RKNet Blog... Thing

mathiasx Ernest Hemingway does not cash in on internet memes. He creates them. You ever hear of mudkipz? Yeah, that was him.

Via #ectomo on EFNet. (Come say hi!) ~Ectomo

Until I started looking at the Analog 6.0 stat reports for the site, I had no idea what a shemagh was. Now I know it’s a it’s a style of head wrap which originated in the Middle East. If you really want to know how, ActionGear.com has a pretty handy tutorial (with pictures!).

However, you’re probably wondering what middle eastern head and face protection has to do with site analytics. I am rather mystified myself!

Observe the following:

Up until this very post, I have never talked about shemaghs. How could I if I had no idea that such a thing existed? (Well I’d seen the head wrap in films, mainly, but never in person and never knew what it was called.) I don’t show up in the first five pages of regular Google search results for the term “how to tie a shemagh”. Ditto the first five pages of image results. Nor blog search results (although I personally think I should show up for a lot more terms in the blog search category, this is one I should not show up for which makes this outcome unsurprising). Yahoo’s first five pages of results also pulled up no mention of my name. I checked the first five pages of MSN as well, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. Still no mention of this site.

So what gives? Where does this rogue data come from? I am on shared hosting, but this is just plain out of the blue.
I am on shared hosting, granted, but my stats thus far has been without grievous errors like this. Any masterminds want to take a stab at why such a thing might happen? (Also, feel free to make fun of me for the quality of the other search terms that I legitimately DO show up for. lol mudkips.)

April Fools’ Day, one of the most loathsome and wasteful days the calendar year has to offer, has come and gone. Most everyone seems to have survived, thankfully.

DeviantArt, known for being a haven of artists producing works ranging from hackle-raising (no pun intended) furry fan art to really good photography, decided to celebrate this traditional day of asshattery by pranking all of its users. The accomplished this feat, not by Rickrolling everybody and their brother, but by taking care of exposing the masses to another already-mostly-expired internet meme.

For the duration of April first, all DeviantArt user pics were changed to a looping animated gif of a Mudkip, which displayed the phrase “so I heard you like mudkips??”. (Well, more or less anyway.)

A lot of people seemed to be under the impression that DeviantArt had been “hacked” by 4chan. A lot of other people didn’t seem to mind at all. Indeed some even seemed to embrace the siren song of the anime rendition of an axolotl forever om nom nom nom-ing in their profiles and various visited pages.

It was of course only a joke and DeviantArt returned everyone’s avatars to normal when it was April 2nd. April Fools’ Day was pretty uneventful for yours truly, I think I would have liked to have had a little omigod hax! rather than an entire day of waiting for someone to do something awful to me. Anybody out there get meme bashed or otherwise tricked this past April 1st?

I found a great big PNG with instructions on how to make a papercraft mudkip! I found it on some random gamer forum, but it looks like it originated with someone from /po/.

If you get around to making this, be sure to share links to photos in the comments! Fun papercraft Pokey-mans for everyone! YAY. If that’s not your speed, here are two simple, adorable kitties that you can print and build, too.

Enjoy!

All this talk of Mudkips (and having to troll around Google Labs for something work related) got me to thinking, just how popular is this whole “mudkips” thing, and what about rival Pokémon meme, Seaking?
Well, the results are in!
The winner for longest running search item? Seaking.
Current most popular? Mudkips.
Overall though, I’d say the winner is Seaking by a huge margin. Fuck yeah, Seaking!

Although I couldn’t help but notice, when adding Slowpoke (Hey guys, am I late?), I got some articles too. Talking about some hybrid Lexus. Funky. In typical Slowpoke fashion, this search lags way, way behind the others. Fitting, really.

Search result totals (as of a few minutes ago):
Seaking - 1,110,000
Slowpoke - 624,000
Mudkips - 359,000 for mudkip, 122,000 for mudkips

Clearly, even though there’s a rise in popularity of the newer gen meme fodder, Mudkips, there is a serious lack of content for this topic. Although to be fair, I think Encyclopedia Dramatica probably has the subject covered well enough for us all. If you don’t know that ED is not safe for work then you haven’t been around the block. So I’ll tell you right now, that it’s not safe for work, and if you’re really very worried about that, then you should probably not go around the block. They do however have a link in there for a PDF on scientists’ attempts to study the development and regeneration of axolotls, which as we learned earlier today, are the closest thing we get to Mudkips on this side of our Quantum Reality Tunnel. Science will find a way though, it always does. Yay science!

Anyway, all of that was really just some blatent search related infoporn, exposing me for the meme-addled child I truly am. Do they have support groups for this kind of thing?

Ok, not really. My good friend Kento over at Uglorable has composed an AMAZING compendium of obscure animals - one for each letter of the alphabet - entitled: Obscure Animal Alphabet: Axolotl to Zebu.

For letter A is the Axolotl, which HAS to be the inspiration for that internet famous Pokémon, Mudkips.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Sure there’s color differences, but that’s pretty minor all things considered.

As you go down the list, you realize that the creators of Pokémon were clearly influenced by nature itself. Sure, they take a lot of liberties, but in terms of creature design, it’s clear they went straight for nature’s bounty.

Even if you couldn’t care less about video games, Pokémon, or internet memes, I’d still recommend checking out this animal alphabet. Every letter is an adventure, there’s a photo of each unique animal, and a description of each one! It’s like Zoo Books, only awesome.

Perhaps so much that you wish you were one?
Deck out your hellspawn in Mudkips this year for halloween, via BuyCostumes.com. Note the maniacal expression on the model’s face. Clearly, he loves him some Mudkips.

Tip off courtesy of loyal reader from the ormgas IRC: efiloN! :D

Editor’s note: you may have come here because you noticed a small notice at the bottom of the “wizard has turned you into a mudkips” picture. I want to go on record as saying I did NOT create that image. However, a lot of people were hotlinking to the copy of it posted above. Rather than shut down hotlinking altogether, I have opted to let people know where the image they are hotlinking to is being hosted. I’m glad you stopped by. :) Please feel free to peruse the rest of the site and comment.

Just for you, gentle readers, just for you.