Good to know.  Thanks, Franklin!

"Secrets, secrets are no fun, unless they're shared with everyone!"