Meme of the Week - Marianne Williamson

This meme wins the Internet this week. If you did not watch the second night of the first Democratic Party primary debate two nights ago then this will make no sense so just move along. If you did watch it or have seen a highlight reel of candidate Marianne Williamson's performance in that debate AND you are familiar with Twin Peaks then this meme will make perfect sense and hit you in the funny bone unless you are humorless.

Ultimate Dank Meme Mashup

How in the hell did I miss this back in 2017? Oh that's right, teaching credential program and you-know-who and probable PTSD from both hellish experiences. Well, here it is better late than never.

R.I.P. Krautchan

I discovered the chans several years ago, coming to the party rather late in the game. I've never posted even once on any chan, forever a lurker. I found them to be a veritable gold mine of fresh memes (I refuse to call them "dank") and even older memes which I'd somehow missed. One of my faves was the late Krautchan (oft-referred to as "KC" by fans), a German language image board. Having never posted there let alone shitposted, I don't qualify as an authentic "Bernd", the honorary title of all "anons" (anonymous posters) there. Earlier this year Krautchan was finally killed off (closed down by the host nation) once and for all by the uber-PC SJW German guberment. This followed repeated shut-downs previously due to racially-themed un-PC shitposting there. Each time it reemerged from sanctions such as its near-death experience in 2016 for which the above image macro refers. Alas, poor Krautchan, I hardly knew ye!

Picture of the Day - Haile's Rare Pepe

Today I subbed at Atascadero High School. Two of my students from last year's student teaching experience were in study hall. Haile began to draw the outline to Pepe the Frog, my all-time favorite meme. She remembered from last year when I revealed my Pepe-fetish to my classes and shared some of my favorite Rare Pepes. As she neared completion I handed her a green dry-erase marker to color in Pepe. She created a great Pepe image! Thanks, Haile! Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Meme of the Week - California State Bird

Meme of the Week - RIP Pepe?

Image by Matt Furie (all rights reserved)
The creator of Pepe the Frog (born 2005) which became a popular internet meme in the years following has officially declared Pepe dead as of earlier this month. This is in response to Trumpistic Alt-Right netizens of the chan-worlds appropriating the formerly laid-back "Feels good man"-exclaiming party frog (2008). 

"Feels good man" metamorphosed into a more existentialist Pepe with the subsequent incarnation exclaiming "Feels bad man" (2009).

 More recently, Pepe metamorphosed into a smugly-smiling frog known as Smug Pepe (below).

 Many more incarnations (some referred to as "Rare Pepes") followed in subsequent years such as the one below referring to the Dirty War in Argentina but also being a variant of Smug Pepe.

 Pepe's most recent evolutionary form has been that of an yellow or orange-haired amphibian champion of Trump (or amphibian representation of same) starting in late 2015 (below is a Trump Tweet) and enduring throughout all of last year during the U.S. Presidential election campaign season as well as since then in 2017.

However, I would argue Pepe is already evolving beyond and past Trump. I would even argue Pepe was many other things during the campaign season but only the Trumpistic versions of him got noticed by the hysterical Liberal mainstream media and political hacks. However, some hyper-sensitive SJW hypochondriacs of politically-correct virtue insist Pepe is now permanently corrupted and to some is even an anti-Semitic symbol of hate.... as if one use of such a widely popular symbol represents all such uses or at least "trumps" all other uses of the meme. That is the sort of broad-stroke-painting that Liberals/Progressives are so eager to condemn when others do it.

Of course, things never die on the Internet. Pepe is still alive and well and continues to rapidly evolve as often as somebody needs him to communicate their ideas, whoever they are, whatever those ideas be. The latest Pepe incarnation I have noticed is "Comfy NEET Pepe"(below) which seems to have appeared in just recent months.

A more recent (as in just weeks old) variation of Comfy NEET Pepe above is his smug-in-the-apocalypse NEET Pepe (below). BTW, NEET stands for Not in Education, Employment, or Training and comes from Great Britain and refers to "losers" to use a Trumpian turn of phrase.

Perhaps the most significant development of all regarding to Pepe the Frog is the ironic/satirical tongue-in-cheek religious cult called the Cult of Kek that has formed around the character based on an oddly cool sequence of coincidences starting in late 2015.

Loving Tigers

As I explained about a month and a half ago HERE, I have been oft-obsessed with Tiger tanks thus far in 2017, particularly the Tiger II design. Not mentioned in the aforementioned post, is my second-place obsession with the Tiger I (seen in the above meme in the bottom half), which although not quite as bad-assed as the Tiger II, actually looked very much more bad-assed IMHO. My younger-brother-by-another-mother, Blake, shared this meme with me yesterday. I love it and it still speaks to my oddball mind and its obsessions and wanderings.

Absolutely Degenerate Basket of Deplorables

I'm not sure if I should be ashamed or proud to be a charter member of the Absolutely Degenerate Basket of Deplorables, but I am what I am. We have been un-PC-ly subverting the popular culture for well over a year now and at some point need to upgrade to a podcast. Memes courtesy of the PhotoShop kung-fu of Stephen Soto (all rights reserved).

My Favorite Memes

Below is my list of some of my favorite internet memes. Internet memes are not to be confused with Richard Dawson's term "meme" from which the term internet meme is derived in a roundabout way. My list is in no particular order. Some of these are high-brow and even rather sophisticated and some are distinctly low-brow and yet others fall somewhere in between. I created none of these although I wish I was clever enough to have created at least some of them (and gifted in the arcane arts of Photoshop). I could try to explain each one of these to you but since I'm primarily sharing this with my fellow meme culture peeps and they already "get" these, I'll leave it up to you to figure them out if you can..... Google (and Google Images (and image search)) are your research friends. However, I will toss you this bone to get you started in memology: knowyourmeme.  

My Favorite Shooting Stars Memes

As I explained last month HERE, one of the latest crazes in the world of internet memes is the coupling of  the track "Shooting Stars" by Aussie band Bag Raiders with an assortment of funny GIF images. Below are some of my favorites. If I have to explain why these are funny, you wouldn't understand. Either you "get it" or you don't. But if you must know then you must suffer through THIS.

Meme of the Week - Never Forget Nakatomi Plaza

Surely I shall never forget. If I have to explain any of this then you have been exposed as a pop cultural dweeb. For those of you who "get it" I applaud your pop cultural hipness.
*Note: if you don't know and feel you must know to what this refers just go HERE.

2016 Templeton Earthquake

It didn't take long for it to become a meme. The early morning M4.0 earthquake (epicentered 5.5 miles west of Templeton and focused at 3 miles depth) that jarringly rattled the North County (I sure felt it here in Paso Robles as I was already up when it hit just before 4:00 a.m.) caused no damage other than to some people's nerves and was the subject of much conversation throughout the area today. Tonight my dog is acting strangely and I can't shake the feeling maybe another earthquake is eminent locally. This morning's event is probably an aftershock of the 2003 San Simeon Earthquake.

Jefferson's Prescribed Fire

This rather gripping illustration accompanied a year-old tongue-in-cheek article in the satirical news publication The Onion entitled "Study Finds Controlled Washington, D.C. Wildfires Crucial For Restoring Healthy Political Environment." I see connectivity between it and the below satirical Cthulhu political campaign meme. It seems to me that both of these images reflect the Jeffersonian sentiment that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing." The broader version of the 1787 quote in which Thomas Jefferson is referring to Shay's Rebellion goes: "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

Meme of the Week - Pepe of the Cave

Not only is this by far the most clever Pepe the Frog meme to date, it may very well be the most clever internet meme to date, period. It is a hybrid of Pepe and Plato's Allegory of the Cave and the current cultural climate of the United States. Utterly brilliant!

I'm What's Wrong With America

I encountered this tongue-in-cheek internet meme today and can proudly say I immediately recognized the character on the right (Michel Foucault) and yet still have no idea of what is on the right although I recognize it is either manga or anime.

Meme of the Week - Kim Jong-un-Connected

Earlier this evening I noticed a tweet on Twitter which reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had just announced that his crazy little kingdom had succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear weapons (makes them small enough to place in missile warheads). That immediately brought to mind this meme which I tweeted in response. To my surprise, there has been a flurry of Twitter-verse positive responses to it this evening which continues into this hour.

Tale of Two Syrian Refugee Memes

Liberals and Conservatives think and act the same way and must be grouped together taxonomically given their similarities. Their collective group comprises seemingly of some of the dumbest members of the human race now walking the earth. They are also some of the most horrible human beings prone to ugly outbursts of hatefulness. Below are two memes I ripped tonight from the Facebook Walls of two of my Facebook "friends." They are tangible evidence of Conservatives' and Liberals' vile and pseudo-intellectual tendencies.

Conservative anti-Syrian refugee meme employing logical fallacy.
Actually, ALL of those snakes would bite you and most probably none of those refugees would attack you.
Conservatives are snakes!

Liberal pro-Syrian refugee meme employing logical fallacy.
In 1939 there were not incidents of Jewish refugees blowing shit up and shooting up concert halls in Europe.
Liberals are worse than Nazis!

2012 Apocalypse Hurricane Sandy Meme

I encountered this meme sometime earlier this week or last week while looking for something else in Google Images. Apparently, this was created at the end of 2012 as a homage to both Hurricane Sandy and the 2012 Apocalypse/Mayan Calendar Roll-over/Pole-Reversal craze. In its nascent form it appeared immediately after the storm sans the monsters and was falsely presented as being an image of the storm approaching New York. Later, it appeared in the form seen here in year-end look-backs like THIS. The image is a hilarious mash-up of a standard image of the Statue of Liberty combined with a 2004 Mike Hollingshead supercell image captured in Nebraska combined with various movie monsters and antagonists. Surprisingly, the shark image predates by half a year the Sharknado craze.

Disaster Girl

I have previously never revealed on this blog that I am an utterly unapologetic internet meme-whore on social networking sites. One meme I encountered some time ago and immediately fell in love with is Disaster Girl. The real-life story of her is surprising and just about as funny as the memes are that have found genesis from an impromptu sidewise glance from a little girl observing a real fire. No, she and the residential fire are not Photoshopped together. When she appears with that same wicked glance with a different background it is courtesy Photoshop and people with too much time on their creative hands. The first image below is the original photograph that North Carolinian Dave Roth shot of his daughter Zoe at a house fire in 2004. Following it are some of the evolutions of the image into internet meme hall-of-fame renown by various anonymous bored contributors over recent years. Initially the Disaster girl memes were of the original image with some sort of dialogue humorously attributed to the girl in that situation. Later, some wags got even more clever and started Photoshopping her into various historic and even prehistoric disasters.

This one is a private joke with my mom... although any PK would get it.

Note: this is Archduke Ferdinand whose assassination sparked World War One.

I believe that is the carnage of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Famous Vietnam War image... and she was there apparently.

Most of us remember this Photoshopped image after 911 purporting to show a tourist getting photographed atop the World Trade Center as American Airlines Flight 11 approaches behind him. Disaster Girl was there, too.

2011 Japanese tsunami.

The Miracle on the Hudson

Random forest fire

Random tornado damage

Random winter storm damage

Random sink hole

Random rioting.