/ 25 September 2002

Who do you blame for impure thoughts?

Okay, I’ve decided that a number of local politicians need a serious beating, and I’m the person to help organise this. How, you ask? Well, browsing on E-Bay, I found an auction offer for a “real Ass-Kicking” (by a 6 ft, 250 pound American). All I had to do was cover his expenses and air-ticket, and in return, I could get a genuine ‘no bones broken but still severe’ ass-kicking of a lifetime. Naturally at the idea of ‘buying’ an ass-kicking, I thought of our government and all those wasters of oxygen in Parliament. Go take a look and put an offer in yourself, at the Ass-Kicking Auction!

But on to other serious things. For a collection of movies – courtesy of Nasa – of what happens when you fill balloons with water and then pop them in zero gravity, go check out the movies of science in action at Zero Gravity Water Balloons.

Seeing as nearly half the people in this country are unemployed, it’s a pity that local TV Channels haven’t smelled the great potential for good TV from all this human suffering. Instead of putting the homeless to work, why not do what this next site shows – and make them fight each other, for our entertainment?

Yes folks, real homeless people, beating the crap out of each other. (CNN refers nervously to this concept as ‘grisly footage of homeless men fighting and performing dangerous stunts’) Gee, sounds just like Gladiator, but without the cocaine, muscled retards or fake veneer of respectability. Go take a look at the future of reality TV at Bum Fights.

Those of you trapped on the Net will know of the zillions of sites asking people to ‘rate’ pictures – the usual ‘am I hot or not’ genre. Then you get the many bizarre websites dedicated to people’s pets. So, as an example of what happens when meme’s collide, try Rate My Kitten.

It must be nice to live in a country where you can focus on dumb things, as opposed to locking yourself in at night thanks to uncontrolled civil unrest (also known as ‘crime’). Take a look at what happens when someone got tired of waiting in queues to ride rollercoasters, and decided to build their own, in their backyard. Backyard Rollercoaster.

Tying in with the new Star Wars damp squib, how about a full scale model in someone’s garden of The Millennium Falcon. Given the coming high speed-train service, maybe the ANC should think about getting some real engineers – like this guy who built his own home made monorail.

Let’s get away from my wild uncontrolled contempt for local government at the moment, and onto something more fun. What could be more fun than sweets for children, shaped like cigarettes? Well, how about sweets shaped like syringes! Yes folks, you can almost hear the morons and professionally-outraged experts lining up to appear on talk shows at the storm around the rather cool-looking Syringe Sweets.

According to some statistics, around 70% of processed food in the US (I assume locally as well) contains genetically modified material. However, no one seems to mention this, or even bothers labelling it as such. Start your voyage of discovery – and perhaps your move away from most of the rubbish on supermarket shelves – at Label This. And do a bit more browsing and cutting and pasting of info available at the excellent True Food Network.

Got bandwidth and time to kill? Why not browse through the varied delights of The Top 100 Online Games. Or instead of browsing the porn sites, you could always read an interesting (all ages) overview of the online porn industry and how it’s fairing – at The Devil His Due.

Sexual repression causes a whole bunch of fun things – including what happened around 400 years back, when some young girls decided to start pointing the finger at people and blaming the Devil for their impure thoughts. Get ready for a lot of fascinating reading (and cutting and pasting for offline storage) at the Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive.

As part of your general education, take a read of this interesting interview dealing with what is known as the Philadelphia Experiment, called Aliens, Time Travel and Wormholes.

Here’s something for all those ageing people who think because they’re going grey and bald, its a good idea to shave all their hair off and pretend to be cool instead. Someone should tell them the truth. Head Shavers!

Until the next time, if people who don’t like me organising-an-ass-kicking-for-the-President, 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.