Damn You Meme, Damn You to Hell

Thanks to JL Pagano and Knackered Kaz, I've been apparently tagged with something called a meme. (Help me out, what's a "meme" ; and how do you pronounce it?)

The first player of this game starts with the topic “five weird habits of yourself,” and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You are tagged” (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

The two things I love about blogging are (a) the easy and immediacy with which a cretinous technophobe like me can post (b) the interaction between different bloggers. I understand that this meme serves to stimulate further interaction between bloggers which can only be a good thing.

But I have to explain one thing about myself - actually it might be one of my weird habits. I loathe, despise, hate, abhor (and a host of other such verbs), chain letters, e-mails and the like. I've had the lot in my time - post this email to 10 people who you love and something good will happen within 10 days ; Take this cup of yeast, flour + milk and spread this friendship cake ; Buy 5 books and leave them on 5 tube trains with a message to the finder to do the same ; Send your business card to this child who is dying of a brain tumour and wants to be in the Guiness Book of Records for having the most business cards.

I dislike these chain things because, I think they play on people's insecurities. The fear of drawing the wrath of God on someone .... or the terror of being the spoilsport who broke the chain. I detest Mexican waves for the same reason.

They were particularly commonplace at our school. It was telling that they persisted despite the nuns' excessive punishment of any participant. The nuns used to make anyone caught say 10 decades of the rosary and tell five of our friends the error of our ways. Or maybe it was that we had to get 10 of our friends to say 5 decades of the rosary, I can't remember rightly?

I used to delight in stopping this superstituous nonsense by canvassing classmates to send me the chain. They thought that I was weird 'cos I took great delight in breaking the chain by sending the 5 letters to myself. For a time I became the Scourge of the Chain Mailers ; Part admired, part pitied. But I got a lot of letters from girls who didn't want to risk breaking the chain themselves. One girl even started a chain that had a rule expressly forbidding anyone to include me a recipient.

Cos its Christmas and I know that JL and Kaz don't mean any harm, here are my 5 things.

1. Whenever I pass a Catholic church where there is a funeral on, I always go in so that I can hear an emotional rendition of "Tantum ergo". I imagine myself in a horror movie and sing along getting more and more frightened.
2. Each year I start two separate diaries - a work one and a personal one. By February I end up in a right state as I never know where I am suppose to be.
3. Every office Christmas party, I always end up snogging the one man that I hate the most. This makes the following year even more unbearable and if I stay in the same company for more that 2 years, I'm afraid that I'll end up having his babies while wanting to murder him most cruelly.
4. As the only person in a family of 10 children without a middle name, I invent a different middle name and initial for credit cards, electoral register, etc. At College I was Paige L, my bank link has Paige M, my polling card proclaims Paige S. I signed my blogger account as Paige A Harrison. I understand that this is probably fraudulent as well as weird.
5. I feel an overwhelming compulsion to break chain letters, email etc. I now tag the following 5 people :- Paige, Paige, Paige, Paige, Paige.

Hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and look forward to reading you all in 2006.
Paige