It's wonderful that someone at the Wall Street Journal, or an interviewee for this Mike Myers, and to a witty commentator on my The post about the cable cuts featured an image of a shark with lasers attached to its dorsal fin (not its head like the joke goes, but it's a good effort). Worthen quotes TeleGeography research director Stephan Beckert:
“It might have been sharks with laser beams on their heads but I’m guessing it’s not.”
Ha-ha! Hysterical. Call downstairs and tell them to get us an image!Compare that to a quote from
Yes, I said "terrorist sharks," not "sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads," and one commentator called me "weak" for not including an image of a shark with a suicide bomber vest on. Well, at the time, I was just being a smartass, and it was the end of the day. Besides, that might be a tad insensitive, don't you think? Another commentator suggested they were Mormon union sharks, so they'd have big families and you couldn't fire them. Also a tad politically incorrect. But later that night, a Murdok reader by the name of "Guest"—Guest is a popular name these days—really drove the joke home: "Sharks…With freaking laser beams attached to their heads!!!!" And there you have it, the birth of the laser-shark joke in reference to the cable cuts. Call it what you want, collective unconscious, parallel development, or the obvious joke just hanging in the air for anybody to take because everybody's seen that movie; I still say it started here. I even added an addendum in TechCrunch's Duncan Riley, who at one time was a real zealot about linking and giving credit where credit is due (and who, at least at one time, wasn't a real believer in this collective unconscious/parallel development/fair use hullabaloo), probably didn't read my post about it, so he couldn't have known to give me some credit for it either instead of the WSJ. Riley does suggest that News Corp.'s cheesy tendencies are infecting the great Wall Street Journal, and that images of laser-sharks are just beneath them. We disagree. We think that makes for an entertaining blog post that resonates with Austin Powers fans. Besides, it was a WSJ blog post, and not a front-page story. Also besides, we've made a better image to reclaim our joke. And the shark's way scarier.
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