The Long and Winding (Meme) Road, and 5 Favorite Posts

One of the most interesting devices on the blogosphere is the meme - a trail of “tags” on a particular topic that has a life of its own. I’ve found the coolest part of a meme tag is actually tracing back all the links - it’s amazing all the places you will go. Let’s use my most current tag as an example:

Rick, at Shards of Consciousness, tagged me with the “5 Old Posts Meme“. Easy enough - find my 5 favorite old posts and share them.

Who tagged Rick? None other than Liz Strauss, a founder of SOBCon (and yes, there WILL be a SOBCon08!).

Let’s click through again - Liz was tagged by Ilker, at The Thinking Blog. I’d never been to this blog before, but I will be back.

Ilker got the meme through Rob at LinkNotes. Rob is in the Netherlands, so my world has expanded again.

I then traveled to Markeef’s Boudoir, who had tagged Rob. Markeef is in Perpignan, France, which is very close to the Spanish border (I actually drove through this town back in 1997 during a vacation). Tres Bien!

Markeef got the tag from Keeyit’s Wonderful Life (like that “Half-Full” title). Keeyit is in Malaysia. I love the subtitle of the blog - “Yesterday is History.Tomorrow is a Mystery, and Today is a gift.That’s why we call it the Present”.

Next, I landed at Life’s Roller Coaster (who tagged Keeyit). I found out that today is the 50th Independence Day in Malaysia. Happy Independence Day!

The “Mad Penguin” was the previous tagger, over at Life’s Little Notebook. Read her “about” page - great stuff.

The Mad Penguin was tagged by Jesse, at JustJessie. Jessie is “living the American Dream… Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happymeals“. And she takes great photographs.

I traveled next to Guatemala, where Ex-Pat Mom blogs about “the not-so-simple” life there. And this was her very first tag. Way cool!

Her tagger was a site that for some reason said “access denied”, but now I was determined to trace this one all the way to the beginning. Because once I get determined………….

Ex-Pat Mom claimed the originator was Mimi Pencil Skirt, who plays at “Bloggingham Palace“. Now THIS is a blog with lots to offer -I could spend days here. I found the post on the “5 old posts” but Mimi was a “tagee” too, from Bond’s very “cushy” site, The Big Leather Couch. And then, there it was. The originator tag! Total degrees of separation: 14

So who started this thing - Kyra, aka the108. On July 16th she launched the meme with her post “The Archive Meme“. Interestingly, the meme instructions started out a bit differently. Here’s how the five previous post links were supposed to work:

Link 1 must be about family.
Link 2 must be about friends.
Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are… what you’re all about…
Link 4 must be about something you love
Link 5 can be anything you choose.

Kyra, glad I spent the time clicking through to the beginning, and thanks to those I encountered on the trail who graciously revealed their tagger. And Rick, thanks to you most of all for pulling me into this wonderful journey.

Here are my five posts, presented in accordance with the original instructions:

Family: I learned SO much from my 100 year-old grandmother. I was happy to share it.
Friends: This is my favorite tribute to all the great friendships I have forged in my 47 years.
What I’m About: Crash Davis in Bull Durham inspired me to “put it all out there” for everyone to see. I’m glad I did.
Something I Love: Music, and lots of it. I have a soundtrack to my life.
Anything: I hate the word “nice” - apparently a lot of other people do. This post has been my most popular one by far.

Now, I must tag 5 others, because I’m not about to stop this chain. I figured since this has been a post of discovery, I’d tag 5 bloggers I’d never visited before. I picked 5 at random from MyBlogLog:

Hypocritical
Demo Girl
The Dog’s Breakfast (love that title)
Debanter
Early To Success

Wow. I really didn’t think this simple little meme reply would end up being such a fun ride.

I wish all of you a happy and rejuvenating holiday weekend. My next post will be on Joyful Jubilant Learning on Labor Day - see you there!