Why is it called Tumbarumba? Tumbarumba is a town in New South Wales, Australia. The town inspired John O'Grady's poem The Integrated Adjective (also known as Tumba-bloody-rumba). The poem, in turn, popularized tumbarumba as a synonym for tmesis—the insertion of one word into the midst of another word or phrase.
What is Tumbarumba all about? Tumbarumba is an add-on for Firefox web browsers. It quietly sits in the background, occasionally inserts a fragment of a story into a webpage that is being viewed. The result is an absurd sentence that is reminiscent of the surrealist exquisite corpse game. If the inserted fragment (we call the fragments "tumbarumbas") is spotted and clicked upon, the entire story will emerge and eventually take over the page.
Our intention is for the reader to not only have the pleasure of finding and reading the stories, but also the momentary disorientation of stumbling upon a nonsensical sentence as well as a heightened awareness of textual absurdities (of which only a fraction will be the result of Tumbarumba).
How are you changing the text on the websites? Are you hacking into them? No, we're not hacking into websites. The change happens on your specific web browser when it displays a web page's content. It's sort of like changing the text by writing in a particular book... none of the other copies of that book are effected.
Does Tumbarumba track the sites I am visiting? We do not collect any information about our users or their computers. The add-on exists exclusively on the user's computer. The only information that is transmitted to a server is for an image search on Flickr.com using keywords from the short stories. No personal information or information about your web browsing habits are transmitted to a server. Your privacy is respected and protected.
The extension does store on your computer the web page where each story has most recently been uncovered. It stores the information so that the stories can be easily accessed via the Table of Contents page.
Installing Tumbarumba
How do I install Tumbarumba? Go to the main page, click on "download", and follow the instructions there.
What changed in the most recent version of Tumbarumba? Click here for a list of all the changes since version 1.0.
The installation isn't working. What should I do? Are you using the Firefox browser? Currently Tumbarumba only runs on Firefox.
If you are running Firefox, try installing again... look at the top of the browser window and check and see if there's a button requesting that you confirm the installing. If so, press the "Allow" button on that banner.
The installation still isn't working. What else can I do? Send an email to
with details about the problem. We'll try to help.
First Aid
I don't see any effect... is Tumbarumba working? Tumbarumba is not intended to have an obvious and immediate effect. The idea is for it to occasionally mutate a webpage's sentence and cause you, the reader, to a moment of confusion & delight. You can actively hunt for Tumbarumbas, but we think it more fun to stumble upon them unexpectedly.
How do I report a bug or comment? The preferred way is for you to select open the Tumbarumba menu on the Firefox menu bar and select Submit suggestion or bug report menu item. Doing that will start a new email message in your email program and will enter some details about Tumbarumba's configuration in the message's body.
Alternatively you can directly email us at
Using Tumbarumba
Is there a tutorial or example? Sure! Go here for a tutorial.
How do I access the project's stories? Once you find a Tumbarumba, click on it. Repeatedly. For more details, try out our tutorial.
Where can I see a list of the stories in the project?
The table of contents is here.
How do I go back to an uncovered story? The "Stories" section of the main page provides a link to the webpage where you most recently uncovered each of the stories. You can also bookmark pages where you find stories (this is useful if you like how a story is formatted on a particular webpage and you to still be able to access that version long term).
Using the Table of Contents on the main page will result in the story being immediately shown. Using other methods (e.g., a bookmark) to return to a page where a story was uncovered will have the text reset so that the story can be uncovered again.
Why is a story no longer showing up? If you returned to the story without using the Table of Contents, the webpage's text is reset... if you locate the sentence fragement and click on it again, the story will reappear.
If the inserted text no longer appears on the webpage, then the page's content may have changed slightly. The places that stories appear is partially based on the specific content of webpages. So if a webpage is updated with new content, it may no longer be possible to see a story that used to be there. No need to worry though... you can always find the story on a new webpage!
How do I share a story with my friend?
We want everyone's experience to be one of individual discovery, so the places where stories appear is different for every computer. Because of this there's no way for you to send a web address where your friend can see a particular story. However, you can encourage your friend to keep an eye out for Tumbarumbas so that the story is eventually uncovered.
The wacky formatting is making it hard to read a story. Is there some way I can see the story in plain text? The appearance & formatting of a story is based upon the formatting of the webpage on which you find it. This is meant to be part of the experience. No need to despair, however, if you don't like how a story shows up on a given page, the format will change when you find the story on another website.
How do I see the unmanipulated webpage?
You can see the page's intended text by disabling Tumbarumba on that particular page. Open the Tumbarumba menu on the Firefox menu bar. Select Disable Tumbarumba on this page. This will cause the current page to reload and display without any Tumbarumbas. The webpage will continue to not contain Tumbarumbas unless it the page is re-enabled.
To re-enable the page select the Enable Tumbarumba on this page in the Tumbarumba menu. Note, most pages do not contain Tumbarumbas so "enabling" Tumbarumbas does not guarantee the presence, just the possibility, of one.
How do I disable Tumbarumba on a particular webpage? Open the Tumbarumba menu on the Firefox menu bar. Select Disable Tumbarumba on this page. This will cause the current page to reload and display without any Tumbarumbas. The webpage will continue to not contain Tumbarumbas unless it the page is re-enabled.
To re-enable the page select the Enable Tumbarumba on this page in the Tumbarumba menu. Note, most pages do not contain Tumbarumbas so "enabling" Tumbarumbas does not guarantee the presence, just the possibility, of one.
How do I temporarily turn off Tumbarumba for all webpages?
Open the Tumbarumba menu on the Firefox menu bar. Select Turn off Tumbarumba. This will cause the current page to reload and display without any Tumbarumbas. Additionally, no other webpage will display a Tumbarumba. To turn Tumbarumba back on, select Turn on Tumbarumba in the Tumbarumba menu.
This is different then disabling Tumbarumba in when Tumbarumba is “turned off,” it continues to work in the background but it stops short of changing how webpages display. Disabling Tumbarumba stops Tumbarumba from having any effect on the browser at all.
How do I temporarily disable Tumbarumba?
Open the Tools menu on the Firefox menu bar. Select the Add-ons menu item to open the Add-ons dialog. Select the Tumbarumba item in the Add-ons dialog and click the “Disable” button. You will need to restart Firefox to have the disabling go into effect.
To re-enable Tumbarumba, open the Tools menu on the Firefox menu bar. Select the Add-ons menu item to open the Add-ons dialog. Select the Tumbarumba item in the Add-ons dialog and click the “Enable” button. You will need to restart Firefox to have the enabling go into effect.
How do I uninstall Tumbarumba? Sorry to see you go! Please feel welcome to give us feedback about your experience with Tumbarumba.
Open the Tools menu on the Firefox menu bar. Select the Add-ons menu item to open the Add-ons dialog. Select the Tumbarumba item in the Add-ons dialog and click the “Uninstall” button. You will need to restart Firefox to finalize the uninstall.
Tumbarumba is a 2008 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.