March 27, 2012
The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures was initially a humorous hoax from the interactive encyclopedia ‘Baidu Baike’ which became a popular and widespread Internet meme in China in early 2009. These hoaxes, ten in number, originated in response to increasingly pervasive and draconian online censorship in China, and have become an icon of citizens’ resistance to censorship. The meme initially began as a series of vandalized contributions to ‘Baidu Baike,’ through the creation of humorous articles describing a series of fictional creatures, each with names vaguely referring to Chinese profanities (utilizing homophones and characters using different tones). Eventually, images, videos (such as faux-documentaries) and even a song regarding aspects of the meme were released.
It was thought that the Baidu hoaxes were written in response to recent strict enforcements of keyword filters in China, introduced in 2009, which attempted to eliminate all forms of profanity. The ‘Baidu Baike’ ‘articles’ initially began with ‘Four Mythical Creatures’ (‘Grass Mud Horse,’ ‘French-Croatian Squid,’ ‘Small Elegant Butterfly,’ and ‘Chrysanthemum Silkworms’), and were later extended to ten. The memes became widely discussed on Chinese Internet forums, and most netizens concluded that the initial aim of the hoaxes were to satirize and ridicule the pointlessness of the new keyword filters. The meme is interpreted by most Chinese online as a form of direct protest rather than motiveless intentional disruption to ‘Baidu’ services. After the hoaxes were posted, news of the articles spread quickly online on joke websites, popular web portals and forums.
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March 27, 2012
The Grass Mud Horse or Caoníma, is a Chinese Internet meme widely used as a form of symbolic defiance of the widespread Internet censorship in China. It is a play on the Mandarin language words which translate literally to, ‘fuck your mother,’ and is one of the so-called ’10 mythical creatures’ created in a hoax article on ‘Baidu Baike’ (a collaborative encyclopedia) in early 2009 whose names form obscene puns. Official ‘cleanup’ of the internet, which threatens the Caonima, has led Chinese internet users to create other ‘Mud Horse’ variants, such as the ‘Rolling Mud Horse’ and ‘Working Mud Horse,’ which are also puns for ‘fuck your mother.’
The ‘China Digital Times’ sees Caonima as the ‘de facto mascot of netizens in China fighting for free expression, inspiring poetry, photos and videos, artwork, lines of clothing, and more.’ It is an illustration of the ‘resistance discourse’ of Chinese internet users with ‘increasingly dynamic and sometimes surprising presence of an alternative political discourse: images, frames, metaphors and narratives that have been generated from Internet memes [that] undermine the values and ideology that reproduce compliance with the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian regime, and, as such, force an opening for free expression and civil society in China.’
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March 27, 2012
Very erotic very violent is a Chinese internet meme that originated from a news report on China Central Television’s flagship ‘Xinwen Lianbo’ program (a daily news show) allegedly quoting a schoolgirl describing a web page. On the Chinese Internet, this incident was widely parodied and weakened the credibility of the state broadcaster’s newscasts. This Chinese phrase follows the form of ‘very good very mighty,’ a snowclone (cliché template) for Internet slang popularized earlier that year.
In late 2007, ‘Xinwen Lianbo’ aired a report about the wide and easy availability of explicit content on the internet. The report appealed to juristic institutions and those seeking legislation in order to purify the internet environment. In the report, a young student described a pop-up advertisement she saw as being ‘very erotic, [and] very violent.’ After the airing of the report, internet users began to ridicule and parody the quote and question the program’s credibility, believing that it would be unlikely for a person of that age to find a web page to be both erotic and violent at the same time.
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March 27, 2012
A language game (also called secret language or ludling or argot) is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to the untrained ear. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others.
Some common examples are Pig Latin, which is used all over the globe; the Gibberish family, prevalent in the United States and Sweden; and Verlan, spoken in France. Each of these language games involves a usually simple standard transformation to speech, thus encoding it. The languages can be easily mentally encoded and decoded by a skilled speaker at the rate of normal speech, while those who either don’t know the key or aren’t practiced in rapid speech are left hearing nothing but gibberish.
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March 26, 2012
Fishing with John is a 1991 television series conceived, directed by and starring actor and musician John Lurie, which earned a cult following. On the surface, the series resembles a standard travel or fishing show: in each episode, Lurie takes a famous guest on a fishing expedition.
Since Lurie has no expert knowledge of fishing, the interest is in the interaction between Lurie and his guests, all of whom are his friends. Nothing particularly unusual actually happens, but the show is edited and narrated in a way to suggest that Lurie and his guest are involved in dramatic and even supernatural adventures. Guests included Jim Jarmusch, Matt Dillon, Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, and Dennis Hopper. Each episode has voice-over narration by Robb Webb, which is sometimes bizarre and off-topic. The soundtrack is by Lurie, with several guest performers.
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March 26, 2012
The Onion is an American news satire organization. It is a newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club (which features interviews and reviews of various newly released media, as well as other weekly features). Since 2007, the organization has been publishing satirical news audios and videos online, as the ‘Onion News Network.’
The Onion’s articles comment on current events, both real and fictional. It parodies such traditional newspaper features as editorials, man-on-the-street interviews, and stock quotes on a traditional newspaper layout with an AP-style editorial voice. Much of its humor depends on presenting everyday events as newsworthy and by playing on commonly used phrases, as in the headline ‘Drugs Win Drug War.’
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March 25, 2012
‘A Night at the Roxbury‘ is a 1998 American comedy film based on a recurring skit on television’s long-running ‘Saturday Night Live’ called ‘The Roxbury Guys.’ SNL regulars Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Molly Shannon, and Colin Quinn star.
The film is about wealthy Yemeni-American brothers Steve (Will Ferrell) and Doug Butabi (Chris Kattan) who enjoy frequenting nightclubs, where they bob their heads in unison to dance music (specifically Haddaway’s hit song ‘What Is Love’) and fail miserably at picking up women. Their dream is to party at the famous L.A. nightclub The Roxbury, where they are continually denied entrance by a hulking bouncer (Michael Clarke Duncan).
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March 25, 2012
Second City Television (SCTV) is a Canadian television sketch comedy show offshoot from Toronto’s The Second City troupe that ran between 1976 and 1984. The basic premise of the show is that ‘SCTV’ is an independent television station in the city of Melonville.
Rather than broadcasting the usual TV rerun fare, the station produces a bizarre and humorously incompetent range of cheap local programming including a soap opera called ‘The Days of the Week’ (‘Monday… Tuesday… Wednesday… these are… the days of the week’), a game show, ‘Shoot At The Stars,’ in which celebrities are literally shot at like targets in a shooting gallery, and full blown movie spoofs like ‘Play it Again, Bob’ in which Woody Allen (Rick Moranis) tries to get Bob Hope (Dave Thomas) to star in his next film.
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March 25, 2012
The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876. It is the world’s longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor magazine, after the ‘Yale Record.’ The organization also produces occasional humor books and parodies of national magazines. Much of the organization’s capital is provided by the licensing of the ‘Lampoon’ name to ‘National Lampoon,’ begun by ‘Harvard Lampoon’ graduates in 1970.
The Lampoon is known for its bacchanalian parties, which can result in smashed plates and furniture. Robert K. Hoffman, co-founder of the ‘National Lampoon’ and major donor to the Dallas Museum of Art was a Trustee until his death in 2006, and was declared a Trustee ‘Ad-Infinitum’ a year later. The bone of his pinky finger is said to be encased in a block of lucite in the Harvard Lampoon’s ‘Brainatorium Crypt.’
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March 25, 2012
National Lampoon was both a ground-breaking American humor magazine and also a wide range of productions directly associated with that magazine. The magazine ran from 1970 to 1998, and was originally a spinoff of the ‘Harvard Lampoon’ (is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University).
The magazine reached its height of popularity and critical acclaim during the 1970s, when it had a far-reaching effect on American humor. It spawned films, radio, live theater, various kinds of recordings, and print products including books. Many members of the creative staff from the magazine subsequently went on to contribute creatively to successful media of all types.
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March 24, 2012
The Incal is a set of science fiction comic book series written in French by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius and others. ‘The Incal’ takes place in, and introduced Jodorowsky’s ‘Jodoverse,’ a fictional universe in which his science fiction comics take place. The story begins in the dystopian capital city of an insignificant planet in a human-dominated galactic empire. The series stars John DiFool, anoccasional bodyguard. DiFool has no interest in being a hero, has mood swings and suffers from self-doubt and temper tantrums in which he threatens to walk away and assume a comfortable lifeh. He has a fondness for cigars, ‘ouisky’ and ‘homeosluts’ (gynoid prostitutes).
The series mixes space opera, metaphysics, and satire; a counterpoint to the grandiosity of the events is always Difool’s base, even cowardly nature. Every major character in The Incal is based upon Tarot cards – for example, John Difool is based upon The Fool with his name being a pun upon ‘John, the Fool.’ Moebius and Jodorowsky sued Luc Besson, director of ‘The Fifth Element,’ claiming that the film borrowed graphic and story elements from ‘The Incal,’ but they lost their case. In a 2002 interview with Danish comic book magazine ‘Strip!,’ Jodorowsky actually claimed that he considered it an honor that somebody stole his ideas, saying he believes that authors do not create the stories they tell as much as they make personal interpretations of mythemes shared by the collective unconscious.
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March 23, 2012
Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means attacking imaginary enemies. The word ’tilt,’ in this context, comes from jousting. The phrase is sometimes used to describe confrontations where adversaries are incorrectly perceived, or courses of action that are based on misinterpreted or misapplied heroic, romantic, or idealistic justifications.
The phrase derives from an episode in the novel ‘Don Quixote’ by Miguel de Cervantes. In the novel, Don Quixote fights windmills that he imagines to be giants. Quixote sees the windmill blades as the giant’s arms, for instance.
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