Skip to main content

The catatafish

 


Regular viewers of South Park will recognize the term "catatafish." It is a fishy ghost first found inside the stomach of a semi-regular character called Mr. Slave. Presumably the body of the fish got there as a result of Mr. Slave's devotion to S/M.

As you can tell from this clip, the catatafish is a catfish, and also has a vaguely samarai-like outfit.

It's the samarai connection that presumably inspired a play on words in the character's name.There is a bit more going on than the addition of a couple of unnecessary syllables to the word "catfish."

One traditional samurai weapon is the katana, a slightly curved sword as portrayed above. As the link here indicates, the Catatafish appears to have a katana, in a bejeweled sheath, on his back.

So I'm thinking catatafish is a portmanteau of katana and catfish. Sound right to everyone? Only sign onto this if it sounds right to you. I'm not here to make you do anything. Not like those stories they tell about me and that underage salmon.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Demimonde Mesila ThraamMay 28, 2021 at 1:59 PM

    I am a huge South Park fan, and I have been wondering about this for ages. Thank you for this astute observation!

    The catatafish character also shows up in the South Park game "The Stick of Truth".

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti
9 comments
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak
17 comments
Read more

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

  Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave.   First, Plato  is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability.  I  only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers
Post a Comment
Read more