Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme

Hipparchia has tagged me for The Pharyngula mutating genre meme. I saw this on Pharyngula and tried to ignore it, but one ignores Hipparchia at one's own peril. I'd hate to be the object of one of the wonky, withering posts on her excellent blog. Crooks, liars, and insurance company executives have been known to commit seppuki after reading her take-downs. I'd certainly have no chance. So, since this post is at least partly about survival:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.
You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.
Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My pedigree:
My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-grandparent is archy.
My grandparent is Why Now?
My parent is Over the Cliff, Onto the Rocks.

My version of the questions:
The best end-of-the-world novel in SF/Fantasy is: Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle.
The best “bad” movie in scientific dystopias is: Tank Girl.
The best sexy song in pop is: “Brass In Pocket” by the Pretenders.
The best alt-country album in country music is: Fight Songs by Old 97s.

To keep the meme alive, I'm passing it along to:
Aaron at Nobody in Particular, because he's becoming an expert on Darwin.
Sona at Sona Says, because she's always thinking about random stuff.
Saint Gasoline at Saint Gasoline, because he's evolution minded, and something of a trouble-maker, so he should enjoy this.
and Catnapping at The Odd Neighbor, because she's so freaking awesome, and should pass those awesome genes along to the next generation.

11 comments:

catnapping said...

awesome, huh? you've got yerself a lapcat for life.

prrrrr.

Catnapping said...

uh oh. i've been over to kiefus' blog, and it turns out...he tagged me first. he tagged me on the 16th in the early afternoon...

does this mean you're not my daddy?

Keifus said...

One does indeed.

Cat: the same problem happened with twiffer. I'm one of those lucky bastards that needs a partner to reproduce, I guess. Good thing Arch is so handsome.

K (I think this is gonna take a lot of beer...)

Archaeopteryx said...

Keifus, I put this on Cat's blog, but--

The same-sex deal works because you're a Massachusettsian, and the inbreeding deal (both Hipparchia's offspring) works because I'm an Arkansan. So it's a win-win-lose situation! (I mean Cat's the loser).

Sona said...

oh boy - I think I'll have to get to this over the weekend!

Keifus said...

Oh I don't know, a chemist (more or less) and an evolutionary biologist should be able to cobble together some passable mutant offspring, right?

Nah, you're right. Sorry, Cat.

Catnapping said...

Oh boy. I'm gonna be on the Jerry Springer show! I've got just the tube-dress picked out. Dang. I wish I didn't have so many teeth.

hipparchia said...

y'all are awesome!

i have a few cousins who are heavily into genealogy. they researched the family tree back to, like, 1600. among other savory facts, they discovered that some of the "branches" on the "tree" are really loops [as we've taken to calling them], with cousins marrying cousins. more than once. and reproducing! there are days when i'm glad i don't share dna with these people.

i think it would be kind of cool if those who got tagged twice listed both parents.

hipparchia said...

i love the pretenders. thanks for the reminder.

hipparchia said...

i just finished making all the rounds. y'all did your multiple parents. way cool.

Sona said...

*phew*

ok - I got mine done. Shopping around for a car this weekend kinda messed my whole weekend up.


I admit I got stuck on the country music one - I don't like country music.