Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Meme - my first

Sarah of That's Not Very Nice! tagged me with my first meme. I found myself having all sorts of weird reactions to this. Since most of the time I'm minimally social, I felt a little like the kid in school who is unexpectedly chosen first instead of last for a team. And then I started laughing because the first of the two class discussions I had/have to lead for the seminar was on an excerpt from Richard Dawkins 1976 book "The Selfish Gene". The title of the excerpt - Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes. This may include the first instance of the meme concept. Dawkins is writing about evolution and a new emerging replicator.


"...It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate which leaves the old gene panting far behind.

The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. "Mimeme" comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like "gene." I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme."

Having bored you all with that, on to the meme itself.

1. Do you use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning?
I am so not a morning person, so what do you think? At least I haven't thrown the (expletive deleted) thing across the room lately and risked killing anything.

2. What time do you set it for?
At least an hour earlier than the latest time I can get up. There's some madness in this method.

3. Do you hit the snooze button, if so how many times?
You have to ask. Some days I beat it with my cat.

4. Have you ever abused an alarm clock?
Well let's see. When in college I threw one across the room, barely missed my way too cheerful morning person roommate, and watched it break against the concrete block walls. These days I use the remote control for the TV or the cat to beat the (expletive deleted) button into submission. (oooohhhh...this submission thing is just too too.)

5. It's time to spread some "Its Blogcess" linky love.

Rules of the game, as per Sarah:
First, copy and paste #1 - #5
(Make sure to link to: "It's Blogcess", which is the link in #5. Because it is always polite to link the one who started the linky love.)
Second, link to my site (because it's polite to link the site that tagged you)
Third, go and tag 5 other blogs, more if you like.
Fourth, Email the owner of, or post on the blogs that you have tagged, to inform them that you've tagged them.

Sarah changed the rules and picked only 3 others to harass with this. I'm following her lead and tagging:

My blog mama (forgive me?)
The Pixie who is temporarily off-line and way far away so she can't kill me
My friend Tal who may send the mole rangers after me for this.

6 comments:

Sarah said...

Yay! I was wondering if you were going to participate. :-) I had the same feelings myself, this being the first meme for me as well. Welcome!

Anonymous said...

Well, as memes go - this one is fairly easy to do... so I don't have to kill you this time. *grin*

Unknown said...

wiping sweat from brow.

talpianna said...

Mole don't do no memes.

Anonymous said...

I haven't been around to welcome you...but welcome to the family and Happy Thanksgiving!

Anonymous said...

ROTFL on the mental image of hitting the snooze button with the cat :-D