January 16, 2009

First Line

For some reason I’ve had this line in my head for months now. So I decided to finally draw it and post it:

In my mind, this means something specific. Can you figure out what? And if so, how far can you continue the line?

Posted by David at 12:42 PM | Permalink
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Comments

Has it got something to do with musicians always writing songs about terrible events? Though in my head that doesn’t explain the bird or the snake(except for the song Barry White sings for snakes on The Simpsons) That’s my way-off guess…

Posted by: Mark | January 16, 2009 1:52 PM

Lenny Bruce is not a afraid! That’s a sad hurricane, friend.

Posted by: Casey Duffy | January 16, 2009 1:53 PM

Damn! Now I just look foolish.

Posted by: Mark | January 16, 2009 1:56 PM

I’d draw an ear for listening to yourself churn. but after that I can’t fathom how you could continue.

Posted by: Wavemancali | January 16, 2009 2:15 PM

That’s great!

Posted by: Steve Lawson | January 16, 2009 2:32 PM

It may be, but “I feel fine”.

Posted by: Garrick | January 16, 2009 2:41 PM

Leo-nard Bern-stein!

Posted by: DAve | January 16, 2009 3:39 PM

Viva R.E.M.!

Posted by: Seth | January 16, 2009 3:43 PM

Each of the images is more dangerous than the last.

Posted by: Andrew Wade | January 16, 2009 5:24 PM

Brilliant! As always.

Say, for such a carefully designed site, why don’t you have a favicon?

You should come up with a cool one.

Posted by: uuh, Robert? | January 16, 2009 6:13 PM

nevermind. It finally showed up in my ie6 browser. My bad.

Posted by: uuh, Robert? | January 16, 2009 6:16 PM

I have no idea what it means, but I like it anyway. Great continuity…

Posted by: Kamigaeru | January 16, 2009 9:54 PM

The sound of twitter is seducing me away from my karaoke and into the abyss… ?

Posted by: rwo | January 17, 2009 9:23 AM

Speaking of the favicon, it seems that its declaration is not right in the HTML of this page. The header refers to:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>

where it would be better to have no indication (default /favicon.ico) or the more accurate (for this site):

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”/favicon.ico”>

I hope this helps and does not simply sound moronic.

Posted by: Yves Roumazeilles | January 17, 2009 3:28 PM

Hmmm, I looked at this and immediately thought of a seismic shock on the left, leading to a tsunami on the right, with various animals reacting (birds reportedly sometimes show a prescient pre-sponse to earthquakes).

I as far as I know, however, aeroplanes do not spontaneously take off in fright, so I’m missing something :-)

Posted by: Chris | January 18, 2009 3:56 PM

David, give love to my Ellen…I have been regularly reading your posts, brilliant, I still can’t figure out why you are not “the” man in the Big Apple…Anyway, I can’t resist a riddle, especilly one with an ANCIENT EGYPTIAN quail chick symbolizing the letter and sound “w”. is that intentional?

Posted by: valentina anselmi | January 18, 2009 4:52 PM

Hmmm…
an ear, a globe, no idea how to draw needs, a speaker, a grunt from WoW, an arm making a muscle, how do you draw a clatter?

Posted by: Gary | January 18, 2009 7:04 PM

Hmmm…
an ear, a globe, no idea how to draw needs, a speaker, a grunt from WoW, an arm making a muscle, how do you draw a clatter?
and, as always, VERY creative - I love your site!

Posted by: Gary | January 18, 2009 7:05 PM

Whatever it is, I’m just hoping it doesn’t involve snakes on a plane.

Posted by: Felipe | January 18, 2009 9:36 PM

But I feel fine.

Posted by: elizabeth | January 20, 2009 5:13 AM

The only thing scarier than a black hole is a man with a microphone.

Posted by: SRShearer | January 20, 2009 7:52 PM

ha - you drew my ringtone!

Posted by: Carolyn | January 21, 2009 1:14 AM

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s Snake-Wave-Spiral-Man!

Posted by: Anonymous | January 21, 2009 11:44 AM

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s Snake-Wave-Spiral-Man!

Posted by: BV | January 21, 2009 11:46 AM

LMAO @ snakes on a plane!

Posted by: Katie Alender | January 22, 2009 1:54 AM

Just to clarify, for those of you who do not get it:

that’s great it starts with an earthquake
birds and snakes and aeroplanes
lenny bruce is not afraid
eye of the hurricane

Posted by: LS | January 22, 2009 4:24 AM

Fun! Alrighty (unless LS got it and it’s just song lyrics), it’s a sequence to be continued as far as possible to the right, so the question is “audio wave-ish graphic is to these four things as spiral graphic is to what?”

So there’s an audio wave and then there are four things that produce sound — sound that communicates in various ways. What’s the sequence? Not increasing complexity (human can communicate much more complex range of ideas with sound than bird can, but snake and plane don’t fit well into that theory).

Maybe increasing danger level. A bird and snake can communicate “I’m about to attack you” and there’s a greater threat from a rattlesnake attack than from a songbird attack. The sound/proximity of a plane can communicate that it’s about to do a lot of damage. But of course a human voice can communicate in the most dangerous and damaging ways — especially a human in a position of power and/or speaking to a crowd, as the drawing suggests.

So, continuing: what comes next might be four spiral-themed things ranging from, say, a religious icon (least threatening) to a hurricane and then a black hole (most threatening).

Posted by: Kay | January 23, 2009 11:14 AM

I did a flow chart of this about a year ago for Song Chart pool in Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61735774@N00/2304355559/

Posted by: Dave Cortright | January 24, 2009 10:21 AM

The first symbol reminds me of the freesound project’s logo.

Posted by: Tyler | January 31, 2009 6:26 PM

The image represents the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack

Posted by: Maneo Choudhury | February 12, 2009 4:26 PM

I got it.

It’s about the sound made on twitter when you tweet about snakes on a plane being a very crap movie. But then a lot of Snakes on a Plane fans start screaming into their mics and drown out your valid points in a whirlpool of trollism

Posted by: Idea Master Funda | April 23, 2009 2:45 AM

We ought to thank Mr. Sterne Lawrence. =P

Posted by: Roberto from Italy | April 24, 2009 4:50 AM

No really, it’s a rhebus for internet utils, isn’t it? Seesmic, Twitter, the snake HAS to be ‘fark’, Propeller, MySpace (or ‘Live’), Twurl… And next in line would be a cupcake (for delicious).

Posted by: Miss_Om | May 28, 2009 12:08 AM

I think the drawing confirms that you’re absolutely bonkers.

Posted by: Eelkonio | June 16, 2009 11:45 AM