Strange Concatenation of Events

You can be in the wrong for years and not know it.  You can be kind of proudful that you have information others might not have and it’s always interesting when that information, unbeknownst to you, is entirely wrong.  It’s erroneous.  And you’ve been wrong.  Hopefully you don’t go into a pout or snit but take the news well because you’re a public figure and have a certain standard to uphold.  A standard you invented yourself.

I’ve spent a month thinking about this.  Two weeks.  Actually, a few days.  I’m not making a big thing out of this but when you get something wrong it’s best to fess up and it also gives you, that is me, the motivation to come over to this here blog thingy to see what’s going on, which, and I’m not going to water this down any here, has let an entire month pass, and the merriest month of May, no less, without a single entry, or “post”, or whatever’s supposed to be going on here.

I know.  Big question mark.  Again.  Let’s take a short break and see what’s out there and maybe coming our way.

It’s all right.  It’s just that guy taking pictures of the sky again.  Why does he do that?

Musical Interlude

Take a word like “concatenation”.  For years you pronounced it and spelled it, on those admittedly rare times when you might have written it down, as in never, “concantenation”.  Raise it up for the Concantenation, hiya.  We free.

Then, I was stumbling around, bumbling and burbling and bliffling for something to get on with and then States said something.  It was something about something, or it might have been something about something else.

But it caused me to say:  “A strange concantenation of events”.  And she said she’d never heard of the word before.  And I felt strong because I’m so learned.  I knew about “concantenation”.  What I didn’t know then I know now and that’s always so humbling, isn’t it?  Feel so good.

I couldn’t remember where I’d first come across the word and the phrase.  And for years, although I had the phrase right, I was spelling and pronouncing “concatenation” with that extra “n” in there before the “t”.  It’s “concatenation”, Mike.  Not that other thing.

Concatenation: The action of concatenating, or the condition or relation of being concatenated. 1. Union by chaining or linking together; concatenated condition. b. an instance of chaining or linking together. 2. Union in a series or chain, of which the things united form as it were links. 3. A concatenated series or system, an interdependent or unbroken sequence, a ‘chain’.  That’s from the good book. OED.  God bless.

Chain of events.  Then I managed to re-discover where I came across this word and phrase, and was reminded that the original discovery itself was the product of a strange concatenation of events.

It was a series of events that caused me, years ago, and I’m still a bit bewildered by this, and it’s kind of shocking, so be careful, to be reading Edward Gibbon.  Not the guy who runs the dry cleaners over on 8th, but the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” guy.  And for reasons unknown the word and phrase stuck through the decades.

And now, today, at last, through a further strange concatenation of events, I’m sharing with the world all that’s gone on about this.  And you can see how it could go on.  And on.  Because just about everything is the result of a strange concatenation of events.  Today is the result of every day that has come before.  I’m sure of it.

Belisarius or somebody was getting his kilt dry cleaned and by a strange you know what something went amiss.  I think that was it, but I could be wrong.

Author: Steven Brown

Creative View all posts by Steven Brown