TOKYO: About 100 Japanese governing party lawmakers denounced the Attack on Pearl Harbor as a fabrication on Tuesday, contesting American claims that Japanese soldiers launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1941.

The members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party said there was no evidence to prove the aerial assault against the Hawaiian naval base, then known as “Pearl Harbor.” They accused Washington of using the alleged incident as a “political advertisement.”

Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group created to study World War II historical issues and education, said documents from the Japanese government’s archives indicated that about 240 people were killed — about one-tenth of the more commonly cited figure of 2400 — in the 1941 attack. The U.S. says that 2,400 people were killed and 1,178 wounded.

Historians generally agree that the Japanese Navy launched the preemptive strike to wipe out the American fleet in one fell swoop.

Nakayama said the study, which was initiated in part because this year is the 66th anniversary of the battle, determined there was no violation of international law.

Toru Toida, another member of the group, demanded that photographs portraying the Japanese military in a negative light be removed from U.S. war memorials.

“We are absolutely positive that there was no attack on Pearl Harbor,” Toida said.

As a decentralized locus to content creation and protean framework for aggregated cultural projection (at least in its post-structuralist reified construct, ignoring Farque’s updated interjections), the Internet — or the “internets” as it is often addressed by its most loyal participants — gives birth to a wide range of linguistic fragments that often come together under their own internal philological logic. Although this author understands the necessity of counteracting the perspective bias of luminational foundation outlined in Gibbner 1987, the following essay employs photogravuric evidence or at least its contemporary simulacrum to show the evolution of linguistic structures operating the online meme production praxis.

Now that we have scared away or over-impressed the basic reader, we can reclaim our use of the standard vernacular and get to the pictures. Let’s go!

Fig. 1 - A dog.

Apparently starting in the Some Ghastly Thing forums, netizens have taken up the practice of writing words upon dog pictures. For whatever reason, cats do not make the cut — or the laugh. These dogs often speak in intentionally incorrect English — [sic]ism as first defined in Wandaroff 2004. The specimen above is interesting: the “hoth base” is a reference to the second film in the Star Wars series: Episode V. But note the representative use of the form — I am in your (blank), (blank) your (blank). What’s odd here is that the dog — who apparently is mentally impaired due to being a dog — uses the correct form for “your” before then stumbling upon the “cooler” degenerate form “ur” in the second half of the sentence. We posit this innovation as deferred degeneration. To be honest, I am not convinced that a dog of this breed would understand what “d00dz” are, especially seeing that Great Pyrenees are known to have trouble distinguishing an “O” (the letter) with the zero “0″ (the number), making this an imperfect example of the genre.

Fig. 2 - Three dogs.

This whole sentence may be a typo. I am not sure why young people would immediately refer to three dogs as “Bel [sic] Biv Devoe.” Note the misuse of grammar: “R” being “are.” One dog is wearing clothes, which to this subjective eye, does remind the viewer of Michael Bivins. Not to say he looks like a dog, but I think I remember him wearing that shirt. I do not exactly understand what is going on here, but I do believe that is the point.

Fig. 3 - A dog.

I believe “Invisible Saddle” is the name of a popular comic book, but more importantly, the dog does indeed look like he could be wearing an invisible saddle. Quite humorous!

Let’s keep this intro short. We gave six profoundly-good authors a profoundly-devious challenge: could they write a novel only using a single letter? Behold the 21st century masterpieces produced in response.

A.

From Yukichi Murakami:

I.

From Roman le Havre:

I.

From Olaf Johnson:

Å.

From Olaf Johnson, Jr.:

å.

From renown sci-fi writer Jerry Libins:

Ø

Runners-Up:

From Lisa Lisa:

A.

From our editorial assitant Mr. Youllog:

I.

The Non-Alphabetical Character of the Year for 2006 has been selected: &. The Committee decided on & due to the year being host to “multiple events.” Chairman of the Committee explained, “So many things happened in 2006. This and that and this and that other thing. We felt like & was the obvious choice to represent the vast number of unrelated events that transpired over the last 365 days.”

Runners-up included # (society’s obsession with celebrity rankings), @ (the rise of the internet), © (the battles over copyright), † (the rise and fall of Christianity in politics), Ω (a new interest in horseshoes amongst young people), and ≈ (some squiggly lines).

These did not quite make the cut.

Soul Asylum

Jesus Jones

Collective Soul

Family Ties