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User talk:BnaiBrithChai

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European anthem, Esperanto Lyric, Kálmán Kalocsay & English translation

 * ''Ode to Joy
 * Odo al Ĝojo

 * ''Joy, beautiful sparkle of the gods,
 * ''Daughter of Elysium,
 * ''We enter, fire-drunk,
 * ''Heavenly one, your shrine.
 * ''Your magics bind again
 * ''What custom has strictly parted.
 * ''All people will be brothers
 * Where your tender wing lingers.

 * Ĝoj'! Fajrero belradia!
 * Elizea di-filin'!
 * fajrebrie ni al via
 * templo iras, preĝi vin.
 * Ĉesu, de vi sorĉligate
 * de l' rigora mod' la ŝir',
 * ĉiuj homoj sentas frate,
 * se vi ŝirmas per flugil'.

 * ''Chorus
 * ''Be embraced, millions!
 * ''This kiss for the entire world!
 * ''Brothers, above the starry canopy
 * ''Must a loving Father reside.

 * Ĥoro:
 * Jen brakumoj al milmiloj,
 * Jen ĉi kis' al tuta mond'!
 * Fratoj! super stela rond'
 * loĝas patro por ni, filoj!

 * ''Whoever has succeeded in the great attempt
 * ''To be a friend's friend;
 * ''Whoever has won a lovely woman
 * ''Add in his jubilation!
 * ''Yes, who calls even one soul
 * ''His own on the earth's sphere!
 * ''And whoever never could achieve this,
 * ''Let him steal away crying from this gathering!

 * Se la granda ĵet' bontrafis
 * kaj amikon gajnis vi,
 * se virina am' vin ravis:
 * Vin enmiksu kun ĝojkri'!
 * Jes, se eĉ nur unu koro
 * estas via en la mond'!
 * Kaj se ne - do vin kun ploro
 * ŝtelu for el nia mond'.

 * ''Chorus
 * ''Those who occupy the great circle,
 * ''Pay homage to sympathy!
 * ''It leads to the stars
 * ''Where the unknown one reigns.

 * Ĥoro:
 * Ĉiu sub ĉielo glata
 * donu sin al simpati',
 * al la steloj gvidas ĝi,
 * kie tronas Nekonata.

 * ''All creatures drink joy
 * ''At the breasts of nature,
 * ''All good, all evil
 * ''Follow her trail of roses.
 * ''Kisses she gave us, and the vine,
 * ''A friend, proven in death.
 * ''Pleasure was given to the worm,
 * ''And the cherub stands before God.

 * Ĉiu sur la brust' Natura
 * suĉas sukon de la ĝoj'
 * kor' malbona, koro pura
 * sekvas ŝin laŭ roza voj'.
 * Ŝi vinberojn, kisojn donas
 * kaj amikon sen pridub',
 * en volupt' la vermo dronas,
 * vidas Dion la kerub'.

 * ''Chorus
 * ''Do you fall down, you millions?
 * ''Do you sense the creator, world?
 * ''Seek him above the starry canopy,
 * ''Above the stars he must live.

 * Ĥoro:
 * Ĉu genuas vi, milmiloj?
 * Vi kreinton sentas, mond'?
 * Serĉu super stela rond',
 * loĝas Li trans astro-briloj!

 * ''Joy is the name of the strong spring
 * ''In eternal nature.
 * ''Joy, joy drives the wheels
 * ''In the great clock of worlds.
 * ''She lures flowers from the buds,
 * ''Suns out of the firmament,
 * ''She rolls spheres in the spaces
 * ''That the seer's telescope does not know.

 * En eterno de l' Naturo
 * Ĝojo estas la risort'.
 * En la mondhorloĝ' por kuro
 * radojn pelas ŝia fort'.
 * Ŝi el ĝermoj logas berojn,
 * sunojn regas ŝia gvid'
 * Ŝi tra l' spaco rulas sferojn
 * trans la astronoma vid'.

 * ''Chorus
 * ''Happy, as his suns fly
 * ''Through the heaven's magnificent plain
 * ''Run, brothers, your track
 * ''Joyfully, as a hero to victory.

 * Ĥoro:
 * Kiel sur la pompaj vojoj
 * sunoj sur la firmament',
 * gaje marŝu, frata gent',
 * kiel venki la herooj!

 * ''From the fiery mirror of truth
 * ''She smiles upon the researcher,
 * ''Towards virtue's steep hill
 * ''She guides the endurer's path.
 * ''Upon faith's sunlit mountain
 * ''One sees her banners in the wind,
 * ''Through the opening of burst coffins
 * ''One sees her standing in the chorus of angels.

 * Esploriston ŝi alrid'as
 * el la fajrspegul' de l' Ver',
 * sur krutaĵ' de l' Virto gvidas
 * ŝi la homon de toler',
 * sur Kred-Monto sunobrila
 * flirtas ŝia flag' el or',
 * ŝin tra l' fendo ĉerk-kovrila
 * vidas ni en anĝel-ĥor'.

 * ''Chorus
 * ''Endure courageously, millions!
 * ''Endure for the better world!
 * ''There above the starry canopy
 * ''A great God will reward.

 * Ĥoro:
 * Ho toleron, paciencon,
 * fratoj, por pli bona mond'!
 * Donos super stela rond'
 * granda Dio rekompencon!

 * ''Gods one cannot repay
 * ''Beautiful it is, to be like them.
 * ''Grief and poverty, acquaint yourselves
 * ''With the joyful ones rejoice.
 * ''Anger and revenge be forgotten,
 * ''Our deadly enemy be forgiven,
 * ''No tears shall he shed
 * ''No remorse shall gnaw at him.

 * Ĉu pripagi diojn? Vanto!
 * Ĉu simili? Bela pen'!
 * Venu ĝoji kun ĝojanto
 * la mizero, la ĉagren'.
 * Venĝ'? Kolero? En forgeson!
 * Jen pardon' al malamik'!
 * Liaj larmoj havu ĉeson,
 * lin ne boru pento-pik'.

 * ''Chorus
 * ''Our debt registers be abolished
 * ''Reconcile the entire world!
 * ''Brothers, over the starry canopy
 * ''God judges, as we judged.

 * Ĥoro:
 * En ŝuldlibroj plu nenio!
 * Mondon regu harmoni'!
 * Fratoj! Kiel juĝis vi,
 * tiel juĝos pri vi Dio!

 * ''Joy bubbles in the cup,
 * ''In the grape's golden blood
 * ''Cannibals drink gentleness
 * ''The fearful, courage
 * ''Brothers, fly from your perches,
 * ''When the full cup is passed,
 * ''Let the foam spray to the heavens
 * ''This glass to the good spirit.

 * Ĝojo ŝaŭmas en pokaloj,
 * en orsango de l' vinber',
 * mildon trinkas kanibaloj,
 * heroecon malesper'.
 * Se rondiras la botelo,
 * fratoj, saltu el la sid',
 * ŝprucu ŝaŭmo al ĉielo:
 * Jen ĉi glas', por Bon-Spirit'!

 * ''Chorus
 * ''He whom the spirals of stars praise,
 * ''He whom the seraphim's hymn glorifies,
 * ''This glass to the good spirit
 * ''Above the starry canopy!

 * Ĥoro:
 * Himnas Lin abismo stela,
 * sera far' kun glora cit'.
 * Jen ĉi glas' por Bon-Spirit',
 * supre, trans la tend' ĉiela!

 * ''Courage firm in great suffering,
 * ''Help there, where innocence weeps,
 * ''Eternally sworn oaths,
 * ''Truth towards friend and foe,
 * ''Mens' pride before kings' thrones
 * ''Brothers, even if it costs property and blood,
 * ''The crowns to those who earn them,
 * ''Defeat to the lying brood!

 * En suferoj: firma forto,
 * al senhelpaj: ŝirma brust',
 * eternec' al ĵura vorto,
 * eĉ al malamiko: just'.
 * Virfiero kontraŭ tronoj,
 * kvankam sangon kostu spit',
 * al merito estu kronoj,
 * kaj pereo al insid'!

 * ''Chorus
 * ''Close the holy circle tighter,
 * ''Swear by this golden vine:
 * ''Remain true to the vows,
 * ''Swear by the judge above the stars!

 * Ĥoro:
 * Fermu vin en sankta rondo,
 * Ĵuru do kun glaso-lev',
 * pri l' fidelo al la Dev',
 * je l' Reganto de l' Stel-Mondo!

anti-nato demonstrations
Just so you know, a stub is an actual article of a few sentences, not just the word "stub" -- so just write something small:) Also, check out the Tutorial -- it's extremely helpful and easy to read. --Zantastik 04:54, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Han chauvinism
Hi BnaiBrithChai,

Rather than starting multiple articles about the same thing or similar things, you might want to just add the information into one article, and then make the rest into redirects. You might also want to consider merging short articles together yourself rather than asking others to do so. ;)

Finally, please don't put redirects that link back into the "see also" section. Thanks! -- ran (talk) 21:06, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Image:Christiandenominations.png== ==

What are you using Image:Christiandenominations.png for, exactly? Please explain... Master Thief Garrett 09:34, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Answer: it was taken from the wikipedia article "Christian denominations". I've taken the webshot as png. But the original graphics was just text. I think the png format can be better transported or downloaded and I recommend the author of the article Christian denominations replace the text format with the png. BnaiBrithChai

 * Ah! That certainly makes sense now! Yes I think PNG would be better for table/graph/flowchart things like this, but it needs to be tidied up at some point in time.
 * As plain-text it was fine, but as an image it's just plain hideous. You should maybe consider following one of the vector art tutorials to make it look all fancy-pants and cool. But even using it as-is in the meantime is just fine, and you can then replace it with something else later.
 * Anyway, good job! Keep on being bold! Master Thief Garrett 00:08, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Spam
Hi BnaiBrithChai. We never interacted before. It's a shame that you put your message at my talk page just above the notice that I dislike having my Talk page spammed with impersonal multi-user messages. It has been reverted on sight by another helpful editor and I won't even bother to read it. You should think of other ways to raise your concerns. — mark ✎ 05:52, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Presumption of innocence
I don't remember how I first stumbled on the article Debra Lafave, but since then the need for its existence has puzzled me. It's about a woman who seems utterly unremarkable other than for being charged with a crime, and even if she's found guilty of the crime I still think she's unremarkable. In this edit, you added her to Category:Statutory Rapists. However, one of the more attractive features of the Anglo-American legal system is presumption of innocence until determination of guilt. I've therefore removed the category link. -- Hoary 07:00, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Letter names in different languages or alphabets
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Facebookdinejad
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June 2009
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RfD nomination of Red Spider Revolution
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Tsamba Lalikuli listed at Redirects for discussion
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title: User talk:BnaiBrithChai


text:
Volcano (South Park)

"Volcano" is the second episode of the first season of the American animated television series South Park. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on August 20, 1997. In the episode, Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny go on a hunting trip with Stan's uncle Jimbo and his war buddy Ned. While on the trip, Stan is frustrated by his unwillingness to shoot a living creature, and Cartman tries to scare the hunting party with tales of a creature named Scuzzlebutt. Meanwhile, the group is unaware that a nearby volcano is about to erupt.

The episode was written and directed by series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It was inspired by the 1997 disaster films Volcano and Dante's Peak, both of which Parker and Stone strongly disliked. The plot was also based on the significant amount of hunting Parker and Stone witnessed while growing up in Colorado; Stan's hesitation about the sport mirrors Parker's real-life feelings about hunting. Parker and Stone felt the computer animation in "Volcano" had greatly improved compared to the early episodes; they were particularly pleased with the lava, which was made to resemble orange construction paper.

"Volcano" received generally positive reviews and was nominated for a 1997 Environmental Media Award. The episode featured the first appearances of recurring characters, Jimbo Kern, Ned Gerblansky and Randy Marsh. The latter, who is also the town geologist, is established as Stan's father in later episodes. It also marked the first of two appearances for Scuzzlebutt, who became a popular minor character and appeared in the video games South Park 10: The Game, South Park: Phone Destroyer and South Park Rally. The episode parodied the Duck and Cover educational videos from the 1950s and 1960s that advised people to hide under tables in the event of a nuclear attack.

Plot
Stan's Uncle Jimbo and his Vietnam War buddy Ned take Stan, Kenny, Kyle, and Cartman on a hunting trip in the mountains. As they arrive, Jimbo explains to the boys how to hunt. Whenever they see a creature, they shoot it after yelling, "It's coming right for us!", so they can claim the shooting was in self-defense. Stan does not have the proper temperament to enjoy hunting, and finds himself unable to shoot a living target. Unlike Stan, Kenny is able to shoot animals, impressing Jimbo. Meanwhile, a South Park geologist, Randy, discovers that the mountain on which the boys are hunting is a volcano that is about to erupt. He reports his findings to the Mayor, who directs one of her aides to make appropriate decisions about the crisis.

During the hunting trip, Jimbo proclaims Kenny his honorary nephew, upsetting Stan. When night falls, Cartman tells the story of Scuzzlebutt, a creature that has a piece of celery in place of one of its hands and Patrick Duffy for a leg. The boys are skeptical, so Cartman decides to dress up as the creature the next morning in order to convince and scare them. When he disappears the next morning, the others set out to find him. They then see Cartman disguised as Scuzzlebutt and start shooting at him. When they catch up with him at the base of the mountain, Stan tries to shoot him in order to redeem himself in his uncle's eyes. However, he is unable to do so and the delay gives Cartman time to remove the costume. At a lower elevation, Randy orders the South Park residents to dig a trench to divert the lava away from the town.

Suddenly, the volcano erupts. The hunters try to flee, but find themselves trapped on the other side of the trench. The real Scuzzlebutt then appears, and Jimbo apologizes to the boys for their seemingly imminent deaths, just before realizing that Scuzzlebutt is weaving a wicker basket to carry the hunting party to safety. The lava then flows through the trench just as Randy planned, but due to a miscalculation he made, the trench leads the lava to Denver, destroying it. However, in a misguided attempt to prove he can kill something and impress his uncle, Stan kills Scuzzlebutt. Jimbo is less than impressed, telling Stan that "some things you do kill and some you don't". Ned states that he now understands the folly of guns and drops his rifle, which accidentally fires, killing Kenny. Stan does not understand, since Jimbo tried to kill Scuzzlebutt earlier and other animals and wanted to impress Jimbo like Kenny did, Jimbo points out that Kenny is dead and that Stan will always be Jimbo's nephew. The boys decide that hunting is stupid and confusing, and decide to go home and watch cartoons.

Production
"Volcano" was written and directed by series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The episode was inspired by volcano-related Hollywood disaster films, such as Dante's Peak and Volcano (1997), which came out around the time they were writing the script; Parker and Stone considered the films two of the worst ever made. Stone said, "If you watch this episode and then go watch Volcano, this makes more sense than Volcano does." Debbie Liebling, who served as a South Park producer at the time of the episode's broadcast, said the volcano erupting in South Park helped establish the setting as a place where "anything can happen". Although Stone and Parker acknowledged that a volcano could not actually erupt in this Colorado town, they felt they were entitled to create the episode anyway because the Volcano film was set in Los Angeles; Stone said, "If they could do it, we could." Similarly, the duo acknowledge the tunnel built in the episode would not really divert the lava, but they included it because Parker said, "Any movie today, that's basically how dumb they are."

Another influence on the plot was the amount of hunting Parker and Stone saw around them while growing up in Colorado. Neither of them were hunters, and Parker said Stan's hesitation about hunting was based largely on himself and his father, who hated the idea of killing an animal even though Parker's grandfather, like Jimbo, was enthusiastic about the sport. Parker said he feels many of the first-season episodes considered taboo in 1997 would have been considered less controversial five years later, but that "Volcano" is an exception. Since the episode involved children drinking beer and threatening each other at gunpoint during hunting trips, Parker said he did not believe Comedy Central would have aired it following the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Parker said, "Back then, it was just sort of funny, kids pointing guns at each other, and it's just not so funny now."

South Park animators spent the first four episodes of the show trying to perfect the animation of the characters. By "Volcano" – which was produced after "Weight Gain 4000" –, Parker and Stone felt the textures were improved, as well as smaller details like the lines around the eyes of the characters. While the series pilot "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" was animated with construction paper, subsequent episodes were made using computers. Nevertheless, Parker and Stone wanted the show to maintain its crude paper look; for example, they specifically asked for the night sky in this episode to look like a black piece of paper with holes cut into it for stars, just as it was in the pilot episode. Stone and Parker were especially proud of the animation of the lava, which they said took hours to perfect, although they acknowledged it ended up simply resembling orange construction paper. The lava ball shooting out of the volcano and almost killing Kenny was directly inspired by the Volcano film. Parker and Stone came up with the character of Scuzzlebutt during a random conversation with Comedy Central executive Debbie Liebling. While meeting with her, they simply started drawing the character, and decided to add a celery hand and Patrick Duffy leg for no particular reason. Scuzzlebutt also appeared in a second episode, "City on the Edge of Forever" from the second season. Scuzzlebutt turning out to be a real character rather than a ridiculous story was the first instance of a common characteristic of the Cartman character, in which Cartman says outrageous and completely unrealistic things that turn out to be true. Stone commented, "He's right more often than he's wrong."

The "Volcano" episode was in production when South Park debuted on August 13, 1997. Comedy Central executives did not object to most of the content of the episode, but said the scene in which Kyle farted while talking to Stan should have been removed because nothing happened after the fart, and they said it was not funny. Parker and Stone, however, insisted it stay in the episode, and they said the lack of any reaction whatsoever to the fart was what made it funny. During close-ups of Cartman's face while telling the story of Scuzzlebutt around the campfire, the flames from the fire stop moving. Parker and Stone noticed the consistency error after the episode was filmed, but they did not have enough time to go back and fix it before the broadcast date, so it was left in. A cat featured in the background of one of the outdoor scenes was designed to look exactly like Parker's cat, Jake. The scene in which Ned catches fire was based on an experience Parker had during a Colorado camping trip where he tried to do an "Indian Fire Trick", in which one pours gasoline onto a fire to create large flames. Although nobody caught fire, Parker said the trick misfired, and he nearly burned down the forest. After finishing the episode, Parker and Stone realized "Volcano" was about two minutes shorter than the time length required for the episode. In order to add time to the episode, Parker and Stone added the scene with Ned singing the song "Kumbaya" around the fire, as well as the long freeze-frame on a shocked Chef and Mayor McDaniels reacting to the news of the volcano's imminent eruption.

In addition to Scuzzlebutt, "Volcano" included the first appearances of recurring characters Randy Marsh and Ned Gerblanski. In this first appearance, Randy is identified only as the South Park geologist, and it is only in the episode "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" that he is first introduced as Stan's father. Parker, who provides the voice of Randy Marsh, said the design, voice, and personality of the character are based on his real-life father, who works as a geologist for the United States Geological Survey. Parker said his father is very calm in real life, and Randy's relaxed reaction to learning of the volcano—calmly sipping his coffee—is "about how my dad would react to anything". The look of the Ned character was based on a drawing Parker made in high school, although the character did not originally have a voice box. The voice was inspired by a waitress who worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, where Parker and Stone would visit while attending the University of Colorado. The duo said they would go to the restaurant just to hear her voice, but that it was so low they would lose their appetite when she took their orders. Stone and Parker had trouble creating the right voice for the character; they tried putting the microphone directly on their throat, and also bought an actual voice box, but ultimately decided that the best way to provide the character's voice was with natural voice simulation.

"Volcano" was released alongside five other episodes in a three-VHS set on May 5, 1998, marking the first time South Park was made available on video. The episode was released on the "Volume I" video along with "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe"; other featured episodes included "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", "Death", "Weight Gain 4000", and "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride". "South Park: The Complete First Season", a DVD box set featuring all thirteen episodes, including "Volcano", was released on November 12, 2002. Parker and Stone recorded commentary tracks for each episode, but the tracks were not included on the DVDs due to "standards" issues with some of the statements; Parker and Stone refused to allow the tracks to be edited and censored, so they were released on a separate CD.

Cultural references and impact
The episode features a fictional education film called Lava and You, which says lava will pass harmlessly over potential victims who duck and cover their heads. The film was inspired by actual "Duck and Cover" films from the 1950s and 1960s, in which children were instructed to hide under tables or lean against walls in the case of a nuclear weapon attack; Parker and Stone, like many critics of the films, found the methods painfully simplistic and did not believe they would actually help in the case of such an attack. Jimbo and Ned are described as veterans of the Vietnam War, the military conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam that lasted from 1959 to 1975; Cartman, who is far too young to have participated in the war, claims to have flashbacks to his experiences in it. Patrick Duffy, the American television actor best known for his roles in the shows Dallas and Step by Step, appears in the episode as the living leg of Scuzzlebutt. Matt Stone claimed there was no particular reason Duffy was chosen as the leg, except that he is such a nondescript actor: "He's just super bland. Like, how could you possibly be a fan of Patrick Duffy?"

The scene where Scuzzlebutt puts a star on top of a tree is a reference to a similar scene in the 1964 television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in which the Abominable Snow Monster places a Christmas star atop a large tree. Mount Evanston, the fictional mountain in "Volcano", was named after the real Mount Evans in the Front Range region of the Rocky Mountains in Clear Creek County, Colorado; Nichols Canyon in the episode was named after Kirt Nichols, a friend of Trey Parker. Jimbo blames the Democratic Party for passing overly restrictive laws on hunters and gun owners. Upon learning children are in danger due to the volcano, Mayor McDaniels seeks publicity for herself by contacting the television news programs Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition.

Several lines of dialogue from "Volcano" became especially popular among South Park fans, including "It's coming right for us!" by Jimbo, and the two Cartman lines, "Democrats piss me off!" and "Cartoons Kick Ass!", the last of which was featured on T-shirts. Despite the relatively small role Scuzzlebutt played in the series, he nevertheless became a popular minor South Park character. He was included in the South Park video games South Park 10: The Game and South Park Rally. The song "Hot Lava", sung by the Chef in the episode, was featured on the 1998 soundtrack Chef Aid: The South Park Album.

A recreation of the episode serves as the Wizard Mode of the South Park pinball machine produced by Sega in 1999.

Reception
"Volcano" originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on August 20, 1997. The Environmental Media Association nominated the episode for an Environmental Media Award in the "TV Episodic Comedy" category. However, the eventual recipient of the award was The Simpsons, for the episode "The Old Man and the Lisa".

"Volcano" received generally positive reviews. USA Today critic Matt Roush praised the episode, especially the "Duck and Cover" films. The Advertiser called the episode "outrageously lewd" and "hysterically funny". The Washington Post critic Tom Shales considered the episode funnier than its predecessor "Weight Gain 4000". Peter Hawes of The Sunday Star-Times in Auckland, New Zealand, said the episode was funny and intelligent, adding, "Once again, the US national psyche is imperishably captured by a crude cartoon." He liked the way adults were portrayed as less sensible than the children, and he particularly enjoyed the "Duck and Cover" videos: "It is terrifyingly funny, for it is a word-for-word recreation of the insane Atom-bomb Safety film, created and distributed in 1952 by the US government, who never for a second thought it would work." The Daily Record of Glasgow, Scotland, praised the episode and described it as "hardcore humour": "Love it or loathe it, you can't ignore the adult animation series whose bite is worse than its bark."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Volcano (South Park)


text:
Nuruddin Farah

Nuruddin Farah (Nuuradiin Faarax, نورالدين فارح) (born 24 November 1945) is a Somali novelist. His first novel, From a Crooked Rib, was published in 1970 and has been described as "one of the cornerstones of modern East African literature today". He has also written plays both for stage and radio, as well as short stories and essays. Since leaving Somalia in the 1970s he has lived and taught in numerous countries, including the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Sudan, India, Uganda, Nigeria and South Africa.

Farah has garnered acclaim as one of the greatest contemporary writers in the world, his prose having earned him accolades including the Premio Cavour in Italy, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize in Germany, the Lettre Ulysses Award in Berlin, and in 1998, the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In the same year, the French edition of his novel Gifts won the St Malo Literature Festival's prize. In addition, Farah is a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Personal life
Nuruddin Farah was born in 1945 in Baidoa, in Italian Somaliland. His father Hassan Farah was a merchant and interpreter and his mother Aleeli (née Faduma) an oral poet. Farah was the fourth eldest boy in a large family.

As a child, Farah frequented schools in Somalia and adjacent Ethiopia, attending classes in Kallafo in Ogaden (now the Somali Region). He studied English, Arabic and Amharic. In 1963, he was forced to flee the region following the Ogaden Rebellion and subsequent border conflicts between Somalia and Ethiopia. He settled in independent Somalia, where he found work as a typist in the Ministry of Education.

From 1966 to 1970, he pursued a degree in philosophy, literature and sociology at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India, where he met his first wife, Chitra Muliyil Farah, with whom he had a son (the marriage later ended in divorce). Farah subsequently went to England, attending London University (1974–75) and studying for a master's degree in theatre at Essex University (1975–76). His mother died in 1990, and in 1992 he married British-Nigerian academic Amina Mama and they have a son and a daughter.

In 1990, he received a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service and moved to Berlin. In 1996, he visited Somalia for the first time in more than 20 years.

Farah's sister Basra Farah Hassan, a diplomat, was killed in a bombing in January 2014 while working with the United Nations in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Farah currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Cape Town, South Africa.

Literary career
After releasing an early short story in his native Somali language, Farah shifted to writing in English while still attending university in India. His books have been translated into 17 languages.

His first novel, From a Crooked Rib (1970), told the story of a nomad girl who flees from an arranged marriage to a much older man. Published by Heinemann Educational Books (HEB) in their African Writers Series, the novel earned him mild but international acclaim. On a tour of Europe following the publication of A Naked Needle (HEB, 1976), Farah was warned that the Somali government planned to arrest him over its contents. Rather than return and face imprisonment, Farah began a self-imposed exile that would last for 22 years, during which time he taught in the United States, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Sudan, India and Nigeria.

Farah describes his purpose for writing as an attempt "to keep my country alive by writing about it", and for Nadine Gordimer he was one of the continent's "true interpreters". His trilogies of novels – "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship" (1980–83) and "Blood in the Sun" (1986–99) – form the core of his work. First published by Allison and Busby, "Variations" included Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981) and Close Sesame (1983), and was well received in a number of countries. Farah's reputation was cemented by his most famous novel, Maps (1986), the first part of his "Blood in the Sun" trilogy. Maps, which is set during the Ogaden conflict of 1977, employs the innovative technique of second-person narration for exploring questions of cultural identity in a post-independence world. Farah followed this with Gifts (1993) and Secrets (1998), both of which earned awards. His subsequent "Past Imperfect" trilogy comprises Links (2004), Knots (2007) and Crossbones (2011). His most recent novels are Hiding in Plain Sight, published in 2014, and North of Dawn (2018). Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bhakti Shringarpure observed: "The most prolific writer Somalia has ever produced, Farah has indeed kept his country alive in our collective imaginations for the past 40 years. ... North of Dawn beautifully articulates the pervasive anxiety and nervous condition of being a migrant."

Farah is also a playwright, whose plays include work for the stage — A Dagger in Vacuum (produced Mogadiscio, 1970), The Offering (produced Colchester, Essex, 1975), Yussuf and His Brothers (produced Jos, Nigeria, 1982) — and for radio: Tartar Delight, 1980 (Germany), and A Spread of Butter.

Besides literature, Farah is an important scholar within Somali Studies. He serves on the International Advisory Board of Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, published by Macalester College.

Selected awards and honours

 * 1974–76: UNESCO fellowship
 * 1980: English-Speaking Union Literary Award (for Sweet and Sour Milk)
 * 1990: Corman Artists fellowship
 * 1991: Kurt Tucholsky Prize, Stockholm, Sweden
 * 1993: Best Novel Award, Zimbabwe (for Gifts)
 * 1994: Premio Cavour, Italy (for Italian translation of Close Sesame)
 * 1998: Neustadt International Prize for Literature
 * 1998: St Malo Literary Festival award (for French edition of Gifts)

Novels

 * Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy
 * Reprints: Heinemann (African Writers Series 226), 1980; Graywolf Press, 1992.
 * Reprints: Heinemann (African Writers Series 252), 1982; Graywolf Press, 1992.
 * Reprints: Graywolf Press, 1992.
 * Blood in the Sun trilogy
 * Reprints: Arcade, 1999.
 * Reprints: Arcade, 1999; Kwela Books, 2001.
 * Past Imperfect trilogy
 * Reprints: Riverhead Books, 2004; Duckworth, 2005.
 * Reprints: Granta Books, 2012.
 * Blood in the Sun trilogy
 * Reprints: Arcade, 1999.
 * Reprints: Arcade, 1999; Kwela Books, 2001.
 * Past Imperfect trilogy
 * Reprints: Riverhead Books, 2004; Duckworth, 2005.
 * Reprints: Granta Books, 2012.
 * Reprints: Granta Books, 2012.
 * Reprints: Granta Books, 2012.

Short fiction

 * Novella

Plays

 * ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶-̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ -̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ The Offering. Lotus (Afro-Asian Writings) vol. 30, no. 4, 1976, pp. 77–93.
 * ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶-̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ -̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ The Offering. Lotus (Afro-Asian Writings) vol. 30, no. 4, 1976, pp. 77–93.

Essays

 * Autobiographical and literary essays
 * "Celebrating Differences: The 1998 Neustadt Lecture", Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah, edited by Derek Wright, Africa World Press, 2002, pp. 15–24.
 * "Childhood of My Schizophrenia", The Times Literary Supplement, 23–29 November 1990, p. 1264.
 * "A Country in Exile", World Literature Today, vol. 72, no. 4, 1998, pp. 713–5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/40154257.
 * "The Creative Writer and the Politician". The Classic, vol. 3, no. 1, 1984, pp. 27–30.
 * "Do Fences Have Sides?", The Commonwealth in Canada: Proceedings of the Second Triennial Conference of CACLALS, Part 2, edited by Uma Parameswaran, Writers' Workshop, 1983, pp. 174–82.
 * "Do You Speak German?!", Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, vol. 22, 1982, pp. 33–8.
 * "Germany—And All That Jazz", Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, vol. 18, 1981, pp. 8–12.
 * "Ibsen, In Other Words", Nordlit, vol. 34, 2015, pp. 15–22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3350.
 * "In Praise of Exile", Literature in Exile, edited by John Glad, Duke University Press, 1990, pp. 64–77.
 * "Savaging the Soul of a Nation", The Writer in Politics, edited by William Glass and Lorin Cuoco. Southern Illinois University Press, 1996, pp. 110–5.
 * "Why I Write". Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah, edited by Derek Wright. Africa World Press, 2002

 * Social and political essays
 * "Bastards of Empire", Transition, vol. 65, 1995, pp. 26–35.
 * "Centuries-long War for Somali Peninsula", WardheerNews, 12 April 2018.
 * "Country Cousins", London Review of Books, 3 September 1998, pp. 19–20.
 * "False Accounting", Granta, vol. 49, 1994, pp. 171–81.
 * "My Life as a Diplomat", The New York Times. 26 May 2007.
 * "Of Tamarind and Cosmopolitanism", African Cities Reader, edited by Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse. Chimurenga, 2010, pp. 178–81.
 * "People of a Half-Way House", London Review of Books, 21 March 1996, pp. 19–20.
 * "Praise the Marines? I Suppose So", The New York Times, 28 December 1992, pp. 14–17.
 * "The Family House". Transition, vol. 99, 2008, pp. 6–15.
 * "The Women of Kismayo", The Times Literary Supplement. 15 November 1996, p. 18.
 * "Which way to the Sea, Please?" Horn of Africa, vol. 1, no. 4, 1978, pp. 31–6. Republished by WardheerNews, 4 March 2015.

title: Nuruddin Farah


text:
Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride

"Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" is the fourth episode of the first season of the American animated sitcom South Park. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on September 3, 1997. The episode was written by series co-founders Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and directed by Parker. In this episode, Stan's dog, Sparky, is revealed to be gay after humping a rival male dog. Under peer pressure, Stan tries to make him more masculine, and as a result, Sparky runs away and ends up at Big Gay Al's Big Gay Animal Sanctuary. Stan comes to understand homosexuality and tries to make everyone in South Park accept it.

"Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" addressed open homosexuality in a way that was uncommon for television at the time, which created some anxiety among executives at Comedy Central. The network initially objected to offensive remarks made by sports commentators in the episode, but the comments were kept in at the insistence of Parker and Stone. Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny's designs were changed slightly in this episode and these designs would remain for the rest of the series. George Clooney made a guest appearance as Sparky, a small role with no dialog except for dog barks. The episode also marked the first appearance of Big Gay Al.

The episode received generally positive reviews for its portrayal of homosexuality. Creators Stone and Parker considered it their favorite episode of the first season, noting that it helped elevate the credibility and relevance of South Park during its early days. It was nominated for both an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program and a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Individual Episode, and was the episode submitted when South Park won a CableACE Award for Outstanding Animated Series.

Plot
Stan's new dog Sparky follows the boys to the bus stop one morning. Stan believes Sparky to be the toughest dog in South Park; but, when Sparky suddenly jumps on top of another male dog and begins humping him energetically, Cartman declares that Sparky is homosexual. At football practice for the school's team, the South Park Cows, Stan's Uncle Jimbo and his friend Ned show up and ask the coach, Chef whether the boys can beat the betting spread of 70 points for the Cows' game against the Middle Park Cowboys. Impressed by a play from Stan, who is the quarterback and star of the team, Jimbo and Ned go to a bookmaker, where Jimbo bets $500 on the Cows. As a result, everyone else bets all their money on the team, and they threaten Jimbo if the Cows lose. Intimidated, Jimbo and Ned seek a back-up plan and learn that John Stamos' brother Richard will be singing "Lovin' You" at half-time. Consequently, they plan to detonate the mascot for Middle Park, by placing a bomb to explode when Richard Stamos sings the high F note in the song.

After practice, Sparky appears and mounts another male dog. The next day, after class, Stan asks his teacher Mr. Garrison what a homosexual is, prompting Mr. Garrison to claim that "gay people are evil", even though Chef claims that Garrison is himself gay. As a result, Stan attempts to make his dog heterosexual. Later, Sparky overhears a frustrated Stan ranting about how he wants a butch dog instead of a gay dog. This prompts Sparky to run away to the mountains, ending up at Big Gay Al's Big Gay Animal Sanctuary, an animal sanctuary for homosexual animals.

Concerned about his dog, Stan goes to look for him, missing the start of the football game. When Stan finds Sparky at the Big Gay Animal Sanctuary, Big Gay Al takes Stan on a boat ride through his sanctuary and gives a speech about how homosexuality has been around for a long time, which eventually makes Stan accept his dog's homosexuality. Meanwhile, Richard Stamos fails to hit the high note of the song at half time. Returning to the final moments of the game, Stan steps in as the quarterback, passing the ball to Kyle for a touchdown as time runs out. In his speech after the game, Stan tells the people of South Park about the Big Gay Animal Sanctuary and that "it's okay to be gay". He leads the people to the site of the Sanctuary, but it has mysteriously disappeared; people's runaway gay pets, however, return. Before leaving, Big Gay Al thanks Stan for making everyone understand homosexuality. Although the Cows beat the spread, Richard Stamos appears to prove he can hit the high note that he missed earlier, triggering the bomb and killing the Middle Park team's mascot.

Conception and objections raised before airing
The plot for "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" originated from an idea by series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to have a boy try to convince his gay dog not to be homosexual. Michael Smith, a childhood friend of Parker and a basis for the Ned Gerblansky character, claimed that Big Gay Al was based in part on a real-life resident of Fairplay, Colorado. Smith, a minister at a Fairplay church, said of the resident, "We just call him Big Al, but he cross-dresses every year for Fairplay Day. He lives out of town, which is why Big Gay Al's cartoon pet sanctuary is set out in the hills". However, Stone said the name "Big Gay Al" and the idea of his "gay animal sanctuary" came from Pam Brady, a producer and writer with the show.

When the episode was under production in 1997, it was relatively uncommon for a television series to openly address homosexuality in such overt terms, especially in a cartoon. As a result, Parker and Stone said Comedy Central executives expressed more concern about "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" than any other previous South Park episode. Parker said of the network, "I don't think they ever really discouraged it, but they were definitely freaked out". The network, however, did object to scenes in which one of the football sports commentators made offensive jokes and was silenced by the other commentator. The network particularly objected to a joke in which, after watching Kyle run, the commentator said, "I haven't seen a Jew run like that since Poland 1938", a reference to the country's invasion by Nazi Germany (which actually took place in 1939). The jokes were based on a number of real-life offensive remarks sports commentators made and got in trouble for. Stone said the scenes were meant to parody the commentators, not the subjects of the jokes. However, they were only allowed to stay in after what Stone called "a big fight" with Comedy Central. After the episode was scheduled to air, TV Guide refused to advertise it under its true title for fear of offending readers, and instead called the episode "Big Al's Boat Ride".

The episode was written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and was directed by Parker. Parker and Stone considered "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" their favorite episode of the first season, and they credit it with helping elevate the credibility and relevance of South Park during the early days of the series. Although the first season of South Park received a lot of criticism from commentators who felt the show was disgusting and offensive, Parker specifically defended the episodes "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" and "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride", which he felt included moral values and a "sweet side to it" among the sophomoric humor. Stone also said those two episodes became the specific shows people would most talk about when they discussed South Park.

Animation
Actor George Clooney provided the small role of the voice of Sparky, which is limited entirely to dog barks. Clooney was a vocal South Park fan and was largely responsible for generating news about "The Spirit of Christmas", a 1995 animated short film by Parker and Stone that served as a precursor to South Park. Parker said they decided to cast a famous actor in the small role of Sparky because "we thought it was funny", and because they wanted to do something different from the animated series The Simpsons, which is known for having prominent guest appearances on a regular basis. Parker added, "Since South Park is sort of a show that rips on celebrity, we wanted to degrade them in other ways too. And we thought let's have celebrities on, but have them do really minor, unimportant things". Comedy Central executives were excited at the prospect of having Clooney appear on the show, but Parker said they were disappointed to learn his role was so small. South Park animators created the episode using PowerAnimator, the Alias Systems Corporation animation program most commonly known as "Alias". It was particularly challenging for animators to design the complex scheme of lights during the episode's disco club scene. Eric Stough, director of animation for the series, said it took one of the technical directors "about half a day" to set up the brief scene. Parker said he was particularly happy with the animation in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride", and said he believed the series was starting to settle into the defined look it has retained throughout the years. Parker said, "I think that this was where we finally felt like we got it right, we got the look of it right". However, the animation includes some perspective errors, particularly during the football scenes, where Chef stands about as wide as a 10-yard marking on the field. Parker said the animators worked for a long time on the snow in the outdoor scenes, but ultimately decided they did not like how it came out.

The speech Big Gay Al gave while taking Stan on a boat ride through his animal sanctuary was based on actual speeches animation director Eric Stough made while working as a "jungle cruise director" at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. The dirt smudges on the football players' helmets and uniforms were intentionally designed to look like smudges on construction paper. This was done to maintain the show's deliberately crude visual style they first created with construction paper in "The Spirit of Christmas" and the pilot episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe". The characters Butters Stotch and Clyde Donovan are featured during the football game, although neither had been identified by name yet in the series. During a football crowd scene, a white character can be seen that looks identical to Tolkien Black, an African-American character introduced later in the series. The background character is wearing the same shirt Token wears, which Parker explained was the result of an animator placing a different head on the body in order to create a filler character for the crowd. The moment when Big Gay Al says, "My work here is done" and disappears into a suitcase is Stone's favorite part of the episode, even though he admitted, "It makes no sense". Parker said that the moment was written that way simply because the duo could not decide how to "get rid of" the character. Parker said, "We didn't want him around all the time, (so we asked) how do we not make him a character each week".

Theme
"Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" explores the central theme of homosexuality, particularly through the gay characters Sparky and Big Gay Al, who would go on to play a more prominent role in the fifth season episode, "Cripple Fight". The episode encourages tolerance of homosexuality, with protagonist Stan initially displaying anger and dismay upon learning that his dog is gay, but eventually learning to accept homosexuality and concluding that we should accept others for who they are. Big Gay Al displays several exaggerated gay stereotypes, including his lisping voice and flamboyant wardrobe, which includes an ascot tie. Although some have described the depiction as inflammatory, other commentators have said the stereotypes are used as functions of satire. Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz, PhD students in media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said in a 2009 journal article, "These episodes function not as part of a larger discursive web, but as media texts encoded in a manner similar to that of The Simpsons".

"Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" also explores and satirizes people's reactions to homosexuality through Stan and other characters who react to Sparky's behavior. For example, Stan admits he does not even know what being gay includes, except simply that it "is bad". Also, when Cartman suggests to Stan that Sparky might be at the mall buying leather pants, it satirizes the stereotype that all gay men are engaged in the leather subculture. The episode also mocks what many LGBT activists perceive as hatred and misunderstandings about homosexuality often expressed by anti-LGBT and right-wing activists, including Christian ministers Jerry Falwell and Fred Phelps. This is partially illustrated in this episode by Mr. Garrison's condemnation of homosexuals, rooted in deep-seated fear of his own sexuality. Basing his comment off this episode, Gardiner commented that South Park had a "Queer Lite" attitude towards homosexuality, stating "they are unemphatically tolerant, polymorphously perverse, ambiguously gay affirmative".

Cultural references and impact
The South Park football team plays a rival team from Middle Park, Colorado. Like South Park itself, Middle Park is an actual basin in the Rocky Mountains of north-central Colorado. Matt Stone said the Middle Park kids were made to seem richer and cooler than the South Park students because that was the perception real South Park residents have of the actual Middle Park. Richard Stamos, who sings during halftime in the episode's football game, is the fictional brother of John Stamos, a real-life actor best known for his roles on Full House and ER. Trey Parker and Matt Stone did not know Stamos when they wrote "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride", but Parker said they assumed he was "a big douche" because of his role on Full House, which Parker called "just the most horrible thing ever put on television". Since the episode aired, however, Parker and Stone have become acquainted with Stamos and found him to be "a really, really cool guy". John Stamos told them he loved the inclusion of the Richard Stamos character in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride". Richard Stamos sings "Lovin' You", a 1975 hit single by singer-songwriter Minnie Riperton. Parker chose it because he felt it was a popular song in the gay community, and also because, "I've just always hated that song. I hate any song from that era, really. It's just a horrible time for music."

During the beginning of Mr. Garrison's class, Cartman writes an essay on the TV series Simon & Simon instead of Asian culture. Also, Bill suggested that Stan take Sparky to a Barbra Streisand concert. The disappearance of Big Gay Al at the end of the episode is a spoof of Dr. Lao's disappearance at the end of the movie The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Big Gay Al's ride also features a number of miniature characters, among them Olympic figure skater Brian Boitano, singing a song called "We Are Gay", which is a parody of the ride "It's a Small World", an attraction at the Disneyland theme park. Boitano was featured in "The Spirit of Christmas", and would later be the basis for the original song "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. The song played during the closing credits of "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" is "Now You're a Man" by DVDA, a punk rock band that Parker and Stone founded. This song was also featured in their film Orgazmo.

In this episode, the sports announcer states he had not seen a "beating like that since Rodney King", referencing to an incident in 1991 where King was beaten by six LAPD police officers. The incident sparked tensions in LA that eventually led to the 1992 LA Riots. When Pip is tackled later, the commentator states that he has not seen an Englishman take a blow like that since Hugh Grant. This references Grant's arrest in June 1995, when he was caught performing a lewd act in public with a Hollywood prostitute. Grant was fined $1,180, placed on probation for two years, and was ordered to complete an AIDS education program. The announcer makes an incomplete remark about a tackle, "I haven't seen so many children molested since...". This was rumored to have been followed by a line, "since Michael Jackson came to town", or alternately, since the McMartin preschool trial, which was supposedly censored after the broadcast premiere, but there is no evidence of this.

Big Gay Al became one of the most popular and easily recognizable of the non-regular South Park characters, and was featured in the 1999 film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut as the MC of a United Service Organizations show. Although not a major role, Big Gay Al performs a large musical number called "I'm Super (Thanks for Asking)", which was featured on the motion picture soundtrack. The episode also included the first appearance of Jesus and Pals, the public-access television talk show hosted by Jesus Christ. The show was mentioned in the episode "Weight Gain 4000", but actual footage from the show was not featured. Parker and Stone specifically sought to introduce Jesus and Pals, and the idea of Jesus as a South Park resident, as a reference to their original "The Spirit of Christmas" cartoon. Comedy Central censors were concerned about this portrayal of Jesus in South Park, but did not prevent Parker and Stone from following through with it.

Release and reception
"Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on September 3, 1997. Comedy Central representatives told media outlets that the episode received overwhelmingly positive responses from viewers who identified themselves as gay. In 1998, Jonathan Van Meter of The New York Times Magazine called the episode "one of their best shows", and praised the episode for mixing a moral message with the jokes, as well as a sentimental relationship between Stan and Sparky. Van Meter wrote, "What often keeps the show from being offensive is this kind of sweetness – and that it's funny". The same year, The Advertiser, a North Yorkshire-based publication, called the episode "one of the all-time best". Also in the same year, Rick Marin of Newsweek described the episode as "gleefully offensive and profoundly silly", but praised it as "juxtaposing cute and crude, jaded and juvenile".

In 2003, Chicago Tribune writer Allan Johnson praised the tolerance toward homosexuality displayed in the episode, which he rated the tenth greatest episode in the series' history. The same year, Chicago-based RedEye ranked it the fifth greatest South Park episode. In 2007, Lorne Chan of the San Antonio Express-News declared it the second best sport-themed South Park, behind "Up the Down Steroid", praising its satire of gambling on elementary schools and sports events. Also in 2007, Travis Fickett of IGN gave the episode an 8.4 out of 10 rating and identified several "great moments". In particular, he praised closeted-homosexual Mr. Garrison's claim that gay people are evil and have a "black vomitous fluid" running through their veins, and the moment when Jesus was about to explain his feelings regarding homosexuality only to be cut off by "Marty's Movie Reviews".

Colorado for Family Values, a Christian advocacy group with a history of lobbying against homosexuality, used "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" in its materials when trying to mobilize Colorado to censor South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in 1999. The group circulated a "South Park Action Kit", which included analyses of the South Park episode content, sample transcripts, reviews and tips on how to keep the movie from playing in local theaters. The kit also included a "Homosexual Issue Analysis", which focused on "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" and warned the episode taught children "tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality through the perverse idea that Stan's dog, Sparky, is a homosexual dog". According to Westword, a Denver-based alternative weekly newspaper, this anti-South Park effort by Colorado for Family Values was largely ignored and decried by most Coloradans.

"Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" was the first episode of the series to be nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. It was also nominated for the 1998 GLAAD Award for Outstanding TV – Individual Episode. Matt Stone and Trey Parker chose "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" to represent South Park in their submission to the CableACE Awards in 1997. The series won the CableACE Award for Animated Programming Special or Series as a result. It was the last year the CableACE Awards were given out before they were discontinued. Out magazine, one of the most widely circulated gay and lesbian publications in the United States, listed Big Gay Al among the most influential individuals in the gay and lesbian community in 1998. Big Gay Al was the only fictional character listed in the "Entertainment" section of the magazine's "Out 100" list.

"Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" was released, alongside five other episodes, in a three-VHS set on May 5, 1998, marking the first time South Park was made available on video. The episode was released on the "Volume II" video, along with "Weight Gain 4000"; other featured episodes included "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", "Volcano", "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" and "Death". The episode, along with the other twelve from the first season, was also included in the DVD release "South Park: The Complete First Season", which was released on November 12, 2002. Parker and Stone recorded commentary tracks for each episode, but they were not included with the DVDs due to "standards" issues with some of the statements; Parker and Stone refused to allow the tracks to be edited and censored, so they were released in a CD completely separately from the DVDs.

title: Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride


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An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig

"An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" is the fifth episode of the first season of the American animated television series South Park. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on September 10, 1997. In the episode, the boys of South Park try to force Kyle Broflovski's pet elephant to crossbreed with Eric Cartman's pet pig for a class project on genetic engineering. Meanwhile, Stan Marsh tries to deal with his elder sister Shelley, who keeps beating him up.

This episode was written by series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone along with Dan Sterling. "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" episode served as both a parody of genetic engineering and a statement against its potential evils. The scenes of Stan getting beat up by his sister were inspired by Parker's real-life childhood experiences with his own sister, who is also named Shelley.

"An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" was met with generally positive reviews, and has been described as one of the most popular early South Park episodes. Several commentators praised its satirical elements with regard to genetic engineering. The episode marked the first appearance of Shelley Marsh, Stan's mother Sharon Marsh (at the time named Carol), the mad scientist Dr. Alphonse Mephesto, who was inspired by the title character of the 1996 film, The Island of Dr. Moreau, as well as revealing that Randy Marsh is Stan's father.

Plot
The boys are waiting at the bus stop when Eric Cartman notices Stan Marsh has a black eye and it turns out his elder sister Shelley has been beating him up, all because she got new headgear at the dentist. Kyle Broflovski has problems of his own; his mother Sheila will not let him keep his new pet elephant in the house. At school, Mr. Hat teaches the class about genetic engineering, which prompts Kyle to decide to crossbreed his elephant with Cartman's pot-bellied pig, Fluffy, to make little "pot-bellied elephants", which he could keep in his house. Upon hearing this, Terrance Mephesto bets Kyle that he can clone a whole person before Kyle can create a pot-bellied elephant. Their teacher Mr. Garrison suggests the boys use their genetic modifications for the upcoming science fair and go to the South Park Genetic Engineering Ranch.

At the ranch, Dr. Alphonse Mephesto shows them his genetically engineered collection, including several different animals with four pairs of buttocks, such as a monkey, ostrich and mongoose. Mephesto then explains that, just like the Loverboy song says, "pig and elephant DNA just won't splice", and steals a blood sample from Stan and the boys leave. At school the boys learn Terrance has cloned a human foot. The boys go to Chef with their genetic engineering problem, and after he too cites the Loverboy song, he gives them the idea to try to have the animals "make sweet love" to breed.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mephesto and his assistant Kevin have created a human clone of Stan for Terrance. The boys attempt to get the pig and the elephant drunk and to mate, but it does not seem to be working until Chef stops by and sings to the animals with a little help from Elton John. The cloned Stan breaks free from Mephesto's ranch and proceeds to terrorize the town. The boys eventually find the clone and take it to Stan's house and convince it to attack Shelley; however she easily defeats it and the clone decides to destroy the house and indirectly kills Kenny McCormick, by flinging him into a microwave, with a chair. Mephesto shows up and shoots the clone, but Stan is afraid he will be in trouble for everything the clone did. However, in a brief moment of kindness, Shelley takes the blame, after which she beats up Stan.

When the science projects are due, Terrance presents a monkey with five pairs of buttocks, known as the "Five-Assed Monkey", but Kyle has nothing until the pig gives birth to a pot-bellied pig that looks like Mr. Garrison, implying the pig was impregnated by Mr. Garrison before the elephant. Garrison quickly awards it first prize over Terrance's monkey.

Production
"An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" was written by show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Dan Sterling. It first aired on September 10, 1997, in the United States on Comedy Central. Parker and Stone intended to call this episode "An Elephant Fucks a Pig", but changed the title under pressure from Comedy Central. The network also made them cut a scene in which Shelley sets Stan on fire, to keep the show from coming under the same controversy for showing dangerous acts that can easily be imitated as MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head and later, MTV's Jackass. On early reruns of "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig", water under Stan would appear without an explanation. It was until later when South Park was re-released in HD when the water under Stan was removed. It was during the writing of this episode that Parker and Stone decided Kyle would be the good student and "school-smarter than the other kids".

The subplot with Stan getting beat up by his sister Shelley came from Parker's real-life experiences getting beat up as a child by his sister, also named Shelley, who is three years his elder. Parker said although his sister would later deny it, she regularly beat him up or locked him out of the house for hours. He stated that the scene when Stan says "You're my sister and I love you" in order to try to avoid a beating, but was subsequently beat even harder, was based on an actual experience with his sister. A scene in which Stan asks the giant mutant Stan to attack Shelley is based on Parker's childhood fantasy of having a larger version of himself beat up his sister. The resolution to the subplot, in which Shelley takes the blame for Stan's mistakes, and then beats up Stan when he tries to thank her, was also based on experiences Parker had when his sister would bail him out of trouble.

The dialogue spoken by the giant mutant Stan was inspired by a mentally handicapped character in the MTV show How's Your News?, which Parker and Stone produced. According to Parker and Stone, the character could only say phrases like "Bubba chop, bubba chewy chomp", and both men took turns voicing mutant Stan to sound the same way. Isaac Hayes, who does the voice of Chef, recorded all his lines via phone from New York City. Parker and Stone said they were nervous to ask him to repeat the line, "Now I know how all those white women felt", but he had no problem repeating it. The genetic mutations Dr. Mephesto creates, including the animals with multiple asses and the goldfish with bunny ears, were inspired by things Parker drew during high school.

The scene in the cafeteria, in which the four boys are annoyed by Pip Pirrup, is a cut scene from the original version of the South Park pilot, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe". As such, the animation in that individual scene is actually traditional paper cutout stop motion, while the animation throughout the rest of the episode is done with computers. In order to illustrate the aftermath after the destruction scenes, Parker and Stone smudged the paper sets with their fingerprints and stains to make them look like scorch burns.

Cultural references
The Baltimore Sun writer Tamara Ikenberg equated the episode as both a parody of genetic engineering and a statement against its potential evils, particularly through its portrayal of the giant mutant Stan wreaking havoc through South Park. This episode marked the first appearances of the characters Shelley and Sharon Marsh, Stan's elder sister and mother respectively, as well as that of Dr. Mephesto. Dr. Mephesto is based on Marlon Brando's character Dr. Moreau in the 1996 film, The Island of Dr. Moreau, which is based on the 1896 H. G. Wells novel of the same name. Mephesto is named after Mephistopheles, the demon in the Faust legend. Kevin, the companion of Dr. Mephesto, is based on the small creature who resembles and dresses like a miniature version of Brando's character in the film.

Elton John, the English singer and songwriter, appears as a guest vocalist for Chef's song, in one of the earliest celebrity spoof appearances on South Park. Trey Parker, who provided the voice for Elton John, said many people thought it was the actual John singing because his impression was so accurate. In another musical reference featured in the episode, several characters claim the real-life Canadian rock group Loverboy wrote a song about the fact that the DNA of an elephant and pig will not splice. "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" includes several pop cultural references to films and television shows. The last line in the episode, "That'll do pig", spoken by Cartman, is a reference to the final line of the 1995 film Babe, a movie about a talking pig, which Stone has described as one of his favorite films. When the boys try to tell police officer Barbrady about the clone, he suggests that the boys have seen too many episodes of The X-Files. In the scene in which Pip is introduced, Stan asks Pip about his peculiar name, but Cartman interrupts Pip during his answer. Pip's reply – "my father's family name being Pirrip and my Christian name Phillip, my infant tongue--" – is identical to the opening line of the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations, which is narrated by its protagonist, Pip. The fourth season episode "Pip" is a parody and comedic retelling of the novel, and stars Pip, who assumes the role of his namesake.

Reception
Several media outlets described "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" as one of the most popular early South Park episodes. Tom Carson of Newsday said it was the most outrageous South Park episode until "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" aired three months later. Many reviewers said the mere title demonstrated the crudeness and originality of South Park, then still a relatively new show. Chris Vognar of The Dallas Morning News said, "With episode titles such as, 'An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig,' suffice it to say there ain't much on the air like it."

Tamara Ikenberg of The Baltimore Sun said the episode demonstrated the show's ability to address ethically challenging issues like genetic engineering with an "imaginative, unconventional flair". Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times praised the episode, and said the bestiality hinted at in the final scene of the episode illustrated the outrageousness of the show, as well as the fact that the show would probably not be enjoyed by all audiences.

Rick Bentley of The Fresno Bee said the biggest laughs from the episode come from the song Chef sings to the elephant and pig. In 2008, Alicia Wade of the Daily Egyptian said the episode and its theme about genetic engineering still felt fresh more than 10 years after its original broadcast. In 2009, Travis Fickett from IGN rated the episode an 8.3 out of 10, and concluded, "It's a bit shocking, perhaps offensive to some, but in the context of murdering mutants and five-assed monkeys created by Brando parodies in Hawaiian moo-moos – it all makes perfect sense. And it's all quintessentially South Park."

Home media
"An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" was released, alongside five other episodes, in a three-set VHS on May 5, 1998, marking the first time South Park was made available on video. The episode was released on the "Volume III" video, along with "Death"; other featured episodes included "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", "Volcano", "Weight Gain 4000" and "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride". The episode was re-released by Warner Home Video in 2002, as part of the DVD box set South Park – The Complete First Season.

"Tonight is Right for Love", the song sung by Chef to encourage the elephant and pig to make love, is featured in the 1998 South Park soundtrack "Chef Aid: The South Park Album". In the track, rock singer Meat Loaf sings the song along with Isaac Hayes, the actor who voices Chef.

The distribution license for "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" was among six South Park episodes purchased in 2000 by the Pittsburgh-based company and website SightSound.com. The site made the episodes available for download $2.50 for a two-day download and $4.95 for a permanent copy. It was one of the first experiments with making television videos available for Internet download, making "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" one of the first of any television episode made legally available on the Internet.

title: An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig