"Angry Cable Guy" and the analog era of viral audio

In the days before the modern internet, it took a lot of awesome to make a meme. Usually, these were faxed visuals of dirty cartoons, pictures or jokes. But there were also audio memes. They were dutifully recopied from one analog cassette tape to another, resulting in increasing levels of hiss.

Some, like tapes of the Tube Bar prank calls, became permanently embedded in pop culture by getting written into The Simpsons. Others just faded into memory when the tape got eaten.

For about 13 years, I have occasionally searched for one of my favourite audio memes from the '80s and '90s: Cable Guy. But somehow I missed it when the recording finally surfaced on YouTube last year (and two years before) and was covered on BoingBoing:



The transcript has errors ("AutoMag" was the name of the show, and "Dogan" is an ancient slur against Catholics) but there it is.

According to No Cable: "This tape came from the answering machine at Cablenet (now Cogeco) in Kingston, Ontario in the mid 1980's. "Automag Magazine" was a car review show that used to air in the area. This customer obviously loves his Automag Magazine! Not safe for work or near children due to the excessive (and hilarious) profanity. This tape was recently featured on Boing Boing, and yes, copies were made and distributed at my high school as well."

From Kingston (my hometown) it spread across Canada in both Beethoven and non-Beethoven versions. The band my brother played in at the time, The Pariahs, used to play it at The Toucan before they took to the stage. It was shared in dorm rooms, at parties, through the mail.

And then the tapes got worn out. Our cassette decks became obsolete. And we forgot about it.

The rate and frequency at which new online memes emerge, spread and fade today is dizzying. You basically need a daily update. Back in the day, though, these things were unusual and long-lasting enough to leave a mark.

And now it's back. It has even been Xtranormaled:



Welcome to the 21st Century, Angry Cable Guy. Wherever you are.

Oh joy oh joy! A button museum!

I try to keep some of my nerdiness to myself, but I can't contain it any longer: I love vintage novelty buttons.

I used to have a great big collection of them (along with pop bottles, and sundry other crap) that I kept in a drawer. Now I'll have to go looking for them, because the Busy Beaver Button Co. has opened an online Button Museum to show off their own treasures.

I found out about this via Buzzfeed, where Buzzer Jesse McNulty posted a collection of buttons from the sexual revolution.

Here are some highlights:

Man oh man. The collection apparently covers all eras and messaging:

I wonder if they'd be interested in my "Junk Food Junkie" or "Ban The Leg-Hold Trap" classics...

Superheroes no longer live by The Code

A post in BoingBoing yesterday eulogized the death of an American legend: The Comics Code Authority. 


This holdover from the "moral corruption of youth" anxieties of a more innocent era, the Code was established as a means for the comic book industry to self-regulate rather than be regulated.

The Code was specifically set up to crack down on "graphic depictions of violence and gore in crime and horror comics, as well as the sexual innuendo of what aficionados refer to as good girl art."

In the 1960s and '70s, when underground stoner comics just ignored censorship, the Code was especially concerned with depictions of drug use. In 1971,  Stan Lee of Marvel comics famously published a trilogy of Spider-Man issues that were not code-approved, because they dealt with the negative effects of hallucinogenic drugs.




Ironically, those issues were actually an early attempt at alternative social marketing, having been requested and endorsed by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare!

But the Code survived. However, soon afterward the drug issue was addressed even more directly and graphically in rival publisher DC's Green Lantern:

Note the Code

 So obviously, things were changing. But not fast enough. Comics went "adult" in the 1980s, and the code became largely irrelevant.

I don't think any Code could have anticipated this.

Now Marvel, DC, and even squaky clean Archie Comics have abandoned it.

So now that it's dead, I'd like to look at what the Code did allow.

Cracked recently published a list of The 8 Most Awkward Sexual Moments in Comic Book History. It included one character "dating" his step-sister, and more than one excuse to promote ephebophilia:

Dude, she's 13...

In another post, Cracked unearths some of the comic book industry's most unfortunate attempts to become more inclusive:

*facepalm*

And if you think that guy looks like a "bad motherfucker", you don't know just how twisted comic books can be. In yet another Cracked post about disturbing comics, they lay on us an Avengers storyline that has a guy raping (and impregnating) his own "mother"...

You thought I was exaggerating?

I was not.

Another site called "Superdickery" specializes in posting out-of-context frames from old issues of mainstream comics to expose their pervasive sexual undertones:

It's okay to come out of the cave, Batman. We're okay with it now.

This is also okay now, Jimmy. Be proud.

Wonder Woman, by the way, is all about bondage...

And more bondage...

... with a little voyeurism thrown in.

Ummm... WHAT?

If you don't get it, don't ask.

This is probably another example of slang not aging well, but DAMN!

Farewell, Comics Code Authority. You will not be missed.