“what lame crap music is on your iPod”

I'll start today's blog with PhysioProf's comment to my blog yesterday:

There's nothing wrong with ignoring this "meme tag" shit.
BTW: TAG!
HAHAHAHAHAH!!

With two meme tags going around yesterday (the 100 books tag I blogged on yesterday and the iPod tag I'm going to do today, I've had plenty of opportunities to observe the sociology of meme tag. As any good scientist should do, I have allowed the data to inform my interpretation. Yesterday I struggled with my painful childhood memories of chain letters as social control implements. However, after yesterday's shenanigans, I think it's clear that is not what is going on. My new hypothesis is that meme tag is a blogging form of "butt sniffing". For those of you who do not own dogs (and may be wondering if this blog has just earned an X-rating), butt sniffing is how dogs get to know each other. Seeing what "shameful" music PhysioProf or DrDrA has on their iPods - and what they consider shameful - tells you something about them that does not necessarily come through in blogs...same with assessing whether someone has a similar "literary background" as you do. While I have deep issues of doing things because people expect me to do it, I have no problems with butt sniffing (I should also probably note at this point that the opinions expressed in this blog are solely mine and do not reflect those of my institution, my funding agency or General Disarray who may all have fundamental issues with - and possibly regulations against - butt sniffing). So, since PhysioProf sniffed my butt, here we go:

I don't quite know how to judge "lame" or "embarrassing" objectively (obviously if it's on my pod, it's because I love it or because General Disarray put it there). Given some of the things that are on people's lists, I suspect there is a lot of music on my pod I SHOULD be embarrassed by! So, here are the things I was embarrassed by when my students walked into my office and it was playing... loudly:

1) Black Eyed Peas- "My Humps". I honestly thought it was hysterical the first few times I listened to it, then a student walked in while it was playing ("My humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps") and I was mortified (and wondered if I could be sued!)

2) Avril Lavigne - "Girlfriend". Sheer mindless (teenager) fun, which is only embarrassing because...well...I'm a little beyond my teenage years and do not have a teenage daughter to blame it on.

3)Gwen Stefani - "Hollaback Girl"

"Uh huh, this is my shit
All the girls stomp your feet like this
A few times I've been around that track
So it's not just gonna happen like that
Because I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl"

Really, what's not to love about that song?

4) Dido - "Here with me". I try to hide it sometimes, but I really am a girl at heart....sigh.

5) D-12. "My band". A hysterical spoof on boy bands by Eminem and his crew. It is a really funny song....but not something my students seem to understand.

And there you have it. To quote Dr. Free-Ride: "You're tagged if you want to be"