Three Bad Habits …
“I procrastinate."
“I interrupt people.”
“I don’t call anyone.”
Oh, waah!
This is the very reason I dislike most memes: The questions are soft and those answering them tend to do so while viewing themselves in a most flattering light. In all honesty, if your worst habits are not calling people, interrupting conversation, and procrastination, get in line for a halo. My bad habits eat those for breakfast. Please don’t take offense. If Jeffrey Dahmer had written a blog, and if he’d been answering the question, he likely would have said, “I’m not punctual.” Not, “I lure homosexual men into my apartment, kill them, and eat them.”
That’s why, if I should ever write five questions for a meme, the first will be:
1. If you had to kill and eat someone, who would it be and why?
Right away I’ll know whether or not I’m on the menu. I’ll also have a better answer than, “He seemed like a quiet, friendly sort to me,” when I am interviewed about the respondent’s behavior by CNN after they find the chopped up bodies of victims in his (or her) back yard.
You’ll notice my first meme question is interrogative and ends with a question mark. It’s also an essay question, requiring the participant to provide more than a simple two-line response. It engages the respondent and asks her (or him) to reveal something about themselves outside their comfort zone. Sure. There will be the usual stupid answers. Brad Pitt. Because he’s hot. But for those with even a shred of imagination, it’s a challenge.
It isn’t like asking, “If you could kill someone and get away with it scot-free, who would it be and why?” because it adds another weird dimension to simple murder. Gone are the political figures who might be first responses in the simpler inquiry. Who would want to eat them? (Most, like the legislation they pass, would be full of pork fat.) Gone, too, are many, many celebrities, because you just don’t know where they’ve been.
I can think of at least one person I’d like to eat—and right this minute. But I wouldn’t want to kill them. See? It’s a challenge. Even to me.
Meme questions ought to assume things about the people answering them. Like the second question on my list:
2. What is the weirdest fantasy you’ve ever had while (before or after) masturbating?
Everyone does it. Some of you reading this are thinking about hooking up later via the Web and having a mutual wank. And you know this is far more interesting than what’s on your to-do list. Otherwise reality television wouldn’t have an audience. I can hear the excuses now: “Who? Me? Never!” “Married people don’t do such things!” The question alone eliminates a whole community of holier-than-thou fundamentalists who’d lie in their answer anyway. Only the truly brave, the truly honest, and the truly adventurous would accept the challenge. And how revealing! Imagine the answers! The protagonist of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces imagined his pet collie a moment before orgasm. You’d have to go a long way to get weirder. But what fun trying! Such a question would make even lying answers more interesting.
Meme questions ought to pave the way for storytelling, and not make the respondent stretch to do it. This one, for example:
3. You catch your significant other in bed with a(nother) man, a(nother) woman, a sheep, a chicken, and three eels. Which arouses the most jealousy in you and why? Which is most titillating? Why? (Extra points for narrating the dialogue and series of events occurring in the first fifteen minutes after your initial discovery.)
If unique sexual situations are the mother of all sorts of invention, then sexual scenarios involving livestock and fish are the Thomas Edison of imagination. How, exactly, one responds to such an outrageous event gets at the heart of who he (or she) is. One might call it a meme with testes.
But beyond prurient curiosity, we’d like to get at the political leanings of our blogging subjects (since politics is generally the hot topic of the day, unless one is discussing photographs of Miley Cyrus or the latest antics of any of a host of fallen teen idols), so we offer the following:
4. You’re sitting on the commode in a public restroom when the person in the stall next to yours starts tapping their foot and waving their hand under the partition. Because they are wearing cufflinks given only to U.S. Senators, you realize you are being propositioned by a prominent political figure, most likely a Republican. How do you respond? Who is the first person you telephone following the proposal? Do you involve Fox News? CNN? The New York Times? The National Enquirer? Does blackmail cross your mind? Does it make a difference if the political figure is a Democrat? Do you vote for the individual in the next election?
Of course, a number of other questions spring to mind. How dirty is the stall you’re in? Is there graffiti on the wall? And will your mother take your telephone calls after your face has been plastered all over the media from one end of America to the other? Inquiring minds want to know.
While we’re in toilet mode, let’s consider our subject’s larcenous proclivities:
5. You’re sitting on the commode in a public restroom when you realize the person in the stall next to you is dead. At their feet are sixteen tiny rubber balloons filled with a white powder. It could be anything from talcum powder to powdered sugar to rat poison to a half-million dollars worth of uncut heroin. No one else is in the room. What do you do? Scream? Phone the police? Call a friend? Take some (or all) of the balloons? Why or why not? Does it make a difference if you know the white substance is, indeed, a half-million dollar stash?
See? What we need are questions that require the respondent to use their imagination and answer at length. Believe me, if you’re in a stall next to a corpse, your last six jobs won’t mean a thing to you. Unless they involved either the capture of drug offenders or the distribution of narcotics. Either way, you probably won’t be blogging.
To be fair, I’d better answer the question at hand. Name three bad habits.
- I am an ass.
- I don’t care that you think I’m an ass.
- Fill in the blank.
15 May 2008
This entry has 1 comments. Your input is welcome.
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Jim writes:
I don’t care that you are an ass. On top of that, I don’t even care if you don’t care that I don’t care that you’re an ass.
And, for what it’s worth, I do think you are an ass.
I will tackle your questions one at a time on my website.
Posted 16 May 2008