Five Words Make a Title

[capri0mni]

One Unusual Dream: Writing this down so I don't (entirely) forget it: Woke from a dream on Sunday morning that was odd because Nothing Weird Happened. It was incongruous with my waking life, because I was back in college (though my current age), and my mother was alive while my father had died.

But the whole dream was just a community meeting held in the college's student lounge, with invited members of the community (such as school-aged children and their parents). And the project at hand was figuring out how to put on some sort of theatrical festival, and who should be in charge of what, and trying to come to some sort of consensus on structure and theme. And people were talking over each other, and it was hard to keep track of side conversations and make sense of what decisions were actually being made.

But ... That was it. At some point in the middle of thinking: "Man! we have some great ideas, and this could be great, but first, we really need to get our act together..." I woke up.

The only really unusual thing was that the student lounge had a working fireplace at one end of the room, and at one point, I was chatting with a woman while she cleaned out the ashes. But then again, this was an artsy-fartsy Liberal Arts college in the Northeast USA, somewhere, so even that wasn't really weird.

I mean, a dream where no articles of clothing disappeared, ninja octopus assassins were not trying to break in, no getting lost in the hallways on the way to the meeting, only to enter an elevator that's a mini-Egyptian museum. It was weird for being normal.

Two Posts from "Rolling Around in My Head" that have got me thinking: The News in Plain Language (making the news accessible to those with intellectual disabilities) and Forgiveness: A Guest Post by Donna Lee (Why forgiveness is often a stumbling block to healing)

Three things I'm pondering:

A) Coming into social awareness amid the Feminist Pride of the 1970s, I never would have thought that, 40 years later, adolescent young women would be subject to online "slut shaming" and bullying, while their adolescent young men partners are not shamed for the same behavior... Excuse me, but: where-T.F. did That come from?!

B) Related to the "Plain Language" post, above: That Up-Goer-Five text editor demonstrated for me that "Plain Language" =/= "common language," especially if it means a) using an uncommon secondary definition of a common word, and (even more important) creating unusual strings, and long strings, of common words when a single, uncommon, word can convey the idea much more clearly (For example: "Teacher" is in the top thousand, and therefor allowed, but "Teach" is not). Sometimes, jargon really does give us the best words.

C) On the possibility/probability that human beings never will explore the universe outside our own solar system: At first blush, that seems depressing. But then again, maybe alien planets and alien beings need to remain fiction, so that we have a storytelling space for exploring alternate philosophies and historical implications.

Four songs/videos I look up, when I need cheering up:

Die Gedanken sind frei (my try) (in German)

"Experimental Film" with Jim Henson and the Muppets

Symphony of Science - "We are all connected"

Classic Sesame Street - Fruit Song (more often than not, this song pops into my head whenever I'm in the produce section of the grocery ^_^)

Five Favorite Flavors:

Cocoa/Chocolate
Ginger
Black pepper
Citrus
Garlic

Comments

[dharma_slut]

that Up-goer editor demonstrates, to me, the terrible poverty of language that so many people abide in.

And I love the fruit song... Especially the nectarine

[capri0mni]

Hee! It takes a decent amount of self control not to sing that line out loud when I see nectarines on display... ^__^