/ 5 January 2004

The festive season aftermath

Seeing as it’s just after the media atrocity known as ‘Christmas’ I thought it’d be useful to find out a bit more about this Jesus person who keeps being mentioned on boring TV shows. Luckily this Jesus guy has his own homepage where he explains some of the stuff that people seem to think is a reason to go to Church. Find out everything you wanted to know at The Jesus Homepage.

Or if you want your religion in more flavours than regular vanilla, once upon a time there was a little old dog with cataracts, who barked sideways at strangers because he couldn’t see where they were. This led to some folks realizing that this was a beautiful analogy of how humans interact with this ‘God’ concept they have. Go browse through The Church of the Blind Chihuahua.

Then there’s all the whiney rubbish on TV news and in newspapers about DVD pirating and CD pirating (which came from the PR departments of the local profiteering swines trying to maintain their stranglehold and profit-margin) — for instance, Company X whining about ‘reducing the cost of their DVDs to R109 … Gee, now they’re only making R100 profit. Anyway, if you were weird enough to buy a CD this Xmas, go follow the advice at the charmingly named What A Crappy Present. Then get a nice reality check on the music industry at Downhill Battle.

Let’s dive back through the swingdoors of history for a moment. Most of you have to deal with the operating system known as Windows on a daily basis. To get a glimpse of how far things have come, now that we’re up to the rather crappy OS known as XP, take a geeky look at Windows Version 1.

As lazy people like me know, the second law of thermodynamics is not to be messed with. And it basically can be summed up as ‘all energy goes from useable to unuseable’. (Which is a cool geeky justification for putting on the aircon, and staying at home and not expending vast amounts of energy, just because the media says its a holiday.)

Well, this ‘energy is always lost’ concept is a solid, unbreakable Law. Until now. Clip this following news item and make your physics or science teacher look stupid in front of the rest of the class when school resumes:

Law of Entropy Broken.

Seeing as it’s the holiday season, why not take a look at what happens when you combine happy people and body paint. Go take a look at the naked joys of Airbrushed Bodies.

Alternatively, clean-shaven women are always a fun thing, but no one seems to bother suggesting that the reverse might be equally pleasurable. Try this site devoted to trying to sell you gadgets to, er, shave yourself. Go to Ball Trimmer.

Then, oddly related, at a site dedicated to fans of masturbation (yes, both genders do it, and no, no one’s gone blind yet), they’re

looking for people to review porn sites. Truth is stranger than fiction. Go take a look at the jobs section at Self Lovers Guide.

TV screens and the methods of displaying pictures hasn’t really changed much in 30 or 40 years. So when a technology comes along that tries a different approach, it’s worth a look. Consider the idea of combining a bit of water vapour and a visual image, so that you end up with what is, in effect, a floating picture that can be walked through. Take a look at the pictures of

this in action at Fog Screen TV.

Someone who shall remain nameless at the M&G, made the mistake of assuming I’m anti-American — presumably because of all of my ongoing attacks on aspects of the USA’s political strategy. This is a rather simplistic view of the motives behind my criticism. I think America is mostly fabulous, but I have serious problems with the current administration in power. So there. With that said, take a read of one little rather snotty Iraqi teen’s experiences with the US military, at Iraqi Teen.

Here in South Africa, where 25% of the police force is functionally illiterate (and thus wouldn’t even be able to read this column), a sense of humor is decidedly lacking. Not so the police at this next site, who made a very precise and logical online page to allow people to arrest themselves. Take a look at The Self Arrest Form.

Destruction and chaos is always wonderful, especially when there is absolutely no reason for the destruction in the first place. Chaos and illogical behavior is always a great way to freak out the anal-obsessives who can’t cope with something not following the rules.

A case in point: Someone was curious about what would happen if you combined the unlikely pairing of a load of Diet Coke and a PC. Go stare thoughtfully at this combo of anarchy and scientific inquiry at Diet Coke In A Computer.

Old news item, but still great fun. There was a TV show in the UK, where contestants had to compete for the attention of a young woman. After they discovered she was a pre-op transsexual, they all freaked out and ran for lawyers. Take a read of the news item and pic. Based on the pic, I don’t see a problem, but I guess I’m too well-adjusted. Contestants in Transsexual

Show Sue.

So you’re a world traveler and you keep getting hassled by women who just won’t take no for an answer. I understand, it happens everywhere. Luckily there’s a site which can help – go browse though How to Say ‘No’ in 407 Languages.

If I had to mention a site which had phrases like ‘Not sure what pee to use?’,you’d probably think this was one of those odd Japanese fetish sites which you hope your significant other doesn’t catch you on. But you’d be wrong. Pedator urine is used for training animals in a variety of ways. Go stare at this site which sells everything from mountain lion urine, through to wolf-pee. I’m not kidding. Checkout Predator Pee.

Then more ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ stuff. How about a site with lots of women looking for nothing more than love and companionship. Yes there’s a catch. They’re all criminals, and behind bars. Go look at the faces and rap

sheets of Jail Babes.

At first I cringed, thinking this next site was for real. Then I looked closer and read the ‘creative date ideas’ and howled. At first glance the site seems to be one of those ‘Abstinence is good for you’ sites, aimed at teenagers, but look closely at the advice they give at Technical Virgin.

Then, as I don’t really drink alcohol, I’m not going to have any problems over this festive season, but you might — so stagger slowly to Hangover Cures.

If you’ve never watched a web page being shredded before your eyes, go to this online shredder, and type in the url of your choice and watch a page get torn apart at The Shredder.

And finally (and trust me – this one’s for adults only), how about an online translator which turns the url of your choice into something approaching the language of your average porno site? You have to mess with people’s minds and try this one, put in the url of your choice and ‘porno’ it, at Pornalize.

Until the next time, if local record companies or the M&G Online editor doesn’t get me.