Monday, February 13, 2006
I'll play your game, you rogue
Or rather, I won't. My esteemed colleague Connor has recently "tagged" me to continue a quote unquote pyramid meme. This I must refuse. I hold to an incredibly stringent and arcane moral code, and part of this code consists of under no circumstances taking part in blog-based memery. Internet memes, as a whole, sicken me on all kinds of levels. Hampster Dance, All Your Base, O RLY?, "It's Jesus LOL"...truly this is a legacy of shame for the human race. Now, I recognize that we must distinguish between the tween chatroom fuel listed above and the likes of which Connor has posted, which serve a beneficial purpose in letting we, the readers, learn more about the thoughts and personal history of the particular meme-continuer. This distinction is unimportant in terms of my own participation, however, for it is to the letter of the law that I must hew. I do not in any way wish to offend Connor through my refusal, but I anticipate that by accomplishing what was his scheme all along--to get me to produce a new post--he will be satisfied.
Not to fully deprive you of pointless insights into my mythic history, I will now relate a tale from the early days of the internet. The year is circa the early nineties. I was in 5th grade. One day on the schoolyard (we had schoolyards back then, before virtual reality took over) my best friend ran up to me, brandishing a single sheet of paper of the variety routinely produced by the dot matrix printers of that age. The contents of this particular paper, however, were not endogenous to my friend's home computer. Rather, as he explained, by some fel magicks they had been transmitted to his computer from some unimaginably distant technological stronghold. A note: this friend was an incredibly huge fan of the Alien film series. And dustily printed onto that sheet of paper were the words: "The B**ch Is Back." This cryptic epigram foretold the coming of a much longed-for third Alien movie, or so my friend told me that his mysterious "cyberspace" connection has told him. And lo, it proved to be true, for when the farflung future of 1992 dawned, the world came to know the disappointment that was Alien3. This incident, my earliest exposure to the internet, remains notable for several reasons. First, to fit in with the vague theme of this post, even my introduction to the WWW came in the form of an internet meme. Second, I didn't edit the profanity in the previous sentence. It was actually spelled "B**ch", because at this point in time swear words were not allowed on the internet. No, it was a zone reserved for government communiques and ultra-civil discussion between college professors. It was designed to inform children of snow days and such. That said, even with the asterisks the very idea that someone was sending out that message set our little elementary school hearts a-racin'. Perhaps one distant day we too could become phone "crackers" and use our weird fax-noise-making skills to order pizzas. Oh, we were so young and foolish then. But in many ways, better than the children of today. Better human beings. We couldn't download live streaming videos of a man raping a goat through our cell phones like today's fifth graders. We didn't even know what cell phones were, and if you told us, we would have informed you that those are properly called shoe phones and were standard issue for agents of K.O.N.T.R.O.L. in the 1960s and 70s. And we didn't need crappy Flash animations of Chuck Norris to keep ourselves entertained: we had crappy regular animations by the name of Chuck Norris' Karate Kommandos to watch every Saturday morning! Kids these days with their internet memes, man, I keep telling you, it's fine, learn2vael.
Or rather, I won't. My esteemed colleague Connor has recently "tagged" me to continue a quote unquote pyramid meme. This I must refuse. I hold to an incredibly stringent and arcane moral code, and part of this code consists of under no circumstances taking part in blog-based memery. Internet memes, as a whole, sicken me on all kinds of levels. Hampster Dance, All Your Base, O RLY?, "It's Jesus LOL"...truly this is a legacy of shame for the human race. Now, I recognize that we must distinguish between the tween chatroom fuel listed above and the likes of which Connor has posted, which serve a beneficial purpose in letting we, the readers, learn more about the thoughts and personal history of the particular meme-continuer. This distinction is unimportant in terms of my own participation, however, for it is to the letter of the law that I must hew. I do not in any way wish to offend Connor through my refusal, but I anticipate that by accomplishing what was his scheme all along--to get me to produce a new post--he will be satisfied.
Not to fully deprive you of pointless insights into my mythic history, I will now relate a tale from the early days of the internet. The year is circa the early nineties. I was in 5th grade. One day on the schoolyard (we had schoolyards back then, before virtual reality took over) my best friend ran up to me, brandishing a single sheet of paper of the variety routinely produced by the dot matrix printers of that age. The contents of this particular paper, however, were not endogenous to my friend's home computer. Rather, as he explained, by some fel magicks they had been transmitted to his computer from some unimaginably distant technological stronghold. A note: this friend was an incredibly huge fan of the Alien film series. And dustily printed onto that sheet of paper were the words: "The B**ch Is Back." This cryptic epigram foretold the coming of a much longed-for third Alien movie, or so my friend told me that his mysterious "cyberspace" connection has told him. And lo, it proved to be true, for when the farflung future of 1992 dawned, the world came to know the disappointment that was Alien3. This incident, my earliest exposure to the internet, remains notable for several reasons. First, to fit in with the vague theme of this post, even my introduction to the WWW came in the form of an internet meme. Second, I didn't edit the profanity in the previous sentence. It was actually spelled "B**ch", because at this point in time swear words were not allowed on the internet. No, it was a zone reserved for government communiques and ultra-civil discussion between college professors. It was designed to inform children of snow days and such. That said, even with the asterisks the very idea that someone was sending out that message set our little elementary school hearts a-racin'. Perhaps one distant day we too could become phone "crackers" and use our weird fax-noise-making skills to order pizzas. Oh, we were so young and foolish then. But in many ways, better than the children of today. Better human beings. We couldn't download live streaming videos of a man raping a goat through our cell phones like today's fifth graders. We didn't even know what cell phones were, and if you told us, we would have informed you that those are properly called shoe phones and were standard issue for agents of K.O.N.T.R.O.L. in the 1960s and 70s. And we didn't need crappy Flash animations of Chuck Norris to keep ourselves entertained: we had crappy regular animations by the name of Chuck Norris' Karate Kommandos to watch every Saturday morning! Kids these days with their internet memes, man, I keep telling you, it's fine, learn2vael.
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