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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October 28, 2010
The Darwin Award are a tongue-in-cheek honor, originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions circa 1985. They recognize individuals who have contributed to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization due to their own (unnecessarily foolish) actions. The project became more formalized with the creation of a website in 1993, and followed up by a series of books starting in 2000, authored by Wendy Northcutt. The criterion for the awards states, ‘In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species’ chances of long-term survival.’
Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies; however, the site notes: ‘Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously.’ But the candidate is disqualified if ‘innocent bystanders,’ who might have contributed positively to the gene pool, are killed in the process. The Darwin Awards books state that an attempt is made to disallow known urban legends from the awards, but some older ‘winners” have been ‘grandfathered’ to keep their awards. The Darwin Awards site does try to verify all submitted stories, but many similar sites, and the vast number of circulating ‘Darwin awards’ emails, are largely fictional.
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October 28, 2010
Garfield Minus Garfield is a webcomic created by Dan Walsh. Each strip consists of a reprint of a past episode from the comic strip Garfield, from which the character of Garfield himself has been removed through photo manipulation. Though Walsh admits that he was not the first to come up with this idea, he was the first to popularize it. The resulting strips thus consist mostly of Garfield’s owner, Jon Arbuckle, interacting with himself, rather than with his pet cat.
The strip’s website characterizes this result as ‘a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.’ Garfield artist Jim Davis has commented on the webcomic, stating that he is an occasional reader and finds it ‘fascinating’ and an ‘inspired thing to do.’
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October 28, 2010
ROFLCon is a biennial convention of Internet memes that first took place April 25–26, 2008, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Various Net celebrities attended, such as the authors of the webcomics xkcd, Questionable Content and Dinosaur comics, Jay Maynard ‘The Tron Guy,’ 4Chan founder moot, Leeroy Jenkins, The Brothers Chaps, and many others. ROFLCon was organized by a group of students from Harvard University led by Tim Hwang.
The ROFLCon team spent months tracking down people associated with memes, but many of the invited guests did not attend. Attendance was open to the public after pre-registration and a fee. The primary events of ROFLCon were moderated panel discussions with the Internet celebrities, as well as question and answer sessions with the audience. Several guest speakers gave talks on issues pertaining to internet culture. The convention ended with the ROFLConcert, featuring live performances by Group X, Leslie Hall, Lemon Demon, Trocadero and Denny Blaze. In 2010, the conference took place from April 30 to May 1 at MIT.
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