Meme What You Say: Culture is Cracking Under the Weight of its Own Insignificance
As I rejoin the world of social media, one things sticks out at me — the adoption of the word meme to describe any old post we decide to broadcast to our various audiences around the world. Memes hold as much significance and sway as our genes do in shaping cultures, over generations, and yet I hear people saying things like “check out this meme of a cat eating pizza” or “my buddy sent me a meme about Prince’s death”. I’m sorry folks, those are not memes, they are simply our mind chatter being immortalized in cyberspace through our fingertips instead of our mouths. I’m not saying those kinds of things aren’t creative or even at times captivating and clever, they are. Social media is neutral, neither good nor bad. It is a tool. It can be used to waste time in frivolity and fluff; it can be used to express the depths of ones creativity; it can be used to inform, impress, and interconnect. It’s the very avenue by which this article has made it to your brain after all. However, social media has only been around for 20 years in its current form and that is simply not enough time to create even one single meme. Meme comes from the latin root to mimic and is described by Dictionary.com as a part of our culture that has been formed through repetition by being passed down from generation to generation. The fact that humanity now eats cooked meat and uses utensils is a meme. Through repetition over generations, as in a widespread generational mimic, new cultural trends and behaviors are created and adopted. Flossing is a meme, because it was not created genetically, but memetically, meaning it was born from mimicking, over time, not from being re-tweeted. We call our social media posts memes to give significance to what does’t much rise above the level of banter or chit chat. Meme’s change cultural trends over generations, not over news cycles. Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 work The Selfish Gene likes to take credit for the coining of the word, despite it self-admittedly being from the french meme which means same, alike, or oneself. The word meme has been in our cultural genetic make up, or should I say memetic make up, since before Richard Dawkins was born. We can co-opt it, like we did with the other French words “rendezvous” and “hors d’oeuvre” because we are too lazy to come up with our own english word for “clandestine meeting” and “small finger food,” but that doesn’t mean that meme means what we think meme means. Oxford English Dictionary and now even Webster’s online Dictionary have added a second definition for the word meme, so we can continue using the word in this manner that hyperbolizes our individual impact on our culture through social media. Or we can come back down to reality and start calling all those memes what the really are – cyber small talk. Not everything we post on our social media accounts is as memeingful as we might like to believe. Showing me a picture of a monkey snuggling with a cat is an ice-breaker at best, not a culture shaker. Twitter probably comes from the latin root for “Twit” after all, hardly a culture bending force. Shaping pop culture for a week and effecting cultural trends over lifetimes is like comparing a paint ball gun to a bazooka and saying they have the same basic effect. I meme, come on people.
Unclehood: The Chronicles of a Brand New Uncle
Unclehood (unk-al-hud): 1. (n) All the fun of parenthood, with none of the parenting. 2. (n) A second childhood when you’re all grown up. Technically speaking you could say I became an uncle 569 days ago when Charlie was born. But I didn’t feel anything. My sister did though, as she was basically ripped in half for 17 hours; but for me, becoming an uncle was as easy as becoming 37 this year…I didn’t feel a thing. You could say that I became an uncle 553 days ago when Charlie and I first met. She was pretty tiny, being born two weeks early and all, so by the time I held her on June 21st or so, it was pretty much her actual due date. But I like to say that I’m becoming an uncle. I’ve never been one before and I’m not really sure what it all means just yet. One thing I’m sure about though is that I get to be there for all the fun parts, and even create some of them, but I don’t have to change nearly as many poop-filled diapers as mom and dad will. That much I know for sure. Christmas gives way to Springtime and little Charlie is 22 months old now. I live in California and she lives in Connecticut so I’m in and out of town often, and each time I come back home I am meeting a brand new girl that it feels like I’ve know for lifetimes. She’s got more inches, more words, more expressions; things I’ve never seen before but know are somehow a part of me. This must be what parenthood feels like, I think, but with less fatigue and shit. A few poop-filled diapers and many plane tickets later and this mound of cells and drool has become a person; a full personality with opinions and preferences, like me, but not a bitch like me. Oh, and she has mastered the art of saying the word “uncle”, which has melted my heart all over again every single time I hear it. And she knows phrases now too, like “Uncle Brian”. Sometimes it sounds like “Opey Bye”, sometimes it sounds like “Unn-al Bine” but I don’t care. When those piercing and vibrant eyes look at me, right at me, and she says my name it’s as if all things made of matter cease to matter at all. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my whole world changed when Charlie was born. She came into this world 839 days ago, and I’ve been becoming an uncle ever since. If she ever gets tired of me she can go ahead and cry uncle, but just hearing that word is going to melt my heart. You’re stuck with me kid; I’m becoming an uncle, and I’ve fallen in love.
Smoke & Mirrors: Slight of Hand About a Magical Plant
There is major confusion surrounding many aspects of the ubiquitous, yet seriously misunderstood botanical phenomenon knows as Mary Jane, or in the stodgier circles of the laboratory: Cannabis Sativa Afghanica Indica Cunningham—or Pot for short. I intend to clear away some of the smoke and lay out some of the cold hard facts. The confusion I’m referring to is not the befuddlement caused by a few tokes of your Brother-In-Law’s good stuff after a Thanksgiving dinner, it’s the conflict and question given rise by our gut when we know we are being deliberately lied to, but we don’t know why or by whom? I may sound paranoid, but sometimes paranoia is a proper response, and that’s when a conspiracy theory isn’t just a theory anymore. And no, I’m not paranoid because I got too stoned. Let’s start at the beginning, roughly a bunch of millennia ago, when pot first appeared on the scene. According to advancedholisitic.org we can trace societal acceptance for and the usefulness of hemp back to 8,000BCE, which is over 10,000 years ago. “Finding hemp use and cultivation in this date range puts it as one of the first and oldest known human agriculture crops” according to the website. Carl Sagan expanded on this point in 1977 suggesting that marijuana may be the world’s first agricultural crop, becoming the catalyst for modern civilization itself. If that’s true it would seem to me that humanity evolved pretty well from our stoned beginnings and now, under the century of prohibition we seem to be falling apart. Maybe medical marijuana can not only help save patients from pain but possibly can help save society as a whole from the impending pain we are about to unleash upon ourselves when our consumer lifestyle leads to a massive collapse of the modern standard of living we’ve come to know. Hemp use, for recreation and healing, as well as for clothes, paper, ropes, construction materials and food is well documented throughout humanity’s history. 100 BC we find the first evidence of hemp paper in China, which is stronger and longer lasting paper than the thin and highly degradable type we manufacture today from trees. The Constitution of the United States was printed on hemp paper, indeed that’s why it has lasted to this day. In concentrated doses cannabis is anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumoral. It literally shrinks tumors and reverses their effects. The research on this is spotty because of a mix of deliberate deception and incompetence, but I’ve seen this treatment work. I am treating a mole on my body this way right now, and it’s beginning to shrink. So I became infatuated, captivated by Mary Jane herself. My passion to learn everything I could about pot took root inside me. The hemp plant itself has the hardest fiber of all plants that can be processed so it makes higher quality paper than trees, which could mean an end to deforestation. The oil from the stalk can be used instead of crude oil to make all petroleum based “plastic” items we use today, thus eliminating toxic plastic from the planet and replacing it with something lasting but safe. It can further be processed into non-toxic paint, heating fuel, car fuel, construction materials, cords, rope and clothes. Additionally hemp seed is the most complete form of food on the planet, being the only thing containing every known amino-acid chain as well as an abundance of nutrients and minerals. Just by being planted in large enough numbers, the amount of carbon dioxide it uses can single-handedly reverse our man-made carbon foot print, while the seeds it would produce can feed everybody three times over. And finally it’s one of the most advanced plants out there, being able to be both male and female, pollinate itself, grow in almost any climate and reproduce in vast quantities without any help—that’s why we call it a weed. Pot, in short, is a miracle. I am caught in the thrall of this new phenomenon that has the potential to reverse many catastrophic trends facing humanity. I mean, we know it’s good for the economy! So why is this information so hard to come by? Why has prohibition of such a wondrous miracle plant lasted for almost a century? And why don’t we rise up and put an end to all of humanity’s problems in one fell swoop by legalizing, harvesting, manufacturing and—yes—even smoking this miracle plant. If cannabis can yield eco-friendly versions of all the toxic modern day comforts we have come to know and love then what is the hold up? Is it because those of us who know about this kind of thing happen to be stoned all the time? Well I don’t think that’s it. The medical marijuana movement has gained more support and accomplished more in the last five years than it had in the previous 15 years before that. And awareness of hemp and it’s beneficial, nay, miraculous effects is becoming common knowledge. So why does it seem that our consciousness regarding this issue moves at a stoned snail’s pace? Because we are being deliberately lied to. Marijuana is a plant and therefore it cannot be patented. The equalizing nature of this makes it a threat to many industries, from oil to plastic to cotton, even to paper and pharmaceutical drugs. If people can grow their own medicine in their back yard or their home then where does that leave the prozac pushers? The deliberate disinformation campaign has been fully underway for decades now. In the 1930’s citizens were told that marijuana would make black men and Mexicans rape women. Then in a complete one-eighty in 1942, in order to win WWII, the US government ordered farmers to grow the crop to make equipment and rope for their ships and soldiers. In the late 1960’s ganja caused a massive cultural and spiritual awakening prompting Nixon in 1971 to declare a war on drugs. The last thing men in power want is a society that’s
A Weekend In London Smoking Fags
I am sitting in a bus terminal at the Stansted Airport on the outskirts of London waiting to return home from a friend’s wedding. I was here less than 48 hours ago. My jet lag is just now beginning to rectify itself and I am going to careen through the time zones again making my body, and my watch face, tired. It’s 8:30am London time, and it will be 6:30pm Ohio time when I get home. That will make for a sixteen hour travel day, after which I am expected to be ready and awake to host the freshman in our home for three days of consecutive partying. When I got to my motel on Friday afternoon I napped on and off for 5 hours which felt great at the time. When I was twisting and turning in my bed that night at 1am, more awake than a little kid on Christmas Eve, sleeping next to bridegroom and best man snoring soundly, I realized that the my naps may not have been the best idea after all. I decided to take a walk, smoke a cigarette, and discuss some of my life questions with God, or at least the black night sky. Two minutes down the sidewalk is a 24-hour service station that looks to me like a rest stop you might find on the side of the highway. I ordered a bacon & egg sandwich and what I actually got was a flattened hero role with some strips of bacon bunched up in the center, a few strands of half-melted shredded cheese, and something white, which I can only assume must have been the egg. I ate my smashed breakfast sandwich in silence and lit a cigarette inside of a public building. I guess our anti-smoking laws haven’t made it quite this far yet. Upon returning to the travel lodge I struck up a conversation with Anna, the front desk lady on nightshift. 3.5 hours, a coke, and over 10 cigarettes later I was ready for bed. She told me about her 5 husbands, her combined 39.5 years of marriage (and going strong with hubby number 5), her thoughts on love at first sight, about the time she met the translator to the queen of Morocco, and fancy fingernail painting techniques. I went to bed at 5am that morning wondering if my idea of love at first sight, and my idealized version of falling in love once and being in love forever was indeed a fairytale. If Anna could be in love 5 times, did I really think I was going to get out of the war of the heart that easy. I am sick of being on the frontlines. I want to hide in the back of the medi-vac, licking my wounds and stuff every one my pockets with extra gauze for the day when I may really have to stop my own bleeding. Anna said she had no regrets. She said she lived the life of the unknown. If you live the life of the known, she was telling me, it is not challenging, it is not exciting, it is manageable, unadventurous, and chances are good you like calling yourself an adult and carry a briefcase. But if you live the life of the unknown, anything can happen to you, and it seems, as if almost a dream, that you can make anything happen. She has loved five times, has 4 children, lived a life of mystique in Morocco, and works as a cab driver and night receptionist in England. And the mind-boggling thing is…she actually seems happy. Four times divorced and she seems happy. She worked as a therapist for a while and onetime one of her clients spotted her in the public square and began to ask her questions. This was a client who was having marriage problems. He asked if she had ever been married and when she told him that yes she had, five times, he didn’t know what to say. He looked over at a young mother pushing her baby in a stroller, looked back at Anna and said “how can you give me marital advice when you can’t even get it right?” She smiled, and replied unflustered, “who said I got it wrong?” I went to sleep puzzled, fatigued, woozy from too many cigarettes, and desiring to know less and less about my exciting and challenging future. What was in store for me would be just fine After the wedding reception the next night Claudia, one of the twenty-something guests, and myself decided to head off to an English nightclub to find cute boys and give me assurance that, being out so late, I would indeed sleep on the plane. We waited in the cue for ages and then we were tossed aside by a bouncer who didn’t want to let me in because my trainers (aka sneakers) violated the “smart casual” dress code. “I am just a dumb foreigner,” I told him, “and I won’t show anyone my shoes on purpose.” I flashed my best innocent American smile. He apologized saying there was nothing he could do, so Claudia and I ended up smoking some fags on the edge of the greasy sidewalk a few meters down from the club. In England they call cigarettes fags. We lit fag after fag sitting on the pavement and deadening our lungs. It got me to thinking that maybe we should call homosexuals cigarettes back home. Cigs for short. “Wanna go to the cig club” we’d start saying to each other. Or “God hates cigs” would be the new signs on the nightly protests outside the grave of Matthew Shepherd. In England we smoke fags. In America we smoke ‘em out. As we headed back to the travel lodge I stared out the window of our taxi feeling like I was a piece of grizzle that the monster that is the London club scene spit up
The Reason For Rain
A quarter of a century has gone by for me, and sitting on a plane on the way to London for the wedding of an old friend all I can seem to do is check out the hot guy waiting to use the men’s room five cramped rows in front of me. There was a time years ago, during that stage of my life where memories are covered in fog and smudged by time’s chiseling fingers that I would sit for hours in front of our gigantic picture window and be completely absorbed by the rain falling on the road. If it was sunny I seemed to feel in the pit of my stomach this obligation to be outside. Adults used to keep telling me that it was nice outside and “the fresh air will do you good.” That was a sentiment I didn’t quite understand. I wanted to sit on the hard wood floor, flatten my paper against a comic book hero on the glass of my picture window and trace the hours away in my living room, in my imagination. “If the air is so fresh,” I found myself thinking, “then why don’t you go get some of it for yourself?” We endured many surprise tornado scares and hurricanes in southern Connecticut growing up. Some mornings my mother and sister would wake up shivering and bewildered by what sounded like God’s wife slapping him one good smack upside the head. I can imagine what her complaints might have been. It’s too hot in August in California. It’s too cold in Norway. Not to mention that Sandra Bullock hasn’t made a good movie in years and there are millions of starving children dying weekly all over our death dotted planet. But I digress. The thunder seemed to send a panic through the people around me. And just as the rain would start pelting the roof and window outside my bedroom I would be scooped up and carried to mom’s bed, where Cheryl, my sister was usually already waiting and breathless. I sleep like the dead. So I never heard those dark early mornings when God was being slapped around and we were quarantined to our mother’s bedroom. The following morning as my eyes blinked into focus I would see clearly a ceiling pattern that was different than mine. There was no oblong crack in the plaster here, and there was no reflection of familiarity hanging above me. We must have had a storm again I would admit disappointedly to myself. I have always loved the rain. And thunder and lightning were, to me, dazzling special effects that weren’t to be missed. But I sleep deeply. So I tended to miss these late night showings. And I would wake up feeling sick about it, as if a best friend had moved away and we didn’t properly get to say our good-byes. I grew fond of the rain growing up because it seemed to be the only weather that would allow me to do the things I wanted to do with the approval of all the grown-ups around me. When it was raining I wouldn’t hear from a teacher or a babysitter that I should be outside. Instead, I was admonished that I could catch cold if I wasn’t careful, and that I should play inside today. The news that I couldn’t play outside was always delivered with such apology. Are these people crazy? I want to play inside. I always want to play inside. Inside is where I can write my feeble poetry, turn couches into the batcave, trace my comic book role models by the gray light streaming through the window, through the paper, through my soul. Or I sometimes would simply stare, dumbstruck at the television as Jamie Summers saved the day from bad guys on another antique re-run of The Bionic Woman. I often used to sit and stare out that picture window contemplating the reason for rain. When I visit home now that gigantic picture window doesn’t look so grand anymore but I still stare out from it….wondering if childhood could simply still be on the other side of that sheet of glass. It’s sunny and even now I feel something inside, an implanted irrational guilt, telling me I should be out doors. “Go and get yourself some fresh air,” I try to muster, “it will do you some good.”
