TAGGED! by Cowboy The Cat!

The rules:
Answer the questions about yourself. At the end of the post, tag 5-6 people and post their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog (something along the lines of “Hello! I found your blog inquisitive! Please check out my blog! It is about the daily happenings in the life of a park ranger! — or something). Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

Crap, I dunno. I was temping, I think. I was dating MizSplotchy. Most importantly, I was preparing for the Rapture that was coming in the year 2000.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)

a) I gotta do this meme, because CTC did an awesome job on my story virus and if I don’t do this today I’ll feel like a festering potato.

b) I’d like to wrassle with the kids a bit when I get home, or play cars, do something fun, etc.

c) Tonight I’m meeting with the four main actors of my upcoming short film, together for the first time! I’m a little nervous.

d) I’m taking my camera with me. After the actor meeting, I want to revisit the location I really liked on Spaulding and take some more pictures. I also want to see what it looks like on a weeknight (I was there before on Sunday).

e) I might snap a few photos of negative space signage as well.

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Wheat Thins

Ghirardelli Chocolate Caramel Squares

A knifeful of creamy peanut butter

Brownie bites

Pistachios

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

a) [acts of altruism placeholder]

b) Assemble an orchestra of 250 acoustic guitars, arranged so I can spontaneously direct groupings of guitarists to play certain notes.

c) Build a kickass adult-sized combo jungle jim and funhouse, not like those crappy ones you find at state fairs

d) Do a series of self-financed feature films

e) Work on only things that are creatively/emotionally rewarding, or are integral to “a)”.

5) Places I have lived:

Springfield, IL

Carbondale, IL

Chicago, IL

Brookfield, IL

What can I say? I am a denizen of the Land of Lincoln.

6) People I want to know more about:

In the spirit of CTC’s Random Weblogs feature, I am going to randomly think of blog URLs and tag the people I find there.

http://picklerelish.blogspot.com/ (Last updated 03/2006)

http://ivanatinkle.blogspot.com/ (Last updated 06/2005)

http://robotsindisguise.blogspot.com/ (Last updated 08/2004)

http://crunchythings.blogspot.com/ (Last updated 03/2006)

http://throwmetheidol.blogspot.com/ (Last updated 03/2005)

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|          |   /     \     /  \___
 \        /  / /(. .)\ \__/   |___|_____
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                () ()      
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               ooO Ooo

Ahhh.

Vacation. For my family, but not for me, unfortunately.
Every student and teacher looks forward to the
return of warm weather, because it signifies that the school
year is at an end.

So, what then? Should I be like everyone
else in the workforce, working summer months? Or
could I make it as a teacher? Could I shoulder the
responsibility of attempting to impart knowledge to
eager minds, or minds eager to do anything but
tests and quizzes?

My mother was a teacher, giving junior high kids an art
education. But I can’t teach art. I’d like to teach
magic, or trickery, scavenger hunts, puzzles with
elaborate clues. But can I find a job that pays me for that?

Let’s say that I would turn out to be good teacher,
or that I was passable. Let’s say I taught puzzles, or tricks
of language. The problem would be the next class.
Kids taking my class would have the answers to my questions.

Returning students could simply pass these questions, which
I labored over, to the next batch of students. It wouldn’t be
Geography or Math, which is something relatively fixed, and
having relatively firm rules to base my teaching on. But
teaching tricks? Perhaps they’re better done for fun.

A dreamy, steamy meme, from Freida Bee:

*Link to the person who tagged you.
*Post the rules on your blog.
*Write six random things about yourself.
*Tag six random people by linking to their blogs.
*Let each of the six know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment (on each blog).
*Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

1. I am really enjoying living in Brookfield lately. The sun is warming up things, and the friendly bunch of neighborhood kids are out playing again. My kids have a good time outside. There are three parks within walking distance of our house. We had a really nice and relaxing time at the Brookfield Zoo yesterday. It’s not the big urban center of Chicago (the reason I moved up from Springfield in the first place), but it’s cool.

2. My favorite word of praise is “cool”. My favorite word of disapproval is “stupid”.

3. I have recently realized that I am ignorant of a fair amount of enormously-popular celebrities currently walking around and getting their stupid pictures taken.

4. I don’t ever want to have a dog, because a dog is a pooping baby that never grows up.

5. I hate clutter but am oblivious to filth. I could live in a really dirty apartment (and I have), but at least every dirty thing would be in its proper place.

6. I can’t keep up with my 3-movies-at-home Netflix subscription. I’m going to need to ratchet it down a couple movies. Am I ever going to watch The Changeling? Maybe I’ll just wait until Halloween.

Previously:
Iris!
Marigolds!

Zoiks, another meme I have been tagged with. I better get on with it, I reckon.

The Rules:

1. Post the rules before you give your answers.

2. List one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use your maiden name or your mother’s maiden name.

3. At the end of your blog post, tag one person (or blogger of another species) for each letter of your middle name. Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they’ve been tagged.

Bright – I’m reasonably smart. There are plenty smarter, but I do okay, I guess.

Eccentric – I’m a tad weird, and not necessarily in the oh-let’s-watch-a-documentary-about-this-interesting-chap way. I have an eclectic palate, I concentrate on odd musical things, and I routinely indulge my sense of humor that many times finds no common ground with readers of my blog. So, I’m not crazy wacky nuts, but I’m a little off (I honestly think most people have their own eccentricities which they choose to keep hidden).

Negative – I can be a real pisser sometimes. This pissiness comes out in bursts, sometimes in carefully controlled form.

Juvenile – Four words: I like fart jokes.

Anxious – I’m a hypochondriac, I have the occasional panic attacks, I’m paralyzed with fear when faced with a mechanical breakdown or a simple household repair. Anxious.

Misanthropic – Not only am I negative, I am also a little misanthropic. I think people are capable of wonderful things, but there are times when confronted with something awful I think, “yeah, that’s humanity for you”. See Dreadful Reimaginings for my misanthropy in concentrated form. And look forward to a new bitterly funny installment of this feature, Jesus and the Magic Beans, which I’ll post sometime this coming weekend.

Imagination – I’m not all rain clouds, I like rainbows too. I think the imagination is one of the greatest treasures of being alive. If you’re not using yours, you’re missing out. That’s one reason why I often have more fun talking with kids.

Nice – I’m nice! Honest!

I’m so nice I won’t tag anyone for this. However, if the ghost of Harry S. Truman wants to give it a shot, he is certainly welcome to.

I hear a faint and distant kerfuffle.

Is it the light brushstrokes of a clown painting an alligator? The sickening wet crunch of an alligator eating a clown?

No, it’s a meme lobbed thisaway from the long lost Bubs!

Rule 1) List three reasons for your blogging.

a) I gots ideas
b) I needs to tell them
c) It’s free

Rule 2) List the rules.

I am. Just be patient.

Rule 3) Tag three others with the thread.

I tag:
Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post
Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing
Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler

So we are well clear of February Is No Meme Month, which means standard meme rules apply.

Dr. Zaius has tagged me with a “Six Word Memoir” meme that Freida Bee previously tagged me with and I answered here.

In certain cases I could simply provide a link to my original completion of the meme as a comment on Zaius’ post which tagged me, saying “I did it [link to my original post]here[/link]”.

However, due to a confluence of events, this is not appropriate, and I must redo the meme to satisfy the informal rules set forth by meme-governing bodies.

Please allow me to explain.

I recently started my own meme, one which I am not entirely proud of, but, well, here it is.

It’s a really terrible meme, where I simply do the “Name Game” song on different blogger’s names, and say they in turn have to do the “Name Game” song on their own set of bloggers, etc. Zaius recently completed the Name Game meme here (he had been one of the people I tagged).

I want to compare the Name Game and the Six Word Memoir memes, but first let’s break down the standard attributes of a generic meme:

Relevance – Does the meme make sense to the tagged person? For example, a movie-related meme assigned to a blogger who frequently discusses movies would have a high Relevance, while a gardening meme to the same person would have a low Relevance.

Efficiency – How much is required of the tagged blogger to satisfy the meme requirements? If the taggee can easily complete the meme with little to no effort or time, we call this a high Efficiency meme. If much work/time is required, this is a meme of low Efficiency.

Positive Effect – What will the outcome for the completion of this meme be? Will interesting facts be revealed? Will a work of art emerge? This is more subjective, but I would argue that different memes have different degrees of Positive Effect.

I use a 100 point system on each attribute. The attributes are added together to give you the total meme score (TMS). The higher the TMS, the more compelled the taggee should feel to complete a meme. So, a TMS of 300 is a *must complete*, while a TMS of 75 should elicit from a tagged blogger, “yeah, well, if I’m bored and I don’t have anything better to do, I’ll take a crack at it.”

An important modifier: One thing we must keep in mind is that the number of times a person is tagged with a meme factors into the TMS. Simply divide the sum of the three attributes by the number of times someone has been tagged for a particular meme to get the adjusted TMS.

The Six Word Memoir
Relevance: 78
Efficiency: 77
Positive Effect: 79
TMS: 235

Relevance: The Six Word Memoir is actually pretty nice for a meme. A bloggers’ business is writing, and this writing represents his or her unique worldview. Asking people to reduce their worldview to a small number of words forces the taggee to consider this worldview, and attempt to distill its essence.

Efficiency: Despite the fact that the meme prompts the blogger to think a bit, it’s still a very efficient meme. Only six words are required — no downloading/uploading of images, no required long-winded answers to complex questions.

Positive Effect: This meme also has a nice chance for Positive Effect. Perhaps as a result of this the blogger will learn something about what makes them tick. Also, readers of the blog will learn a little more about the person behind the blog.

The Name Game
Relevance: 24
Efficiency: 80
Positive Effect: 12
TMS: 116

Relevance: The Name Game meme is something every blogger dreads to get tagged with. It is essentially a forwarded chain letter that you have been asked to perpetuate. The Relevance score is slightly mitigated by the fact that Name Game itself is actually not an unpleasant song to sing, and bloggers might not have considered how their name actually sounds when “name-gamed”.

Efficiency: Name Game actually edges out Six Word Memoir for Efficiency, as all the tagged blogger need do is copy and paste a block of text, and replace one name with another.

Positive Effect: There is little to no positive effect for this meme. The world will not be any better a place to know how a blogger’s name will sound name-gamed.

Clearly, the Six Word Memoir is a far more interesting and important meme than the Name Game. However, remember that this is the second time I have been tagged with Six Word Memoir, which requires us to divide the TMS by two.

The final breakdown is:

Adjusted Six Word Memoir TMS: 117.5
Name Game TMS: 116

As you can see, even a twice-tagged Six Word Memoir has a higher TMS than the Name Game.

As it is now, I am slightly in meme debt to Dr. Zaius. So, I will complete his tag to satisfy this debt.

***************************

Here you go, Dr Z.

My (Second) Six Word Memoir:

Indulges In Wacky Unfounded Theories Occasionally

Let’s play the Name Game! This is the stupidest meme ever, but by completing it we will save puppies’ lives, so let’s put down our cynical pens and start banana-ing.

*****

Rules
1. Tag one to many persons by doing the name game song on their Blogger name (their first name, if they have one).
2. Tell your tagged, name-gamed bloggers that they will have to continue the Name Game meme, or innocent puppies will be [make up something suitably awful].

*****

Hello, taggees! Please pass this meme on.

If you don’t, I believe there are puppies about to be jettisoned from the International Space Station without space helmets!

The only thing preventing this terrible tragedy from being enacted is your continuation of this meme!

The taggees:

Bubs, Bubs, bo-bubs,
Banana-fana fo-fubs
Fee-fi-mo-mubs
Bubs!

Some, Some, bo-bum,
Banana-fana fo-fum
Fee-fi-mo-mum
Some!

Vikki, Vikki, bo-bikki,
Banana-fana fo-fikki
Fee-fi-mo-mikki
Vikki!

Samurai, Samurai, bo-bamurai,
Banana-fana fo-famurai
Fee-fi-mo-mamurai
Samurai!

Zaius, Zaius, bo-baius,
Banana-fana fo-faius
Fee-fi-mo-maius
Zaius!