We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,203,769-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
This week’s entry: Quick hits
What it’s about: Lots of things! Over the years, we’ve come across Wikipedia articles that fascinated or amused to some degree, but were too short to write a full column about. So for the next few weeks, we’re going to shake up the format, and move through our 6,198,555-part series a bit faster by tackling multiple subjects in brief. This week, we look at a few surprisingly controversial topics.
Parking Chair: While we start every column with “biggest controversy,” we may have never tackled a more heated subject than the parking chair, the practice of reserving a parking space on a residential street by placing a chair in the center, to block anyone else’s car from parking there. This is common wintertime practice in many cities in the Midwest and Northeast (also known as “dibs”), as people who have to shovel out a parking space feel entitled to it long-term.
In some places, respecting the parking chair is considered common courtesy; in others, the parking chair is illegal, although the level of enforcement varies by municipality, with former Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake declaring she could no more stop people from blocking parking spaces with chairs than she could stop locals from calling each other “hon.”
While police do enforce bans on parking chairs in some places, Wikipedia notes there can also be stringent civilian enforcement: “The practice is often most effective when accompanied by the threat or actual occurrence of a ‘look of consternation’ from a vigilant, often elderly neighbor who ‘keeps watch’ in the vehicle owner’s absence.” Is that parking space really worth getting the frowning of a lifetime from your elderly neighbor? We think not.
Cow Tools: There are comic series with their own Wikipedia pages, but “Cow Tools” may be the only individual comic panel with its own page. Gary Larson’s beloved The Far Side ran this strip in 1982 to massive audience backlash. “Cow Tools” depicts one of the barely anthropomorphized cows that were a staple of his strip, standing in front of a table with several misshapen objects and the caption, “cow tools.” Readers were perplexed and enraged, sending Larson hundreds of letters and inundating his feature syndicate with angry phone calls.
To calm the public’s ire, Larson had to explain the joke, which was simply if cows were to make tools, “they would lack something in sophistication.” Why this barely-a-joke struck such an irate chord with readers remains a mystery.
Long Hundred: We’ve long been baffled by the traditional European system of weights and measures, with 79 gallons to the hogshead (U.S. gallons, that is; it’s 66 imperial gallons. And we’re talking about a hogshead, as opposed to a tobacco hogshead, which is 145 gallons, 121 imperial), and 5 1/2 yards to the rod. But it’s amazing there was a consensus on any system at all, given that medieval Europe couldn’t even agree on how to count to 100. Germanic languages used the word “hundred” to refer to 120, otherwise called the “long hundred,” or “twelfty.” Medieval England, unsurprisingly, used both, with a Latin book of weights and measures using the long hundred to measure some goods and short hundreds (i.e., 100) to measure others, and alum being measured in stone, but not the contemporary 14-pound stone still sometimes used in Britain and Ireland; also not to be confused with a Tower pound, which was 12 ounces as opposed to 16, or the mercantile pound, which was 15 troy ounces. We’re going to lie down for a while.
Wulfstan (died 1095): Medieval Europe had a lot of units of measurement, and it also had a lot of bishops named Wulfstan. Wikipedia disambiguates three by including the year of their deaths, as well as 11th-century monk Wulfstan The Cantor, and 9th-century merchantman Wulfstan Of Hedeby. But Wulfstan Died 1095 is the most confounding of the lot, as he was the second Wulfstan The Second. He was named after his uncle, Wulfstan Died 1023, who was by turns Bishop Of London, Bishop Of Worcester, and Archbishop Of York. As Archbishop Of York, 1023 was known as Wulfstan II, because there had been a previous Archbishop with that name. But when his nephew took his old post as Bishop Of Worcester, he was also known as Wulfstan II, as he was the second Bishop Of Worcester with the name, the first one being the first Wulfstan II. Okay, we’re going to go lie down again.
Kanchō: A very quick shout out to Kanchō, a children’s prank popular across East Asia that involves clasping one’s hands together in the shape of an imaginary gun, and poking the victim’s anus, while exclaiming, “Kan-CHŌ!” The word itself is a slang term for “enema” in Japanese. Koreans call the prank “ddong chim,” and in China, it’s “Qiānnián shā.” Kanchō even has a arcade game adaptation, Boong-Ga Boong-Ga, although it seems only five consoles were ever made. If a player got an exceptionally high score, the machine would “dispense a small plastic trophy in the shape of a pile of feces.”
Further Down the Wormhole: Wikipedia helpfully included a link for feces, but we’re just going to let that one go. Instead we’re going to the page for finger gun, which helpfully includes detailed instructions for how to make your hand into the shape of a gun. It’s part of a “gestures” category that includes everything from dapping, to pinky swear, to the Vulcan salute, to the kiss. We’ve always thought of kissing as more than a mere gesture, but as Wikipedia correctly notes, “cultural connotations of kissing vary wildly.”
The most consequential kiss in the Christian world was that of Judas Iscariot, who kissed Jesus Christ before betraying him, making the name Judas synonymous with betrayal, and among other things, giving him a namesake in the Judas Goat, which we’ll look at when we run down some animal-related quick hits next week.
90 Comments
You’ve got to appreciate the irony of people getting angry about not understanding a joke that’s about how dumb an animal is.
The trouble is, as Gary Larson himself admitted, is that he made one of the tools look like a crude saw, which made the audience try and figure out what the OTHER tools might be and predictably coming up empty.
Not even sure it is an intelligence joke. Cows don’t have opposable thumbs so of course they are going to be crude. The fact that they managed one sorta-saw is almost impressive.
Now I’m the one who missed the joke, which is also ironic. It’s been so long so now I read one of the books that I had it in my head that he always depicted cows as kind of dumb, which was definitely wrong.
That’s a reference to the legend that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was started by a cow knocking over a lantern.
You’d think this one would be a bit more controversial than a joke about their tools.
The Far Side is tied as my favorite comic. Tied with Calvin and Hobbes. I love them both for different reasons.
No, I think the humor is just the tableau itself. Imagine a world where cows tried to make tools and sort of copied what they was around the farm but were not very good at it, but they still stood around and displayed them. That’s a funny world. The caption is a simple label because it’s not about the narrator making a joke at the expense of the cow, it’s just funny to look at this scene.
“Cow Pies”
Eeny-oony-wanna.
Not hamsters again!
I see your little petrified skull, labeled and resting on a shelf somewhere.
I spent the whole decade of the 80’s working in bookstores, so was a Larson fan from the beginning, but those swapped captions continue to be my favorite moments from the strip.
From the Wikipedia article:In one letter, a reader from Texas wrote that they had shown the cartoon to “40-odd professionals with doctoral degrees,” and none could understand it.I guess that makes me a fucking genius, because this cartoon doesn’t seem all that hard to understand. I will say, though, that it can be extremely hard to explain in words what exactly makes a Far Side cartoon funny. I was reading a book of them recently with a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old who often wanted me to tell them what the “joke” was. We even read the famous “Look at me, I’m a cowboy” cartoon. It’s not easy to point to the joke in that cartoon.Absurdism is tough to explain because it’s easy to be absurd without being funny. A bowling ball sandwich is absurd. But it’s not funny. Why is a buzzard saying, “Howdy howdy howdy!” funny? Obviously the contrast between a grisly scene of a dead cowboy being consumed contrasts with the goofiness of the moment. But even that doesn’t quite capture the nuances of the image and dialog. There are probably a million riffs on the same premise that wouldn’t quite land. So I’m guessing something like this is what people mean when they say the don’t “understand” a Far Side cartoon. It’s not that the premise is necessarily over their heads. It’s that the alchemical nature of the absurdity isn’t working for them as a joke.
I don’t know why Cow Tools is the one Far Side strip that always confuses people. At least there’s a clear joke in that one. On the other hand, there’s this entry, which mystifies me to this day:What.
“From Contented Cows” is (or for many years was) printed on the label of every can of Carnation condensed or evaporated milk. “Contented Cows Give Better Milk” was later the title of a corporate leadership book, which is pretty gross if you think about it even a little bit.Instead of saying she’s not “happy” or “satisfied,” the bovine wife’s word choice reflects the familiar marketing phrase.
Screen name is accurate.
Star for your account name, combined with your cowsplaining.But, you must realize how demeaning it is for you to explain cow things to non-cow beings as if they didn’t know and needed your explanation. People can be smart, too!
Its a riff on the marketing for Carnation Evaporated Milk which advertised itself as coming from “Contented Cows.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_(brand)She has pearls and other accoutrement showing that she is a social climber, which is the other layer to the joke.
And more than that, the phrase “contented cows give more milk” is both a literal concept (treating cows humanely is more productive for the dairy industry even if a lot of factory farms don’t do it) and a metaphor for how bosses should treat employees better if they want them to be more productive.
My thanks to you and everyone else who explained this. It’s
been bothering me since I checked out a collection of Far Side strips
from the school library in 4th grade.
That’s a long time.
This is definitely a generational thing, as people too young to be familiar with that Carnation ad campaign would be confused.
Which is why pop culture jokes get dated so quickly.
I like how every explanation in this thread built on the last one, until we reached an insightful truth about pop culture references.
I always thought that one was hilarious, despite not knowing the Carnation reference. I thought she was just a discontented, upper-class cow, stuck with a lazy bull who’s let himself go. What’s not funny about that? I mean, given that whatever’s in Blondie and Mother Goose and Grimm passes for humor in the comics, that was more than enough for young me when I first read it.
Yeah, I had no idea about the background. I just…thought it was funny. Because it is!
Yeah, I always just assumed it was a face-value joke about being rich but not content, and Larson used cows because he likes to do that sometimes.
And yet canned milk has a very long shelf life.
I was sent to the hardware store for a long weight once. It took ages.
Hey, can you get some elbow grease while you’re there? We’re almost out.
and a can of striped paint!
Also looks like you got a really bad snipe infestation under your porch. Better get some traps and bait
TALK PAGE HIGHLIGHTS: KANCHōDELETED Azrael’s Story,One exception is when a student of an English teacher living abroad in Japan created a fabled story where the teacher kanchoed Godzilla. To ensure that the fingers would stay clean, as Godzilla wears no clothes, the student drew the teacher, Azrael, using a rocket instead.These kind of storys are best left to Azrael’s site. Gerard Foley 20:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)Too much information?Several parts of this article seem to be well-intended, but over-informative, for a wikipedia entry. Specifically:- linking to “nachos”, based on similar pronounciation- illustrating how to write “kanchō” in hiragana and katakana- explaining the the concept of homographs- explaining the difference between wāpuro and Hepburn romanization- listing the homographs of “kanchō”- listing words that contain “kanchō”- linking to the automatic translation service “used to obtain various meanings of kanchou”These should probably be replaced with references, or removed altogether.—Piet Delport 23:14, 12 November 2005 (UTC)First section edit.NEEDS PICTURES —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.140.93.240 (talk) 07:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)I just edited the first section of this page. Since it involved deleting paragraph I thought I should explain why. First I changed “undy gundy” to wedgie or goosing since the former seems to be a fairly obscure term.I removed the last paragraph because all content was redundant or irrelevant IMO. Goosing is now mentioned in the first part, and the “I am a Japanese School Teacher” site is already an external link. All that leaves is the Dirty Sanchez comparison which really didn’t add anything useful.
I gave up on Judas Goat after that difficult second album.
I keep imagining an album of Judas Priest covers performed by the Melvins now, for some reason.
You do NOT move that chair in New England.
I mean, I WOULD (because fuck dibs), but I don’t want to get anyone’s car keyed or tire slashed as a consequence.If I could successfully do so without making the drivers of the cars who will unwittingly park there be assumed to have done it, I totally would.
My sister use to drive this tiny little Geo Storm and was an expert parallel parker, she would just park between the chairs
Your sister is my parking vigilante hero.
Boston: The two most important two rules to remember are: You can only use a space saver when the city declares a snow emergency. You have 48 hours to use a space saver after the city ends an emergency. After that, you must remove it from the street.
Whaddya think you’re bettah than me?! And fahk you, just for good measuh.
say hi to your mother for me!
As the others below say, yeah, don’t move the chair and park in the space. Fold it, put in your trunk, and resell it on the next block.
Clean out the whole street and run an action on that block. “Parking chairs! Get your parking chairs here! More heavy snow on the way!”
Massachusetts is a far cry from New York!
I would. “Hey! Free chair! Thanks!” and off I go.
75% of shootings in Chicago are dibs chair related. Even in the summer!
Good lord. Normally I would wonder where those people angry about Cow Tools are today, but I’m pretty sure a lot of their heads exploded when they perused an issue of the New Yorker at their doctor’s office.
Cow tools really was the original internet shitpost before the internet was even a thing.
Irony and surrealism weren’t yet concepts taken for granted in the early ‘80s. “Late Night with David Letterman” brought them to the masses at about the same time The Far Side debuted. But it took many years to weave them into our collective sense of humor. Now they’re foundational. I still remember trying to explain This is Spinal Tap to my dad in 1984, but he could never wrap his head around the idea that comic actors who could write and play rock music would create oblivious personas and write lyrics that were intentionally mediocre-to-bad for the purpose of making a satirical film. Beyond his middle class postwar comprehension.
True, you could say there’s a lot of meta-humor in ‘Cow Tools.’ It’s funny to have dedicated a portion of newspapers around the country to such an unmotivated image.
That explains a lot.
I think this was the first Far Side comic I saw, and was instantly a fan for life. Larson distilled absurdist humor down to its bare essence.
In their defense, there’s nothing more aggravating to a comic strip reader than not being able to figure out what the joke was supposed to be. It haunts you all day. You start asking others, but none of them care.
I expect that happened to me more with Far Side than every other strip put together.
Doesn’t bother me. They aren’t puzzles. They’re jokes and funny is in the mind of the beholder.
I know one woman who was so confused by a New Yorker cartoon that she went down to the magazine to complain and manage to get hired to make one. Unfortunately, she inadvertently ripped off a Ziggy. It was a whole thing.
Yadda-yadda.
You forgot a “yada.”
And of course, there’s the Far Side where he managed to accidentally imply that dogs all want to have sex with cars.
apparently, everyone also missed the joke in “the holsteins visit the grand canyon.” it’s not that the little sister cow is wearing a bow on her head but that the brother cow is using his hoof to give her “bunny ears,” ie even cow brothers will do that to their sisters when they’re posing for a photo.
A lot of his strips take a moment of thought to get, so I’m not surprised people arrive at all kinds of wild interpretations.
Why this barely-a-joke struck such an irate chord with readers remains a mystery.Cut and paste on 80% of the internet.
In Ohio, people get around parking laws by just abandoning their cars on the street and not moving them for months at a time. Nobody gives a shit about parking their shitty truck in front of your house in the best parking spot and then leaving it there for 10 months while the traffic cops do absolutely nothing about it because the tags are still active. Fuck you truck, I hate you
They did this Kanchō thing in an episode of Kim’s Convenience and I couldn’t believe it was real. Certainly not objectively weirder than a wet willing or tea-bagging, but still weird.
It is not as gross as selling the panties of young girls in vending machines, but it is not good
my only question about those vending machines is…………..i’d like to make a few bucks, where can i send mine?
One drunk night my wife and I looked into it. Like the serious economics of it. We couldn’t get a straight story on how they even get them so I strongly suspect those machines are a lie and those aren’t actual panties from ladies!
I really do think our society needs a mechanism to properly brief people on what horny dudes get up to between the ears. Its awful and the source of much darkness in our society, but we can’t address it until we name it.
I said above, I think the “What is the capital of Thailand” prank seems to be the closet American equivalent.
As a Chicagoan, I have strong feelings about dibs. (Ironically, I don’t have a car, so I really shouldn’t, but I empathize on behalf of all my car owning friends.) I think that dibs is bullshit. You do not get to claim ownership of a parking spot on a public street simply because you dug it out. If you want a parking spot to call your own, you should pay for one or petition your Alderman to limit parking on your street so that only residents can park there.
“But I did the work to dig this out!” You’re gonna have to do that after any snow storm, no matter where you park. When you had to take a spot two blocks away from your apartment, do you place the dibs marker there? No. You only put it out when the parking spot is in the convenient location for you. So it’s NOT entirely about the fact that you dug it out. It’s about the location. You don’t get to claim the spot when it’s convenient to you.And I know there are some people who claim dibs on spots they DIDN’T shovel. A conveniently located shoveled spot is open when they get home. They decide, I’ll put my lawn chair out here so I can keep using it.The only thing that stops me from removing them when I see them (because they technically are illegal, just not enforced) is the fact that the person who ends up parking there might be assumed to be the one who does it, and some of the people who engage in dibs can be mean motherfuckers. I don’t want anyone to get their car vandalized because someone is pissed their stolen traffic cone got removed from a parking spot.
you would be murdered in boston with that attitude. never come here.
I could get murdered here as well. You’ll note how I mentioned “some of the people who engage in dibs can be mean motherfuckers.” Again, I may oppose it, but I’m not so stupid as to act on it.
live long & prosper.
In Boston the rules are actually codified, so if you steal someone’s dibs they can rightfully be pissed:https://www.boston.gov/departments/311/what-do-your-car-when-it-snowsThough, I think they just codified it to help avoid all the fist fights and car vandalism that would ensue if someone’s dibs was stolen.
Well, it doesn’t say anything about other people “stealing” your dibs, just noting that the city won’t remove it until 48 hours after the end of the emergency. The only way I’d even consider respecting a space saver is if the person noted a (reasonable) time frame they expect to need the space again.
Public streets aren’t your personal possession.
I have to assume anyone who arrives home to discover their dibs spot occupied is going to just fuck that car up something fierce. A car with smashed windows can hold a lot of snow.
Yes, and because my empathy for people having their cars fucked up is stronger than my empathy for them being able to find parking, I leave the dibs in place and just bitch about it instead.
i’ve got to start using the word “twelfty” in my everyday conversations!
I think the important thing with the chairs is to recognize the custom where you live. If calling dibs on a public parking space has become universal there, then sure, why not?But anywhere else? Trying to stake a claim on publicly owned property is wrong.So feel free to use your chairs to mark spaces if everyone else is doing so, but don’t think that such behavior is universally acceptable.
It pisses me off a little bit that the Long Hundred exists. That just sounds like some contrarian bullshit.
People weren’t actually angry, so much as baffled and annoyed by how stupid it was.
The American equivalent of Kanchō has to be the old “What is the capital of Thailand” prank right?
Folding chairs, sofas, traffic cones…I would and have thrown them on the sidewalk to take a public space. It’s one of those northeast “traditions” that needs to die, like parking on top of the median. If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of public parking, take the bus or move to the suburbs.
At least two people were killed over parking spots in Philadelphia in Nov. Think what it’s like when it snows.
I’ve always interpreted Cow Tools as being kind of a horror story because the cow’s tools are made out of other cows’ bones
Pretty sure Kim’s Convenience has an episode around ddong chim!
In fairness Wulfstan is a cool-as-hell name so I understand why it was so popular