The Me!Me! Generation Popularizes the Meme

I have been remiss. Tagged with a meme by two delightful people (and bloggers), I’ve taken my sweet time to craft a response. I’m the kind of guy who loves words but can never find a word that matches my tiles in Scrabble. I love ideas but am flummoxed by an imposed subject. Hence, the long delay in responding to these particular memes.

First, from Tisha, a meme that seems rather like a game of “tag, you’re it!” Tisha, the Puerto Rican Belgian from New York, doesn’t really write a blog. She hosts a party. For every one word she writes in her posting, about 1,001 words get written in her comments. She was gracious enough to tag me with the “Thinking Blog” meme, the rules of which are simple: tag five more bloggers who make you think. (And as I think about this, it occurs to me that, like all pyramid schemes, this one must eventually break down. “Sorry sir, but your meme has broken the law of exponential growth. That’s why we had to pull you over.”) Here are five blogs that regularly tickle my brain cells:

Living next door to Alice
Thomas draws from a diverse array of sources that always feel fresh and charmingly subversive.

Life Hiker
The confessions of a retired executive, a former Republican who feels betrayed by Dubya, LH writes a blog much more thoughtful than the subject who frequently incurs his disgust.

Rather Than Working
A lawyer who fully realizes that there is no law requiring bloggers to “stay on topic,” Dave opines about the law, politics, and UPS delivery snafus.

There is No One Right Answer
Michael Kaufman and I once served together on the San Diego Deming User Group executive team. Michael has a great and interesting mind that patiently points out how inane are the policies that govern our schools and corporations.

Barbara (Ehrenreich)’s Blog
Including Barbara on this list is rather like adding Elle McPherson to the list of the cutest girls in your school. Barbara is a real writer, author of Nickel and Dimed and, more recently, Dancing in the Street. She’s even been interviewed by my favorite radio host, the BBC’s Andrew Marr. She’s big time and about as likely to pass along this meme as Queen Elizabeth is to use her sleeve as a handkerchief.


Then, from Cody McKibben, a young ecopreneur, this meme of answering the question of five goals I’ve never taken seriously. Cody has the kind of mindful optimism that will eventually save civilization from staggering from catastrophe to catastrophe like a drunk in a dark room. One can only hope that his generation pulls off this neat, but thus far elusive, trick of inoculating the general populace from insanity.

Five Goals I've Never Taken Seriously

1. The goal of staying fashionable. My sense of fashion is only slightly more developed than that of a dog in a sweater.

2. The goal of growing up. I still find young people (between the age of 0 and 25) more fascinating than most of my peers because they are still so full of possibility. For them life has yet to become a habit of expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies. I find that open-ness utterly charming.

3. The goal of getting organized. Other people seem to have a portion of their brain able to sort and categorize. To me, everything is related to everything else and I quickly become overwhelmed with the task of sorting or categorizing. Sigh.

4. The final goal of the World Cup. I can’t help it. I’m an American and actually think that the World Series is aptly named even though none of the teams competing have yet come from outside of North America.

5. The goal of fitness. Someone once asked Steven Wright how he was doing. He said, “You know that feeling you have when you’re leaning back in a chair and you start to tip but at just the last moment you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time.” My fitness program is like that. I’m always teetering on the edge between running-in-a-marathon shape and full-fledged stay in your bed all day obesity, never quite able to completely kick the exercise habit or ever actually make exercise a habit.

I’d be intrigued to hear the following bloggers answer this same question about five goals never taken seriously.
Chesca at Ex-skin diver
Cce at Madmarriage
Damon's Wacky Thoughts
Eric Byers
Paula at Escape from Cubicle Nation

There. I've passed along two memes. This must be what a petri dish feels like.