June 11, 2003

Yoinks!

So, looking through my referral logs, I noticed an odd one: the Simpsonesque yoink.org. I pulled it up, and it's a link to the comments section of kottke.org -- just the comments, not the post that they're connected to. The title of the page says kottke.org, even. According to Google's cache, Jason briefly (as in one post) toyed with MT over there -- perhaps as a testing ground for his switch away from Blogger for the main site? Interesting.

Alas, this is not news so much as a rediscovery: Weblog Wannabe exposed a little of this back in Sept. 2000 -- along with finding the odd fishbulb.com (what the hellll?). Anyway, I think it's an interesting solution to what I would assume is a space issue -- by shunting bandwidth-hogging comments to another, underutilized URL, kottke.org's bandwidth and memory remain accessible even when there's a comment storm abrewing. (Interesting, though, that comments for the main column content aren't hosted at yoink -- you'd think he'd put them over there, too, since there are regularly double-digit comment counts over there, versus a small handful per entry on the "remainders" column.)

Posted by Andrew Huff at June 11, 2003 02:21 PM
Comments

fishbulb - n, (`fish` * bulb , Simpsons reference. Homer takes the kids to Springfield dump after church and finds a box of Japanese dishwasher detergent whose mascot looks suspiciously like Homer. A disturbed Homer contacts the manufacturer for information. Turns out the manufacturer is the result of a merger between two companies whose mascots were a fish and light bulb. You see the mascots merging in an animation.
Bart: "There you go, fishbulb."

Posted by: jpeg at June 11, 2003 05:47 PM

Wow, so he registered not one but two Simpsons-related URLs. That's a fan.

Posted by: Andrew at June 11, 2003 11:32 PM

Plus, Mr. Sparkle banishes dirt to the land of wind and ghosts!

Posted by: amyc at June 12, 2003 10:03 AM

Hmmm, looks like mrsparkle.com is still available....

Posted by: amyc at June 12, 2003 10:04 AM

Some more Internet/Web/cartoon tie-ins....

A few months ago, Homer gave his e-mail address as ChunkyLover53@aol.com. Of course, the writers had registered the address before the episode aired, and hundreds of people sent Homer mail.

And then there was the time that "King of the Hill" had an episode where Peggy Hill had some pictures taken of her (freakishly large) feet, and they ended up on a fetish site at PeggysFeet.com. Someone at Fox had the great idea to pre-register the URL and put up a Flash animation that mirrored what was shown on the site in the episode. (Click Peggy's foot, and you heard "Hoo yeah!") Unfortunately, they didn't re-register the domain, and it's just an ordinary old pr0n site now.

And then there's the most recent instance of a cartoon Website turning out to be real: www.yzzerdd.com, from an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The site in the show simply littered the screen with popup ad windows, which eventually spilled out of the computer and filled up the ATHF's house. The actual site is not that bad, but it's still quite amusing.

Posted by: jima at June 12, 2003 01:05 PM

And no one can forget Mr. X's website : http://www.thesimpsons.com/mrx/

I think the earliest reference to a website on a show that actually became something was on NewsRadio where a guy was found dead in a copier and Phil Hartman thought he had killed him. It turned out to be a suicide and the guy left a note referring to http://www.freakzilla.com :)

Posted by: jpeg at June 12, 2003 01:58 PM