See how the title of this post actually records and predicts history? No? Oh dang. I thought it was obvious.
Listen here, and I'll tell you the tale of the punctuation marks.
It starts with the ...
It's well known that three periods combined together mean that you actually aren't ending a sentence. It's less well known that they are called ellipses and have an grammatical purpose that is used and abused these days. (Click
here to become less ignorant.)
And it's rarely known how this tri-period-combo came to be. Back in the days when punctuation wasn't governed, and . wasn't a period (hard to imagine, I know), the . was simply a ., a symbol. What was it a symbol for?
Anything and Everything!
One day long ago, a boy named Ellip and his sister (we don't remember her name, so we call her Sis) were supposed to catch fish and gather berries together to help their mother with dinner. Well, Sis didn't like anything to do with fish, and Ellip didn't like anything to do with berries, so they decided that Ellip would take care of the fishing and Sis would take care of the berries.
Well, long story shorter, things didn't go according to plan. Ellip was attacked by a bear that wanted fish, and Sis threw berries into the bear's mouth, which the bear choked on, then swallowed and tried attacking Ellip again, but the berries were poisonous, so Ellip didn't die, he just got mauled.
On the way home, Sis supported the limping Ellip she would sometimes forget what she was doing, so Sis would drop Ellip while her mind wandered elsewhere. Ellip would cry out in pain, and only when he regained her attention would Sis realize that she'd forgotten him. Then he would be angry. Wouldn't you be?
But the truth was, Sis never finished anything. She dropped Ellip so many times, that by the time they made their way home, there was no mark from the bear attack. In fact, it had been so long since the bear attack that Ellip and Sis had forgotten why it was taking them so long to return home.
And when they got home, Mother was furious. She had been worried. And starving. She was a twiglet when they finally got there.
"What on earth took you so long, Ellip and Sis?" She asked. [Not an actual quote.]
Ellip and Sis tried and tried to remember, but all they could say was "Well," and "We were getting food and then," but these were not sentences, and mother waited so long for them to complete their thought that she continued starving to death.
Literally to death.
And Ellip and Sis also continued to starve, because Death wouldn't take people who can't finish sentences.
Until one day, there was a woman who used the . to represent Anything and Everything. She would draw a . every time she became distracted with something. It was a way for her to recognize that her mind was wandering and she needed to stop. So she would carry a piece of papyrus around with her (she was Egyptian, of course) so she could remain focused.
Don't ask me how she came up with this method of keeping focused. History can only reveal so much.
The point is, the woman was so successful in using the . for distractions that she ending up having only 3 of them every day. She created the symbol for distractions: ...
How does the history play together? Well, Death invented grammar and punctuation, and when he saw the woman's symbol for distractions, he superiorly thought to himself, "Those old people, Ellip and Sis, they can't finish their sentences because Sis kept getting distracted with other thoughts. I bet if I can teach them the distraction symbol and get them to use it in a sentence, then I could finally claim them as my own!" and that is how Death claimed Ellip and Sis. He was so thrilled that he figured out a way to free people from sentences that had to be finished but couldn't be due to memory and distractions, he named the ... after Ellip and Sis.
So why did I share with you that *history? Because, now that you know that each dot used to represent distractions and loss of focus to the point of memory impairment, you can understand the title of this blog, right?
Right?
Hmph. I will tell you then, you not-so-brilliant-children-whom-don't-understand-obvious-symbolism. (But really, you are smart, unless you are reading this, because honestly, who in their right mind reads something this long and ridiculous?)
The exclamation mark (something exciting) is surrounded by ellipses (distractions and forget-tions).
For those of you who need me to spell it out for you, I kept getting distracted (NaNoWriMo, work, etc.) and I forgot that NaNoWriMo was over. All of that equals the ellipsis before the exclamation mark. The exclamation mark is me remembering to blog and actually doing it (something exciting). The ellipsis after the exclamation mark is a predictor of the future, meaning I will probably forget to blog again.
It was supposed to be a simple way to say sorry I haven't blogged in a while, but now I am blogging to add excitement to your life, but I'll probably get distracted and busy and forget to blog again in the future.
But lo, I have to explain so much to you readers.
Next time I will choose a simpler title. My apologies.
*may or may not be accurate.
