‘Tis the season to be sleazy — er, I mean “merry” — so this week I’m doing my best to counteract all the unattainable illusions that the mass media are trying to make the public hope for over this festive season.
Rather than reinforce the unrealistic expectations with which the adverts are barraging everyone, I thought it’d be far more pleasant, sane and fun just to pander cheerfully to the prurient interest. Ho ho ho!
Seeing as newspapers have been scraping the barrel recently, trying to come up with various lists of things that happened in 2004, in order to make readers buy the papers and thus keep profits up over this “low paper purchasing period”, I thought it might be fun to do a digital version. Check out The Top 10 Internet Hoaxes/Urban Legends of 2004.
Getting bored with Christianity? Tired of the same old trite platitudes being trotted out, which clearly don’t reflect anything of the reality in which we live? Well, luckily there’s a solution! Go make a new religion which does work for you. Get on your knees at The New Religion Creator.
If you’re part of one of those poor families (as about 70% of this country is) that can’t afford expensive Christmas decorations, then — courtesy of the internet — I have a gloriously tasteless and cheap alternative for you. Why spend money on a chintzy angel for the top of your Christmas tree — assuming, of course, you can afford a tree? If you have a tampon in the house, then there’s a great plan B available to you, which can make you the envy of all the other shack dwellers in your neighbourhood! Yes, folks, go find out how it’s all done at The Tampon Angel Pattern!.
Just to prove I have both a social conscience, and a rather twisted sense of humour, here’s more cool stuff for poor people this Christmas — assuming that they can even access the internet to read this. See what fun things can be created for free, at Paper Toys!.
For the dignified and elegant among us, in terms of quality Christmas gifts that clearly show that you’re a discerning and thoughtful person, surprise and alarm those you know by getting them the ever-popular Diana Death Clock!.
For a cute game for adults, which takes the horrors of working in an office cubicle and turns it into a game, look at the rather cute present for the slave worker in your life — The Cubes.
Gear change. So you’re horny. You have the money to go country-hopping in search of nookie. Do you keep this sleazy epic journey to yourself, or do you obsessively detail every single moment of your quest, for the voyeuristic delight of countless online netizens? It’s a no-brainer question, actually. Go stare in awe at the excesses of an online photo album of one man’s six-month trip to Russia in search of women. It’s 272 pages of pix and text that detail every step of this noble quest.
I won’t tell you on which page the man gets lucky, as it’s worth spending some time just going through the step-by-step adventures all by yourself. If you never realised that blatant sex tourism could be a fascinatingly interesting voyeuristic experience, be frightened and amazed at Winston’s Six-Month Adventure in Russia and Latvia 2003.
It’s standard practice for web designers to put fake Latin in large chunks of text on to web pages they are in the midst of designing. This being the silly season, some geeks at Portsmouth University decided to do something a little different to fill in the spaces of an unfinished web page on which they were working. Take a look at One for All and All for One.
Geeky stuff. Online text-to-speech avatars and software are always fun to play with. To get a sense of how the technology is improving, go choose your language, put in your own text and kill some time at Text to Speech Demo.
Then, in the ultimate geek personality test, why not find out What File Extension You Are.
Apple is crap, I’m afraid to say. Yes, it may be “better” than PC, but that’s not a good enough reason to support it. I mean, Betamax is a far better format than VHS, but you do reach a point in a product’s life where you have to go with what the majority of people are using — or face ridicule and redundancy. So my Betamax machine gathers dust in my cupboard these days. Given the strange desperation of Apple users to ward off the inevitable, take a look at a parody of the Apple site as it’s probably going to look like in a decade or so. Go to The Apple Store of the Future.
Then, step over into the cheerfully obsessive side of the internet. As you know, the net itself allows for people to make lists and catalogue things that often are of no interest to just about anyone else. But the act of making the big step of putting the odd things online seems to inspire others to do the same. Take this next site, for instance — be afraid and thoughtful as you browse through The Russian Cassette Tape Archive.
Or how about the slightly odd excesses shown at a German site of someone who collects burger containers? Hold the ketchup at All My Burgers. And you might want to take in the strange nostalgia of The Vintage Walkman Museum.
This week’s “thing to make you go awwwwww”. It comes from Thailand, and it’s a Baby Elephant.
Alternatively, to see an animal up for sale via eBay that isn’t particularly cute, go see the beast for sale known as The Couch Eater.
To see what happens when a certain Asian obsessiveness and interest in miniaturisation meets home-made fruit, go stare in silent admiration, at the sequence of pix detailing How to Make a Miniature Orange.
What’s better than spanking your monkey? Not much, but this next site tries hard. You probably know of the widespread net phenomenon about “rating” pictures — usually of net-geeks who rather hope other people will think they’re hot. So try this site, which takes the “rate my pic” concept and runs into weird territory with it. Go to Rate My Monkey: Hot Or Not.
Sites that can occur in normal societies, unlike South Africa: I covered this cute site a year or so back, but it’s worth pointing to again. You may not have heard of the idea of deliberately leaving books around for other people to grab and read, and knowing that they in turn, will do the same. It’s called “book crossing” — browse through this website, which helps those taking part in this fun process to keep track of where the various books end up. Go wish you lived in a place where this sort of casual fun could be done, at Book Crossing.
And staying with the idea of “here’s what they do in countries where rape, murder, ignorance and brutality is not a normal, everyday experience”, go stare in awe at some very cool Christmas Lights Displays.
Still in the Christmas vein, you know that it’s a common practice for kids to write letters to Santa — but, you may not have known that there’s an equally growing trend for kids at Christmas to write Christmas Letters to Christopher Walken.
Feel like making your very own singalong Christmas carols? Go to the Christmas Carol Maker.
Then, if you need to hone up on your redneck language skills, you can’t get better than the frightening mangling of the English language as shown at Hickbonics.
A quick “are they or aren’t they” site. Most hip and cool people will know that the term “bears” is used by a segment of the gay community to describe the enjoyment that some folks have for large, bearded men. I have no worries or problem with that. (The world’s quite big enough for every kind of quirky sexual fetish — I mean, there are apparently even people who think that Amore Vittone is somehow “attractive”. Go figure.)
Anyway, back to the bears. So if you have a site featuring two happy-looking, large, bearded men who collect up teddy bears, you rather have to wonder idly “are they or aren’t they?”. Go check out the bears at The Bear Guys.
Art section. It’s unexpected, in a sleazy column like this week’s one, but still we have to offer a nod or two towards the higher cultural pursuits — art, for instance. Ever thought about turning money into art? Find some inspiration from what’s been done to these dollar bills at $1 Dollar Art.
And what would Christmas be without at least one interesting deformity to look at? Take the following sad case of a man who got burned in an accident and had skin grafts taken from his chest to be used on his legs. He now has the dubious pleasure of having a nipple on his leg. Think I’m kidding? Go stare at The Leg Nipple.
Here’s another body modification you may not have expected. Tired of having your glasses slip down your nose? There is a rather logical but extreme cure. Have them bolted through your nose: The EyeGlass Piercing.
And yet another deformity — but a political one. This time, it’s the obscene, racist regime to our north, to which the African National Congress is doing everything but offer pelvic massages to help maintain it, as it murders its citizens and makes Africa a laughing stock around the world. A big, ironic Christmas “thank you” to the ANC, for helping the rape, murder and destruction continue in Zimbabwe — a neighbouring, once-democratic country. Keep an eye on the unfolding genocide at The Zimbabwe Situation.
Seeing as you made it all the way down to the bottom of the column, we have a special adults-only treat for you. In fact, this link really needs to have a very big advisory up front, stating “Warning! Male genitals ahead”. With that clearly stated, I had to include this site, as I’ve never seen a tattoo done to this extreme. For purely educational purposes (yeah, right) go be very, very afraid at The Dragon Tattoo Penis.
Until the next time, if the sleaze doesn’t get me.