Stream of consciousness

So yesterday I posted about science and managed to forget to mention the fantastic view in the sky on Monday night that helped inspire the post.  I didn't manage to snap a decent photo of it myself, but it was something like this:

Source

The moon is reasonably easy to pick in the picture, but the small bright dot in the bottom right is less so.  That is Jupiter.  On Monday, blessed with clear skies, this was roughly the view I had before Jupiter moved behind the moon.

This I enjoyed for two reasons, the first is that it allowed me to pull out a word that I don't get to use anywhere near enough - syzygy, meaning an alignment of three celestial objects (and also the only word in English that includes three 'y's).  The second is simply the sheer beauty and awesome magnitude that is demonstrated.

That got me thinking about whether the terms 'beauty' and 'magnitude' have any inherent meaning about the moon and Jupiter, or even to syzygy, and realised that it was (as the cliche goes) all in the eye of the beholder.

The thing I read the following day, about 3.8 million years of success leading to me also got me thinking, and thus came the blog post.  I've said before that I'm writing these stream of consciousness style and although I am going back to fix spelling and grammar and to change wording slightly for clarity, I have been trying not to start these posts with an idea of what is going to be there at the end.

This meant that when I got to the end of yesterday's post I was faced with a conundrum, I had wanted to mention the syzygy (in no small part because of the word itself) of the Earth, moon and Jupiter, but I'd managed to get to the end of the post without doing it.  Even though I liked the post and felt that it tied up effectively at the end I was sorely tempted to change it to include some reference to this.

I eventually decided not to because the whole point of stream of consciousness is that this might happen and something better may come from it, and that I should deal with it.  Also because it gave me a prompt for another post today.

Finding the words

I had something very weird happen to me the other day, it even frightened me a little.  I have spent rather a large amount of time since returning from the United States reading and writing about culture, business and expanding knowledge base so these subjects have been looming pretty large in my mind.

Also, because business studies is something I have previously worked on for all of never, I have been stressing about it - to the extent that it has been popping up in my dreams.  Trust me, marketing managers preventing your superhero alterego from catching the villain with their dancing spreadsheets isn't something you want to happen, even in your sleep.

Dreams are dreams, though, and that wasn't the weird thing that happened to me.  No, the weird thing was when I realised I had forgotten how to talk to people. Weird right?

I was out with friends, doing everything I could to relax and put the whole assignments issue out of my mind for a few hours - which, of course, meant that I was thinking about it most of the night.  This in turn meant that I was only following the conversations in the absolute broadest sense of the term and not participating much.  For anyone out there who knows me, they will probably realise that this is fairly unusual behaviour for me and a couple of people decided to check if I was alright.

I'd like to stop for a moment to say good on them, they are awesome friends and I wish more people in the world could be awesome friends.

Anyways, they asked if things were ok and I sat there for about five seconds doing that disturbing fish thing of opening and closing my mouth while I tried to remember how to form a coherent sentence that didn't involve supply chains or market trends.  I eventually came up with "Yeah, just thinking about my assignments." and then managed to actually get into the swing of things.

This was the first time in my life that I have found myself completely unable to say anything, just forming the words was a gargantuan task for some reason.  And this freaked me out because words are so very important to me.

"Sigh"

I have a friend who always insists on writing omgosh in online chat to show that she isn't blaspheming.  This got me thinking about the number of people who say this but are atheists, shouldn't they say omct rather than omg as they believe in the chaos theory rather than any sort of god.  As an agnostic I feel I should probably write omubogapdpttsiitfohawmomnae (oh my unspecified being of great and possibly divine power that takes some interest in the fate of humanity and who may or may not actually exist) although possibly worded differently for the sake of not taking up almost an entire twitter post just to write the acronym.

I mention this first because it amuses me a little.  There is a particular language usage doesn't amuse me in the slightest, though, and that is people who say sigh.

Now I'm not talking about the word in general, it is a great word that is useful to describe a forceful outlet of breath.  No, I'm talking about people who say sigh instead of actually sighing, or worse those who sigh and then feel the need to emphasise it by saying sigh afterwards.

My issue with this is that a sigh is supposed to signify that whatever is being sighed at is not great, but it isn't terrible either, it's just meh.  Spending additional energy forming the word rather than just breathing out heavily is far too much work for something that wasn't worth the effort in the first place.  And yes I realise that I am doing the same thing by writing an entire post about it...

Well at least she didn't say sigh at me.  Source

My theory is that ranting about it here will make it easier for me to put up with it when my friends say it, which is far too often.  Then again, I have been informed that it annoys others when I use weird worth order such as "my liking is of the not so much variety" or try and enlarge the English language with things like "nonsensicality" so I probably shouldn't complain about it.

End of Days

Well we're most of the way through the day and it hasn't rained fire yet, I haven't seen any large groups of people suddenly collapse in the street or anything like that either.  That said we're still not completely safe, after all at least half the various things that could kill us all are most active after dark.

This is why it is still important to have your last words ready.  Face it, no one wants to have it recorded that they said "Does anyone else smell that?" or "Duck? Where?" right before they expired, particularly when you consider some of the other gems that people have managed:
"Friends applaud, the comedy is over." - Ludwig van Beethoven
"Such is Life." - Ned Kelly
"Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." - Karl Marx
"Et tu, Brute?" - Julius Caesar
"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." - Oscar Wilde
"If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." - Obi-Wan Kenobi

So anyone who wants their final words to be passed down through the generations needs to have something pretty awesome locked in.  Personally I'm not sure whether I want something witty, ironic or inspiring.  I reckon for the apocalypse something along the lines of "We go, so that a better world may begin." is probably appropriate, but it would probably make me sound poncy and up myself or something.  "Of course!"  also has a certain appeal, as does "It's all buried at the lake." but both of these will be particularly awkward if I don't die on schedule so they're probably out as well.  My only other idea at this point is "That I was not expecting." so clearly I need help.

I'm stumped, so I'm asking what you think I should make my last words?  And what is it that makes good last words anyway?