Oh my god! There's an axe in my head!

July 16, 2012 10:05 PM

Back in the far distant past of the internet (round about 1993, it seems), back when Usenet was actually a bunch of discussion groups instead of a way to download warez and pirated media, the newsgroup alt.gothic had a simple post made by one Yohaun, a short list of translations of the phrase "Oh my god! There's an axe in my head!". Responses contributed translations in more languages. Now, nearly 20 years later, this list continues to exist and grow.
posted by hippybear (9 comments total)

k:-O
posted by yeoz at 10:13 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Huh. Different URL in that old post that redirects to the new page.

I guess this is a double. Oh my god!
posted by hippybear at 10:15 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I can eat glass and it does not hurt me.
posted by 23 at 10:15 PM on July 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

(The new page does have history about the meme, plus a lot of footnotes for the different translations...)
posted by hippybear at 10:16 PM on July 16, 2012

This is strange and wonderful.
posted by LarryC at 10:23 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Cantonese says "Oh god! Someone has chopped at my head with a knife!" The Mandarin is pretty good, albeit totally lacking tones. When I see lists like this, with errors like this, it makes me wonder how far off all the other languages are.
posted by jiawen at 10:24 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Great to see an Iron Warrior meme still going strong 20 years later. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the more obscure translations contained the time and location of the next nautical competition.
posted by ceribus peribus at 10:24 PM on July 16, 2012

jiawen: scroll down to the footnotes and look at the changes they've made to be more accurate in various languages, and drop the maintainer of the website an email or something with your corrections. They seem to have gotten more serious about having things correct in the eight or so years since this was first on MetaFilter.
posted by hippybear at 10:27 PM on July 16, 2012

In my head, I can hear my grandmother saying this in yiddish.
posted by not_on_display at 10:38 PM on July 16, 2012