I am Aware of All Internet Traditions

(Click the pic for a larger view.)

For background on this meme, see here, here, here and here - plus many, many other places.

(Boy, that Nietzsche was a heavy cat, wasn't he?)

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Six Word Memoirs

It's the hot new meme sweeping the blogosphere! Amy tagged me, so here we go. The rules are:

1. Write your own six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere

4. Tag five more blogs with links

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I'm told this all stems from Hemingway, who apparently met the challenge of writing a novel in six words with: For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Umm, okay, so no pressure, then, to be brilliant like that or anything. I went through several versions of the memoir:

Seven states. Three countries. Much art.

Immaturity? I call it reverent irreverence.

I sound my yawp against corruption.

Dude, you take things too seriously.

Comedy where possible, action where necessary.

Drama's great, but more bawdiness, please.

Carl Barks to Kurosawa to Orwell.

Learning, acting, teaching, filming, writing, moving.

Alright, done with that. What's next?

Hey, riffing is my thing, baby. (Damn! Another one!) Anyway, for my "official" entry, I decided I'd go with something a little more, um, abstract:

Oooh, look, shiny! Socrates and Godzilla!


(Click for a larger view.)

To be more serious, lacking Hemingway's gift, I'd say the challenge for memoir is picking which defining moments of many to use, which aspects of one's life or personality are most salient. As Alice says in Wonderland, "I could tell you my adventures beginning from this morning, but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." I actually don't feel my personality is that different from when I was a kid (shades of 49 Up), but successive waystations have invited or demanded different aspects. The truth is, I've always felt every person is many people inside, or has many sides to him or her. (For that matter, I also think the best relationships are those where you can show or explore the most sides, or where the other person accepts, encourages or draws out the best aspects of you.) But as to the basic mix, as Wordsworth put it, "the child is father of the man."

I don't know how many other people have done some version of a "Who am I?" exercise (we did that sort of thing at the school where I taught), but I found the most accurate approach for me was to define myself as the tension between different aspects. Zen appeals to me because I can be so impatient and annoyed. I admire compassion in others in part because I can be self-absorbed. I feel compelled to call bullshit, but also like to make people laugh. Of course, those last two especially can intersect.

(And ain't nothing like a gadfly breathing nuclear blue flame. You'll wipe that smirk off your face, Bill Kristol, when your bloodthirsty hack ass is on fire.)

And on that note... Many of the blogs I'd tag have already done this, so if you haven't, and you'd like to participate, have at it! As Glen Hansard would say, T'anks!

The Book Meme

D'oh! Tagged by Lance Mannion! (I'm not sure about the "gentleman" thing, though, nor even the "scholar"... )

Here's how you play:

• look up page 123 in the nearest book
• look for the fifth sentence
• then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.

Monsieur Mannion mercifully grants a Liberal Fascism exception.

I'm sure you'd be shocked to know that in front of the two massive, overflowing bookcases (thankfully bolted to the wall at last, since I'm in earthquake territory) by my desk are stacks of books piled up in loosely organized piles. (Yes, ladies, I'm a catch.) In any case, I grabbed a book within reach, one of my favorites, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, "A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings" translated by Paul Reps:

No sooner had the Buddha spoken than that Bodhisattva sprang up from the earth and bowed and paid homage to the Buddha. Buddha directed him to arouse the girl. The Bodhisattva went in front of the girl and snapped his fingers, and in that instant the girl came out from her deep meditation.

Dude. That's deep.

(Certainly more serious than my entry for the Band Meme.}

If you're interested, that's from koan #42 of The Gateless Gate. "The Girl Comes Out From Meditation." It's pretty apropos for me since Mumon's comment includes: "If you can understand this intimately, you yourself can enter the great meditation while you are living in the world of delusion." So, um, I'm afraid I'll be stuck there 'til at least November 2008.

Anyway, if you'd like to be tagged — you're it!

The Band Meme

So I swung (by a yardarm) o'er t' th' fine ship of Cap'n Dyke, Lesbian Pirate Queen and Rogue Blogger — Yar! — and discovered a great project/post: "The Band Meme." As the Cap'n's post explains:

Here’s how The Band Meme goes. You are about to have your own band’s CD cover. Follow these directions to the letter. Go to……

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it’s more amusing that way.

The Cap'n's album is the pic above. And it's good. Really good. But stand fast, true believers, for the most hard-rockin' cover evar!

(Ready? Stand back, I tell ya!)


BOOM! Just look at it! That's friggin' hard-core, man! It's all like, ironic 'n' stuff. If it were goth, it would be "pink" goth, so goth, so assured in its gothiness and gotha-cicity, that it doesn't need to even look goth. And what says serious, ground-breakin' tunes like a friggin' panda bear? Nothing beats panda bears! They're like, the 11 of animals! Panda-Cams are like crack! Even Wonkette's snark melted when faced with the mighty power of Tai Shan Butterstick, provoking full-scale withdrawal breakdowns of the sort ya normally only see after ya've thrown the widescreen TV off the balcony of your 14th floor hotel room in a drunken rage. I mean...

...Okay, marketing says we need to sex it up a bit. They like the whole Panda thing, although they don't want me to mention the "crack" thing in the ad. They're thinking Billy and the Boingers meets the Evil Puppy from Conan O'Brien. Wholesome, cute, but also evil. Edgy. Something more like this:


Yeah! Look at that! It's an evil red panda! I mean, an evil red giant panda, not an evil red panda. Hell, you knew what I meant. Smart ass.

But I'm thinking it'll go double platinum.



God, I'm such a panderer sell-out.

Maybe watching a Polish art house classic will make me feel better.