Memes light the corners of my mind.

Today I advanced to the next grade of bloggerschool (as they might say in the Netherlands) because I learned what a "meme" is.

I had already known about the cultural studies idea of a meme -- I'm probably not explaining or understanding the concept as fully as it was designed to be understood, but essentially, memes are little pieces of cultural knowledge that become a part of "us" and get passed on in a similar way as genetic code. Like cultural evolution. Or something.

Anyway.

One of my fellow Dramatists Guild Fellows, Dan, mentioned that he had a blog, and so I was reading it, and learned that in the blogosphere (oh yes, I just used the term blogosphere) a meme is something that someone posts on their blog which other bloggers respond to on their own blogs. The meme I saw was to write five (5) things about yourself that your readership doesn't know about you.

So here goes:

1) As a 'tween, I got very into horror movies for a period of time, a time in which I wrote my first and only novel. It was a new installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. I must've had my sights set on the film option, because I illustrated key settings which made it easier to visualize how each character met his or her creative and untimely demise. There was also a napkin folded inside the notebook I was writing in, on which I had sketched all the characters hanging out together, each labeled with their name and with a bad-ass expression on their face. This was to be a mock-up of the movie's videocassette cover.

2) I look to see what Amazon.com has personally recommended for me on an alarmingly regular basis.

3) My body clock is timed to "The Cosby Show." No matter what time it's on, I can't fall asleep until then. Nick at Nite recently pushed its back-to-back episodes of "The Cosby Show" to midnight, so I've not been getting lots of sleep lately.

4) I once wrote music for a play without really understanding what the play was about, and literally improvised "avant-garde" music by hitting random keys on the keyboard. I had an assistant, who I told to bang a drum every now and then. I won an award for it.

5) That show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" makes me cry--nay, blubber--like a baby from the moment it starts to the moment it ends.

So, I think how a blog meme works, technically, is that I'm supposed to "tag" other bloggers and that will force them to put the meme on their own blog. And, well, the only people I know with blogs who might actually see this one are Liz and Dave. So, Liz and Dave -- tag, you're it!