When Memes Go Wrong

I recently did one of those emails where you list 3 interesting facts about yourself for each category. The idea was to tell your friends something about yourself that they might not already know. For example, one item asked me for three jobs I've had - so I entered Radio Voiceover girl, PR Consultant, and Toy Shop Salesperson. Then we had "Three foods you love" and I wrote Croissants, Green Grapes, and OMG Trident Hot and Spicy Noodles. They are awesome enough to elicit Oh My God, you see. And then I wrote Hamburgers, Bacon, Camembert, Tzatziki, Marinated Asparagus, Pizza, French Fries, Chocolate... ahem.

Anyway, I sent the email to a handful of people, including my aunt G, who's in her 60s and new at this whole "intarweb" thing. So far she has mastered Booting Computer, Connecting to Internet, and Typing on Skype. (We're still in the novice stages of Email, because every 30 days Gmail asks her to sign in again, and she calls me in a panic because "Gmail is gone" aka "I can't see my emails, and what's all this about a username and password?")

Apparently she paid real attention to this email. When she and my mother arrived for their visit last weekend, she had contributed to the Great Grocery Giveaway (see, "my mother always brings me food"). Among the goodies were croissants, because I like them. Then we had green grapes, because I like them. But missing, she explained, were the noodles, because she searched and searched but she just couldn't find the right brand.

I grabbed a packet out of my cupboard (see, "I bought groceries to feed my guests but we didn't eat any of it"). I showed her the package. "I SAW THOSE!" she said. "I saw Trident brand. But you wrote 'OMG' so I was looking for OMG Noodles."

I could see my sister cover her mouth at the other end of the room, trying not to laugh. Do you know how hard it is not to laugh when someone else does that?

I curse you, Sister Of Mine. I love you, Aunty G.

Another Meme

While I'm at it, here's a shameless reminder to take a look at the latest Weird Search results at weirdsearch.blogspot.com .

And here's a meme I was sent, which I found kinda amusing. Up first is the finished product, a letter to my 12-year-old son.

Dear Jay,

I don't really know how to tell you this, but our socks don't match. I think I realised it when I finally changed my underwear under the bus and I saw you sit on the Olympic Soccer Team's goalie. I'm sure you're scarred enough to understand that I'm allergic to your earlobes. I'm returning the couch cushions to you, but I'll keep your collection of chewed gum as a memory. You should also know that I confessed today about the moose poaching and I will haunt you when I'm reincarnated as an eskimo.

I hope the elastic in your underwear breaks,
Mum.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

How to play:

Answer all these questions first.

1) What's the colour of your shirt?
Blue - I'm in love with your cat
Red - Our affair is over
White - I’m joining the Convent
Black -Our romance is over
Green- Our socks don't match
Grey - You're a leprechaun
Yellow - I'm selling myself for chocolate
Pink - Your nostrils are insulting
Brown - The mafia wants you
No shirt - Purple hedgehogs want to destroy you
Other -I dislike your eyelashes

2) Which is your birth month?
January - That night you picked your nose
February -When I quoted Forest Gump
March - When your dwarf bit me
April - When I tripped on peanut butter
May - When I threw up in your sock drawer
June - When you put cuffs on me
July – When you smacked my butt
August - when your hippo had twins
September - Last year when you peed your pants
October - When we skinny dipped in the bathtub
November - When your dog humped my leg
December - When I finally changed my underwear

3) Which food do you prefer?
Tacos - In your apartment
Chicken- In your car
Pasta - Outside of your office
Hamburgers - Under the bus
Salad – As you were eating cardboard
Lasagna - In your closet
Kebab - on the Jerry Springer Show
Fish - In a clown suit
Sandwiches - At the Elton John concert
Pizza - At the mental hospital
Hot dog - Under a street light
Other- in bed with Bill Gates

4) What's the color of your socks?
Yellow - Ignore
Red - Put whipped cream on
Black - Hit on
Blue - Knock out
Purple - Pour syrup on
White - Carve your initials into
Grey - Pull the clothes off
Brown - bite off
Orange - Castrate
Pink - Pull the pants off
Barefoot - Sit on
Other - Drive over

5) What's the color of your underwear?
Black - My boyfriend
White - My father
Grey – The Catholic Priest
Brown – The Olympic Soccer Team’s goalie
Purple - My corned beef sandwich
Red – My knee caps
Blue - My laundry bucket
Yellow - My illegitimate child in Ghana
Orange - My Blink 182 cd
Pink – Your ‘My Little Pony’ collection
Other --The elephant in the corner

6) What do you prefer to watch on TV?
Movies - Senile
Re-Runs- Frostbitten
Star Trek -Middle-class
Simpsons- Cowardly
The news - Scarred
American Idol - Masochistic
Cartoons - Open
Top Model - High
Other -shamed

7) Your mood right now?
Happy - How awful you are
Sad - How boring you are
Bored - That I get turned on only by garbage men
Angry - That your smell makes me vomit
Depressed – That we’re related
Excited - That I may pee my pants
Nervous - The middle-east is planning their revenge on you
Worried - That your Ford sucks
Curious - That you need a sex-change
Silly - That I'm allergic to your earlobes
Cuddly - That Santa doesn't exist
Ashamed - That there is no solution to you being a dumb kid
Other - That your driving sucks

8) What's the color of your walls in your bedroom?
White - Your toe ring
Yellow - Your green shirt with the frills
Red - your Barbie underwear
Black - Your pet rock
Blue - The couch cushions
Green - Your hedge clippers
Orange - Your false teeth
Brown - Your nose hair clippers
Grey - Our matching snoopy underwear
Purple - Your old New Kids on the Block blanket
Pink - the naked photographs of your mother
Other - Your Hannah Montana underwear

9) The first letter of your first name?
A/B - your virginity
C/D - Your photo with the moustache drawn on it
E/F - Your neighbors dog
G/H - The oil tank from your car
I/J - Your left ear
K/L - The results of that blood-sample
M/N - Your glass eye
O/P - last night's dinner
Q/R - your dining table
S/T - Your collection of chewed gum
U/V - Your criminal record
W/X – Your car keys
Y/Z - Your credit cards

10) The last letter in your last name?
A/B - Love your sweet, sweet butt
C/D - Always will remember the rotten eggs
E/F - laugh at your middle name every time I think of you
G/H – Will not tell the authorites that you stole the whale from the backyard.
I/J – Mocked you behind your back constantly
K/L - Hate your cooking
M/N - confessed today about the moose poaching
O/P - Told my psychiatrist about the bruises
Q/R - Always wanted to break your legs
S/T - Get sick when I think of your feet
U/V - Will try to forget that you broke my heart
W/X - Haven’t showered in a month
Y/Z – am better off without you

11) What do you prefer to drink?
Wine- Our friendship is ruined
Soft drink – I’m off to lead a new life as a grapefruit
Coffee – I will haunt you when I’m reincarnated as an Eskimo
Milk - The apartment building is on fire
Water – I'm scratching my butt as you read this
Cider– I have a passionate interest in mice
Juice – You ruined my attempts at another world war
Mineral/Vitamin water – You should get that embarrassing rash checked
Hot chocolate – Your apple-fetish is weird
Whiskey - I love Oprah Winfrey
Beer – Thanks for the jewellery
Other – you should stop picking your nose

12) To which country would you prefer to go on a vacation?
Thailand – Warm tingly sensations
Australia - Best of luck on the sex change
France - Love always
Spain - With tears of sadness
China – You make me sick
Germany – Please don’t hurt me
Japan - Go milk a cow
Greece - Your everlasting enemy
USA - Greetings to your frog Leonard
Egypt – Kiss my butt
England - Go drown yourself
Elsewhere - I hope the elastic in your underwear breaks

Then fill in the gaps.

Dear (last person you talked to),
I don't really know how to tell you this, but (1). I think I realised it (2) (3) and I saw you (4) (5). I'm sure you're (6) enough to understand (7). I'm returning (8) to you, but I'll keep (9) as a memory. You should also know that I (10) and (11)

(12),
(Your name)

Another Meme

Thanks to Allison, Sascha, Julie, Sarah, Andrew and every other d*mned Facebook user who tagged me... yes I mean it, thanks! ;)

This one is the "25 random things about you" memes where you have to copy and paste this to every person in your email address book within fifteen minutes or else you will get 497 years of bad luck, your hair will all fall out, you'll accidentally ski into a goat's MEOW and become stuck there, and 17 female third-world children will contract elephantitis of the testicles or else you will miss out on the meme-y goodness.

1. I started my family at 18, semi-intentionally. I was naïve to the extreme. I am not real good at feeling appropriate emotions (even my mother has admitted she doesn't understand me, and my dad would just be amazed that feelings exist in the first place). I suspect that my wish for kids was some expression of trying to figure out family love, since my sister and I hated each other as kids and my parents were (still are) merely housemates that don't display any love whatsoever. (My sister is gay, and once remarked that our orientations MUST be to do with that loveless marriage.) Kids at 18 was an enormous mistake. Just having kids was probably the main part of my mistake, since I think my only parenting genes involve the presence of ovaries. However, we play the hand we've been given so I do love my kids and I don't regret their existence.

2. Vasectomy was a great invention.

3. I consider myself a lapsed Wiccan, in the way that someone might be a lapsed Catholic. You know the kind... can say they believe in X Y Z, but don't spend their days living organised religion. I have no interest in seances, "witchcraft" in the stereotypical sense, casting spells or throwing runes. I live my life in what others erroneously refer to as karma. Treat people how you expect to be treated because it will come back to you. However, I do, in a sense, worship Mother Earth and Father Time, if someone needs to understand that to get it straight in their heads. More than this, we all owe our existence to the planet we're standing on. I consider climate change skeptics to be ostriches, and more than that, they're selfish bastards. Personally, people who never consider their impact on the world around them are merely asking for the world to bite them in the ass.

4. Love being fair-skinned; hate the fat distribution I've inherited, regardless of the fact I have a BMI well inside the normal range. I am never going to have washboard abs, nor is my stomach ever going to be free of severe stretchmark scarring, but since it has never been public display material, it doesn't really matter anyway! :)

5. My eyes are grey around the outside and yellow in the middle ("cat eyes"). The technical name for this is central heterochromia and their technical colour is "hazel", but people generally assume they're blue.

6. I don't like dogs, as a rule. I can tolerate other people's well-behaved dogs, have even been known to pat them and babysit, but I just don't like them. I'm a cat person.

7. I'm a dual citizen of Australia and the UK. I expect to eventually add Finnish to the list.

8. I suck at coordination and anything remotely athletic. I'm the kid who always came third-last at school carnivals. The only kids behind me were that grossly overweight girl and the boy with the learning disability.

9. I'm an internet addict. I don't mean I can sit there for three hours. I mean I can sit there from the time I wake up until the time for bed. Family have often mocked this, however, my internet time includes streaming movies, watching youtube, reading the news online, writing my 3 blogs, writing fiction, playing internet games, chat rooms and using skype. None of them would mock someone who filled 12 hours of their day with a newspaper, going to work, watching neighbours, home & away and the simpsons, renting a movie, writing in their diary, playing scrabble for an hour, having a gossip with friends at a bar, then calling some buddies on the phone. Yet we've both done the same thing really.

10. I'm a single parent and I harbour no animosity to the kids' father. Quick, take a photograph to preserve this occurrence for posterity.

11. I love gardens and still seem to kill anything interesting. I am presently filling up garden beds with random boring shrubs, and they aren't dying, since I don't much like any of them.

12. I'm not vegetarian (any more) but eat very little meat. It has nothing to do with loving animals, I just detest dealing with raw meat. I'll make the effort to prepare fresh meat in a meal once a week, but more often we either eat a vego meal or we deal with foods containing pre-prepared meat (BBQ chickens and canned chunky soup are staples for us, I can do those gems in ten different casseroles dude). I could happily live as a vegetarian again if someone else dealt with the whole "making sure I eat properly" crap. Generally, it's easier just to throw the odd bit of meat into diet than to be continually downing supplements of B12, iron, vitamins, minerals and omega 3 to the nth degree. Even these things aside, I prefer not to rely heavily on any food that is so destructive to the earth as cattle are (and by this I mean the impact they have in consuming fodder etc).

13. I suck at whistling and the kids laugh at me.

14. I had nine piercings but have retained three (ears and tongue).

15. Night owl. If you call me at 9am on a weekend, don't expect pleasantries or sense.

16. I love planes.

17. I am anti-aspartame. Do not feed me your nutrasweet sh!t. Do not feed it to my kids and let me find out about it. I can eat chocolate and down coca-cola like the best of them, but I'm not being a guinea-pig for any chemical that's linked to cancer the way this useless stuff is, when there's perfectly good sugar to use instead.

18. Same goes for canola oil, and I don't really want to hear a lame argument that so many people eat it that it must be safe.

19. Coffee is the nectar of the gods.

20. I'm engaged to a wonderful man, but I define myself as bisexual. A better description would be to say that gender to me is largely irrelevent, since I love primarily with my brain. I like (or dislike) a person according to whom they are, not what bits are in their pants or who they're rolling in the hay with.

21. I don't think I could ever have nip and tuck done. Can't imagine having a surgeon cut pieces of my face away to lift it all up, can't imagine losing chunks of stomach to become flat, don't want to think about lollipop incisions to send my post-children bust further North, and stay away from me with a fat-sucking hose. Hey, good luck to those that have, but it's not for me.

22. In the same way I cannot contemplate having silicon bags put inside my chest, either for reconstructive purposes or even just for augmentation. I don't define myself by my gender-specific parts, so from an asthetic point of view, having boobs is a bit like having earlobes - they're just, there. If I ever got some diagnosis that necessitated having them lopped, well I'd just be flat chested. If others are uncomfortable seeing a breast cancer survivor like that, then that would be their issue, not mine. I wanted to applaud Christina Applegate for appearing on TV with no padded bra, no bust, just her honest self. And I feel like hugging women that think they cannot go on without them.

23. I cried at ET.

24. I often cry at heartwarming news stories.

25. I once auditioned for Australian Idol.

If you're reading this and have a LiveJournal, a blog, or Notes on Facebook, guess what sucker, you just got tagged. Make with the meme-ing and copy/paste this to people, stat.

~ Elisa

Brain Scan Meme

Ever wondered what your brain scan would look like?

Here's mine.



I have no idea what the images on the left even are.

I am amused.

~ Elisa

Christmas Meme

1. Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog? Hot chocolate. I'm not sure I've even had proper eggnog, nor whether I liked it.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Santa never wrapped mine, but he did wrap some at our house, because at some peoples' houses he wrapped them all.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Coloured, our tree is fibreoptic and twinkles. We have white stencil lights for the windows.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope. Mum had a tiny wreath she used to hang over the doorway, but I'm not sure that counts.

5. When do you put your decorations up? Um... when I get in the mood. I'm not yet.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? All of it! Mum's trifle, K's salad and G's potatoes have to be highlights though.

7. Favorite Holiday memory? Probably laughing my butt off as assorted cousins threw tantrums or yelled about not liking their presents.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? Probably about 8 or 9

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Nope, but that won't last long, since I'm moving to a country where Santa comes on Christmas Eve.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Tinsel garlands, baubles. And a few other small things

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Love how it looks, dread it. In Australia, this question has nothing to do with Christmas.

12. Can you ice skate? Badly. Also see above.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Yes, a Snoopy Tennis Game&Watch

14. What’s the most important thing? A relaxing and peaceful day in good company.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Mum's trifle

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? The 2pm sleep / or the 3pm "stuff face with leftover food"

17. What tops your tree? A star

18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving? Giving.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? O Holy Night

20. Candy canes, Yuck or Yum? I'm hopelessly addicted to canes.

and I'm adding my own question
21. Is there any tradition that you personally have started for your family? Yes... I always make a donation to the Salvation Army. Then I send an email to let people know that I have made a donation for them all instead of sending cards. (A friend in Seattle put me on to this idea and I loved it.) When I lived in the city I also used to run a collection of non-perishable food to give to a local community centre.

with thanks to Scalpel, who didn't tag me, but whose blog is interesting.
http://scalpelorsword.blogspot.com/

~ Elisa

The "Can You?" Meme

You know what to do...

1. Knit? Yes
2. Do a cartwheel? No
3. Speak another language? I'm learning.
4. Name all the states of America? No, but I can for Australia ;)
5. Do 50 situps? Probably not!
6. Write with either hand? Yes
7. Pick a lock? Yes. Should I admit to that?
8. Drive a manual transmission (stick shift)? Yup
9. Create your own website? Yes
10. Touch your nose with your tongue? No! Despite trying really hard!
11. Play chess? Yes, badly, because I'm impatient
12. Shuffle a deck of cards? Yes
13. Read a map? Yes, pretty well
14. Speak Pig Latin? Esyay.
15. Cook Spaghetti Bolognaise? Yes.
16. Remember the 80s? Oh yeah! <3
17. Read minds? Very, very rarely. I prefer to call them visions, or whatever word you want to use
18. Shoot a gun? No, and I never intend to try. Guns disgust me.
19. Multitask? Not very well. I get too easily distracted.
20. Whistle with fingers? Nope! I can barely whistle without!

~ Elisa