typopinion::proof that nothing gold can stay

Many people, while they may have heard the term, are not exactly familiar with what a meme is. (Many will feign knowledge just so I'll shut up about it.) Incidentally, there's a lot of heavy conjecturing behind the idea of a meme, mostly a pseudo-science called "memetics", which purport--according to Meme Central--that a meme is a "contagious idea, all competing for a share of our mind in a kind of Darwinian selection." It continues on to say, "As memes evolve, they become better and better at distracting and diverting us from whatever we'd really like to be doing with our lives. They are a kind of Drug of the Mind. Confused? Blame it on memes." And to settle the old debate, "meme" is pronounced "meem". The little buggers've been around since 1976, but it's pretty well established that they've exploded since the internet became popular. So, by extension, we can blame the military for memes. ^_^ But if you'd like to learn more, once again, Meme Central is a fantastic place to start.

Meme Central fails to mention, however, the various virulent memes that have infected the web at one point or another. Let's take a look at a few of them, shall we?

The Jason Kottke meme. Without a doubt, this was one of the most annoying memes to ever appear. No one is quite sure when it began, though according to m³tacubed, it was sometime around the time that Jason Kottke's ego exploded and he became an elitist bastard (unspoken but possibly true). It was a pretty easy meme to replicate; basically, all you had to do was put the words "I am Jason Kottke" somewhere on your webpage. Weblogs were most susceptible to this meme, mostly because Kottke's highly popular kottke.org WAS (and still is) a weblog. It seems to have died out lately, though a few strange souls such as Phil Ulrich (of philulrich.com) and Nikolai (of Fairvue) seems to be trying to revive it. In honor of that, they're BOTH lying: I am Jason Kottke.
"All your base are belong to us." for the love of Jebus, do I really need to expound on this one? I've already posted a couple parodies of AYBABTU myself. There's a song devoted to it ("Invasion of the Gabber Robots", by The Laziest Men on Mars). There's sites fascinated with it. And lastly, there's one insane fan of the craze who created a page about the company (now out of business, surprise surprise) which was so well done, many people were fooled into thinking that maybe Toaplan hadn't gone out of business after all. "But what's all this crap about, Seth?" I hear you thinking. Well, it's got to do with video games. For those of you who didn't leave following those lines, the game in question was a Japanese-and-European-only game called Zero Wing, for the Sega Genesis. The game itself had a fascinating storyline in Japanese (I've seen a translation of it somewhere on the 'net...it reminds me of some sort of manga plot), but in the European release, it seemed to have been translated by a single overzealous Japanese man locked in a room with 20 cans of Jolt Cola and a Japanese-to-Engrish dictionary. In the process of translation, this:
"With the help of the UN forces, all your military bases will soon be ours."
became this:
"All your base are belong to us."
For some reason, it caught on. Don't ask me. I didn't make the damn thing up, I just play host to it.
The 'OBEY' shirt. This has got a lot to do with Jakob Nielsen, and I don't quite get it myself. Rik of mememachine.net created this shirt, which is sort of strange looking. Further research on Google seems to indicate that Jakob Nielsen is some sort of minimalist web designer. Yeah, and if he thinks I'll obey, he can bugger off. He's also anti-graphics. Check out his webpage here: http://www.useit.com/.

(3:18:30 PM)

Ah, the joy of the dropdown box. typopinion now has a more intuitive, choose-from-a-list-and-press-a-button navigation system. Hurrah! ^_- (2:56:25 AM)

Time for another bad AYB parody. (Discuss bad AYB parodies)

In AD 2001, war was beginning.
Lott: What happen?
Jeffords: Somebody set up me the switch parties.
Dubya: We get signal.
Lott: What!
Dubya: Republican party listen up.
Lott: It's you!!
Daschle: How are you gentlemen!!
Daschle: All your liberal are belong to us.
Daschle: You are on the way to losing control of Congress.
Lott: What you say!!
Daschle: You have no chance to survive pass legislation.
Daschle: Ha ha ha ....
Dubya: Lott!
Lott: Lose every 'vote'!!
Lott: We don't know what we doing.
Lott: Lose 'vote'.
Lott: For we are great dumbasses.

(2:17:14 AM)

Mmmmkay. Well, in the effort to continue the never-ending story routine, I've contributed a couple of chapters of philulrich.com's pick-your-own-path-slash-never-ending story. Just so you know. Oh, and one of the options is punching me in the face. A lot of you might find that fun. Mind you, my zombie gets its revenge. And now, on to what I was originally going to talk about. Have you ever considered the cosmic thought processes that go into lawnmowing? And so I proudly present:

If you're like me, mowing the lawn, whether you're using a push mower or a riding mower, is not exactly a mind-consuming enterprise. In fact, I tend to think about anything except mowing the damn grass. It's where I've considered some of the strangest things ever. Zeno's Arrow, for instance. That sort of thing. I've also written entire songs in my head, and don't think THAT doesn't turn out interesting. Okay, so this point wasn't too interesting. I admit it. (Discuss lawn mowing--yardwork vs. philosophical exercise)

I'm going to go destroy more brain cells. (12:28:00 PM)

First, an announcement. I'm sure that anyone forced to read that horrible AYB parody I wrote earlier today has already guessed at this, but nonetheless, it's important. In case it wasn't really freakin' obvious, I moved typopinion off of Blog*Spot. I repeat:

For starters, I felt really bad about cheating them out of their ad. I was also afraid that if I kept it up, I might give into temptation and block it AGAIN, in which case they might find it and delete typopinion. And I don't want to try to reconstruct the blasted thing. For the record: many free webhosts are vulnerable to slips of Cascading Style Sheet. "gee, no, I didn't know that putting 'table { display: none; }' in my style area would block Blog*Spot's ads!" (For the record, don't ~~shoot me~~ do that.) That said and done, let's move on to my real topic.

Go on, move to my real topic. Figure out what my real topic is, then move me to it. I defy you. Having trouble? ...In truth, so am I. This looks like it's just going to be another opinionated site like so many out on the web. And you know what? So be it. I'll state it formally: typopinion, as it stands, is going to be a front for the personal opinions and musings of Seth "Shifty" Tiefenauer, that being me. I see no need to give the site a self-deprecating name or tone, or to use the word "musings/blog/crazed/wandering/pointless" anywhere in the title. I believe that, by , anyone who reads this should expect to get my opinion, and they're gonna like it. I feel it's usually worth reading. (1:16:27 AM)

I think 50megs.com and I are about to have words. Angry ones. >_<

I've tried to use the 50megs family of servers (Freeservers, I believe) before with Blogger. The two machines seem to have trouble communicating. Picture this:

In AD 2001, blog was beginning.
Blogger: What happen?
Ev Williams: Somebody set up us the broken pipe.
Jason Shellen: We get signal.
Blogger: What!
Jason Shellen: Blog edit turn on.
Blogger: It's you!!
50megs: How are you gentlemen!!
50megs: All your error are belong to us.
50megs: You are on the way to not working.
Blogger: What you say!!
50megs: You have no chance to publish make your page.
50megs: Ha ha ha ....
Jason Shellen: Blogger!
Blogger: Take off every 'publish'!!
Blogger: You know what you doing.
Blogger: Push 'publish'.
Blogger: For great blog.

Need I say more? (2:37:59 PM)