January 31, 2005

This image can't be a coincidence. Is it just me, or is this image frighteningly close to el Goatse? (SFW, and no more inside!)
posted by kitfisto 19 years ago
  • Time magazine had a cover that was eerie in the same way a few months ago with two fists pulling open a flag.
  • We're no naive that we belive these manifestations are coincidences, are we? It's an in-joke. I wish I wasn't in, but unfortunately, I am.
  • haw!
  • The Wikipedia article on goatse [sfw] mentions the book in the "Parodies and Tributes" section. Also a picture of the Time cover.
  • God damn it. I was almost recovered from my last goatse exposure and you had to go and retraumatize me.
  • You people. Sometimes a suspiciously enlarged sphincter-like object is just a suspiciously enlarged sphincter-like object.
  • I don't WANT to be exposed to coincidence.
  • But I don't WANT -- dammit homunculus. Ya beat me :)
  • My god. The very concept of a four-handed goatse. There's whole new levels of wrong there, all of which I just got exposed to. Oh, that I should live to see such a thing...
  • It's not just you. From the, um, colophon, in which the author tells us about the illustrator's background I’d been a fan of Matt Mahurin for a decade. He’s a photographer and photoillustrator who has also directed dozens of music videos, usually in a signature chiaroscuro style: Metallica’s “Unforgiven”..., “Orange Crush” by R.E.M...., Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” You’re often able to find his disturbing photocollage illustrations in issues of the U.S. Esquire... Most memorably..., but I quite disagree), Matt was the man responsible for darkening O.J. Simpson’s mug shot on the June 27, 1994 cover of Time and the symbolism of the cover: An easy linkage to technology, with just enough abstraction to make it work. The hands (definitely pulling from the corners) symbolically “demystify” accessibility and open a metaphorical portal to an accessible technological future. But what are the hands opening a portal to? In mockups, the portal is merely a black void. But that’s where we’d set the title block. The hands, then, open a portal to the title of the book, or, by extension, to the book itself. We’ve got enough layers of metaphor at work here to keep Gitanes-smoking semioticians exercised for hours.
  • I'm a semiotician. It's not voodoo, you know, and you're neither obliged to smoke nor wear stripy shirts. It unfortunately requires a certain amount of study, but you get to study funny stuff (if you wish. But please, don't let that stop anyone's fun.
  • (and that missing-bracket thing is the latest Parisian style
  • But jazz. Jazz must be compulsory down at Semiotician Villas, no? Or will you destroy that beautiful illusion as well?
  • what is a goatsie?
  • A little baby goat of the cutest variety. In case you are serious, here's Wikipedia's entry on it.
  • Umberto Eco made up the word "semiotics" for fear that his work would be understood to be meaningless. Ironic, ain't it?
  • And how many people recently have pointed out the fact that "Gotye" looks and sounds kinda like... But that's because his hit song is so damn overplayed. Here.. have some wacky Gotye as a chaser.