Memes of the Living Dead

I have often wished that someone would run a contest where the winner would say the smartest thing about something trivial and stupid.

An odd scenario, I admit. These are the things I think of as I stare into empty space. I don’t know who would back this contest and how it would benefit society, but stupider contests have happened. If anyone ever ran this contest, I would win.

My entry, you ask? Here it is: “Memes are the Commedia dell’Arte of our generation”.

I find a flawless perfection to this statement. You couldn’t ask for something more trivial: memes, the stupid jokes and time killers of the Internet. And paired with that, Commedia dell’Arte, a sixteenth century, Italian style of theater. I have never been prouder of a more worthless achievement.

 To break down my ridiculous sense of accomplishment, Commedia dell’Arte was a style of improvisational theatre. The company would start with a couple of stock characters: Harlequin, a childlike acrobat, Brighella, a cowardly, greedy villain, Pedrolino, the dreamer and clown, and, of course, the lovers. This grew into a whole wide array of different stock people and scripts. With this set of characters and ideas, a theatre troupe would improvise stories before a live audience, changing according to their demands and the whim of the actors.

And how does this relate to memes?

Memes are the modern expression of stories. You take your stock characters: FU guy, Why U NO, the Troll, Forever Alone, Challenge Accepted, Okay, Me Gusta, F It Yao Ming, and Jackie Chan WTF. That is just the beginning of the possibilities.

Then, anyone on the Internet can make a comic strip using these characters, often relating to their own personal life. The strips break down modern annoyances, victories, or interesting occurrences. If a comic strip is too much, you can go to a meme generator and create a joke off of an accepted meme: Socially Awkward Penguin, Good Guy Greg, Scumbag Steve, Paranoid Parrot, Condescending Wonka, Philosoraptor, Insanity Wolf, Hipster Kitty, Unhelpful High School Teacher, Annoying Facebook Girl, Lazy Senior, and Extremely Photogenic Guy. You can make your own joke, from your own life, and share it anyone. Although you may not recognize all of these memes from their names, you have definitely seen them, had them posted on your Facebook, or had them emailed to you.

Memes take these stock characters and let anyone improvise their own jokes. We only all agree on the basic characters, and then let each person take it where they will. Then the Internet sorts out what is good and what isn’t. The updated format of Commedia dell’Arte. The smartest thing I have ever thought about something trivial.

But I find trivial is too harsh of a world. Though it may sound overly sappy and too lame to be true, memes have changed me. Memes have bettered me. I can’t count the number of times I have read a meme and thought, “Other people do that too!?!?!?!?!?” (my grammar automatically gets worse when looking at the Internet).

To me, memes are more than jokes; they are about connecting our small experiences to the larger world. Memes have taught me that I’m not as awkward as I though. Other people agonize over the things they did in fourth grade as they’re trying to fall asleep. Other people will take out their cell phone and pretend to check it when they realize they are walking the wrong way. Other people do all the stupid, dumb things I do, and they are ok.

Memes give us the latest culture, and though many can be simply stupid or one time jokes, this form of expression opens us up to humanity as a whole. I think memes give a truer nature of my generation’s culture, values, and habits than anything else. Though people may argue about the validity of the Library of Congress publishing a book of Tweets, I honestly think anthropologists will look at our memes in 1,000 years to learn of our everyday lives, habits, and honest actions. 500 years ago Commedia dell’Arte was just a passing entertainment, as memes are now. It is their connection to human nature that gives them meaning and allows them to endure.

Cookbook of the Living Dead

(Sorry to reprint this blog; I published it before by mistake. Here are the corrections from class)

My roommate has dragged me down into her latest obsession: The Hunger Games. However, I am hardly one to complain. I have only read the first book and subsequently seen the movie, but I find myself drawn into this dystopian world. I have always loved stories set in a dark future or parallel world. So yes, I was happy to be drawn into this obsession, though I was surprised where it took me.

For a gift, my roommate received The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook.

There couldn’t have been a louder scoff than mine. A cookbook? For the series based upon children killing each other or starving to death? The fact that it is also “unofficial”, with a clear warning on the bottom that this cookbook is “not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by Suzanne Collins, her publishers, or Lionsgate Entertainment Corporation”, seemed to be the nail in the coffin. So, basically, this product didn’t come from a corporation looking to make a cheap buck, but from some random chick looking to edge in on someone else’s idea to make a cheap buck.

But I do have a soft spot in my heart for cookbooks. As an English and Writing major, after I finish all my homework of reading, writing, and analyzing, I usually am not up for indulging more with the written word. But I like flipping through cookbooks, looking for some new taste to try out for dinner. And The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook surprised me.

The recipes in it looked good. They looked different, which is a rare enough occurrence after two or three cookbooks, and they looked really delicious. This isn’t some half-hearted “Peeta Ham Sandwich” cookbook, but one full of real meals people will want to eat.

The book is broken up into ten Chapters: Breakfast of Champions, Breaking Bread, Keep the Camp Fires Low and Forage (Soups, Stews, and Salads), Humble Beginnings, Sink or Swim-Seafood, Don’t Call Me Chicken (Poultry), Put Some Meat on Your Bones (Beef, Lam, and Pork), Wild Game for Wild Girls, Just Desserts, and Katniss’s Family Book of Herbs. The author, Emily Ansara Baines, tries to give recipes from all sides of Panem: from the rich and luxurious Capitol to the hearty and the survival-oriented world of District 12.

I was surprised to see an entire chapter devoted to bread in this cookbook. Bread is extremely important to The Hunger Games triology, especially in the first book. All of the Districts make their own bread, and Peeta comes from a bakery. The bread in this chapter seems easy enough to make and some sound delicious, like the Heavenly Onion and Dill Bread.

This book has a lot of interesting additions besides the bread. There are also several jam recipes, like Jewel-Colored Mint Jelly and Orange Preserves. Jelly isn’t something you see in ordinary cookbooks; usually it comes in some sort of Do-It-Yourself book. There are also tea recipes and a smattering of goat cheese recipes, stemming from Prim and her goat Lady. The Honey, Goat Cheese, and Apple Tart recipe was what originally endeared me to this cookbook. I remembered how The Hunger Games mentioned this dish in the text, and how tasty I thought it sounded at the time. The cookbook also includes things you might remember from the book like the Orange Chicken that Katniss eats at the Capitol, the Lamb Stew with Dried Plums, and District 11’s Crescent Moon Bread with Sesame Seeds.

Lamb Stew with Dried Plums



District 11's Crescent Moon Bread with Sesame Seeds





The cookbook also has your classic sections: breakfast, poultry, seafood, red meats, and desserts. The poultry section is pretty impressive. I made the Moist Chicken in Basil Cream Sauce, clearly one of the decedent Capitol dishes. I sautéed the chicken in butter and drenched it in a heavy cream, parmesan, and basil sauce. It turned out fantastic; I couldn’t stop myself from indulging. Also looking good from that section is the Orange You Glad I’m Chicken and Katniss’s Picnic Chicken Salad.

Moist Chicken in Basil Cream Sauce

However, the poultry section reveals the cookbook’s biggest problem: it uses a lot of exotic ingredients that are difficult to find. This section not only has chicken, turkey, and duck, but partridge, dove, groosling, and pheasant. Since the book focuses on the scavenger District 12 and the over-the-top Capitol, several recipes include ingredients that will take some tracking down. Examples include primrose root, arrowhead tubers, yucca stalks, wood sorrel, kudzu, and Braunschweiger liver sausage. I am in favor of leaving Wal-Mart and looking for some of these things at farmer’s markets or specialty stores, but the fact that the author suggests ordering most of these ingredients from the Internet makes it too much of a hassle. Also, the chapter Wild Game for Wild Girls has recipes for rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, venison, beavers, mountain goats, and rats. Though I suppose hunters would like recipes for leftover venison, beaver and raccoon push this section to a completely worthless area.

Still, I find that 30-60% of the recipes in any cookbook are worthless due to bizarre ingredients, personally disliked tastes, or difficulty to prepare. The fact that I definitely won’t make some of the cookbook's recipes doesn’t take away the appeal of all the things I want to try from The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook.

What really impressed me about this book was the effort. Emily Ansara Baines could have renamed some Betty Crooker recipes,  and then popped out a waste of space book mostly composed of pictures of the actors from The Hunger Games movie; that would have also made money. But she didn’t; she instead put together a cookbook full of recipes people will want, one that draws from a source people love. She even included a chapter at the end that explains how to find your own wild herbs, berries, and vegetables like Katniss does. But especially since Baines mentions Peeta’s fatal slip with the nightlock berries, this section really should have included pictures.

So yes, if you are a French trained chef you might be embarrassed to put this besides all of your soufflé and risotto cookbooks. And yes, Baines does write an introductory sentence explaining how each recipe relates to The Hunger Games trilogies, and some of these lobotomize the reader with their grasping at straws, overly analyzed, metaphorical technique. However, this cookbook isn’t just going to gather dust in your respected Peeta or Gale Shrine. With the Odds in its Favor, The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook beat my disbelief and proved itself worthy through 150 respectable recipes (minus the rat recipe). 

Crisis of the Living Dead

Does the thought of graduating send you into an existential crisis? Well, congratulations! You are entering into your quarter-life crisis!



Abby Wilner coined the term “Quarter-life Crisis” in the late 1990s, but the phrase has more recently blipped on society’s consciousness as people opened up about their feelings online. A quarter-life crisis refers to a period of anxiety and inner turmoil people experience in their mid 20s, often 25, as they try to figure out who they really are and if they are doing the right things with their life.

After graduation, some people start to feel depressed that they haven’t become adults, or reached their life goals. Many people expect they should have a high paying job that they enjoy, and that they should find their soul mate and settle down into a family. They think that by this point in their life they will understand who they really are and have things mapped out for the future. But today’s society doesn’t really allow for these things.

First off, a college education isn’t the to-do it was in our parent’s generation. A college degree, for all the money you sunk, won’t guarantee you a good job. And then you are left with all that crippling debt from student loans.

With debt, the recession, a poor job market, and glut of people going to college, our generation grows up slower. According to the American Sociological Association, 66% of people in their early twenties receive finical support from their parents, and 40% of people in their late 20s still depend on that extra cash to get by. 56.8% of men and 43.2% of women between the ages of 22 and 31 live with their parents (according to the US Census). And as much as we yearn for our dream job, the average American between the ages of 18 and 30 has moved through seven or eight jobs. All in all, when you look at the traditional benchmarks for adulthood (such as graduating, leaving home, getting a career, marriage, having a baby, and being financially independent), only 46% of women and 31% of men today have accomplished these goals by the time they turned 30. This compares to 77% of women and 65% of men in 1960.

The quarter-life crisis has become common enough to have books, blogs, and web services devoted to it. Huffington Post offers a 25 question "Are you having a Quarter-Life Crisis?" quiz to see if you have entered into quarter-life crisis-dome.

A lot of people in our class are ready to graduate this semester. How are you feeling? Is a quarter-life crisis sneaking up on you? Or do you think you won’t be susceptible for a few more years?

Personally, I am too terrified that I won’t be able to find any job to worry about finding a career or a soul mate. And I am definitely not worrying about settling down for a family. But I can start to feel the pinpricks of this anxiety stinging at the back of my neck. Tell me how you feel, or if you even believe in this premise of the quarter-life crisis, in the comments below. Do you think it is a symptom of the modern transition to adulthood, or a bunch of affluent college graduates complaining? Give me your thoughts. Even if you are like me, and just feel like this about the future:

Wonder of the Living

I have always loved jellyfish.

My earliest memories of them are when I was five. Growing up in Nebraska didn’t have many advantages, but one of them was the Henry Doorly Zoo, the second biggest zoo in America. I would dash through the jungle exhibits, the elephants, and the tiger cages. In the aquarium, I would race past the penguins and the glass ceiling aquarium where you walked underneath swimming sharks and sting rays. I would burst into the jellyfish exhibit.

It was a large cylinder shaded in a dark corner, a quiet place aside from the children’s screams of joy and anger. I would cement myself there and watch the jellyfish drift. I would wonder at the various sizes, from gigantic to tiny specks against the glass. I would stare at the slow movements and try to figure out which were swimming and which were simply floating on the current.

Mostly though, my mind would blank out. I would lose track of all conscious though and feel my heart beat with the thump of the jellyfish’s bells.

When I was eleven and lived in California, my mother, sister, and I would often walk along the beaches. One of my most poignant memories was seeing a whole school of jellyfish washed ashore at sunset. Without the weightlessness of the water the jellyfish’s bodies dissolved into plastic lumps. At first, they looked more like melted paper bags, or lumps of gelatin. There was something so hauntingly sad about those jellyfish marooned onshore. I couldn’t tell which were alive and which had already died. Since then, my heart bursts at the sight of a jellyfish. I find myself hyper-emotional when looking at them, working through an emotional catharsis.

After visiting the Jellyfish Exhibit at Shed Aquarium, I learned you can own your own jellyfish.

Somehow I had never thought this possible. It seemed an unrealistic dream to own jellyfish, like owning a shark or a tiger. It might be something some obnoxious, eccentric rich jerk did, but never a common sense person. But a quick look around the internet proved me wrong.

Jellyfish Art offers you jellyfish at home.  Their starter set offers you everything: a tank, 3 moon jellyfish, and 6 months of food. The tank even comes with a flashing LED light to color your jellyfish as you stare at them.

I have read through the webpage, and taking care of jellyfish doesn’t seem any more difficult than caring for a goldfish. You have to check the water salinity and clean the algae once a month, but that is it. Your jellyfish are FedExed to you, which does seem a bit harrowing, but once they survive the journey they are yours. That is all you need to do to own jellyfish, the silent meditators of the ocean.

The dream will set you back $500. Jellyfish are no longer for the eccentric, but still for the rich. Jellyfish are the latest trend for everyone else who walked through an aquarium as a child. But this doesn’t deter me. I will save my money or wait for the fad to pass. I will clean off a spot in my room and let keep the dust away. I will capture the sublime for myself.