November 16, 2010
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. He was originally created as a fictionalized version of author Theodore Sturgeon (Vonnegut’s colleague in the genre of science fiction), although Trout’s consistent presence in Vonnegut’s works has also led critics to view him as the author’s own alter ego.
Trout, who has supposedly written over 117 novels and over 2000 short stories, is usually described as an unappreciated science fiction writer whose works are used only as filler material in pornographic magazines. However, he does have at least three fans: Eliot Rosewater and Billy Pilgrim—both Vonnegut characters—have a near-complete collection of Trout’s work or have read most of his work.
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November 15, 2010
The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, a thus-far undeciphered alphabetic writing. The Codex is divided into eleven chapters, partitioned into two sections. The first section appears to describe the natural world, dealing with flora, fauna, and physics. The second deals with the humanities, the various aspects of human life: clothing, history, cuisine, architecture and so on. The illustrations are often surreal parodies of things in our world: bleeding fruit; a plant that grows into roughly the shape of a chair and is subsequently made into one; a lovemaking couple that metamorphoses into an alligator; etc.
The language of the codex has defied complete analysis by linguists for decades. The number system used for numbering the pages, however, has been discovered to be a variation of base 21. In a talk at the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles held in 2009, Serafini stated that the script of the Codex is asemic, that his own experience in writing it was closely similar to automatic writing, and that what he wanted his alphabet to convey to the ‘reader’ is the sensation that children feel in front of books they cannot yet understand, although they see that their writing does make sense for grown-ups.
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November 10, 2010
The term ‘Fucking New Guy‘ (FNG) is a derogatory term for new recruits, made popular by US troops in the Vietnam war. Every unit had an FNG, and the term was used across all unit types, from front line combat through to support and medical units. The term was not gender specific; female personnel could be FNGs as well.
FNGs were an important part of the group dynamic of US units in Vietnam and their treatment had at its core an overall sense of ‘us’ (those with experience of the war) and ‘them’ (those who were back in the United States). As one soldier said, FNGs were ‘still shitting stateside chow.’ It was in combat units that the FNG was truly ignored and hated by his colleagues. An FNG in a combat unit was ‘treated as a non-person, a pariah to be shunned and scorned, almost vilified, until he passed that magic, unseen line to respectability.’
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November 9, 2010
Jay Pinkerton (born June 15, 1977) is a nationally published humorist and a former editor of both CRACKED.com and Cracked magazine. Prior to joining Cracked, Pinkerton served as the managing editor of NationalLampoon.com. Since joining Cracked, Pinkerton has helped make CRACKED.com a leading comedy site, including by bringing in new contributors.
Jay Pinkerton initially registered his website, Jaypinkerton.com, to be a portfolio of his comedy and artwork. Afterwards, Pinkerton joined the forums of the Internet humor website ‘Pointless Waste of Time’ (PWOT), and took the attention of the site’s owner, David Wong, with whom Pinkerton worked with on a series of comedy articles. It was around this time that he first published his redone Spider-Man comics, spawning an Internet phenomenon. In addition to Cracked, Pinkerton’s work has also appeared on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Modern Humorist, CollegeHumor.com and numerous other sites. He has also been hired by Valve Software to write some of the sequel to Portal, Portal 2.
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November 9, 2010
‘Turtles all the way down‘ is a jocular expression of the infinite regress problem in cosmology. The joke goes as follows: An Eastern guru affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger. When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant; and when asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle. When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback, but quickly replies ‘Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down.’
The phrase was popularized by Stephen Hawking in 1988. The ‘turtle’ metaphor in the anecdote represents a popular notion of a primitive cosmological myth, viz. the flat earth supported on the back of a World Turtle.
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November 9, 2010
Easter eggs are hidden messages, in-jokes or features in things like video games, web sites, DVDs and other media. For example, the HP 54622D, a professional oscilloscope, has an ‘Asteroids’ clone called ‘Rocks’ that can be accessed by entering a secret sequence of buttons. Google Maps contains an easter egg whereby a user asking for directions from Japan to China would be directed to jetski across the Pacific Ocean.
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November 8, 2010
Bokononism is a fictional religion practiced by many of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel ‘Cat’s Cradle.’ It is based on the concept of ‘foma,’ which are defined as harmless untruths. The primary tenet of Bokononism is to ‘Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.’
Many of the sacred texts of Bokononism were written in the form of calypsos. The foundation of Bokononism is that all religion, including Bokononism and all its texts, is formed entirely of lies; however, one who believes and adheres to these lies will at least have peace of mind, and perhaps live a good life.
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November 4, 2010
A blivet [bliv-it], also known as a poiuyt, devil’s fork or widget, is an undecipherable figure, an optical illusion and an impossible object. It appears to have three cylindrical prongs at one end which then mysteriously transform into two rectangular prongs at the other end.
In traditional U.S. Army slang dating back to the Second World War, a blivet was defined as ‘ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag’ (a proverbial description of anything egregiously ugly or unmanageable); it was applied to an unmanageable situation, a crucial but substandard or damaged tool, or a self-important person. In some areas of the U.S., it refers to a juvenile prank, clearly connected with the original military usage: a sack full of excrement is ignited on the victim’s porch, while the pranksters ring the doorbell and run. The victim attempts to put the flames out by stamping on the bag.
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November 4, 2010
The 2010 Duke University sex thesis (also known as the ‘Duke Fuck List’) controversy arose from a private document written by senior, Karen Owen, in the format of a thesis about her sexual experiences during her time attending the university. Owen wrote and distributed the document to three friends shortly after graduating from the university, in May 2010. By mid-September it was widely available on the internet. In the satirical thesis, titled ‘An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics,’ Owen ranked her partners based on her criteria for performance.
The bulk of the controversy surrounded whether she invaded her partners’ rights to privacy, and whether the subjects of Owen’s paper have a right to sue, as in the case of Jessica Cutler when Cutler published details of her sex life on a blog. It also raised questions as to whether double standards exist if the reaction would have been the same had the document been written by a male. The paper attracted additional attention because some of the men which Owen ranked were from the lacrosse team, and there was an unrelated sex controversy surrounding the team a few years prior.
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November 4, 2010
Master Shake is a fictional character on Adult Swim’s television series, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Like the other main characters, Meatwad and Frylock, Master Shake originally appeared in the Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode ‘Baffler Meal,’ and then made his first official appearance in the show’s first episode, ‘Rabbot’ Voice actor Dana Snyder provides Shake’s voice throughout the entire series. Master Shake lives next door to Carl Brutananadilewski in a suburban neighborhood in New Jersey with his roommates, Meatwad and Frylock. He spends most of his time watching TV, causing mischief, talking about women, sex, breasts, and porn.
He is also fond of playing cruel pranks on Meatwad. In ‘Video Ouija’ Shake commits suicide just so he can haunt Meatwad through his new video game. In ‘Reedickyoulus’ Shake kills Meatwad’s innocent kitten, in a microwave, just to upset Meatwad. His behavior is highly irregular, blaming others for his numerous mistakes, antagonizing Meatwad for pleasure, putting material goods above necessities, concocting poor lies to cover and justify his actions even when caught red-handed, and having an overall lack of empathy and regard for the safety of others. Shake has no official power, except his ability to shoot a substance from his straw, and almost every thing he throws to the ground explodes.
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October 30, 2010
Dock Ellis (1945 – 2008) was a Major League Baseball player who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates, among other teams. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. However, he is perhaps best remembered for throwing a no-hitter in 1970 and later stating that he had done it while under the influence of LSD.
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October 28, 2010
Funky Forest: The First Contact, also known as Naisu no mori is a 2005 Japanese movie written and directed by Katsuhito Ishii, Hajimine Ishimine and Shunichiro Miki. The movie is a collection of several surreal, non-sequitur shorts. Dance numbers, pillow fights, animation, comedy, and science fiction all combine to create a unique and disorienting viewing experience featuring such highlights as an absurdist tribute to David Cronenberg, an ass-television, and a girl who fires lasers from her forehead in order to battle a floating space blob which emits spinning, spherical projectiles.
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