Once upon a time, you could buy cocaine, opium, amphetamines and morphine in most shops. Many products were happily filled up with stuff that today, would get you busted – from the cocaine in Coca Cola through to arbitrary products like “Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup – containing one grain (65 mg) of morphine per fluid ounce” (used to “effectively quiet restless infants and small children”). Go and stare thoughtfully at the drug filled goodies and their adverts, at the fascinating and rather tasty-looking Drug Filled Products of the Pre-Prohibition Era: http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/preprohibition.htm
Try and shake off the buzz from the previous site and take a look at what happens when you combine Star Wars with the ancient Japanese art of folding paper into intricate shapes – you end up with Star Wars Origami!: http://www.happymagpie.com/swdiagrm.htm
Or if you can cope with the overly foul language on this next site, you can have the fun of watching a badly stoned Anna Nicole Smith (and a very drunken Orson Welles) desperately trying to remember their lines, in Out Takes: http://www.viceland.com/issues/v9n4/htdocs/touching.php
In case you’re curious about the current president of the US having the nerve to talk about ‘corporate corruption’ – read this enlightening article on Dubya’s own, highly questionable business career, at the charmingly titled George Bush the Failed Corporate Crook: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0228/ridgeway.php
Hmm, now when’s someone going to ask Thabo Mbeki about his collection of DRC diamonds…?
As Iraq looks more and more likely to become the next target of Dubya and his poodle friend in the UK, do a little background reading on the little-known US military habit of shooting nuclear waste at the enemy. Go read Depleted Uranium: http://commondreams.org/views02/0709-07.htm
Gore Vidal is one of the major literary voices in modern writing and he’s got some very harsh views on what’s happening in the political arena – go read an interview with him at The Last Defender of the American Republic: http://laweekly.com/ink/02/33/features-cooper.php
Gear change. It’s standard now that some men want to be women and visa versa, and for those with the patience and money, surgery is the answer. Look at the photographs on this plastic surgeon’s page, showing before and after views of some of the patients at Feminisation Surgery: http://www.webworqs.com/users/sally/resource/ouster.htm
The internet – apart from being the world largest one stop library – is also a great place to keep stuff. What stuff, you may ask? Well – just about anything that appeals to you. For instance, (for you folks en-route to heart attacks and cancer by eating fast foods), recall those little plastic things filled with sauces and stuff to make the crud seem more edible? Take a walk through The Condiment Packet Museum: http://www.clearfour.com/condiment/
Or how about the dubious joys of sweets shaped like cigarettes, for kids to munch on. Buy your kid some trainer smokes at The Gallery of Candy Cigarettes: http://www.cardhouse.com/a/candy/foreign/forthumb.htm
Then to see some of the bizarre food that those swines making adverts were selling throughout the 40’s 50’s and 60’s – The Gallery of Regrettable Food: http://lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html
Computer geeks have always had a certain thing for sleaze, so – along with a gentle warning about some adult content – take an astonished slow stroll through the strange pixillated world of the computer sex games as made for the old Commodore 64 – at The Girls of 64: http://www.heechee.net/c64/girls/zzframes.htm
Then for something in the same territory, but without the sleaze factor, go see the kinds of things women had to wear, in order to deal each month with what was once called ‘the curse’- at The Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health: http://www.mum.org/paddir.htm
And then, gawk at the attitudes and prejudice expressed in this historical collection of Racist Cartoons: http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/cartoons/
The film geeks among us will know of the exquisite joys to be had from watching truly bad movies – from ‘Attack of Giant Killer Rabbits’ type of flicks (like Night of the Lepus – which scared me witless as a kid) or the totally salacious genre of ‘sex and Nazi experimentation’ films which came pouring out of Italy in the early Seventies (Ilse – She Wolf of the SS, SS Experimentation Camp etc) Most of the films never made it here, as they scared our censors silly. Luckily though, you can dip into downloadable trailers at Classic B-Movie Trailers!: http://www.brainsonfilm.com/trailer.html
And staying with film, there’s a small collection of clips to be grabbed at Propaganda Film Clips: http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/propaganda/video/index.html
There are some strange people out there, who luckily, are making websites showing off their talents. For instance, imagine someone taking the time and energy to carefully paint and make up thumbs to look like people? But then picture it going a step further, and they build sets, wigs and mini-studio’s – and then create a ‘thumbs’ version of Titanic, and film it. It’s called (what else?) Thumbtanic!: http://thumb.com/thumbtanic/
If you thought that was tacky, read this story about what’s happened to Ground Zero – where you can now buy Osama Bin Laden toilet paper. Flag Draped Voyeurism: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/07/09/ground_zero/print.html
Until the next time, if advertisers and junkies don’t get me.
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.