And Scientology was always at the forefront of my mind, but that's due to my rabid distrust of religion, and the fact that their London HQ is across the street from my office.

A joy and a delight.

And each time we have the "Fiction doesn't change people's minds/behaviour" discussion in fandom, I remember a religion spawned by a hack Sci-Fi author.

I read Battlefield Earth in high school from books I picked up at a garage sale, blissfully unaware I was supposed to be having a religious experience. In retrospect, I keep thinking I want to go back and think more of the Psylockes (I have no idea how to spell that now) and the carnival people that I suspect now are supposed to be psychiatrists. Mostly, I'm not even sure where my copy is and don't feel that inspired to hunt it up.

Meme--you know, I honestly have no idea. Knowing the basic concept is different from actually being conversant in the field, so until someone has a better term, I don't know it's not the best available. Though.

This does remind me; I was going through iTunes billboard charts (2004 and back) for something to remember I'd loved once. Using that and my recent run-in with hair bands (what I like, what I like and would buy, what I like and would buy and already own, what I couldn't live without another second), I wondered if a Billboard Top 100 of the Internet in terms of trends would be all that inaccurate. The part that got to me is that the music I loved best, best best was rarely a top 100--my top ten percent, if you will. And not my next ten percent of preference. But the vast general goodwill music that I'd turn the radio up to listen to, or I wouldn't turn off becaue I didn't dislike it enough to get off the couch--assuming I wasn't forced to dance to it as a cheerleader, play it in band, or listened to while in a foreign country--that was more than fifty percent per year, and not always based on what I thought was my preferred genre. At least part of it was, creepily enough, familiarity, my white noise. What I liked made it through to be memorable enough to look for. The rest--I don't know why I know Britney Spears lyrics when I've never seen nor owned an album.

The thing is, 2003/2004 on, if I could ever work out how to really study it without overthinking myself, will be the first time that my music preferences will have a decided bend toward things with a strong beat because they're easier to vid to and not genre or mood.

I'm not sure what to call that, but for me, music's the easiest for me to notice since I have a credit card statement to remind me. With the internet, it's a constant low-grade hum of something and there's a very real part of me that wonders if the ten percent rule is kicking in and I just happen to be around a lot of people with a very well meshing ten percent rule.

And see, I was going to stop after the Battlefield Earth thing. Also, that is where I finally conceptualized base eleven math. There.