Goatse Friday Rorschach Roundup

By Xeni Jardin at 4:36 pm Friday, Feb 24

From time to time, a cranky BoingBoing reader will email something like, "Hey Xeni, if you love goatse so much, why don't you stop posting funny crap about it all the time and just marry it?"

But more often, readers instead email links to goatse-related flotsam and dotcom jetsam.

Here's a roundup of some of the recent sightings; all of these are more funny/weird than explicit/NSFW.
* Charles of dcist.com saw goatse on the opera stage:

This is a review I wrote of a performance by the Kirov Opera at the Kennedy Center here in Washington. I think that the Internet omnipresence of that dreaded goatse.cx image has done things to my brain. I may or may not be seeing it in the set backdrop pictured in the image at the top of the review. I made a point about this in my review, but you can tell me if I'm just seeing things that aren't there. What it looks like to me, in the backdrop of the Grail altar in this production of "Parsifal," is something quite like the dreaded goatse image. There is no reason for that sphincter-like hole to be there either. This staging was used first in 1997, however, so the similarity is unintentional, if it is indeed there.

* BB reader roldick found a goatse inspirational quote.

Got this on my (ambivalent adjective) web clips on gmail today. Maybe I'm just dirty but i immediately flashed goatse. Quote of the Day - Oliver Wendell Holmes - "One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."

* Hal found a four-handed (Mercy!) goatseoid image on a book about web accessibility:

Link to book cover. Despite the unfortunate reference, it's hard to imagine what the heck they were thinking.

* Jesse found goatse on a Prague train:

Took this shot on the Prague subway system. I don't speak/read Czech, but since you have to push a button on the inside door to exit the tram, this sign might be trying to indicate that. Link to jpeg.

* And Sam says there's nothing sweeter than...

Yes, that's right, Goatse candy - with a creme center. Link

Here's a worksafe explanation of the original goatse: Link.