January 2, 2012
When the presentation of information in fiction becomes wordy, it is sometimes referred to as an ‘information dump.’ It is expressed by characters in dialogue or monologue and sometimes referred to as ‘idiot lectures.’ They are sometimes placed at the beginning of stories as a means of establishing the premise of the plot.
They also appear in science fiction, but it is considered poor writing when characters explain things to each other that they would already know. For example, if you need to call someone, you don’t stop to explain to a colleague that you are now going to use a device controlled with digital circuits to use radio waves to transmit your voice. Why? Because your contemporaries already know how cellular radio telephones work.
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December 30, 2011
A krewe [kroo] is an organization that puts on a parade and or a ball for the Carnival season. The term is best known for its association with New Orleans Mardi Gras, but is also used in other Carnival celebrations around the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa, Florida, and Springtime Tallahassee as well as in La Crosse, Wisconsin and at the Saint Paul Winter Carnival in Minnesota. The word is thought to have been coined in the early 19th century by an organization calling themselves Ye Mistick Krewe of Comus, as an archaic affectation; with time it became the most common term for a New Orleans Carnival organization. The Mystick Krewe of Comus itself was inspired by a Mobile mystic society (a Carnival social organization), with annual parades in Mobile, Alabama, called the Cowbellion de Rakin Society that dated from 1830.
Krewe members are assessed fees in order to pay for the parade and/or ball. Fees can range from thousands of dollars a year per person for the most elaborate parades to as little as $20 a year for smaller marching clubs. Criteria for krewe membership varies similarly, ranging from exclusive organizations largely limited to relatives of previous members to other organizations open to anyone able to pay the membership fee. Krewes with low membership fees may also require members to work to help build and decorate the parade floats and make their own costumes; higher priced krewes hire professionals to do this work. Parading krewe members are usually responsible for buying their own throws, the trinkets thrown to parade spectators according to Mobile and New Orleans tradition.
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December 28, 2011
Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) refers to design elements that increase the likelihood a wife will approve the purchase of expensive consumer electronics products such as home theater systems and personal computers. Stylish, compact, unobtrusive forms and appealing colors are commonly considered WAF. The term is a tongue-in-cheek play on electronics jargon such as ‘form factor’ and ‘power factor’ and derives from the gender stereotype that men are predisposed to appreciate gadgetry and performance criteria whereas women must be wooed by visual and aesthetic factors.
Larry Greenhill first used the term in 1983, writing for ‘Stereophile’ magazine, but Greenhill credited fellow reviewer and music professor Lewis Lipnick with the coining of the term. Lipnick himself traces the origin to the 1950s when hi-fi loudspeakers were so large that they overwhelmed most living rooms. Lipnick’s wife, actress Lynn-Jane Foreman, arrived at a different term: Marriage Interference Factor (MIF). Foreman suggested that audiophile husbands should balance their large and ugly electronic acquisitions with gifts to the wife made on the basis of similar expense, with opera tickets, jewelry and vacations abroad among the suggestions.
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December 23, 2011
In Living Color was an American sketch comedy television series, which ran on the Fox Network from 1990 to 1994. Brothers Keenen and Damon Wayans created, wrote, and starred in the program. The show was produced by Ivory Way Productions. The show was taped before a live studio audience in Hollywood.
The title of the series was inspired by the NBC announcement of broadcasts being presented ‘in living color’ during the 1950s and 1960s, prior to popularization of color television. It also refers to the fact that most of the show’s cast was African-American, unlike other sketches comedy shows like ‘Saturday Night Live’ whose casts are usually mostly white.
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December 23, 2011
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! is an American sketch comedy television series, created by and starring Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, which premiered in 2007 on Cartoon Network’s ‘Adult Swim’ and ran until 2010. The program features surrealistic and often satirical humor (at points anti-humor), public-access television-style musical acts, bizarre faux-commercials, and editing and special effects chosen to make the show appear camp. The program has featured a wide range of actors such as Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Zach Galifianakis, as well as alternative comedians like Neil Hamburger, and television actors like Alan Thicke, celebrity look-alikes and impressionists.
The creators of the show have described it as ‘the nightmare version of television.’ The show expands the genre of the live-action material featured in Heidecker and Wareheim’s previous show ‘Tom Goes to the Mayor,’ such as Gibbons, the ‘Channel 5 Married News Team,’ and the Cinco Corporation with its variety of inefficient and tasteless products. New recurring characters and sketches include ‘Uncle Muscles Hour,’ a Public-access television variety program hosted by a gravelly-voiced ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic and Channel 5 News Correspondent Dr. Steve Brule, played by John C. Reilly.
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December 20, 2011
‘Series of tubes‘ is a phrase coined originally as an analogy by then Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to describe the Internet in the context of opposing network neutrality.
In 2006, he used this metaphor to criticize a proposed amendment to a committee bill that would have prohibited Internet service providers such as AT&T and Verizon Communications from charging fees to give some companies higher priority access to their networks or their customers. This metaphor has been widely ridiculed as demonstrating Stevens’s poor understanding of the Internet, despite the fact that he was in charge of regulating it.
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December 20, 2011
‘Monkey Tennis‘ is a British pop culture phrase, first used in the late 1990s and popular throughout the 2000s. Originating as a joke in a television sitcom, it has come to be commonly used as an example of the hypothetical lowest common denominator television program that it is possible to make.
The term originates from the opening episode of the sitcom ‘I’m Alan Partridge,’ originally broadcast on BBC Two in 1997. In one scene the eponymous character of Partridge, a failed chat show host, desperately attempts to pitch program ideas to uninterested BBC executive who cancelled his first series. After failing to interest him in ideas plucked from thin air such as ‘Arm Wrestling With Chas & Dave,’ ‘Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank,’ ‘Inner-City Sumo’ and ‘Cooking in Prison,’ Partridge comes up with a final spur-of-the-moment suggestion, ‘Monkey Tennis?,’ which is met with similar disdain.
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December 17, 2011
The terms Google bomb and Googlewashing refer to practices, such as creating large numbers of links, that cause a web page to have a high ranking for searches on unrelated or off topic keyword phrases, often for comical or satirical purposes. In contrast, search engine optimization is the practice of improving the search engine listings of web pages for relevant search terms.
Google bombs date back as far as 1999, when a search for ‘more evil than Satan himself’ resulted in the Microsoft homepage as the top result. Some of the most famous Google bombs are also expressions of political opinions (e.g. ‘liar’ leading to Tony Blair or ‘miserable failure’ leading to the White House’s biography of George W. Bush).
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December 14, 2011
Bananadine is a fictional psychoactive substance which is supposedly extracted from banana peels. A hoax recipe for its ‘extraction’ from banana peel was originally published in 1967 in the ‘Berkeley Barb,’ an underground newspaper. It became more widely known when William Powell, believing it to be true, reproduced the method in ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’ in 1970 under the name ‘Musa sapientum Bananadine’ (referring to the banana’s old binomial nomenclature). The original hoax was designed to raise questions about the ethics of making psychoactive drugs illegal and prosecuting those who took them: ‘what if the common banana contained psychoactive properties, how would the government react?’
Researchers at New York University have found that banana peel contains no intoxicating chemicals, and that smoking it produces only a placebo effect. Over the years, there has been considerable speculation regarding the psychoactive properties of banana skins. Donovan’s hit single ‘Mellow Yellow’ was released a few months prior to the ‘Berkeley Barb’ article, and in the popular culture of the era, the song was assumed to be about smoking banana peels.
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December 14, 2011
Insect fighting is an activity involving insects (and sometimes, arachnids, centipedes, millipedes and mollusks). It is practiced in areas in China, Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand. Cricket fighting is a traditional Chinese pastime that dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Originally nurtured by emperors, it was later popularized by commoners. It is also a casual activity for youth in western countries and is known colloquially as ‘bugfighting.’
Some of the most popular species used are the Stag Beetle, Rhinoceros Beetle, Kabutomushi, Jerusalem Cricket, and Goliath Beetle, as their sheer size and jumping ability make them formidable opponents. They are trained by their owners to become stronger and more aggressive. With beetles, a small noisemaker is used that duplicates the female’s mating call (fighting beetles are male). Getting beetles to fight requires patience and is much different than other types of animal fighting. The loser is pushed onto its back by the winner, pushed off of a tree limb, or a predetermined area, or is killed.
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December 14, 2011
Spy vs. Spy is a black and white comic strip that debuted in ‘Mad Magazine’ #60, in 1961, and was originally published by EC Comics. The strip always features two spies, who are completely identical save for the fact that one is dressed in white and the other black.
The pair are constantly warring with each other, using a variety of booby-traps to inflict harm on the other. The spies usually alternate between victory and defeat with each new strip. They were created by Antonio Prohías, a prolific cartoonist in Cuba known for political satire.
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December 13, 2011
Men in Black (MIB), in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves. The term is also frequently used to describe mysterious men working for unknown organizations, as well as to various branches of government allegedly designed to protect secrets or perform other strange activities. The term is a generic one, used to refer to any unusual, threatening or strangely behaved individual whose appearance on the scene can be linked in some fashion with a UFO sighting.
Early reports of Men in Black often described them as men of short stature with swarthy complexions, as if they were deeply tanned. Some reported them as Gypsies. Sunglasses, black suits and black cars have been a feature for the entire period since modern sightings began in 1947. According to the accounts of those reporting encountering them, Men in Black always seem to have detailed information on the persons they contact, as if the individual had been under surveillance for a long period of time.
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