On Monday, SkepticalObserver tagged me (here). What is James Young up to now, I thought? Some kind of game, I guess. I like games, but political blogging is serious business; we have a world to save. Nonetheless, I am curious. So I follow the link to his blog (here), and I read.
What do I find? Well, I find this thing on the SkepticalObserver that looks like the blog version of a chain letter (definition provided for young people). However, Jim calls it a meme. My first thought. What in tarnation is a meme? I then decide that “WHAT IN TARNATION IS MEME” might be a good title for a response. Not so.
I do not use the term “tarnation” every day, fortunately. So when my spell checker did not like this term, I looked it up. “Tarnation” is curse word with more than four letters? Darn! I have to stop using it. Jim is ruining my day. According to the dictionary, even blankety-blank is not safe, but we all have to draw a line some place. So I decided to play it safe. I did not look up “darn”, but the title did change.
At this point, I had to decide what to do about Jim’s meme. I don’t do chain letters or chain emails. Was I going to start with memes? NO! So here are eight reasons I will not to relay or propagate a meme.
8. The task provided with this meme, list eight habits or facts about myself, is contrary to the purpose of this blog. This blog is not about me.
7. If every person tagged followed the instructions in just one meme, can you imagine the theoretical result? With every post, we would each have to list eight more habits or facts about ourselves and find eight more people to tag. Eventually, we all would be doing nothing else.
6. Somebody is duty bound to break the chain.
5. “Meme” looks too much like “MeMe”.
4. When I searched on “meme” and “cartoon,” this combination produced very disappointing results. I am sorry, but this is the best I could do. Apparently, some Danish cartoonist regards homicide bombing as a meme.
3. When I googled “meme” and “fun”, I got this (here).
2. Have you ever heard of Memetics? I find the whole idea of treating the spread of ideas as a disease, the point of the term meme, bothersome. If you (the reader) find the idea of memes fascinating, you can catch a meme here.
1. If you (the reader) think there is more to ideas than their evolution, that some ideas are in fact our salvation spread by the example of martyrs, you can discover the word of God here, and that is no joke.
Citizen Tom 
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