I think that South Park as a franchise is a net positive for culture. Unfortunately there is a parge portion of the populace that don’t quite get the satire, or simply parrot things they hear without really understanding the message of the episodes. There are many examples, but the one that bugs me most is when you sincerely use the word integrity now someone always responds with ‘tegrity, because they were instantly trained to respond to the word by saying the truncation. In the episodes concerning Randy’s pot business they illustrate the decline of his integrity over time as he loses sight of his goals and slips into the rampant capitalist mindset of money for the sake of gaining ever more money. (Broadly speaking) I suspect that at least one person who doesn’t read the blog before commenting will do exactly what I’ve just described. It’s really a very minor annoyance, but it happens so constantly that it’s very annoying in aggregate. South Park is very good at making memetic commentary. Something like “Put a chick in it and make her lame & gay!” reduces the concept of the infiltration of outsiders into popular culture to something that even the meanest of intelligences can spit back into the faces of their opponents and both sides instantly know what is at issue. ‘Tegrity does the same thing but people have a much harder time instinctively knowing when it’s relevant to a discussion because integrity can be harder to pin down in the ethically gray reality we exist in. It comes up in my circles so often because integrity as a concept is one that I concern myself with a lot in my everyday life. Even I have trouble deciding if the issues I face come from a lack of integrity, or an abundance of greed, malice, ignorance, or even a combination of factors. On the other side of things I’m glad of this overreliance on memetic speech because it has caused me to become more aware of it and to reflect upon my own. Memes are often a distillation of a truism boiled down to a concept that anyone can understand. “Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.” is so universal it may as well be a cave painting made 100 million years ago. Humans love to communicate, they love to do it quickly, and memes facilitate that cultural shorthand that allows us to move lightly from topic to topic as we struggle through each day. So, even, though it annoys me, I at least know that the urge to meme comes from a very human place in the hearts of the memers. Which makes it a little easier to tolerate.

Anyway, that was just something I was thinking about while writing this page. I’m a bit tired today because my medical misadventure left me a bit sore. It made it more difficult to lay down to sleep than usual. I kind of want to go to sleep early but it always screws up the flow of the next day if I do. I’d like tomorrow to be more productive than the last few days so I think I’ll try to run myself all the way down so I can do nothing but sleep when the appointed hour arrives. That’s all as may be, I suppose. I keep forgetting to mention the support links. Those are above the blog as always, and on the edges too. If you feel like helping me keep the lights on, so to speak, I would appreciate it. I recently replaced my lights with “smart” lights that have an app you can controll them with. They were on sale and I was hoping they would last longer than the shitty LED bulbs I had been using that keep burning out, even thohg they aren’t supposed to do that… These new bulbs can be told to change color and all sorts of things. They are also Chinese, so the communists can spy on me. Fun! I hope they enjoy cataloging my relentless farting schedule. Speaking of, time to get back to it. I hope to see you back here on Monday. Until then, don’t be clicking on any shady links.

Posts authored by Jackie

2701 Upright.