So if I mention sticky palms and a skintight costume, what comes to mind – apart from Helmut Lotti and the male presenter of local TV show Idols? Correct, I’m referring of course to the eagerly awaited new movie – Spiderman!.
If you want an amazing blast from the past, there’s a site with clips from radio shows that a lot of us grew up with. I’ve begged and pleaded with the site owner to provide some full length programs, but for now there’s just short clips. (If you have any old copies of SA radio shows from way back, help preserve a small piece of our cultural history and share them!) Go to Springbok Radio.
Being a vegetarian, I’m not only cheerfully aware of my ethical, moral and health superiority over all you carnivores out there, I automatically join the ranks (in my dreams, at least) of The Sexiest Vegetarians!
Its always funny seeing adverts for pet food on TV, with a range of supposedly great ingredients that your dog/cat will love. Remember, this is for an animal that’ll happily eat its own vomit. So with that simple truth in mind, how about a range of pet food in flavors that’ll really appeal to your pet – as opposed to what some moron in advertising thinks YOU will ‘like for your pet’. Get your pet what it really wants – choose from choice items like ‘Cat Turds’ ‘Butt Stink’ or ‘Rotting Fish’ among others. Go check the flavors on offer at Brown Dog Institute.
Then for more truth is stranger than fiction stuff – longtime gamers will recall a fairly fun voodoo-related game from a few years back. Well, the sequel came out, and a fairly dumb PR company thought that advertising the game on gravestones in cemetaries was a really cool idea. (Amazing, an idea that could suck, blow AND scrape the bottom of the barrel, all at the same time.) Go look at the news report at Shadow Man
Freebie book download time. For those of you who don’t realize that with a copy of MIRC, and a quick join to a Dalnet server and a channel called #bookwarez, you can get just about any book you’d otherwise have to pay insane prices for in the local stores – here’s a quick web-based download of a free e-book, go to VC Andrews.
Previous generations have their own form of ‘where were you when..’ – usually referring to the Moon Landing or JFK’s murder – but this generation has 911 for a ghoulish focus point. Take a look at Where Were You? And then for a wide range of media reactions to that day, try Web Reactions.
If you’re a regular IQ-deprived consumer who only listens to what is laughingly called ‘music radio’ locally, (local music radio = a 24/7 sell-through mechanism for local CD distributors) then you probably wont know about one of the great modern musicians and composer Phillip Glass. For an online interactive tour through around 60 assorted music pieces – as well as being able to rearrange the music you’re hearing, in real-time – try the amazing Phillip Glass Music Engine.
Time to get knotted. If you have way too much time on your hands and are curious about how to actually do the knots that boy scouts and people in bondage video’s seem to manage with ease, then try Get Knotted!
So you’re happily lazy and despite the TV saying that Knysna is a great budget holiday alternative to Tibet, (yeah right) you know you have no intention of going to either. Well, provided you have a vaguely decent Net connection, you can sort through a great collection of other peoples adventures (from categories like Mountains, Jungle, Water, Desert, Snow etc) at Adventure TV.
And looping back to the earlier MIRC reference, if you should happen to look into a channel called #survivor-central, you’ll discover that you can download episodes of Survivor Series 4 – (seeing as a local TV channel thinks they’re really clever making us wait for two months before showing it.)
Of course, seeing as you have the Internet to play with, for a starting point towards freeing yourself and your children from the brain-dulling device called Television – read a book or take a good read through TV Turnoff. And then check out Kill Your Television.
Then finally, to show that education doesn’t actually suck, its just your teachers who did – for a fairly intensive look at the fight between two nation superpowers that helped Hollywood come up with the plots for a lot of movies over the years, go discover The Cold War.
Until the next time, if booksellers, teachers and Idols presenters 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.