“If You Don’t Wear Them, We Will”: Preservation, Appropriation, and the Importance of Role-models in Tibetan Cultural Life

tibetan chupa

I came across this Tibetan meme on Facebook a few months ago. In true meme style, pithy as it is, it manages to encapsulate and gesture towards a great deal. The image shows an assortment of beaming non-Tibetan foreigners wearing traditional Tibetan dress. The top speech bubble says:

“We will learn spoken and written Tibetan and then we will teach it to you” Continue reading

De-calcifying your Pineal Gland, and other New Age Literalisms

“It’s not you…I just don’t think our pineal glands are in the same place right now.”#NewAgeDatingProblems

A while back, I was kinda bored and for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I made this meme. I thought it came out quite well.

decalcifying your pineal gland.jpg

I was just going to post this meme here, but then it got me thinking. Jokes aside, I find the idea of doing something like ‘de-calcifying your pineal gland’ quite fascinating. The concept is one of a panoply of New Age lifestyle/purificatory options, which rely at least in part on a veneer of scienc-i-ness for their legitimacy. Continue reading