Gyrating Bananas

Know your internet memes, Canadians

Among all the news stories hitting the headlines this week about young girls heading off to Syria to fight against Islamic State, or potential terrorist attacks thwarted by undercover police stings, one act of cyber-terrorism, or rather, hactivisim, which went almost unnoticed, caught my beady eye.

I guess this was because it happened in Canada, and unless there is something dramatic that involves heroic security guards at the houses of parliament, news from the nice neighbours across the Pond does not make it big over here.

It might also be because the act was itself pretty darn hilarious, so hard news sites have found it difficult to report on without indulging in a little bit of headline hamming or spurious photos.

Basically, since Friday, people wanting to log onto official websites for Canada's Parliament, its Supreme Court, the city of Ottawa and the Ottawa and Toronto police forces have been occasionally greeted by what the New York Times can only describe as a "a gyrating, anthropomorphic banana" or, more frequently but less amusingly, an error message.

According to the reports secreted in the bottom of newspaper columns, the strange banana shake was prompted by a hacker or a small group of hackers supporting the cause of an Ottawa teenager who was charged last spring with making hoax telephone calls throughout North America.

Along with the banana, the group/person called Aerith, who claimed responsibility for the hacking, posted statements denouncing the city’s police and provided personal information about the lead investigator and the city’s police chief.

I do not applaud the dissemination of private information about individuals, who are only doing their jobs as far as the law is concerned, but I do applaud someone who can make a statement so well and so widely, employing a favourite internet meme to put the message across.

Fans of the gyrating banana referred to so obliquely by the NYT will know that this was the famous 'Peanut Butter Jelly Time' banana, a heavily pixellated dancing flash animation from c. 2000-2001, which asked: "What time is it? It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time".

The internet - what a mine of information it is, not all of it useful - also informs me there is an emoticon developed for people who wish to insert a dancing banana into any emails. Thankfully I have not updated Blogspot with this, or I may have been tempted to insert it here.

A more famous parody would be Brian Griffin's attempts to cheer up Peter by performing the PBJT dance.

Family Guy Brian Griffin and Peter Griffin

I did want to see the gyrating banana dancing across official Canadian websites, but so far I have had no luck. But right now, all I want is a big piece of bread, smothered in grape jelly and peanut butter. It is 4:30. So surely, SURELY, it must be peanut butter jelly time - somewhere? Probably in Ontario.

I'm off to Canada.