Whom, Meme?

I've decided that I hate memes. In case you're not familiar with blogging lingo, a meme is the blogging equivalent of a chain letter. Usually you’re instructed to answer some silly questions on your blog and then “tag” five or six other bloggers. Then those bloggers answer the silly questions and tag five or six other bloggers, and it's just a goshdarnawfullotoffun. Some people welcome being tagged, because it relieves them of the responsibility of thinking of something to blog about that day. My feeling is that if you like being told what to do, maybe you should be doing something useful like getting me a beer instead of blogging.

Some memes even have the chutzpah to refer to themselves as awards. Because, after all, that's how awards work, right? Martin Scorsese gets one, and then he gives one to his five buddies Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Copolla, Brian DePalma, Clint Eastwood and George Lucas, and then George Lucas gives them to all the directors he stole his ideas from, and after about three days of this, you walk into Starbucks and catch Michael Bay trading winged statues with three guys named Alan Smithee.

Look, I don't mean to seem ungrateful. I'm flattered that you think I'm a thoughtful blogger or funny blogger or blogger with particularly iron-rich blood. But isn't all this meming getting out of hand? Lately memes have been piling up on my porch like the dead frogs in Magnolia. Sure, it's cool at first, but after a while they start to smell.

Anyway, over the past few weeks, I've been tagged with several memes. Sage tagged me for the Reflective Blogger Award. Speedcat Hollydale tagged me as a ROCKIN' GIRL BLOGGER (which is funny, because I am not, in fact, a girl). And Zhu tagged me for her Ten Priceless Experiences meme, in which I'm supposed to write about ten experiences that one might enjoy where I live.

I appreciate being tagged for these (well, maybe not the girl one), but let's take a step back and think about this for a moment. Consider for a moment a typical meme, in which you have to recollect the names of all the pets you've ever had and then tag five other bloggers. You write your scintillating account of Mr. Fuzzy's hairballs and then tag five of your pals, who each surprisingly deliver equally riveting narratives. This goes on and on. Let's say that each link in the chain takes 2 days, and that every tagged blogger follows the instructions diligently. After one month, the meme will have propagated to over 30 billion people. That's right, not only has your meme been done by every Inuit and aborigine on the planet, it's actually created 24 billion new people. That's great if you like people, but I get anxious in groups larger than 20 million. And after a few more months, there would be more people than atoms in the universe, which gets dicey because most people* are made up of more than one atom.

Don't worry, this nightmare scenario is unlikely to occur, because memes seem to have an intrinsic propagation limit. Sociologists refer to this as the "DNC Point," after the moment at the Democratic National Convention in 1996 when the entire crowd did the Macarena and America threw up a little in its collective mouth.

The point is that built in to the concept of the meme is the assumption that eventually people are going to stop following the rules. If they didn't, the meme would take over the universe. So, in the interest of preserving the universe for future generations of multi-atomic citizens, I'm not going to tag anybody for any of these memes. I do feel like I should at least respond to the people who were kind enough to mention my blog in their meme posts, but unfortunately I'm kind of an ass, so I have difficulty responding graciously to such things. Therefore I have decided to delegate the task of responding to memes to a good friend of the Mattress Police, Grundir the Implacable.



Grundir, as you may know, is a ring-wraith (Nazgûl) who until recently worked for the Dark Lord Sauron as Undersecretary for Evil Ring Acquisition. Before becoming one of the Nazgûl, Grundir the Implacable was a well-known Númenorian king and hedge fund manager. Although his reputation has been tarnished by the ongoing Mordor embezzlement scandal, he is known as a pillar in the evil community and was even recently named as a potential vice presidential candidate. Grundir is at a crossroads in his career, and has been staying with us while he "sorts out his priorities." We like having him around because he keeps the weeds down around the estate and he's great with the kids.

So without further ado, I present to you my good friend and Nazgûl Grundir the Implacable.

Hello, Mattress Police readers! I am Grundir the Implacable. I would like to thank Diesel for the honor of handling his memes. I swear on the souls of my Númenorian forebears that I will not fail in this task, my lord! I also would like to thank him for letting me stay in his barn while I get my shit together. Can I say "shit" here? Bah! I am Grundir the Implacable, servant of the Dark Lord Diesel. Deal with it! The sun climbs ever higher in the eastern sky, and with it the hopes of the throngs of Mattress Police readers for a new post. Even the immortal are slaves to the juggernaut of time. I shall return another day to dispatch my meme-related responsibilities. For now, let this fateful hour not disappoint my lord's willing thralls. Publish, I tell thee. By the Shadows of Angmar, PUBLISH!


*In fact, pretty much everybody except Kate Moss.


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