A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Timewaster du jour: http://www.omnomnomnom.com You may need to reload once or twice to see what's going on.

As with any such project, some iterations are tasteless, so activate mental filter before browsing. But otherwise there is much cleverness. I have been chuckling.

OK, I can often deduce the source when I see 100 livejournalers all using icons made from the same source material. It is in this way that I learned of the animated film "Rejected", for example, or the TV show "Invader Zim", or know that there was an episode of Buffy where Angel was a muppet. Or that there's a character on Buffy named Angel.

But I am totally lost on the one involving a set of black-and-white posed photographs depicting a man being scared by a sheep-head. Sometimes the icons are animated, showing the man's increasing fear as the sheep-head inches ever closer. Do you know what I'm talking about? What the heck is this from?

According to sunspiral by way of this post by hrafn, there exists a meme in the northeastern U.S. where motorists put signs saying "Free NP" in their vehicles' windows, in hopes that female drivers will flash their breasts at them. (hrafn's post includes some pictures she snapped of some of these signs seen in the wild.)

It apparently originated from local radio shock-jocks around 10 years ago, and has indeed outlived them (for this was that brief era when, for some reason, there were many more shock-jocks then there are today). What I find most intriguing is that, as of this writing, there are no relevant google hits explaining this phenomenon. Googling for ["free np"] gives some sites about NeoPets, some random commercial-product giveaways, and the number-one hit of another blogger himself asking what the hell this means and noting the lack of google hits. (Fun irony!)

If sunspiral's account is corrent, then it seems that the virulence period for this meme began and ended before the Web took off among the mainstream. For 10 years it has lain dormant, with all carriers of it completely failing to spread it any further, apparently not for lack of trying.

The very notion of a pre-Web meme remaining in stasis for a whole decade is amazing to me, like discovering a stone-age tribe living in isolation.