Monthly Archives: September 2011

2nd Aside PtI – or – An Anti-SMS Manifesto

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Back in the introduction to rave no.2  First Post PtII-A New Kind of Blog, you were mercifully spared a diverticulum that threatened to side track the entire enterprise, you will now be subjected to it full force as its very own post – sorry about that.

So as to not kill entirely the feelings of good will toward this blog has thus far engendered, I will mention that we are commencing a two part essay touching on a subject that is near and dear to out hears here at Meme Merchants, and very central to what this blog is all about namely words, language, [the english language in particular] and the evolution of modern society – before that though we launch into a rant on the deleterious trend of impoverishment of language being fostered by modern media run amok.

So to begin

Have you ever wondered why your cell phone company after charging you $500 or $1000 for your 14 year olds excessive text messaging bill at the end of the month is willing to politely back down and wipe out all or most of that fee? [at least the first time]

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Phism of the Day

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There is a feature to this blog which you may have been overlooked until now because of its location at the top of the sidebar which is:

The Phism of the Day

That it is meant to be a daily feature obviously, but what exactly is a ‘Phism’ and why should anyone care?

Our buddy Phi, who you have not been subjected to yet on this blog, a rather mercurial and elusive creature who fancies himself a bit of a poet, has taken over the function of editing William’s collection of aphorisms.  It’s a long story and you needn’t worry about it until Phi Press gets closer to publishing the miniature book of a collection of said aphorisms.

Phi, wise in his own self-serving little way, suggested that the upcoming book be called Phi’s Little Book of Words because no one would ever read [much less purchase] a book called William’s Little Book of Words [ what William proposed].  In this case everyone was forced to agreed that Phi had it right and was perceiving reality more clearly than anyone – even William.  Phi, sly creature that he is, then suggested a combining the two ideas together, Phi + Aphorism = Phism a much catchier tag.  Since we are also all about linguistic boundary dissolution around here we all had to agree it was much the catchier name as well.

And why should anyone care?  We haven’t worked that out yet, but maybe you have some ideas yourself that you can suggest in the Comments.

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And What Kind of Troll are You?

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Eventually someone will comment on one of our blog posts – it is possible – certainly it can’t yet be excluded from the realm of possibilities at least while the issue of having people actually reading the blog is still such an unsettled issue.  Never the less, the editorial staff of the Meme Merchants have been carefully examining the issue we have come to a few initial conclusions as to what may be going on.  The first most obvious issue is that at the current hit rate the blog has achieved up till now has not allowed the vapor pressure of the blog to reach the point necessary for spontaneous commenting to occur.  Another factor could be an insufficient number of nucleation sites available in the currently available raves to catalyze auto-comment formation, this could be do to inadequacies in editorial practice, or people are just hanging back while we get the administrative preliminaries of the blog out of the way – in other words people are waiting for the first REAL post to jump in and comment.  In the interest of exhaustive thoroughness the possibility of reader apathy was discussed, but tabled as unlikely.  A third and more disturbing possibility is that because Meme Merchants has not yet announced its Moderation Policy the few readers that we do have are hesitant to jump in and post a comment for fear or uncertainty over what may happen if they do.

Not to worry, there is no Moderation Policy here, or rather to say that our policy is no moderation.

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Question of the Day – Well, Which One is it?

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Many blogs and website include pages for FAQs, Frequently Asked Questions, which we think is a fine ideas; however, here at Meme Merchants we noticed that most of these supposed FAQs appear to be an invention of the site’s administrators in an attempt to preempt site users from actually asking any questions so the Admin will not then have to take time out of their busy schedule to answer them.  You can tell this is probably the case because there never seems to be a FAQ for any question YOU have about the site, how it functions or it policies – in other words anything you actually care about.  While this situation is not altogether wrong, it does seem to smack ever so sightly of intellectual dishonesty.

Think about it for a moment, if a FAQ page is actually doing its job successfully, none of the questions should ever rise to the level of being asked frequently, doubly true if the site Admins are doing their jobs properly in responding to queries, correcting problems, and have clear, well stated and easy to find policies.  It seems more correct then to call these type of pages something else like, “Things You Need to Know – TYNKs” or “Needful Facts – NFAC,” anything other than FAQ.  Thus the notion of a FAQ seems to be infact some kind of a fairy tale.

Here at Meme Merchants we do not have a FAQ page, because no one has asked us any questions yet, and the Editors would not presume to know what questions are burning in your mind.  We make up A LOT of things around here, our imaginations overflow, but we would not dare to make up what you think [that seems somehow very basic].  You have to set a limit somewhere, and that’s were we set ours.  We have included a contact form on our Contact page which you are encouraged to use to have answered any questions about Meme Merchants related topics or concerns.

We do have an idea to do a feature periodically called:

Question of the Day

Assuming someone ever asks a question – – we will then post it up and rave about it for a while – basically until we are sick of it – and you can then comment.  Eventually those questions and answers will be turned into a FAQ page or filed appropriately someplace else.

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First Post – Pt II – A New Kind of Blog

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In Part One of this introductory missive there was a point I had intended to make that was completely swept away by the rather longish aside that actually got written.  I can feel the weight of another one bearing down on me, but I will push it off for now, or the main point of this whole introductory post may never get written, which is the answer to this question:

And exactly what kind of blog is this supposed to be anyway?

[And that other aside that I was warning you about?  Anticipate it very briefly here.]

But really, the world is filled with blogs – why one more?

Well, that is a very, very good question.

There are two types of people, the type of person who divides people into types – and the type who does not.  Being the type dividing type myself, I could further subdivide people into two other distinct types:  the ‘It’s all good’ type, and the ‘But some things are better than others’ type.   The ‘It’s All Good’ type might feel very little inhibition about just plunging recklessly ahead and starting yet another WordPress blog, while the ‘But somethings are better than others’ type might feel a stronger sense of inhibition about adding yet another potentially hazy, unfocussed patch of real estate to the digital domain of the nooshpere.

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Oh dear, yet another hazy, unfocused WordPress blog by the semi-literate – – or another precious moment of your life scuppered

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Yes, I know what you are thinking already,  ” And with a blog post heading like that you are not helping your cause any.  In post-post-modern blogospheric representation a heading like that it will definitely cost you points.”

Yes, yes, yes, – of course – we know – but, the REASON for the extended headings occasionally to be found here is that it is in itself an obscure literary reference, and bridgehead into a possible new conversation;  which, cognoscenti maybe to be able to pick up on from a couple of different angles, [and you are allowed to congratulate yourself if you succeed] or maybe you will simply enjoy the display of linguistic eccentricity.

There WILL be a cost no doubt, it will probably cost us points with some readers, web aggregators, and search engine indexers – what will Google think?

So, to begin.

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Warning!!

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The material on this weblog will not leave your belief system unchanged!  Any damage to your false-self’s esteem is completely a fiction of your ego.  Any emotional trauma that you believe that has been caused by revealing the provisional nature of your reality is all in your mind.  So, if you feel bad or feel mad…  Change Your Mind!