Today’s Bizarro:
A famous cultural reference here, worked into a pun on badges and budgies.
(Oh yes, you also need to know that budgie is an informal term for budgerigar, which is ‘a small gregarious Australian parakeet [Melopsittacus undulatus, family Psittacidae] that in the wild is green with a yellow head …, is popular as a pet bird[,] and has been bred in a variety of colors’ (NOAD2).)
Three sources on the stinkin’ badges quote. First, from Wikipedia:
“Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” is a well-known and widely (mis)quoted line from cinematic history. In 2005, it was chosen as #36 on the American Film Institute list, AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes. It comes from a line of dialogue from a 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and first appeared in film 21 years later in a movie of the same name. The line was parodied in a 1967 episode of The Monkees TV show called “It’s a Nice Place to Visit” and in the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles in 1974 and was cited in many movies after that.
These parodies were then parlayed into a snowclone. From the Snowclone Database on 7/27/07, in the entry on “X? We don’t need no stinkin’ X”:
The furthest this quote can be traced back is to the 1935 book The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but the snowclone entered the wider world via 1974’s Blazing Saddles, which in turn is a reference to the 1948 Humphrey Bogart film (based on the book) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Badges show up in all three quotes
There’s considerable variation in the syntactic form of the snowclone examples, and steenkin’, stinkin’, and stinking are all attested phonological variants. And there are a great many items for X in the snowclone examples.
The SCDB entry cites a 10/15/05 posting “Stinkin’ Up the Place” by Eric Morse on the Subjunctivitis site, with considerable discussion and a punning example Barges? We don’t need no stinking barges! Badges, budgies, barges.
All three sources approvingly cite a Stinking Badges Home Page, but links to it no longer work.
October 15, 2014 at 5:17 am |
I wonder why what looks very much like a cartoon stick of dynamite with a lit fuse is in the box marked “Chewy Fun!” at the lower left-hand corner. Another cultural allusion I’m deaf to, I suppose.
October 15, 2014 at 5:28 am |
As I remark every so often, Dan Piraro sprinkles various symbols throughout his Bizarro cartoons, using a small set with personal meaning to him. This one has two (note the numeral 2 by his signature): the stick of dynamite and the eyeball (on the counter). The symbols have essentially nothing to do with what’s going on in the cartoon or with the wider culture.
October 15, 2014 at 9:57 am |
Sorry–I haven’t been paying attention. I’ll get my hat and coat…
October 15, 2014 at 1:30 pm |
Not your problem. But there’s no way I can flag this every time a Bizarro cartoon comes by (which is every few days.) Look for the piece of pie and the rabbit …
October 16, 2014 at 12:40 am
I will studiously ignore sticks of dynamite, eyeballs, pieces of pie, and rabbits strewn around his cartoons. The trouble with living in another culture is that it’s hard to distinguish between cultural allusions and simple word/picture play, as this seems to be. I am out of touch with many American cultural allusions as I’ve now been here for almost 21 years. On the other hand, there are lots of things happening over here that most Americans have no clue about. Swings and roundabouts.
October 16, 2014 at 1:28 am
I thought I’d posted about the whole set of Piraro’s “hidden symbols”, but I can’t find it, so now I will.