“Poo Monster” is something only a few people, at least non-internet people, seem to know about. Most respond to him with a blank stare, but when you meet another aficionado it’s like encountering someone who gets a really good inside joke.
Poo Monster is actually known as Domo, or Domo-kun/Domokun, and he comes from Japan. It isn’t really shocking that Domo-kun has Japanese origins – what other country would have a TV station whose mascot looks like a giant, toothy brick of, well, poo?
Domo, the main character, is described as “a strange creature that hatched from an egg,” with a large, sawtoothed mouth that is locked wide open. Domo’s favorite food is Japanese-style meat and potato stew, and he has a strong dislike for apples, because of an unexplained mystery in his DNA. Domo can only communicate via producing a low-pitched noise which sounds somewhat like his own name, but other characters appear to understand him. Domo is known to pass gas repeatedly when nervous or upset.
And here he is hatching from said egg (I wonder what his parents look like? Theory: perhaps they’re some breed of unforeseen, unsanctioned-by-Nintendo Pokemon!) and meeting a clever old rabbit named Usajji:
A pal of mine and I became enamoured with Poo Monster shortly after his introduction to the West, via that “Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten” meme that depicted voracious Domo-kun chasing after innocent kitties (an image which is apparently at odds with his kindly, childlike Japanese reputation). (Interesting sidenote: according to that link, “in 2006, Nickelodeon licensed Domo-kun from NHK and began work on a Domo-kun series”. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AMAZEBALLS.)
For years we had no idea where Domo-kun came from or what he was, so we dubbed him Poo Monster. (Another similarly enamoured pal knew him as “Poo Biscuit”, demonstrating we weren’t the only ones who notes the fecal resemblance). The day we finally identified him as Domo-kun was a most frabjous one.
And clearly my friends and I aren’t the only ones with a Poo Monster obsession. A quick search reveals an endless amount of Domo-kun kitsch – I have a set of Domo post-its in my desk drawer at work (they’re way too special to ever actually use), while my Poo Biscuit pal has an awesome Domo change purse.
LONG LIVE DOMO-KUN.
(Note: Domo-kun is not to be confused with Doraemon, the robot cat from the future.)
Dear everyone who’s not into Twitter: please stop bashing Twitter.
Or at least stop bashing it via lazy criticisms which everyone’s sick of hearing, such as:
“I don’t know what Twitter is ‘for’.” You sound like an ignoramus when you say this. It’s like boasting that you don’t know what the internet is “for”.
“I don’t need to know what strangers are eating for breakfast.” If you’re following people who only tweet about what they ate for breakfast, you’re following the wrong people.
“140 characters isn’t enough to say anything substantial.” Sure it is. Try using the site.
“Hey, did you know that ‘Twitter’ sounds like ‘twit’ and ‘twat’? Let’s make puns based on this observation!” Oh ho ho. Important: The “twit”/”twat” jokes stopped being funny when vaudeville did. Joke about Twitter, but come up with new material please. The existing stuff is as insightful as comparing Sarah Jessica Parker to a horse1.
And when you write patronising articles like this, which treat Twitter’s users (in particular, Twitter’s female users) as superficial airheads who use the site to gush about the trivial high-school details of their life, you sound foolish and deserved to be mocked by the internet.
Okay, sure, Twitter is a great place to gush about the trivial details of your life. But that’s not its only purpose. Much has been made about Twitter’s big-picture usefulness. But it’s a handy thing for everyday people to have in their everyday lives, too. For example: when I was slogging through the final chapters of My Book, it was nice to check into #amwriting and see that, hey, there are a lot of people working at this too, even if I don’t know any of them.
I think that’s kind of rad.
But after all these years I’m still reading articles in the MSM about “novelties” like online dating and adults who play video games – somehow I doubt the Twitter-bashing will end anytime soon.
Not that I think SJP is especially equine, but “She looks like a horse, hur hur” is a gag made about her that needs to be put out to pasture, pun intended. [↩]
First up, two unrelated things: coffee is so good; Vegemite on toast is so good.
The Rejectionist held a contest recently to write the most amazing form rejection letter in the history of the universe, and the winner is a truly astounding cavalcade of LOLs. A sampling:
Please don’t be offended. Your query’s horrendous.
We can’t understand why you’d bother to send us
a missive so deeply in need of an edit
we wanted to vomit as soon as we read it.
Its hook was insipid, its grammar revolting,
its font microscopic, its manner insulting,
its lies unconvincing, its structure confusing,
its efforts at comedy less than amusing.
We think that on average the writing is better
in comments on YouTube than inside your letter.
That’s gold, Jerry! The complete opus is here. I reckon most writers would be pretty chuffed with a rejection like this.
If you aren’t already subscribed to Subnormality, the weekly internet comic featuring “a variety of thinly-veiled misanthropic tirades”, go and do so right now. I dare you not to read the entire archive in one go.
I still (still!) don’t have the internet connected at my new house.
Clearly, this is a dreadful predicament for someone who is addicted to the internet. Gmail is going unchecked. Tweets are vanishing into the ether. My Google Reader subscriptions are piling up. And I can’t even play around with Google Wave!
(I guess I could read Gmail/check Twitter/browse Reader/play with Wave when I’m at work, but unfortunately I have actual work to do there which gets in the way of fun stuff.)
On the bright side, the lack of internet at home means I’m getting some reading done. Pictured above is the section of my bookshelf specially dedicated to all the books I have to read (or in some cases, re-read). I have this thing where I constantly forbid myself from buying new books till I finish the unread books I already have, but then of course I always go and buy new books anyway to add to the pile.
Weirdly, my writing is less productive than ever at the moment, even though I don’t have the siren song of the internet calling to me. Theory: I’m not using the internet, so I’m not using my Macbook, so I’m not writing. Huh.
