On a slightly related (musical) note, there's this song that I (and everyone in the country) has heard a million times. It goes, "Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon! You come and go, you come and go!" (Note to songwriting self: If lacking for lyrics, simply repeat same word/phrase a few more times.) Imagine my surprise, when, sometime last year, I learned for the first time that the singer was not actually repeating a string of commas! Imagine also my disappointment. Sure, "Comma comma comma comma comma chameleon" makes no more sense than "karma (x5) chameleon," but it's infinitely interesting. Imagine if the singer separated all the commas with commas, and then dictated the lyrics. It would go something like this: comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, comma chameleon. And then converting my typed commas would result in twice as many commas as in the phrase before that, and then dictating that phrase would result in twice as many as that and so on into infinity!
Which makes me think of something only slightly related: Imagine a comma nesting inside the curve of another comma, and another, smaller, comma resting inside that comma, and another one inside that, spiraling smaller and smaller and smaller into – again – infinity! Much like the picture, which, due to a lack of similar pictures on the Internet, I had to make myself (no wonder my quick blog breaks take so long! Also, no wonder the picture isn't really finished). So, yeah, compared to the fractal wonderfulness of "comma chameleon," "karma chameleon" is just so blah.
Speaking of chameleons, I've been thinking a lot about color changes lately.
As you probably know, I go through phases where my favorite color changes. Back when I was a youngun, it was yellow. During most of my school days, I was in love with blue. In college it was lavender for a time, then pink (the pastel babydoll variety); following graduation, I had a green period, during which I also developed an affinity for brown; and now - with an inexplicable fascination with white (clothing especially) making an appearance every once in a while - I have veered back towards pink (but of the more fuschia variety).
Those of you who know me on Facebook probably couldn't miss the outrageously pink streaks I put in my hair a few weeks ago. They've faded by now to a faint discoloration, but you can bet I'll be trying that again! Plenty of dye left. Those of us who lead boring lives must settle for having interesting hair. (Of course, those of us who get excited about spirals of punctuation marks probably have boring lives for a pretty good reason.) I've modified my Val's Galore logo to incorporate the hue (and I hope to be able to show it to you soon). And today (actually, the event that prompted me to write this post) I noticed myself grinning idiotically simply because I was so delighted about the pink staple with which I bound a sheaf of papers.
Ah, the little things that make us happy. Although I enjoy feeling happy as much as anyone, sometimes I wish I weren't so prone to these spontaneous mood swings. If I can feel like I'm floating on a cloud simply because I unclogged a drain and followed it up with a pink staple job, I can just as easily sink into depression because I smacked my hand into a milk crate or left my backup sandals at home when I went out in un-sensible shoes. It's pretty draining, having a new mood every minute.
Anyway, though this post is totally lacking in denouement, that's all I had to talk about.
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