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December 16, 2005

Meme Me

From Lani, who, believe it or not, is still alive...

You know it's time to blog when people start calling to see if you're still alive. I am alive, it's just - you know - 'tis the season for running around like a chicken with its head cut off. And I've found that if I don't blog absolute first thing in the morning, it just doesn't happen.

So, here it is, first thing in the morning, and I'm looking for a meme. I still can't wrap my mind around the meme. I looked it up in Wikipedia, and discovered that it refers to any piece of information transferred from one mind to another. That was the last sentence on that page that I really understood, because it went on about memetics and genetics and blah blah blah, too smart for me. I thought it was the combinaton of the word "Me" twice, as in, "It's all about me-me-me-me," just shortened to "meme," mutated to be pronounced like "theme."

Hey, I never billed myself as an intellectual. I'm just as stupid as the next guy. Sometimes, more so.

But, really, to me, that's what memes are - those endless questions that I can't imagine anyone would want my answer to. If you were stuck on a desert island and could only bring one book, what would it be? (Pride and Prejudice, trite but true.) If you could ban one word from the public lexicon, what would it be? (Metrosexual, never should have been in the damn lexicon in the first place.) If you could change one thing about your appearance, what would it be? (My big fat butt. Although, if I changed just my butt, and the rest of me remained the same, then that would look funny. So my whole body, about two sizes smaller. And now I sound like one of those women who's just never happy with herself. I'm really not. It's just that if I had to change something... memes are dangerous.)

But now that I know the real definition - any piece of information transferred from one mind to another - I think memes are much more interesting. Because they don't have to be about me. They can be about anything.

So I'm going to share some Pieces of Information that I Find Interesting (and I encourage you to do the same - either by blog linked through the comments or in the comments themselves. Fun, fun!)

Here we go...

1. Did you know that according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity - which states that all mass is basically just really intense energy - that each of us in our person contains enough energy to explode with the equivalent of something like 10 atomic bombs if only we could figure out how to release it? (I got this from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I didn't just happen to know this. But it's interesting, isn't it?)

2. Maine claims to supply both 90% of the world's lobsters and 90% of the world's toothpicks (go, Maine!) and yet, when someone asked, "If you were to be the Fill-In-The-Blank Capital of the World, what would you be?" (obviously, Maine does memes) they picked toothpicks. I'm guessing, lobster was already taken or someone's toothpick-loving ass got fired.

3. The flush toilet was invented by a guy named Thomas Crapper. You just can't buy that kind of irony.

All right. I've got a morning coffee date, so I gotta run. Happy Saturday!

Posted by Lani at 10:03 PM | Comments (3)

Comments

Posted by: ZaZa at December 17, 2005 10:40 PM

Posted by: TeresaH at December 18, 2005 2:31 AM

Posted by: CJ Barry at December 20, 2005 8:32 PM