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eldin raigmore Admin

Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 1621 Location: SouthEast Michigan
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 12:30 am Post subject: Oh my god! There's an axe in my head! |
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Oh my god! There's an axe in my head! _________________ "We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
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Kiri

Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Posts: 471 Location: Latvia/Italy
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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Really, how do you come up with these!?  |
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eldin raigmore Admin

Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 1621 Location: SouthEast Michigan
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 5:19 pm Post subject: |
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Kiri wrote: | Really, how do you come up with these!?  |
I tried to answer your question; somehow the post didn't make it here.
Anyway, I saw it advertised while reading a webcomic.
Here's their 'history': wrote: | SOME HISTORY.
When we first received the email from Holly Black in 1997, we were only able to trace the forwards back to one Elizabeth Lipp– then in February of 2001, Nancy Cerelli emailed to tell us of a young prophet posting on Usenet:
Quote: | It's been so long since the whole thing that I've forgotten his last name. He was a physics student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada. His first name is Yohan. Really brilliant, quirky guy! I remember him posting it to Alt.Gothic back somewhere around 1993. I was also studying physics but at the nearby University of Guelph. There were only about 18 or 20 translations on his original list. |
And now at last it comes. Hear now the words of YOHAUN, aka Johann Junginger:
Quote: | Just discovered your site today. I must say its one of the better "Axe in my head" sites I've ever come across.
As Nancy Cerelli has pointed out, I'm responsible for starting this "Axe in my head" list (although it clearly has a life of its own now). I originally posted it to alt.gothic[...] 1993 sounds about right[...]
The original phrase is from the Iron Warrior, the Engineering student newspaper [University of Waterloo]. I believe this would have been in Fall 1993. One edition featured lots of photos of faculty and administration members with crudely drawn axes in their heads. The caption "oh my god, there's an axe in my head" would appear near these photos. This edition of the Iron Warrior may have been the one featuring the Chainsaw Ralph and Skillsaw Sue cartoons but I could be wrong[...]
One day my friend Kevin McLellan and I were in the Student Centre pretending to study, when Kevin turned towards me with a maniacal gleam in his eyes and asked "how do you say 'oh my god there's an axe in my head' in French?". The germ had been planted...
I forgot about this for awhile until I discovered Usenet (and alt.gothic - a wonderful place to procrastinate from one's studies). It occurred to me that the internet was a wonderful place to poll people for useless information - so I posted the original list, containing English, French and my clumsy attempt at Latin. I was flooded with replies and began to have great fun maintaining this. I believe I still have a postcard containing a translation in Egyptian hieroglyphs; if you ask nicely I'll try to find it and scan it for you . I only ever posted the list to alt.gothic, but I guess other people began to disseminate it. I'm stunned every time I do a search for the phrase "axe in my head" on a web search engine. I am really amazed at the momentum this thing has gathered...
Keep up the good work - you are doing a better job of maintaining this than I ever could have done...
Sincerely,
Johann (Yohaun) Junginger [2001 Nov 25] |
Words cannot express our pride and thanks for being recognized as a leading source of axe-to-head communication by the man who started it all. Yohaun has since been kind enough to provide the postcard mentioned above– see it and links to Google's archive of his Usenet posts below.
While the background chronicle of "Oh my God! there's an axe in my head," now stands in a kind of completion, there is still much to be done.
Click here to find out how to contribute to this page, and make your mark on history!
An early hint of Yohaun's axes on Usenet: 1994 Jul 20
An early posting of Yohaun's list on Usenet [12 entries]: 1994 Jul 24
First findable correction by a third party [Latin]: 1994 Sep 05
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_________________ "We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission
Last edited by eldin raigmore on Mon Aug 22, 2011 7:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Zearen Wover

Joined: 09 Apr 2009 Posts: 42
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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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It's nice to know this is a contribution to a long standing tradition.
Since I didn't see lojban on the Lojban on the list:
.i .oi.uesai lo ka'amru cu nenri le mi stedu
Gloss:
.i `.' .oi {complaint..} .ue sai {strong surprise..} [₁(₂[nenri1 (contents) :] lo any/some ka'amru axe)₂ cu is/does «₃nenri being contents»₃ (₄[nenri2 (container(s)) :] le the mi stedu head(s) [of] I, me)₄]₁
Davin:
god ej! hym ahek let wit lajŋid lim!
Gloss:
God hey! A axe The I head-TRAN in-TRAN! _________________
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eldin raigmore Admin

Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 1621 Location: SouthEast Michigan
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks, Zearan Wover!
BTW how'd you come up with your username? What's it mean? _________________ "We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission |
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