Saturday, July 10, 2010

Oh Internet. You so crazy.

The internet is great for many reasons. There's porn, fantasy games, user-submitted humour sites and a great deal of other things designed for the express purpose of keeping awful people well and truly locked away in their parents' basement. No offense, awful people.

Sites like StumbleUpon that let you jump from random page to random page of the internet might as well be called 'Go on, I dare you', but you know me. I'm never one to refuse a dare. I've compiled a list of a few wonderful things I have found in the deepest, darkest corners of the web.

I'd like to share that list with you.

First, there's the pages that have no explanation, but don't NEED one because they are just that amazing. These are pages such as the genre-defying Selleck Waterfall Sandwich or the free access television program featuring a man who paints while running on a treadmill and doing one other random activity. Here's a video where he paints, runs and eats a pie, but there are also clips where he blends drinks, makes pancakes and is watched by some kind of Jungle King, all while painting and exercising. Oh yes, get ready for a wasted afternoon.

While we're talking videos, I found an endlessly entertaining Romanian video site the other day. I found it after clicking on a link to a video of a man covered in bees, which was more entertaining than I could have possibly imagined. I initially watched it because I was thinking about that Eddie Izzard bit that you will know if you are as much of a comedy nerd as most people I know. But not only is this particular Romanian beekeeper (who, according to the video, holds the world record for being "covered in the most bees") completely chill about being covered in bees, he's so cool with it that he's going to drink a beer. Hell, he'll even smoke a cigarette covered in bees! In fact, he's so relaxed about all the bees crawling over his body, he might even ride a donkey. You may think I'm just being funny (if so, thanks) but I am only just falling short of directly quoting the video. I also particularly enjoyed the footage of a reporter getting hit by a horse, which I guess is the Romanian equivalent of the widely circulated 'Reporter Gets Hit by a Car' video.

Of course, then there are the little things. The small, personalised corners of the internet that may not seem that interesting at first. But people often reveal much more than they intend to when they use the internet. You might remember when AOL's search logs were accidentally leaked to the public and everyone started getting worked up about the user who spent hours upon hours searching for flowers and song lyrics, before switching to hours and hours of searches along the lines of  "beauty and the beast disney porn, holocaust rape, japanese child slave, molestation and rape porn, virtual children, 3d molestation and rape porn" and so on and so forth, before switching back to looking up Fall-Out Boy lyrics and orchids. 

But as much as I like reading about other people's sexual deviancies, I prefer the more subtle nods to an internet user's character. While browsing something I wouldn't be able to remember even if I were trying, I came across a site offering free linux software, uploaded by users. One piece of software caught my eye because of how unabashedly self-deprecating the description was:

Wallcal is a simple, stupid, useless calendar for your desktop.

I created this instead alot of useful calendars because:

- I don't like Aqua, Graphite, Aero. I like freedom, I love KDE, I'm looking for my personal desktop style..
- Some famous calendars don't work on my PC.

Every month it will show you a photo of my honeymoon in Ireland. Of course you can change them.


And sure, all he's doing is promoting his software, but with the few short lines of a product description, the reader knows that here, here is a guy who hates his life.

If it's baffling product descriptions you're after, wrap your eyes around this description for a recently released work of young adult fiction, one of those books that tries to be 'hip with the kids' despite the fact the author was clearly a middle aged woman from birth.

Madison still loves logging on to Friendverse to see what her BFFs and her cute new boyfriend Nate are up to. But the latest social networking craze is Status Q, which is all about rapid-fire status updates. When one of Mad's friends has to pull off a high-pressure heist, the gang relies on Status Q to send coded messages to each other...all in the middle of a school dance!

What's YOUR status? How about O...M...G.


...sorry, what was that about a heist? I mean, I vaguely understood all that blather about social networking, but did you say something about a high-pressure heist? I think you might have your angle a little askew, YA fiction author Katie Finn.

'But hey,' you might be saying, 'What is there for me? I like my women like I like my coffee. That is to say, with a good hot slice of crazy floating in them.'

Well, wait no longer, because I have the exact right woman for you. I'm not sure who this woman actually is, but her blog is called 'Naked Seduction'. In it, you will find a few blocks of text interspersed between photos of this girl, who is apparently in the films business. But judging by the sheer strength of the crazy sauce garnishing the entire thing, I have a suspicion that those pictures aren't the real deal. No proof, mind you, but I have faith that we live in society where suspicion alone is enough to have someone locked up for life. Here is a paragraph of her writing, with punctuation added by me in a vain attempt to make it a bit more coherent.

Yes it's true, this is what I do! This is what I do, the best to seduce you with, the nakedness, naked emotion, naked heart, naked mind and naked confession. Naked, naked soul and naked compassion. I seduce you with the pure naked me and my naked love. I seduce you like a woman. I seduce you like your best friend. I seduce you like you. I seduce you with the distance only on the other side of the computer. Seduce with the nakedness with danger. I am your mirror only reflects you...


That's right, she'll seduce you like your best friend, which is probably going to be awkward. But not as awkward as when she starts seducing you... like you. I have no idea what that means and it's still creepy. To be fair, after my attempts at editing that, I must admit that it does have potential in the ever-lucrative arena of performance poetry.


-Smackie Onassis


Bitches. Am I Right Guys?

I'm not exactly what you would call feminine. I have all the right parts, but I don't seem to operate them the usual way. I'm a tomboy through and through and as a result, sometimes, I just don't understand women.

I think I was born without the hormone that can turn a together, intelligent woman into a jealous, irrational crazy with little more than a sideways glance at another woman's assets. I have often sat down with my boyfriend purely to discuss the merits of another woman's assets. Sometimes also her tit-ets. I'm guessing the "irrational jealousy" hormone is the same hormone that makes it possible to so much as sit through the trailer to a Sex and the City movie, or understand the appeal of Twilight.

As a result of thinking more like a dude than a chick, I just. don't. get. women. But still, there is nothing that annoys me more than anything that can be associated with the phrase 'Battle of the Sexes'. Not only is it a theme that has been done so often that there is literally no original material left (studies have shown that the last orignal men vs women joke can be traced back to December 5th, 1982*), but women seem to forget that while saying men are better than women is chauvinistic, so is saying women are better than men. While the definition of 'chauvinism' is usually quoted as 'hatred of women' or something similar, it is actually supposed to mean putting one gender over the other, regardless of which gender that may be.

Also, it is completely and totally pointless.

I hear women talk about all the ways male-dominated society is destroying the futures of young women. Don't get me started on how pornography is seen as harmful to women, despite the fact that it is the one industry where women almost always earn significantly more then men, and never mind that men in porn are not only also objectified, but put on a much lower standing than women. Don't even get me started on that. But whenever I hear people who call themselves feminists saying things like this I really fell the need to point out that regardless of what the male half of the world is doing, time criticising would probably be better spent alleviating the harm women are doing to young women.

In my opinion, the effects of the porn industry on young women, whether or not you agree with what I just said up there, are peanuts compared to the wedding industry. If there's one industry I honestly think the world would benefit from completely wiping out, it's the wedding industry.

And yes, I'm serious. For once. You can't open up any newspaper without seeing something about how the world's economy is doomed, for new and exciting reasons every day. People can't afford their mortgages, small businesses are going under and generally speaking, everybody is completely and totally fucked. Governments are intervening left, right and centre, slapping the restrictions on thick and fast.

And yet, it's still perfectly acceptable to drill into little girls as soon as they can speak that if their groom doesn't spend $20,000 on their wedding, it means he doesn't really love her and her entire life will be totally meaningless.A five figure sum is seen as an AVERAGE cost of a wedding these days. FOR ONE DAY. ONE. DAY. Every time I see a photo in the paper about a young pair of newlyweds who will "never be able to afford to own their own home", I want to know just how much they spent on their wedding. To clarify, I'm not saying you shouldn't have a wedding. I'm just saying you shouldn't spend your entire life savings and then some on a single one day event.

For other new and original ways women are destroying other women see: mothers who encourage their daughters to get breast implants because "surgery is no big deal", and fairytales in general. My mother used to tell me about a lesbian couple she knew who, when reading fairytales to their daughter, used to change the endings from '...and she and Prince Charming lived happily ever after' to '...and she went to university, got a degree and then decided on her own terms if she wanted to marry Prince Charming', which I thought was great. Although I also don't like the whole 'Do nothing to fix your problems, and a fairy godmother will do everything for you' idea.

Cinders, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but if you want to go to the ball, you're going to have to make your own damn dress.

-Smackie Onassis

P.S. Heat two of the band names poll is just coming to a close, and unless there is a sudden surge of votes in the next seven or so hours, it's looking like 'The Fistiest Cuffs' is going through to the next round, which I must say I am pleased with. In heat three you will be deciding between The Bourgeois Gestures League, Citroen Ella, Imp Proper and Randy Bourbon and his 'Day of Regrets' Band.


*Disclaimer: I made that up.