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Solving this maze might be a bit of a stretch

Rob Beschizza at 12:08 pm Wed, Jun 13, 2012

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By Drimble at B3TA via Pineapplecharm at Reddit.

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MORE:  images • mazes

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  • http://twitter.com/tntjarks Tom Tjarks

    *sigh* And I’d been doing so well to not see goatse..

  • Mr. Son

    Eurgh! I am disgusted, sir! What a terrible pun!

  • http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

    Alt Headline: “Go to see this maze”

    • MB44

      Go to see this maize?

  • http://andreajames.com Andrea James

    Shouldn’t Mervyn be a gerbil? Oh wait, different famous anus.

    • noah django

       http://pushbutt.com/assets_c/2010/12/bradjosh-famousanus-thumb-500×378-947.jpg

  • Ethan Taliesin Houser

    Don’t use “sir” if you’re going to be on the internet.

    • http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore

      Silence, cad! ;)

  • Quiche de Resistance

    Cornhole, indeed.

  • http://www.paradea.org/notes/ Teirhan

    My reponse once I saw it was something like this kid’s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxkIBEw_K1c

    • noah django

       i can’t stop laughing

  • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

    My favorite version… I really did get a forwarded email from a religious acquaintance who believed this image was a miracle.

    http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/godhands.asp 

    It says something unfortunate about me, I suppose, that I realized what it was at a glance.

    • nixiebunny

      I had someone post that image (with the miraculous explanation) on Facebook. I let them know that it was troublesome, with the Snopes link. They unfriended me shortly thereafter. 

      Tee hee.

      • http://twitter.com/Moriash Nathan

        That image was the primary reason I resigned from my unofficial position as Office Debunker (AKA “The Guy That Can Figure Out How To Use Google and Snopes,” although that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue).  After being forwarded the storm pic and accompanying glurge message for the umpteenth time, I took it upon myself to explain the background, in vain hope of stopping at least one of the dozens of re-forwarded forwarded forwards of a forward I receive every week.

        Evidently, explaining the existence of Goatse with Wikipedia and Snopes links is tantamount to dropping trou and re-enacting it live on the breakroom table… At least in the eyes of the HR guy.  That was an uncomfortable conversation.  Decided to let my fellow staffers live on in credulous ignorance after that.

        • SamSam

          Wow, yet sending around emails with descriptions of God’s glory is just fine, according to HR?

          • http://twitter.com/Moriash Nathan

             Well, golly, who’d be offended by that?!

            It’s a small company in the South (it literally is one HR guy, who wasn’t terribly busy at that), populated by an unfortunate number of people who still think that Bill Gates is going to send them money if they forward an email.  Take modern megacorp office policy and roll it back 20 or 30 years, and you’ll have a pretty good idea where the higher-ups would stand on most matters.  Me, I’m just glad they don’t make me wear a suit and tie, as suggested by the 1972 copy of Dress for Success in the reference room.

          • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

            Hell, I used to work in a Fortune 50 company where my immediate boss forwarded so many offensive chain-emails that I started a blog called “Emails from my boss” (I deleted it long ago).

            The family that owned the controlling shares in the company arranged for their employees to get free viewings of “The Passion of the Christ”, or as local writer Nathan Singer calls it, “Lethal Whippin’”.

        • bcsizemo

          I remember a friend at work was chatting with a mutual friend about goatse and then subsequent name calling once he saw it later that week.  After that I casually introduced them to tubgirl and 1 guy 1 jar…

        • http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson

          You should print out a copy of this maze for them, ostensibly for their kids.

    • jimh

       He’s got the hole world, in his hands…

  • usonia

    Goats eat corn. Why not mice?

  • Charlie Hayes

    And here I was trying to solve the maze ( I dont think you can)

    • http://twitter.com/Nyzaris Nizaris

      EDIT: It’s solvable.

      • Joshua Ochs

        Pretty sure it’s solvable. A quick click of the paint bucket shows that other than a tiny chunk in the upper right, it’s all interconnected.

        • AnthonyC

           Oh… that’s actually brilliant. Never considered that before.

      • http://www.morelightmorelight.com/ mattkatz

        Weird – I don’t think you can.  When I see a maze like this I usually test it by going from the goal outward.  It looks like there are only 2 directions and they both deadend.  Mervyn may never reach his lovely sweetcorn.

        • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/PLW23MKEUJK7E464MOK3YWGUCI William Kiernan

          Here’s the solution.

  • Ipo

    My brain was too sluggish to see the goatse at first glance.  

  • Henry Pootel

    Cornhole!  It’s not what you think!

  • hobomike

    Mervyn should be a gerbil.

    • bbonyx

      Mervyn should be named “Kirk”

  • BadIdeaSociety

    I would like to know what the name of the activity book this appeared in and where can I buy it? 

    Wait, that isn’t the question. The real question is: This is a clipart collage made by a graphic designed to promote the idea that “Look, this is in a kids book.” Wait… why is the image so clean and well-centered on the scanned page? Because it isn’t actually from a kids book.

  • http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

    No, I can’t help Mervyn. ‘Cause Mervyn’s a fucking rat, see? And he’s the kind of guy with Dickie Gere for a friend. And I don’t help no rat with Dickie Gere for a friend.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Huntington/1389561896 Brian Huntington

    Wow. Could not see that to save my life. Saw a reddit comment that said to squint and back up. Rolled my chair back a good 10 feet and saw it. AMAZING. 

  • Eddie Perkins

    Is this an advertisement of the new Batman flick? I think I see Bane’s face mask in the lines. 

  • ROSSINDETROIT

    Me, I’m trying to solve the maze: “this is a really hard maze!  I can’t solve this!  This is too difficult for kids!”  Then I walked away and saw it.  Ha Ha.
    Can I get a unicorn chaser now?

  • howaboutthisdangit

    I didn’t see it, thankfully.  I scrolled down to read the comments and there’s no way I’m scrolling back up now.

  • Finnagain

    I  am apparently immune to this meme.

    • http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

       No you’re not.

      Sleep now. Dream.

  • http://twitter.com/matthewwilkes Matthew Wilkes

    This was made by Drimble, from b3ta

    http://www.b3ta.com/board/10785319 (currently on the front-page, too)

  • Artor

    I could make out the hands, but I didn’t make the cornhole connection until I read the comments.

  • http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Warren

    Oh man. I had to take off my glasses to resolve the image. And now I wish I hadn’t.

  • gijoel

    Funny how corn goes straight through you.

  • Memento Sushi

    Subtle, yet horrific.

  • alfanovember

    Does anyone know how to induce the Chrome browser to take a new thumbnail snapshot of a frequently-visited page?

  • http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

    This was originally from B3TA, just for the record.

    http://www.b3ta.com/board/10785319

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/VQPERCE3ZE2QGCTG2EAYO662EU divacomputerchic

    I don’t see it. help!!!

    • Layne

      Exactly – i thought the gag was that it was unsolvable. Nooooooope.

      As a previous poster said : scoot your chair back 12 inches and squint. 

  • DewiMorgan

    There was me thinking “What a fun maze: and I like how they have some of the lines bolded so that, if you know to look at the positive marks instead of the negative space, following the bold lines inwards from the edge, and out from the goal, you can tell at a glance that the solution goes all around the image in a long path, because there’s no shorter path…

    Then I look at the comments, and am saddened.

    It’s actually a *good* maze. That’s the delight of it.

  • francoisroux

    That what has been seen, can not be unseen… And I was close to having solved it too… blegh…

  • http://twitter.com/timwillsie Willi

    Here is an ascii version of goatse, for every one who doesn’t see it in the maze and who doesn’t want to lose his internet innocence by looking it up…
    http://goatse.ch/

  • skeptacally

    my young nephew’s current favourite joke is to walk out of the washroom with an amazed look on his face and announce “whoa! i didn’t even REMEMBER eating corn!”

  • bigmike7

    The piece works as a meta-musing on the tope of self-exposure, a winking amuse bouche that maps the dislodging of the phenomenological, or the particular, onto the ascending trajectory (could we say primacy?) of the referent. 

    I wonder who else noticed that the textual content–”twisty, turny”–is in amusing dialog not only with the intestinal convolutions of the physical maze, but especially with the gaping yet unknowable Viscera of that famed prototype? With a pencil one is invited to probe the crisis of modern identity, whose existence is contingent on– indeed, parasitic to–the amplification of its very iterations and references through social media.