without downloading any new pictures
here's a thing that makes me feel old
This one’s gonna be shorter than normal. Why? I have a perfectly good reason. You see, what happened was, I uuuuuhhh could not think of anything really good to write about, and the day kinda got away from me, plus this afternoon I biked 20 minutes to a Rite Aid in an area of Brooklyn closer to the equator than it is to Manhattan so a man could shove a needle in my arm so I wouldn’t die of the thing, and now I’m like, “Am I tired, or do I just think I’m tired? Is acetaminophen the same as Tylenol or is it different and if so how? Plus, do I have any Tylenol? Does my arm actually hurt? Is my eye really throbbing and, hypothetically, what does that mean if it is?”
Getting the vaccine, and the totally imagined effects of it, really has made me feel like this:
One of the incredible things about this image is that, as far as I know, there is no identifiable origin for the text in it. The art comes from an old Mickey Mouse comic but the text, about the chemicals in our brain, is not lifted from anywhere that I know of. It might have just been made specifically for this image macro, which leads me to my next question: what conditions created the need for such an image? What was the discussion topic and what was the venue? I’ll probably never know.
Here’s a fun fact: I do not keep a copy of this image handy. I googled “donald mickey chemicals” and found it easily. (Technically I DuckDuckGo’d it but that feels more “pun intended” than I’d like. Unless I lampshade it. Like this!) In fact, I do not keep what are commonly referred to as “meme images” lying around on my computer or on my phone.
I am well aware that this makes me a freak. Web-culture freaks, which I assume I am, love keeping personal libraries of all the weird, context-less crap they find online. It’s a point of pride for them. If you can’t whip out an image macro on a moment’s notice, are you even really “good at internet”? The supposition that people’s devices are full of lo-fi JPEGs is such that Twitter has made a game out of it.
These games are just not for me. There are a few reasons for this.
I’m a terrible texter. This is just how I am. I don’t keep image macros on hand because I am not a good texter and I don’t think having funny pics on hand will make me a better one.
I’m probably a little too old. I think all my friends know I’m some kind of web freak. I don’t need to bring that into every facet of my life. I’m not gonna force my affinity for — just off the top of my head —
’deep-fried PNGs of U.S. presidents with 👁 emoji for eyes talking about their bussy’onto anyone else.Phones are for photos. I feel very strongly that my iPhone’s Camera Roll should only be for photographs that I take. Why? Because I like the sense of historicity and progression. Interrupting that flow with screenshots and image macros I didn’t create feels wrong to me. I delete every screenshot I take after I’ve used it for its intended purpose.
I never use the desktop image folders I make. I have tried to keep a store of funny images on my computer, usually named “junk” or “garbage,” and it always just sits dormant, barely populated with anything. I never go into it because the impulse to share Random Funny Picture just doesn’t come over me often. Instead, I’ve developed an alternative system in which I keep 1-3 funny pics on my desktop, and once I get an occasion to use any of them, that pic then gets deleted. This pic is now headed to the trash:
This system works for a few reasons. It keeps me from using funny images as a crutch for when I don’t have anything to say, and it keeps the images I do send fresh and exciting. It lets me send funny pic with intention and forethought.
I have an amazing brain. Remember when I said I googled “donald mickey chemicals” earlier in this post? That’s because I have a lot of funny pics burned into my memory, usually with an associated text, and so I can just search out any dumb internet pic with relative ease. This means that I don’t just use a funny pic, I use the funny pic — the exact right visual for the scenario.
Saves hard drive space. I hate when stuff takes up hard drive space, which is literally what hard drive space is for. And yet I refuse to use it. Go figure.
Anyway, congrats to the weirdos who keep all these pics lying around. I can never be one of you.
Elsewhere…
again oops didn’t see a lot of funny stuff recently but here’s a couple of stories I liked