Memes of Perception

It's a tribute to what reality TV and transparency-obsessed culture have done to us that we've now got memes like this: tongue-in-cheek productions that let you see all sides of what we do. Our perception is pitted against others', and however successful any perception is at proliferating, the reality remains, fixed, stark, and laughable from the outside. You know it, everyone else knows it; it would be embarrassing to pretend like it's not there.

All great dramas are about this but the context has never been more perfect to pare it down to bare essentials and consume it raw.

Finally, in trademark self-deprecating style, the meme more or less begins to die when people start mocking the format. This last is by Len Kendall:

Is a Wall Ever Just a Wall?

Usually not.

Via @maximeparis of MinuteBuzz.

Dry Erase Quitter a Hoax, and Maybe a Lesson

This may be fiction after all, but it's springboarded aspiring actress Elyse Porterfield to internet infamy and validated the ability of brothers John and Leo Resig to "create" a viral. More than once.*

Humor me ››

I Am Writing an Article About the Vuvuzela.

I want to remember this moment, because on days when I'm sad and think the demands life makes on me are unreasonable or whatever, I can think:

"The other day, for a living, for my JOB, I had to write about the vuvuzela."

It is a noble and perfectly awesome calling.

Image credit: Coca Cola South Africa.

I Hereby Demand Hugs from Everyone Alive

I noticed the other day that people on Facebook were running searches for their names on urbandictionary.com and posting the definitions in their status bars.

Didn't think much of this until Ben Kunz said the meme was a viral stunt that originated from Urban Dictionary itself.

This changes everything!

(Also via.)

Dear People-that-Still-Use-Myspace,

Please stop sending me these. They make me feel sad.

Maybe in 1996 I would've pegged all my self-worth on how many saucily text-rendered Kisses™ I got,* but times've changed.

Now I measure my value by how often I'm reTweeted for saying stuff like this. All. Day. Long.

---

* "7-9 freaken hot." Yeah, baby, yeah.

25 Angela Facts You Won't Find in a Google Search. (Well, Now You Will.)

Russian. Kitsch.
Once you've been tagged, write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

Note: I already did my tagging on Facebook, and I don't want to be all Overachiever and tag 50 PEOPLE, so I'm nixing this rule on L&U.

Fact the 1st. Russian kitsch is weirdly appealing to me. I love the stark appearance and urgency of proletariat propaganda, the big furry hats and coats, the stern expressions, the literature (Turgenev is my favourite), and the art -- especially stuff from between 1900 and 1920.

2. I have judged the characters of men I dated by asking them what passages they liked best in The Little Prince.

3. Talking about Warren Buffett makes me giddy.

4. I stock facts and anecdotes to whip out at a pin-drop. If you know me long enough, you will hear the same one, delivered the exact same way, two or three times. Please stop me if I ever do this to you.

5. Carmen is my favourite opera.

6. If I could put any celebrity in a jar to shake and gaze at when I'm sad, it would be Johnny Depp.

7. When I was six, a girl my grandma baby-sat bit my arm and took the skin off. Grandma did nothing about it -- and I held the grudge up until two years ago, when she coyly confessed that after the girl bit me, she brushed her hair extra-hard so it would hurt.

8. Now that I'm older I realize most of the foods I hated in childhood were due primarily to prejudice. The exception to this epiphany is peas. I. HATE. PEAS.

9. Know how every senior class has a Hall of Fame? I won the airhead awards for mine in both eighth-grade and twelfth: "Lost in Space" and "Most Likely to Have Her Head in the Clouds," respectively.

10. At age eleven I submitted "novels" (of, like, 12 pages) to Dell Yearling, Scholastic and Penguin (I think?) for publication. Each rejected me, probably due in no small part to my cover letters. They were written in pencil and said, "You probably think I'm an amatuer [sic] because I'm a kid. I AM NOT AN AMATUER."

A similar approach (via email, natch) won me my first gig as a blogger.

11. I say derisive things about karaoke, but the truth is I like it and secretly hope someone forces me to sing, and I prove unexpectedly dazzling, and the whole room pays me lots of compliments afterward.

12. As a kid I got kicked out of a comic book store for trying to steal a Ranma 1/2 manga. I never wanted to steal again.

13. Tonight marks the first time I ever peeled a garlic clove.

14. I used to raid my church kitchen for the Eucharist bread. They later switched to biscuits.

15. Guilty pleasure: Sitting on the phone with old high school friends, trawling MySpace and gossiping about who "let go."

16. I eat all the grains first in a bowl of Lucky Charms. Then I count the marshmallows and eat them in heaping spoonfuls while they're still crunchy. A friend once criticized me for this, so I tried eating them the normal way. Can't do it; the second she left the room I was segregating like crazy.

17. Starbucks fired me at age 16 for asking an artillery soldier if he ever killed anyone. If they had not fired me, I would probably still be working there.

18. My parents claim the first word I ever uttered was "baboy," Tagalog for "pig." When I finally grasped English, it wasn't a word that escaped me but a sentence: "I don't like it."

19. I was forbidden to read when I misbehaved.

20. Chili-laced hot chocolate is my favourite beverage.

21. At a previous job, I took up smoking to expedite a promotion. It worked.

22. In fifth-grade I made Spelling Bee Regionals. Didn't win though. We could misspell five words before being disqualified; I can't recall what all of mine were, but I do remember screwing up "diligent." (I spelled it "deligent.")

23. I like uncooked brownie mix.

24. Jadzia Dax is the Star Trek character I love best. It really pissed me off when Terry Farrell left the show and Ezri Dax came along.

25. When we were 17, me and my boyfriend thought Elephant Bar was for rich people. He'd lean back on one of their zebra-print booths and be all, "When I'm rich, places like this are gonna save me tables."

Worth Noting.

Diggin' how, like, 10% of the search traffic to my blog comes from people Googling "I sent that bitch a smiley face."

lolscobles. Seriously.

The site linked below is a tastament -- whoa! -- testament to Robert Scoble's contribution to tech culture. But the million dollar question is, what is he always pointing to?


I can haz Scobles? (via.)