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Readers: Fear the Mansquito. Over the weekend, the Sci Fi channel debuted its original film centered on the half-man, half-mosquito monstrosity, and it’s a doozy. Ryan at the Dead Parrot Society tuned in with his 10-year-old, who enjoyed the movie but couldn’t help pointing out that the Mansquito is a male, and “males don’t drink blood.” Writes Ryan: “See, the problem wasn’t that radioactive, genetically modified mosquitoes mutated a criminal’s DNA, turning him into a 7-foot bulletproof Mansquito. Suspension of disbelief was busted because male mosquitoes don’t drink blood.” Nonetheless, we’re eagerly awaiting a sequel. Mansquito vs. Mothra, anyone?
Now over to the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, the subject of a New York Times piece over the weekend. Mark Liberman at the Language Log noted that the creators of one Adult Swim cartoon are trying to create catchphrases to cement their audience’s loyalty. It’s a trick that dates back to around the time of the Spanish Inquisition — or, at least, to nobody expecting it. The difference this time is that the catchphrases are intentionally meaningless, “gaining significance only from their role in the show and its subculture.” A typical one? “Rats off to ya!,” which was a caption on a shirt Tom in the series “Tom Goes to the Mayor” attempted unsuccessfully to market. The nonsensical catchphrases are meant to become the “basis for a secret language shared by fans of the show,” but Lieberman’s Google search suggests “Rats off to ya!” isn’t (yet) taking off. “Perhaps you need something more than catchphrases?,” he wonders. “Or maybe it works better to start with the traditional sort of catchphrase, which functions as an ordinary piece of language in its original context, before being generalized by cultural resonance?” Maybe. All we know is that we’re grateful people have stopped accusing each other of being the Weakest Link.
Jumping off of Steven Levy’s column in Newsweek – which covers ground, incidentally, that we took on a year ago — Chris Nolan offers her explanation for the lack of woman and minorities in the blogosphere. We recommend the whole thing, but for now we’ll highlight this paragraph:
Big Media reporters prefer to deal with the “top-tier” bloggers and folks in their own part of the world – the East Coast. That’s who they call for TV: Sullivan, Jarvis, Reynolds, Marshall, Kos. That’s who makes it onto dial-a-quote lists. Those appearances reinforce Big Boy Bloggers’ bigger numbers. On Charlie Rose’ blog show, the guest were Glenn Reynolds, Ana Marie Cox and Andrew Sullivan, no one west of the Mississippi. No minorities. That’s diversity Big Media style.
Finally, Jim Dallas takes to task an anonymouse quoted in the Washington Post — this one a Republican political consultant — for saying, “If death comes from a thousand cuts, Tom DeLay is into a couple hundred, and it’s getting up there. The situation is negatively fluid right now for the guy. You start hitting arteries, it only takes a couple.”
“That may very well be the most tortured play on the ‘death by a thousand’ paper cuts cliche I’ve ever seen,” writes Dallas. “But, for what it’s worth, one possible reading of the rest of the story in light of this graf suggests that there’s something big coming soon. Of course, when a journalist taking the pulse (sorry) of an elected official is reduced to printing obligatory ‘we support our man’ quotes from his allies, you know the prognosis (sorry) is not good.”
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.
