spodgod

Made-up statistics suggest that 43% of all Internet communication is the simple recitation and repetition of catchphrases, script snippets and sketches from popular TV programmes.  I’m not taking about random usage either – there are specific scenes, phrases, words and even syntactical structures that attain totemic significance.  See my previous entry “Banned Phrases of 2008” for examples.
 
If you were to peruse the archives of this blog – you would soon discover that I am both irked and fascinated by this phenomenon.  On the one hand, the process of memetic saturation and subsequent loss of meaning is a perfect model of post-modernity.  On the other, the presumption on the part of the poster that the simple cut and paste repetition of iconic phrases is automatically hilarious make me want to use IP location tools to track them down, squirt butane on their pets and set them alight.

 The latest manifestation I’ve noticed is this:

1. Do X
2. ???
3. Profit!

A quick Google reveals that this is a quotation from an episode of South Park called “Gnomes”, in which the titular characters steal underpants for profit.  At one point their business plan is revealed to be:

1. Steal underpants
2. ?
3. Profit

In its original context, I’m sure this was hilarious.   I wouldn’t know as I haven’t watched South Park since about 2003. However, when you’ve seen the same thing 132 times in one morning scattered across various Digg, Slashdot and LiveJournal threads, that initial jocularity wears off.  Also, note the increased number of question marks and the addition of an exclamation point in the ersatz version.  As everyone knows, extra punctuation makes everything funnier – if you’re a twat.

Why does this happen?  My hypothesis is that the appropriation of catch phrases from popular culture is more than just a simple substitute for invention.  Children in playgrounds the world over repeat and re-enact their favourite bits from the shows they watched the night before.  Adults in British pubs parrot Peter Kay’s stand up act, finding the words “garlic bread” unnaturally hilarious when three pints south of sober.

These are both acts of cultural bonding – looking for common experience and values in their peers.  And while the Internet equivalent is partially marked by social ineptitude, it is similarly born of a desire to belong – to be part of a group.  In other words:

1.  Repeat comedic phrase made popular on TV or YouTube
2. ?
3. Profit

I finally bought a Blu-Ray player.  I say “finally” as I’ve spent several months trying not to buy one… As an inveterate early adopter and fully diagnosed, unmedicated geek, I tried to build one.  Problem is, I’m the wrong kind of geek. 

To clarify – there are technical geeks and pop-culture geeks – right-brain and left brain geeks.  I’m something of anomaly in this classification, falling somewhere in between. I’m a technoculture geek – a little bit nerdy and a little bit rock and roll, as Donnie and Marie never sang.  So, while I can do the following:

Code in JavaScript
Build a computer from component parts
Design, customise and create dynamic web sites with off the shelf server side scripts
Tell you why Firefly should never have been cancelled

 I cannot:

Code in C++
Solder together a circuit board
Write my own CMS in PHP
Tell you why Star Wars is so popular

Despite this disability, I decided it might be a really clever and spiffing idea to build my own Blu-Ray player from an old computer… It already had an HD video card and was (is) connected to the 36″ Sony Bravia flatscreen HD TV in my living room.  How hard could it be?  I might even save money.

This is, clearly, why I don’t build computers for a living…  During the process I discovered the following:

* A five year old, kit built PC repurposed as a media centre probably isn’t the best choice as a base unit for a Blu-Ray player project because…

* Most internal Blu-Ray drives have SATA connectors rather than old school IDE.  Even the bottom of the range, barebones Pioneer model (c£90) that seemed such a bargain.

* An SATA board can be bought for about a tenner and plugged into a spare PCI slot. Problem solved, Blu-Ray drive installed.

* Once installed, however, none of my existing media player software would not play back my Blu-Ray disc.  Not even VLC

* There are currently no reliable open source players that support Blu-Ray either (see VLC).

* WinDVD 9 Plus is expensive for a software-based media player… (c£50)

* It’s not enough that a video card has a DVI-D out port to plug into your HD TV…  It also has to be HDCP compliant.

* HDCP (High Definition Copy Protocol) is hardware enabled protection built into commercial Blu-Ray discs.  If your video card, monitor and operating system don’t support it, your Blu-Ray discs simply will not play.

* Virtually all HDCP compliant video cards on the market fit into PCI-E (not PCI) slots.  If your motherboard is three or more years older, as mine was, chances are it doesn’t have any…

* There are some cards on the market which feature chipsets that are described online as “HDCP Ready”.  That doesn’t mean the card itself is actually equipped to decode HDCP.

* There are about a dozen video cards on the market that fit into an AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot that are listed online as being HDCP compliant.  Make absolutely certain it says that on the box before you buy one.  Like I should have.

* After you’ve got your Blu-Ray drive up and running on its brand new SATA board and you’ve installed your apparently HDCP ready but not actually HDCP compliant video card (c£70), don’t be surprised when the expensive media player software you bought still can’t run the one Blu-Ray disc you have in your collection…

* Using AnyDVD (c£60) is probably illegal – but the current version does quite effectively remove region coding and copy encryption from DVDs and Blu-Ray discs.  Perhaps that might be a solution to all that incompatible hardware.

* Until, that is, you realise that the old Pentium 4 CPU in the machine you’re installing all this stuff on isn’t up to the task of Blu-Ray playback after all - and what you finally get is a mess of stuttering and strobing that renders your copy of “Edward Scissorhands” unwatchable.

*  At this point you might, like I decided to do, head back to Amazon and pick up a bottom of the range Blu-Ray player instead.  For £250.

* Always keep the boxes your components came in.  You’ll need them when you have to put them all on eBay.

Remember my super previous posting “Banned Phrases of 2007″.  Well this is exactly the same, but for 2008.  DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?  By the way, what I just said?  That’s one of them… These are now all officially old news…

“Fail.” 

“I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.”  (EDIT: Also, the related but so far not quite as much used “I laughed so hard a little bit of wee came out.”)

“Anything-tard (examples “webtard”, “freetard”, “douchetard” etc)

“Im in ur (x) (doing y) to ur (z)”.

“The cake is a lie”. (or any quote from “Portal” – especially those quoting the lyrics of the song at the end ;”This was a triumph! I’m making a note here… Huge Success!” etc)

“I drink your milkshake.” (A phrase that has, in its overusage, put me off seeing a movie that I would have otherwise crawled over broken dinosaur teeth to see).

“I call shenanigans/BS.”

“Pwned.”

/ The use of slashes to punctuate.
// Like this.
/// Popular with Farkers, don’t you know.

“Video or it didn’t happen.”

Please feel free to dispute my choices or offer your own.