Waxy.org
Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, an independent journalist and programmer living in Portland, Oregon. I created Upcoming.org and some other stuff too.

Contact Me: log@waxy.org or waxpancake on AIM

Garry Kasparov Griefed by Flying Penis

Posted May 19, 2008

In a bizarre example of Second Life leaking into the real world, a political assembly on Saturday led by chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov was disrupted by a flying penis.

Kasparov is a leader of the Other Russia movement, a loose coalition of activists opposing Vladamir Putin and the current Russian government. Over 700 people showed up for the event in central Moscow, but Kasparov's speech was interrupted when a large phallus-shaped helicopter started buzzing around the room. The Moscow Times attributed the prank to "a couple of pro-Kremlin Young Russia activists."

Warning: Mildly NSFW images and video follow.

Compare this incident to the Second Life prank from 2006, where a CNET interview with virtual real-estate magnate Anshe Chung was interrupted by fifteen minutes of flying penises, courtesy of a group of griefers called Room 101.


The big question: Did the pro-Kremlin activists controlling the penis helicopter know about their Second Life counterparts, or was this just griefer minds thinking alike?

Update: I found a translation, courtesy of Shusha from Metafilter. After the security guard swatted it to the ground, Kasparov says, "I think we have to be thankful for the opposition's demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate. Also, apparently most of their arguments are located beneath the belt." Someone in the audience shouts, "Finally the political power shows its face!" Kasparov quickly replies, "Well, if that's its face..." to laughter from the audience.

21 Comments (Add Yours)

May 19, 2008
1:06 PM  
Brett wrote:

The bigger question: where can I get one of those remote control penis helicopters?


May 19, 2008
1:06 PM  
Annalee wrote:

Fill in the requisite "In Russia the [noun] [verb] you!" joke here. I really cannot figure out what the noun and the verb should be though.


May 19, 2008
1:37 PM  
Fn0rd wrote:

LOL!


May 19, 2008
1:59 PM  
Ian wrote:

Brett, it looks like a modded Pico-Z helicopter ;) You can get them from www.firebox.com!


May 19, 2008
2:15 PM  
sixfoot6 wrote:

Don't miss the video of the flying penis being smacked out of the air by some stern brute in the room. Comedy gold.


May 19, 2008
2:55 PM  
Andy Baio wrote:

Ryan, that's the same video I posted above. :)


May 19, 2008
6:00 PM  
Sausage Party wrote:

I like RCtoys.com for flying stuff.


May 19, 2008
6:26 PM  
Jim wrote:

One good whack, and it was all over.


May 19, 2008
6:47 PM  
Beachcoma wrote:

This is the best news I've read all day! Thanks for the vid links.


May 19, 2008
7:50 PM  
Adam wrote:

Russian translation at the end: “That was a mighty penis, almost as mighty as my penis, much mightier then Putin's penis.”


May 19, 2008
9:12 PM  
Pelaca wrote:

Must to be called helicockter.
I can't wait to open a new web page www.helicockter.com


May 19, 2008
9:29 PM  
Ryan wrote:

Doh! I somehow jumped from the front page straight to the comments, and didn't see that you'd posted the vids. That's what I get for drinking heavily in the middle of the day.


May 19, 2008
9:29 PM  
Mum wrote:

Annalee: In Russia, penis fly you!


May 19, 2008
11:31 PM  
staunton wrote:

Notice how the guards were ready to take a bullet from the "attacker"?


May 20, 2008
10:12 AM  
Hargrimm wrote:

Annalee: In Soviet Russia, flying penises smack you!


May 20, 2008
1:54 PM  
Cyberia wrote:

Umm... The music in the @nd-Life attack is from Tchaikowsky's "The Nutcracker." Coincidence, is it, that Tchaikowsky was... Russian?

Keep Cool, but Care
Ian Scuffling


May 21, 2008
10:33 AM  
Adrian wrote:

In Russia, penis fly you!


May 21, 2008
10:38 AM  
Barry wrote:

Priceless.


May 21, 2008
2:32 PM  
wacko wrote:

I heard these didnt quite measure up. The competition is stiff!! You should see the charger!!!


Jun 5, 2008
4:50 AM  
Alessio in Asia wrote:

Till they fly a penis, they can even be funny.
The problems are others...


Aug 20, 2008
5:26 AM  
Baron Von Kerplunk wrote:

I prefer, "In Russia Penis fucks with you!" :]


 

Leave a comment





Waxy Links
Ads via The Deck
November 18, 2008
Bike Hero, biking a Guitar Hero level in the real world — most likely a commercial viral, and maybe even fake, but does it matter? beyond awesome
Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy — mostly posting this just to beat Rex to it
The A.V. Club's 27 popular websites that became books — though they missed Belle de Jour, The Washingtonienne, Fucked Company, Fark, and ZUG
Speed Guitar goes to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — every hour, on the hour, for one solid minute of metal complete with gothic arch and smoke machine
MGMT's "Kids" on the iPhone Ocarina — "the iPhone Ocarina officially replaces the recorder as the nerdiest instrument I can play"
Mena Trott responds to Valleywag article about their Disneyland vacation — my favorite was Space Mountain Snob
LIFE Magazine photo archive hosted by Google — millions of high-res photos, most never published
Amazon launches CloudFront, their pay-as-you-go CDN — very complementary with S3
November 17, 2008
John Hodgman, Jonathan Coulton, and the Long Winters perform "Tonight You Belong to Me" — "Thank you, normal-sized man."
Jerry Yang stepping down from Yahoo's CEO post — it never really fit him well, though I'll miss his e.e. cummings memos
Woman asks Apple community about an unusual iPhone glitch — no, raunchy photos don't accidentally attach themselves to outbound email
Greasemonkey script to pull WikiDashboard visualization into Wikipedia — I made a LazyWeb plea for this last week, and Paul Irish came through
Lee Byron's Fireflies, anaglyph 3D game for Mac — part of Kokoromi's Gamma 3D showcase of anaglyph games
Flickr Boundaries, tool to explore Flickr's shapefiles — read Tom Taylor's entry for more information
Cooking Mama, the Unauthorized PETA Edition — a strangely obscure target for their attention, with a petition to write to the game's publisher (via)
Boing Boing launches gaming blog, Offworld — good writing in a nice design from Brandon Boyer, former news editor of Gamasutra
"Violet" wins the Interactive Fiction Comp 2008 — play it online; glancing at the charts, it looks like Buried in Shoes was the most divisive
Trailer for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek prequel — looks surprisingly good, but I'm a sucker for origin stories; I even liked Enterprise
What would Depression 2009 look like? — Tim sums up the thought-provoking Boston Globe article
The Pirate Bay hits 25 million simultaneous peers — that's not unique people, but concurrent connections; Napster peaked at 26M users
Peter Hirschberg releases Adventure as a free iPhone app — related: Chasing Ghosts will finally be released on BitTorrent Showtime in December (via)
The Big Picture on the California wildfires — also: first-person coverage on Twitter and YouTube, like this freeway on fire and aftermath
Tim-Tams available at Target until March, first time available in the U.S. — best chocolate cookies ever, the Tim Tam Slam is a chocolaty revelation (via)
JS-909, a Javascript drum machine without Flash — through a hack, it even works in IE 6
November 14, 2008
Esquire's hosting Between, the new two-player networked game by Jason Rohrer — from the creator of Passage
"What's that buzzing noise from my BBQ?" — he thought he was killing a few bees, but ends up annihilating an entire colony (via)
November 13, 2008
Kottke explains how to embed high-quality YouTube videos — I knew how to save, link, and change the default, but the embedding hack was new to me
Web 2.0 Origami — lazyweb, please build a converter that creates folding patterns from an uploaded image
Pixar's Burn-E short on YouTube — here's an interview with the director
Valleywag folded into Gawker, all but Owen Thomas laid off — I won't miss it; they hurt a lot of good people and interesting projects in the quest for pageviews (via)

Andy Baio lives here. Some rights reserved, for your pleasure.