Your Next Internet Meme
Posted on February 10, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 69 Comments
While I’m winging my way to New York City, a poll for you all:
And when one of these really happens, we’ll blame you. Oh yes we will.
Posted on February 10, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 69 Comments
While I’m winging my way to New York City, a poll for you all:
And when one of these really happens, we’ll blame you. Oh yes we will.
Category: Uncategorized
Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, editor – AMS
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I’m too young for internet post-modernism.
(LOL)
Whilst incredibly tempting, the Bacon Zombies lose to the Lucas-shoeing. If for no other reason than *everything* is funny when sped up and set to Yakkety Sax.
“Mangy dogs set to be euthanized-cam” that’s just mean. Dipping people in lye I was okay with, but mangy dogs is cruel. (I’m not kidding.)
LOLtumors, of course. We already have Lolthulhu and Loltheist. What else is left?
“Urogenital tumor. Not so grate akshually.”
“And when one of these really happens, we’ll blame you. Oh yes we will.”
Why blame us? You thought them up.
Yeah, voting for this stuff shouldn’t attach any blame to us. We were only doing what we were told to do. We will also stand in line when we see one form.
The powers of steampunk, zombies, bacon and swearing, all put together, still cannot overcome the public’s vitriolic hatred of what George Lucas did to Star Wars. The world is unfolding as it should.
Lucas is (winning?) by 3 votes.
Zombies will outlast Lucas, for his evil is minor and fleeting, but flaming bacon-wrapped brains moonwalking – that is FOREVER. (They’re catching up in the voting – only down by 3 at the moment.)
I really hated to bypass the Lucas thing, but voted for the zombies because, you know, these meme thingies should be about something important, something that really makes a difference.
Yakety sax music makes everything funnier.
My deep dark nightmares invovle Lucas decided to make sequels to other great movie franchises, like the Godfasther.
The very first choice happened to my stepbrother back in the 70s so I had to pass on that, fascinating as it would be to watch in non-smellovision. But really, nothing could compete with bacon-wrapped steampunk zombies o’fire, no matter how tempting the other choices. I mean it’s steampunk we’re talkin’ here!
Would-be Lucas kickers: if you’ve never heard it, check out Patton Oswalt’s Werewolves and Lollipops with his fantasy of discussing the prequels with Lucas just before killing him with a shovel–
GL: “You get to see Darth Vader as a little kid.”
PO: “Oh, cool! Is he like a Damien kid who kills people and…”
GL: “No. He just looses his mom and he’s very sad.”
We vote for George Lucas. We approve, in varying degrees, of all others EXCEPT the bacon wrapped zombies. We’ve told you what we think of the oversaturation and mockery of bacon on the internet.
Don’t make us tell you again.
-The International Internet Bacon-Abatement Coalition.
“loses,” of course. ::grrr::
Lucas must be stopped, before he JarJars us again! If crotch kicking might prevent the next awful aliens from appearing on the silver screen, then that’s what we must do.
The George Lucas idea sounds like a Robot Chicken bit rather than youtube…
I was gonna go with loltumours, but the Lucas thing was just far too tempting. Damn it I want my £5 back for the ticket for Phantom Menace!
Is it a bad thing that I already have a list of people I want to see dissolved in lye?
Is it a bad thing that I might have already purchased the lye?
What?
And Lucas had it coming long before the prequel trilogy, anybody remember the Star Wars Ewok Christmas Special? Yeah, he’s first on the list.
Small edit.
Steampunk zombies who have been wrapped in Kevin Bacon and set on fire.
I urge all intelligent readers of Whatever to vote for the zombies. It could be so much more than a mere internet meme. It could be a crucial first step to the creation of the mythology of the internet.
And from now on I’m wearing a cup.
I’ll double vote the Lucas video if people can keep getting in line over and over and over.
I’m not sure the last three count as internet memes… they’re more like torture. And only the middle one is deserving of said torture. (Poor zombies get a bad name…)
It’s OK, folks. Even though you betray him, George Lucas still loves you. Fear not, for one day every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that George Lucas is awesome.
Ach. One week later for visiting NYC and you could have made this month’s KGB reading. James Morrow and Laird frigging Barron. Laird Barron, man!
Now if we wrap Lucus in bacon first … nah, that would be gilding the lily, he wins without bacon. Bacon-wrapped zombies are definitely second, though.
The first random book doesn’t really have sentences, and gives:
Befall, v. — Syn. occur, take place, come to pass; see happen 2. (Charlton Laird’s Thesaurus)
Second:
Unfortunately, ideas may pour out based on some random pattern of association known only to your unconscious mind. (Get to the Point)
Third (I’m in my wife’s office):
But the un- of undead adj (in sense 3) and related forms, such as Undead-American, unDead Sea Scrolls, as well as unlazy, does precisely that. (Slayer Slang)
Fantastic. I like LOLTumors. Yikes.
This is the first Lucas-related event that I would happily camp in line for. Hell, I just want to kick him for what he did to the Max Rebo band in the remastered edition.
I’m a big fan of the book option, but Lucas… he deserves every kick he has coming.
Mangy, bacon-wrapped, en fuego Lucas being kicked in his chlamydia-infested privates by screaming and inappropriately urinating ex-fans.
And since that’s really only fair and just, the statute of limitations would not come into play.
You should not have put the people in lye one up, John.
Now I have to do it.
Of course, the George Lucas YouTube and bacon zombie were mighty tempting.
Incidentally, I really DO scream the third line of page 53 from books I read at people. It helps relieve stress.
Well, actually, it just transfers it. Not my problem once I’ve screamed.
Here. Let’s try it now.
“IN THE RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THE WINDOW, LETTERED ONTO THE GLASS IN GOLD GILT, WERE THE WORDS ‘CHRISTINE MATTHEWS, PROP.'”!
– Ed McBain, Lady Killer
See? Try it yourself. In fact, if you’re at work, I dare you to scream the third line of page 53 of that trade manual you’re reading. It’s fun!
“THIS PLEASURE, I HAVE SAID, WAS TO BE HAD ONLY ON A SATURDAY NIGHT!”
Page 53, Confessions of an Opium Eater, Thomas de Quincy.
That sentence would probably go over too well in downtown San Diego.
(And since the last meme I did with that book produced a sentence more than 70 words long, I think I got off easy this time. And it’s not even Saturday night! ;) )
“MAYBE SHE HAD SECRET KNOWLEDGE!”
– spirits that walk in shadow, Nina Kiriki Hoffman
There – I feel much better. That book works well for this meme. I’m sure my innocent victim will walk off in new-found paranoia.
The screaming page 53 bit was the only one that made me laugh out loud. The other seem so [i]done[/i].
IF YOU CAN’T PRONOUNCE THE PROGRAM NAME, ODDS ARE GOOD THAT NO ONE ELSE CAN EITHER, SO .CSHRC IS “DOT SEA ESS AITCH ARE SEA.”
–Sam’s Teach Yourself Unix, Third Edition, Dave Taylor.
“WE SURE THANK YOU! was the best Mrs. Rasmussen could do. (High Time, Mary Lasswell, pub. 1944)
It seems that if this is to be an internet meme, we should post videos of us screaming the sentences on Youtube.
__________________________
__________________________
__________________________
__________________________ !!!
You see, the only paper I have here is a composition book I’m using to take notes, and I haven’t gotten to page 53 yet.
I think it could be a game. Post the third line of page 53 (not the whole sentence, just that one line) WITHOUT telling us where it came from, and make us figure it out.
There are no books near me now, or I’d start.
“FOR IN ORDER TO SURVIVE, THOSE OF US FOR WHOM OPPRESSION IS AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE HAVE ALWAYS HAD TO BE WATCHERS, TO BECOME FAMILIAR WITH THE LANGUAGE AND MANNERS OF THE OPPRESSOR, EVEN SOMETIMES ADOPTING THEM FOR SOME ILLUSION OF PROTECTION.”
—*Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, 6th Edition*
Darn, that’s a mouthful to scream at random passerby.
You had me at “bacon”.
I’m rather fond of Xopher’s suggestion.
Let’s see…
Links and Addressing.
Apparently page 53 is a title page.
Bring on the blame, because I am jonesing for bacon-wrapped steampunk Thrillerized zombies.
Thanks for the snicker!
“Most UNIX systems use only 12 bits of salt.”
– Applied Cryptography, Second Edition, by Bruce Schneier
heh.
I voted for Lucas. I’m now humming “Yakkety Sax” to myself and remembering how I really tried to like Phantom Menace.
The lye list is a good idea. I used to have an icepick list, for people who I thought needed to be stabbed in the head with an icepick, but I don’t really keep it updated anymore, since I basically stopped hating people. It never got to 25 though.
#35 kcarlile — I say “dot see-shirk”.
“Once he was done coughing, the farting would start.”
700 Sundays by Billy Crystal
Re: #41
HTML and XML the complete reference by Thomas A. Powell?
“IF YOU’RE WORKING IN A PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT THAT HAS BUILT-IN OVERHEAD DUE TO OTHER FACTORS, THEN THE COST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ARRAYLIST AND A LINKEDLIST MIGHT NOT MATTER!”
Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel
ya gotta yell this one…… It will impress your co-workers.
That’s really scary, CJ. You got it in one.
“MAX NUMBER OF REGISTRANTS CANNOT EXCEED THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF SPACE ALLOWED IN ROOM”
A true tech manual – it doesn’t even make sense.
Sigh
OPENS FILES AS READ-ONLY.
… looks like p. 53 is a list of definitions in Using IDL. ;)
Ewww. Let us hope the winner is “none of the above”.
Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I have to wonder how long someone being repeatedly kicked in the balls would live.
We need the Scalzi equivalent of “Rickrolling.” He creates it. We e/v/a/n/g/e/l/i/z/e/ spread the word (surely there are enough of us to help it go viral). John is featured on next year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Possibly singing.
And there is much rejoicing. And bacon.
damn, I’m still stuck on “Bacon”
Am I the only one that thinks,
25 people you would have dissolved in lye, Mexican drug lord-style (remember to tag them to continue the meme!)
and
The list of things you’ve done that the statutes of limitation have not run out of
might possibly be bad ideas if you would rather not be interviewed by humorless law enforcement types?
Big brother is everywhere man!
The statute of limitations is my friend. 8D
!Steampunk Zombies! FTW
“No Dick! You’ve done enough already!”
-DC Comics Batman Limited Collectors’ Edition
Thriller Bacon. I figure anyone stupid enough to actually sat through all three of the Lucas prequel trilogy DESERVES the pain and anguish, and can’t blame Lucas for more than one film’s worth. They did the rest to themselves.
I would have gone with the “page 53” option, but the nearest book was one of the Aubrey/Maturin books, and the entirety of page 53 was the middle of one sentence that began on page 51.
Somebody’s already beat you to LOLtumors. Jay Lake had a bit of fun with his last year (after he got over the OMGCancer! part of it).
-kat
“KINESIOLOGIC TESTINGIS A HIGHLY VERSATILE TOOL WHOSE TRUE VALUE IS AS YET UNDISCOVERED!!”
(D. Hawkins “The Eye of the I”)
This will work for so many people, on so many levels.
Re: #47
kcarlile, Google searches are amazing things. I just entered the quoted string and looked for a good geeky book.
For a more challenging sentence: “The bandwidth is crap here, and the whole scene has turned out to be one gigantic bummer.”
I think the meme needs additional definition for use with authors who have page-long sentences. Dickens would be murder.
because this is a thread on memes, I feel good about linking to something that includes one full, and one partial of the above listed:
http://james.nerdiphythesoul.com/bennyhillifier/?id=yl2zoEEOUCg
(Also, it’s “Yakety Sax” according to Google. Not “the Benny Hill theme, or “Yakkety Sax” or Yakkity Sax”. Pedants Unite!)
A podcast entitled Schroedinger’s LOLcats. Bacon on the side…
“OR EVEN BETWEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN AND EIGHTY!”
Nah, it’ll never work. . .
I’ll have to go with bootin’ George in the stones–especially if Boots Randolph is playing the tunes to go with it.
The only proper soundtrack for Zanzibar(#30’s) suggestion is Thriller lyrics paired with Songsmith modulated Yakety Sax.
I’m voting on the zombies. (Heck, I’m also eagerly awaiting the debut of the book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I do think that will improve that book for my reading pleasure.)
Tully@47,
Don’t leave us hanging like that. Now I have to go through my Aubrey/ Maturin books looking at page 53 in eadh. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that more than one, nay, perhaps several of the books will meet the description as stated.
Hee hee. Tongue in cheek, Pam, and funny because it’s believable. In point of actual fact, the third complete sentence on page 53 of the Aubrey/Maturin volume closest to me (FORTUNE OF WAR, Norton trade pbk) is, through sheerest synchronicity,
“What was the name of the book?”
Which would indeed be kinda fun to scream randomly in someone’s face, if not quite as surreal as “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”
“I jugggled apples and sang a little song about monkeys while I pondered the problem.”
Fool, Christopher Moore
chlamydia can give you lots of painful and itchy moments so always practice safe sex.’;,