Someone at Google has a profound sense of humour. If you’ve got the time, and are used to the standard error messages that display when sites can’t be found – then there’s a very subtle page that can be displayed, dealing with the much mentioned ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that the US made up as a reason for grabbing oil. You need to do the following steps carefully: 1.Go to www.google.com 2. Type in (but don’t hit Enter/return): weapons of mass destruction 3. Hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button, instead of the normal “Google search” button; 4. Carefully read what appears to be a normal error message, and you’ll discover it’s anything but a normal error message.
So you’ve been sent some badly written email suggesting that if you supply information about your bank account you could make millions, do you swear at the PC screen and hit ‘delete’ — or do you do what a man called Steve decided to do. He replied, striking up a fake friendship with the scammer, progressing to sending pictures of the ‘suitcase full of money’ he was going to be bringing, and then flew to Dubai with friends, to film the scammer in person at the airport. Go stare in amazement at the unfolding saga of African Scammers.
You’ve had those times, I’m sure when words fail you and for no particular reason other than good natured cheerfulness, you get the urge to drop your pants (or lift your dress) and show your butt at something. It cuts through the problem of explaining your feelings about a specific person or isse, in one quick disrespectful gesture. This is called ‘mooning’ and I get that urge a lot, starting with wanting to moon Bush, then Mbeki, then — well, the list just stretches on forever. Having explained this ancient glorious art — now onto the meat: It’s become a tradition in a part of the US for a whole bunch of people to gather for no reason on a couple of specific days and ‘moon’ a passing train. Go read about the event at Moon Amtrak . And then for some truly silly pix, showing the view of the mooners from the train perspective, try Annual Mooning Pix. (If the site doesn’t come up or you get a “site-exceeded-its bandwidth” message, give it a minute and hit reload on your browser — this worked for me.)
Then continuing the “oh-the-hell-with-it-and-here’s-my-butt-to-stare-at” theme — read this BBC report about the case of a man who mooned a police car: Mooning Is Political Protest. And then dip into this news report out of Texas — Man Moons Judge — where a man who was in court, decided to show his displeasure (and naked butt) at the judge who’d just sentenced him, earning him more jail time in the process.
Then you can take things a bit further, by making a large statue of a mooning in action, and point it at your neighbours. Loosen the belt and get ready at Mooning Man Statue. Mooning isn’t always appreciated though, take a look at the pic and read the outraged article when a Canadian athlete had his award taken away because he mooned the crowd. Then there’s the New Zealand rugby player who mooned a car and ended up in hospital (after being hit by the car): New Zealand Hospital Moon.
But its not only athletes who get the urge, take a look at some of the glorious pix of what happens in Portland in the US when a bunch of happy Santa’s invade city streets for a big Mass Father Christmas Mooning. (It’s another happy example of what happens in normal societies when bunches of people who like Christmas, alcohol and anarchy can get together in safety and do stuff — unlike Prison Camp SA, where we’re locking ourselves in at night, like good little democratic prisoners).
And just to show that politics and showing your butt in public are related, look at this next site which is about trying to raise money to finance a trip to go moon the White House. So far the three potential patriotic mooners have raised $374 dollars to go show their butts — but it being a democratic website, they’ve also raised $17 dollars from people who don’t want them to go bare it all. Go checkout Moon The Whitehouse.
Gear change but still oddly related to all the above showing of cracks — back in the bad old days when I was a happy chemical user of anything and everything, I never really needed a checklist of reasons to do drugs — I mean jeez, look around at the world we live in, right? But this hasn’t stopped someone else from coming up with 20 Things That Make Me want To Smoke Crack.
By the way, if you thought the rubbish they sell on those late night TV shows was bad, try something you’d actually love to watch being demonstrated live – a portable music-playing vibrator. I kid you not. Go to Audio Oh. And yes, I know you spend more time with your PC than with your Significant Other, but how far would you actually go in customising your PC so that it could do all those things for you that a geek needs, without ever being told to go wash dishes? Go be very very frightened at probably the ultimate custom-job ever done on a PC – to turn the entire pc into a working, huggable version of Lara Croft. Go stare in awe at the series of photographs showing The Ultimate PC Modification.
You know those stupid moral dilemmas that guidance counselors throw at kids in order to teach them morality — for instance — You’re in a burning building, and there’s an old man and a baby, and you can only save one of them – which do you choose? These and other pretty facile examples to try and teach questions of logic and morality have been around since pa fell off the proverbial. Point being — how about a site which plays with this concept and offers a range of much more fun and difficult choices. Space prohibits giving some examples, but the choices range from quite silly, to very profound (they range from pudding choices — through to who you would choose to die for). Go kill some time at You Must Choose.
As a frightening finale, some of you will remember the sheer anarchic joy locally when David Hall Green was on TV and made some dumbass comments when he thought the microphone was switched off. A major foot in mouth moment. (A mother-of-two was being interviewed about childcare, and David Hall Green off-camera, not realising the microphone was on, chirped “I’ll bet she’s got 14 children and each has a different mother.” Boom, bye bye Mr Green). I still have the newspaper cutting so I’m not making this up. Anyhow, what this is leading up to is an equally fabulous ‘I’m dead in the water with a foot in my mouth’ moment which happened on Sky TV. Listen in as presenters, not aware that they’re being broadcast, discuss Nicole Kidman being a lesbian, and more (including the classic ‘oops’ moment as a friend phones one of the presenters to tell them they’re actually live on the air.) Go and grab the largish sound file at I Wish I Had Shut My Damn Mouth.
Until the next time, if the humourless don’t get me.