Time was when an internet meme was an oddity that somehow spoke to a narrow but deep segment of like-minded people.  Those who perpetuated the meme knew that those who would appreciate it most had something wonderfully undefinable in common.  The meme was vox clamantis in deserto — for readers not in the Latin know here, a voice crying out in the wilderness — only those who understood the cry knew how to respond, or appreciate it.

Remember AYBAB2U?   This internet meme was single badly translated line of dialog from an obscure video game (Zero Wing, by equally obscure Japanese game developer Toaplan).  In the game the standard evil-lord charatacter, who here appeared to be half-machine and half-human declares forcefully (to the player) “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.”

It was right after the Y2K scare. In-the-know techies who had watched the world hold its breath in collective (and now-amusing) terror as the century-clock hit midnight gravitated toward this comical image of the dated, half-machine character threatening, wth his clumsy confidence, “all your base”.

Why open source programmers, role-playing game characters, and the internet-connected assemblage of like-minded nerds so adored, and propogated the phrase in its many forms was an inside joke, and a statement:  We are in control — clumsy and nerdy as we may be.  We somehow are going to come out on top.  All your base are belong to us, you just don’t know it yet.  By 2002, the phrase was a shibboleth for this clique, and poked into popular culture in only the most subtle and insider way.

Ah, the good old days.  Internet memes now speak to everyone, and speak the same language as mass media: reality.  The memes spread now because they are so mildly appealing to so many, not because they are so viscerally comforting to so few.

Where before the meme said “this is us” to its identity-strong propagators, the meme now says “this is what others will like” to its friend-seeking, identity-weak propagators.  Memes of real significance or meaning are drowned out with a monoculture of short-lived YouTube clips.  Maybe its just becoming to easy to pass information around — and the wrong sort of people are doing it.

Mainstream media itself, of course, has become a monoculture of reality shows.  Odd how slices of every part of reality have a stunning sameness when produced for a television network.  Baking cakes is somehow identical to driving trucks through the arctic is the same as singing Whitney Houston songs.  Like Polaroid color, reality TV casts everything it sees in an eerie same-tone.

Susan Boyle, a chubby, unassuming, and unattractive person with little charisma got on a reality-show stage to snickers — and , famously (for the moment) belted out songs with confidence and some talent.  Then transforms back into a frog when done singing.  The oddity stands out in a monotony of Idol-singing, and so becomes wildly popular.

And, as is the case these days, existing popularity drives the internet memes of the moment.  Enter Lin Yu Chun, a chubby, unassuming, and unattractive person with little charisma who belts out songs (karaoke standards really) on a reality show with some talent.  He’s rather weird looking, and from Taiwan.  And he is dressed suspiciously like Susan Boyle — just add a bow tie.  As if it were necessary, he is usually called “The Taiwanese Susan Boyle”, and became known to American audiences as a nascent internet meme via YouTube.

But the mainstream US media can’t let well enough (or bad enough) alone.  Its not enough that Comcast and other US media companies want to control both the speed and the content of the internet, they also want to control the personality of the internet by drowning interesting would-be memes with manufactured junk-memes.  Like having this Lin-Yu-Chun-the-Taiwanese-Susan-Boyle sing a duet of “I Will Always Love You” with William Shatner on America’s “Lopez Tonight” show.  In the style of Whitney Houston.  With odd looks tender looks at one another that seem designed to entice bloggers to suggest a gay element to the duet. Seriously.  (Lin’s Wikipedia entry, suspected of being a shill written by media interests, is under consideration for deletion.  It may still be here.)

Of course the Lin-Shatner video being posted and reposted, sweeping through social networks and the internet itself like the virus it is, killing any evolving items that would have naturally moved to the top in due time.  There no floating to the top anymore, no natural evolution of odd and compelling ideas.  Just intentionally-created junk-meme catnip (crack?) like this.

If you haven’t seen it, unfortunately, here it is.

This Friday night, the day after Michael Jackson died, I was waiting in front of Back Bay station for about a half hour. Enough cars passed playing Michael Jackson’s music — I can probably just call him “Michael” for the remainder of the article — that the survey of his music was uninterrupted. Many Boston radio stations were playing nothing else. At the park in front of the Copley mall, there is a loud and enthusiastic sing-along to to the sound-snippets driving by: Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, The Girl Is Mine, Billie Jean, Beat It, and Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin, and Thriller. People are moonwalking and doing that vampire dance.

I’m waiting for Wesley Morris, a writer for the Boston Globe who has been at work very late writing a piece about Michael’s relationship to race for the Sunday paper. A lot of writers at the Globe are writing a lot of articles prompted by Michael death. There’s a lot to write. As we walk down Dartmouth street, we’re talking about his article. How does his transformation reflect his and others attitudes toward race? And some other issues I didn’t quite get.

From behind us, a young woman, who is white, has overheard part of our conversation and confronts us. “Well, it doesn’t matter if he’s black or white. That shouldn’t come into it.” I don’t know exactly what she’s responding to (because I’ve also been listening to I Want you Back playing from a passing car) but she’s upset. And she looking at us. And approaching. And continuing, “That’s all people want to talk about, is plastic surgery, and kids sleepover, and all that. And its just not right because he gave us so much.” Her date, it may even be a first date, is plainly embarrassed.

I’m struck — and so is Wesley — by how very wrong it is to think we are doing anything but celebrating Michael tonight. “It made me really mad how all the news clips are of child molestation case and all that.” Wesley is quickly commiserating. “I heard the news channels couldn’t get the rights to play music clips. So they keep playing those old child molestation court case clips.” “Oh yes, fair use, they can only play 12 seconds of the video,” I offer. I need to say something.

Her face becomes more incredulous and irritated. Now she’s glaring at me. “Are you a lawyer?” A lawyer who is disrespecting Michael Jackson — is there anything worse. “No,” I may be stammering at this point, “we work for … a media company.” “Oh really?!” This is really too much for her. Did we spend all day running child molestation clips? I continue, “the Boston Globe,” as in, not-the-tv-news. She softens a bit. “It such a tragedy,” I offer. And I mean it.

So many of us spent our adult years distancing ourselves from the man who was the soundtrack to our childhood and adolescence. He gave us our MTV after school, our summer vacations, our prom, our times with our lifelong friends, our weddings, our nostalgia, and still most Saturday nights. And we questioned him, we mocked him, we laughed meanly when the New York Post shouted “Wacko-Jacko”. All at once, we all somehow know this is our time to sing along stand up for him. Even her date felt the need to step up. “They’ll never be another talent like him.” She looked up at him, and away from us. I think he’ll do alright tonight.

I’m feeling — I think we all are — the power to forgive, to absolve, to celebrate.

Pho Republique was not playing Michael Jackson music. They were playing Bob Marley. Our waiter apologized almost immediately. “We’ve been playing Michael Jackson music all night, and I just started getting so sad because … well its so terrible what happened. This seemed like the right thing to play now.” Maybe we came in at just the right time, but as I was scanning the menu, it became clear our waiter is a prophet. Bob Marley is explaining:

In the Back Bay, we’ve been singing them all night.

The most popular children’s show in Gaza has a bouncy xylophone-driven soundtrack, but bunnies and other fluffy-fun lead-characters are dying more gruesomely and frequently than on the Sopranos.

The latest casualty is Assud the Bunny, a six-foot-tall smiling pink rabbit with big ears and a dancy gait who wants to “finish off the Jews and eat them“. After a year of teaching numbers, the alphabet, and a bit of debatable Middle East history, Assud the Bunny threw himself in front of an Israeli missile in his final episode yesterday. On his deathbed he invited a little girl in a headscarf to “remember him as a martyr.”

Assud the Bunny is no stranger to tragedy. He took over as host of “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” from his cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who was martyred in February 2008 by starving himself to death in front of millions of adoring viewers and his improbably human on-screen family.

Nahoul the Bee hosted the show for seven months, teaching children, among other things, how to annoy cats by swinging them around by the tail and letting go, and how to rile lions in the Gaza zoo by pelting them with stones.

The first host of the show was Farfour the Mouse, who encouraged children to drink milk and listen to their parents. Farfour also led youngsters on the show in songs about the AK-47 and led in an accompanying dance that included shouldering and firing motions with imaginary rifles.

In his final episode (June 2007), Farfour the Mouse was quite graphically punched/stabbed by actors playing Israeli officials. A young teenage girl appears afterwards and gives a martyr’s eulogy that is part teen-fan and part peer-encouragement.

But its not all fun and games at Gaza children’s television.

After “Tommorrow’s Pioneers,” a stark panel discussion is on. The “panel” is of children ages 9 to 13, and the show is hosted by a calm and smiling adult questioner. He asks questions of the children:

Host: “Do you think its natural to … blow your self up?”
Sabrine (age 17, by phone): “Yes! It’s our right!”

Host: “Martyrdom. Do you think it’s a beautiful thing?”
Walla (age 11, at table): “Yes it’s a beautiful thing. Who wouldn’t yearn for paradise?”

Host: “Would you agree with that?”
Yussra (age 11, at table): “Palestinian youth are not like other youth … they choose martyrdom.”

The children respond in a uniformly excited smiling manner, eager to please the questioner.

Even Fatah (the Palestinian party that control the West Bank of Palestine) has condemned these programs — especially the latter talk show (if parroting dogma can be called talking) that is so obviously and explicitly designed to cause children to believe life is simply an opportunity for a useful death.

Useful to Hamas, that is.

Since the election of Barak Obama, a new dividing point in the ever-shortening “eras” we have in our lifetime has been placed. We now have “pre-Obama” and “post-Obama” social eras. The last era-marker , of course, was 9/11. The world at that moment became divided into “pre-9/11″ and “post-9/11″ eras.

Yet some people are remarkably immune to changing eras or “change” or any kind (Obaman or otherwise).

I flew to Philadelphia for the Thanksgiving holiday last week. The airport is a marvelous place to see living history. The fat, white, suit-clad, upper-management men, moving through the airport with a multitude of large suitcases in wheeled tow (somewhat like a planetoid moving through space with orbiting satellites) hearkens back to our pre-9/11 period.

Once they were a sign of prestige: the Pierre Cardin suitcases, the ballooning 3-piece suit, the bloated rosy face, the emaciated wife, the financial industry position, the third home. In this era, they are grossly tacky.

But not everyone can change, so they remain, and they continue through the airport, too fat, too white, and with far too much baggage.

In the ongoing saga of Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden: the pirates have received over $30 million (US) in ransoms this year, oil tankers, arms shipments, and container ships have all been held hostage. And the ongoing piracy threatens to create video game shortages this Christmas.

An open question: The role of Yemen in the crisis. A map created today by the UN from its satellite surveillance of Saudi pirates opens the question of Yemen’s complicity.

Barak Obama placed his other grandmother in an Aung-San-Suu-Kyi-style home-arrest while the election was going on: “Family members and security officials barred the Media from accessing her.” I guess it does not help that her name is Sarah Hussein. She gets out today.

Obama’s use of his white maternal grandma as an example of an ignorant racist from another era prompted some pundits to say she has been “thrown under the bus” to score political points. Snarky comments that she recently “died from injuries from being run over by a bus” are inevitable.

Nearby cousins in Kenya also were ordered to be silent: “We were instructed not to talk to the media or anybody about the Senator”

And the Kenyan government forbade coverage of the family’s election night gathering.

Hopefully the US press will now cover what is clearly a newsworthy story: the first US President to have immediate family in another country, and in such a different culture. Especially since Obama knows his family there, visits them, and writes about how important his Kenyan roots are to him.

Not covering Kenya is as clear an example of the media’s self-censorship we’ve seen since the run-up to the Iraq War.

I wholeheartedly support Obama’s presidency. The political need to manage decent and honorable, but culturally-inconvenient family members during an election may be an unpleasant but necessary evil. In the future, I would like to see a better example from him of the kind of respect we should show for our elders and family members.

For months, bloggers have been building expectations for tonight’s world premiere of Ricardo de Montreuil’s new feature film Máncora at the Sundance Film Festival. The film depicts the tribulations of a set of gorgeous young actors involved in a variety of parties and sexual combinations. While this did appear to draw some sympathetic excitement out of young partiers in the audience, it left those looking for any literary or artistic merit rather unimpressed.

The film opens with Santiago, an extremely good-looking and unaccomplished 21-year old who is too busy partying and having bathroom-stall sex to answer the phone when his father calls to let him know he is about to commit suicide. The father leaves a message — and jumps off a bridge.

Santiago finally gets the news and is very distraught. He mopes around his apartment half-clothed and refuses to answer the phone until his “sister,” Ximena, calls from New York. In a particularly clumsy bit of exposition she drones into the answering machine: “I know that I am your sister by the marriage of our parents only, and we have not seen each other for six years, but I want to see you. I am married now, and I am coming to Lima on Thursday with my husband …”

Mercifully, Santiago is moved to pick up the phone at this point, and before you know it the gorgeous by-law-only sister, Ximena, and her extremely sexy husband, Iñigo, are in the apartment all talking about who will sleep where.

The three agree to go on a road trip Santiago has planned to Máncora, a surfing town in the warm north of Peru. What follows is a litany of parties and increasing alcohol and drug use that facilitates a series of events that seems designed to substitute blood and sex for plot and substance.

At the first all-nighter, Santiago gets in a party-stopping fight then has sex with his “sister,” Ximena. The next day, Ximena’s sexy husband, Iñigo, comes back full of accusatory innuendo (Iñigo inexplicably ran off in the middle of the road trip, of course leaving the other two alone to have sex). Santiago is then drawn into harder drugs and kinkier sex with two hot blond debutantes. The party+sex scenes get extremely long and seem to be a collection of loud music videos that are separate from the almost-nonexistent movie. Oh, and we also get to see sexy-husband Iñigo have sex with a Mexican hottie.

Yes, Ximena pouts, and Santiago mopes, and Iñigo acts crazy — but the characters are rolling-paper thin and we don’t care about them.

An hour into the movie, most of the audience is shuffling and giving rolling-eye looks to their confidants. Some of the major-newspaper film critics (we won’t name names here) have actually walked out.

It is possible there are goals of the film that are lost on a non-Peruvians. After decades of totalitarian repression, the freedom of the film’s characters to lead dissolute lives in a post-Fujimori era might paint a more compelling tableau to audiences there. But here in Park City, Utah, there is no escaping the director’s self-indulgence, which rivals that of his characters.

At the end of the showing, there was enthusiastic applause from small groups of the audience who look a lot like the characters in the movie: young well-off party kids. Most of the rest of the audience makes a B-line for the exit.