Bring an umbrella! It's our first RAINY day!

It's a RAINY day!

(That stands for Random Assorted Ideas that were New Yesterday.)

Yes, I just made that up.  Deal with it.  Pretend it's been here all along.

It's time for a RAINY Day because I have an odd accumulation of post ideas and some of them aren't big enough to be posts by themselves.  Others have been sitting to the side and waiting for their moment to shine for so long that their five-o-clock shadows are turning into full-fledged hobo beards.  Believe me, it's time!

First Drop:

Our culture differentiates between rappers and poets.  Buy why?  They both do the same thing, right?  They put words in rhythm and often rhyme to deliver a point in a flowing kind of way.  Maybe the artists themselves are fueling this distinction?  I've thought about this lately because, as anyone who listens to the radio can tell, music is definitely gravitating toward rap right now.  It's been going in a psuedo-pop-rap kind of thing a lot, but lately, we've actually been going back to real rap a bit with songs like "Airplanes" and Eminem coming back by teaming up with random female pop singers all over the place.  Wait...is that sentence an oxymoron or just ironic?

Second Drop: 

I had lunch with an old friend this week!  I hadn't seen him in a year.  I know that probably doesn't seem like much to some of you, but I'm only in college, so a year can seem like a long time!  The really weird part was that I had expected things to be very different from the way they used to be (since someone had informed me that this guy had changed a lot), but for the most part, hanging out with him felt so natural that it stunned me how easily things felt the same way as they used to.  The bad part of this is that I have a terrible habit of messing with him a little too much, quickly approaching an insensitive level.  Don't worry, readers.  I will definitely work on this!  Anyway, my point with this is that some things never change.  It's interesting to see how people that are familiar to you can be like cuddling with your favorite childhood doll or eating a food that was your staple as a kid.  Familiarity can be amazingly comforting.  (Of course, it can also remind you of a former version of yourself that you'd rather forget, but it's better when you can dredge up mostly fond memories.)

Third Drop: 

If you know that a feeling isn't permanent, does that cheapen it?  Emotions are powerful, and sometimes you can astound yourself with the things you'll do just because you're reacting to the way you feel.  If you know that you're feeling something that you aren't going to feel forever, does that change anything?  Maybe it just causes other people not to take it as seriously as you do.  I find that my emotions are usually just as potent as ever even when I realize that I'll get over them, whether it's lovesickness or happiness or whatever.  How about you?

Fourth Drop:

If cash is made of paper, doesn't that mean that we basically barter for goods and services with trees?  That forests are our currency?  I'm glad we thought to cut them before we started carting around trees to bargain with.  Or maybe that idea came later...can't you just imagine our ancient ancestors hefting uprooted trees around in the hope of getting a sofa or a haircut or maybe some pantaloons?

Fifth Drop:

Don't you hate it when your friend is doing something unhealthy and you can't tell them because not only would they not listen to you because they don't want to be told what to do, but they claim that they already know it's unhealthy but they laugh when they say it and don't seem to care?  You worry for them but can't do anything about it.  You have to stand back and see how it plays out.

Sixth Drop: 

Here's what Jamie (my brother) said to Michaela (my friend) today when we were sitting around her apartment:

"You have sesame seeds on your table.  You can plant them and grow a sesame!"

That's just way too funny not to share.

So there we have it, folks!  The first RAINY day on Lantern of Lightning!

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