Did You Ever Notice That "Meme" is "Me Me"? [UPDATED]

I've been tagged by Brunobaby for one of those "But enough about me.  What do you think about me?" vocal warmups:  "Do-re- me-me-me-me-meeee . . . "

I have a "Been there, done that" feeling about this one (I'm very carefully refraining from looking), but I feel like saying something but don't have anything to say (you don't want to hear about the murder-suicide impulses brought on by having to dig up reams of revealing documents for my New York landlord, do you?  Didn't think so), so what the hell.

There are rules, and one of them is that you have to post the rules.

1. Link to the person who tagged you (done)

2. Post the rules here (done)

3. Share 7 random or weird facts about yourself (which'll it be?  random?  or weird?  Geez, I'm sitting here staring at #1 and drawing a blank.  Actually, these things bore me.  I bore myself.  The only things that come to mind are either banal or unspeakable.  How about "Share 3 of your most unspeakable secrets"?  Now that would be a meme with balls.)

1. When I was in my early 20s I wanted to be a poet.
2. I want to be awake when I die because I'm curious.
3. I'm slightly psychic, but not enough to be useful.
4. Decades worth of journals,  making my most unspeakable secrets laugh-out-loud funny (in between the neurotic, obsessive, boring parts), are in my brother's basement where they will probably be destroyed by a flood.
5. I have put suffering cats to sleep myself, with euthanasia syringes provided by vet friends.  I shot the stuff directly into one cat's heart.
6. I could sing all of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," including some of the counterpoint, when I was three.  And just about still can. 
7. (God, I've run out of gas.  Trouble is, we bloggers who've been at it for a few years have already posted most of the weird, random facts about ourselves.)  Um ... I'll have to post a seventh some other time, if I ever think of one that I don't think I've told you before.  Did I ever tell you I used to act out the Nativity story with my toy horses?  That's weird, especially for a Jewish kid.  But I could swear I've blogged it already. 
   

4. Tag 7 random people at the end of the post, linking to them.  (Same problem.  All I know about these people is weird, random facts!)

1. Randy, Internet Ronin
2. Euan Semple of The Obvious?
3. Michael at Sideways Mencken
4. Icepick of The Kitchen Drawer
5. Danny at Jew Eat Yet?
6. Alan Stewart Carl of Maverick Views
7. Ali Eteraz

5. Leave a comment on their blog so that they know they’ve been tagged.  (This is too much work!  Don't you people have anything better to do?  Will somebody please tell them so I can go back to work?)

As far as I'm concerned, if you're not on that list but you actually have some fresh weird or random facts to serve up, please tag yourself.  And leave a comment so we'll know.

UPDATE:  Of course, now it hits me (probably because I've been reading Euan) that "Me Me" isn't really the point of a meme at all. The point is the linking.  The meme is simply the bee that travels from flower to flower, cross-fertilizing the Internet.   So what do we call them -- "WeWe"s? 

Comments

[david]

In re: Item #4: The journals are on a shelf, a good three and a half feet off the ground.

Although, these days especially, that ain't no guarantee...

[Danny]

Ooh, I think I will take this challenge even though I usually run from memes and even though, as you say, all I ever do on my blog is share random and weird facts about myself!

I was riveted by your list and would like to hear more about each point. Do you have a lot of the poetry you wrote in your 20s? Is it in your journals in David's basement? (Have your family members already read any of your journals? Did you use them when you wrote your book about the 60s?)

Oy on #5, you are amazing, I could NEVER do that. And do you mean the German-language version of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik?" Either way, it's bizarre for a three-year-old (who the hell taught it to you?). When do we get to hear the MP3?

[Randy (Internet Ronin)]

OK. I finally finished mine. Biggest problem was sticking to the subject, as I kept wandering off into diversions about others.

BTW, cultural illiterate that I am, I had no idea there were words to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The closest I can come to your feat is that, at 3, my best friend's mother taught us to sing "Frere Jacques" in French. (I learned that version before the English version.)

[amba]

There ARE NO words to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik! I was singing the melody! I got it off the record, which my parents played a lot. And it's still in there, even though I don't refresh my memory by listening to it often or anything. I'm whistling it as I write.

I have quite a bit of poetry I wrote in college and right after -- maybe 20, 30 anyway. Most of it is not in my journals, though there is some quasi-poetry in there. I don't think anyone in my family has read any of my journals (they were top secret for a long time) except that I gave my younger sisters and later, nieces the gushy fake-teen ones I wrote when I was 12 and 13 (which record my reaction to "the day the music died" in 1959). I don't think I used them at all to write about the '60s -- that was mostly memory and taped interviews with other people. I'll use them if I ever write about life with Jacques, though -- that's the interesting stuff.

[Melinda]

I learned the French words to "Frere Jacques" before the English, too.

Except that, being a kid in the Bronx, I'd thought the words were "Sonny Lay Martinez."

[chuck b.]

I'm 3 just like you, and I've done 5 too! Weird, huh?

[amba]

That is weird.

[Danny]

Oy, what an idiot I am, of course you were referring to the Mozart piece--I think my theatre-addled brain was thinking of Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" and imagining you running around singing one of those songs in German!

Wow, your family has such good boundaries. If I were David, I'd be mightily tempted to dip into those journals every time I went downstairs to do laundry. Your comment about your entry from the "day the music died" in 1959 makes me weak in the knees at the thought of all that glorious first-person documentation. You MUST pour over all your journals at some point and scan some pages for your blog (and possibly a future book). I'm sure there are loads of pearls in there and probably some entries reminiscent of one my sister just read me the other day from her 1970s diary: "The Vietnam War ended today. I washed my hair."

I'm still laughing at Melinda's "Sonny Lay Martinez." Ours was hearing "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" as "the girl with colitis goes by!"

[Melinda]

I'm still laughing at Melinda's "Sonny Lay Martinez."

Danny, likewise with "The Vietnam War ended today. I washed my hair."

[Locke]

I feel the need to disseminate this horrible abuse of the word meme, and what I posted at Hallqs page sufficiently gets across my point, so I'll paste:
Sorry, but you are entirely misdirected about what a 'meme' is. A survey or chain letter or pass-me-on or whatever this is has no relation to the word. In order to not look silly or foolish, you should research terms before using them. You can't make something a meme just by declaring it so, and if this was one, it would be instantly recognized and occur regularly in the social consciousness in various forms. All your base are belong to us and LOLcats are memes, 'list 7 weird things about yourself' is a survey at best, and a piece of unsolicited spam chainmail at worst.

[Danny]

Huh? The "horrible abuse" of the word "meme" is already too widespread to be stopped. The definition of the word has come to include this usage and there's nothing foolish or silly about it. (Well, maybe there's everything foolish or silly about it but it's here to stay anyway!)

I just posted my silly and foolish reply to this MEME.

[amba]

Yeah, we had a discussion the first time we did one of these "memes" about how it isn't really a meme. However, you could argue that mistakenly calling these things memes is itself by now a meme. (Or make yourself happy and call it a "MeMe.") You assume we're all ignorant, we may just be miles ahead in irony. ;)

[Ali Eteraz]

Thanks for sharing.

Alas this narcissist par excellence doesn't do memes.

You've tagged me before too.