What Happen?

Dude...What is UP with that NAME?
I've talked about it before, here and again more recently, here, but I still get asked about it, so perhaps it bears a re-hash now for posterity. The name of my blog, 'All Your Blogs Are Belong to Us' is a gag; a joke; a goof. It was originally directed at the group of Tony Kornheiser message board peeps with whom I've been involved since 2002.

The saying is a longstanding Internet buzzphrase that dates back to 1989, but met its greatest popularity a little more than ten yeras later. It's a derivative of a quote delivered by the space villain, 'Cats,' from an obscure Sega Genesis console video game called Zero Wing. In the games's introduction, a crew of 'good guy' space troopers is surprised when their installation falls under sudden attack, followed by an ominous announcement:

Narrator: In A.D. 2101
War was beginning...
Captain: What happen?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
All your base are belong to us.
You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time. HA HA HA...
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !! You know what you doing. Move 'zig'. For great justice.

As nonsensical as all that sounds, the best part is the obvious obliteration of the English language from the poorly translated Japanese dialog. This humorous butchery vaulted the game into the stratosphere of inside jokes across gamer bulletin board systems at the end of the 80s, but soon died out thereafter. However the gag was revived in 2000 via a a parody video created by David Lloyd of the gamer site, Overclocked.org. The All Your Base parody became an Internet phenomenon nearly overnight.


All your base are belong to us (YouTube)
(All credit and rights reserved for the original poster)

The 'catch' was in portraying the phrase in as many different and unlikely applications as possible, as Lloyd showed in the video with hundreds of quick-cut images of Photoshopped signage and other humorous displays of the AYBABTU slogan. The phenomenon was noted in news and magazine articles from Time Magazine, to USA Today, Fox News, L.A. Times, Tech TV, Wired, and more.

And even though it had a decent run but then died once again, the phenomenon still seems to make occasional comebacks, resurfacing and fading, but never quite disappearing altogether.

One of those comebacks occurred in 2002, when I, not quite the gamer type, hooked up with my buddies in on the TK Blog.

It started off as something someone just tossed out in conversation, subsequently to which guys applied different, more ridiculous applications, such as “All Your Post Are Belong to Us,” or “All Your Jock Are belong To Us,” and so on.

So when I originally began this blog I decided to summon up the most obvious employment of the slogan for the situation, fully expecting that at least one of these guys would eventually find it. It was totally an off-the-wall kind of thing. I just wanted to make 'em laugh, given that the phrase was a running joke in our group.

Well, guess what: nobody ever discovered me! And eventually I stopped waiting; I decided to put the new medium to use and try my hand at writing, and found to my utter surprise that it absolutely changed my life.

finis