ancient love spell.
Meanwhile, back from English border, Lisa's Romance Page is draped in plenty of 'Merican velvet, and she directs us to yet more eager celebrity matches . . . but wait, that link is broken so we paddle on until we find Bored.com's Loveshack area, allowing us to squidge onto such must-know links as the Love Calculator.
We next splash noisily over to Dale's place, where Dale himself courteously lists some 389 reasons why a woman should consider dating him. We excerpt number 61 for your cursory pleasure: "I do not make fun of Boutros-Boutros Ghali's name unnecessarily." No better pick-up line than that! thinks we, beginning to feel cheered. Steal freely of Dale's substance. Self-medicating with a short float and a large cookie, we decide to simply love ourselves up -- but don't care to buy any darned products thank you.
Oh no, wait, that's wrong. We do want to flipper over and purchase just one item, and that would be Dr. Stephen A. Mitchell's treatise, Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time. We wetly recall that Salon.com said that compared to making a long-term commitment work, "the zipless f**k is as daring as oatmeal." Why do so many monos go solo? Because, according to Mitchell, we sabotage ourselves out of fear.
But sophomoric sanity calls us back with a splash at The Spark, where they realize it's a thin line -- particularly on corporate forced-fun "holidays." Send a card representative of your straddle.
Actually, there are literally hours of cheerful juvenilia to enjoy at thespark.com, so we begin to relax, no longer possessing as many brain cells as we began with after all. We take their laughable sex test, concerned mainly as it is with diagrammatical use of the word "awesome," learn absolutely nothing about tantra, and finally keen to discover who indeed is the laziest person in the world. Not us. We're bushed.
We wipe tears of laughter from our eyes in thanks to ERIN, who forwarded news of Whatshouldiputonthefence. We're just sorry to have learned of this site so late, as it doesn't appear that this inspired performance art tomfoolery is ongoing (lawsuits, you know). The short version is that a London-based cyclist arrived at his usual bike-locking fence near work last year, on the first day of the Tube strike, to discover that the landlord of said fence had installed a sign forbidding the locking of bikes upon it. Our hero, "The Fencemaster," adopted the droll response of locking a variety of items -- from an ironing board to a teakettle -- upon it. No signs against those! He's also photographed each item, provided extensive (and extensively witty) narrative, researched the genealogy of the buildings' owners and the history of the area where the fence is found, and, it appears, enjoyed more than a few pints in the pub fortunately located just across the street. This is one of those that just gets funnier and funnier the deeper you dig. Highly recommended for hours of happy timewasting.
And Rob goes gaga for LALA's nomination of SatireWire, "New Satire for the New Economy," as a fave site. Proclaiming it a Bronze medalist in our faux Olympics (The Onion and Weekly World News taking gold and silver respectively -- WWN making the running for purporting to show nude photos of Osama Bin Laden with the headline "Now We Know Why They Call Him 'Tiny'"), we've been getting the chuckles over such headline news stories as "Closed Disinformation Agency Can't Convince Staff It's Closed," and "Record 75 Million Americans Now Pretending They Own Their Own Homes." Grab a smile here:
http://SatireWire.com/index.shtml Rob calmly suggests that you, in a middling manner, enjoy the just-OK manifesto of the Dull Men's Club.
Step on the gas and wipe that (laughter) tear away by taking your Emotional Intelligence Test The mighty Village Voice itself wastes a bit of page space with this tomfoolery. Osama bin Fakin'?
And your inveterate timewasting skills are well-rewarded by Jerry Whiting's Jet City Orange Web site. A Seattle-based photographer who claims to have his shooter with him "24/7/365," Whiting is responsible for some of Jones Soda's better labels, likes to drink wine with breakfast whilst preparing Thanksgiving dinner, and has plenty of free shots to share. With a nicely randomized 'Word Poem Theatre' that downloads a shifting variety of non-sequitors, JCO is "updated on Thursdays, give or take."Why Jet City Orange? Whiting explains that he likes citrus and the domain was available. Well then, good enough! We found ourselves spending way more time on JCO than we planned, which is always the highest and best mark of an excellent timewaster.
"Dear Rob," writes this respondent, "I would like to recommend the random name and title generator at http://title.flywheel.org to anyone looking for renaming inspiration. It gave me the title 'Marquise of Yesterday Morning,' which I like quite as much as the one I bestowed upon myself: SUZ E. COMPOST, HIGH MUCKITYMUCK OF ALL THAT ROTS."
We're game, so tried a twirl of the flywheel, only to be flung off as "Earl of Porno Web Sites, Rob Brezsny." Try try again, thought we: "Sorcerer of Amnesia, Rob Austin Brezsny," getting better but Austin? From whence? Once again, with feeling: "Dominar of The Division For Investigating Refrigerators, Rob Brezsny." OK!
For some reason, April Fools Day is big with the tech folks, resulting in heaps of links that evidently give big guffaws to those who understand the mysteries of Linux, Unix, or Use.Net scripting. Thus there naturally enough exists the Top PC Pranks for April Fools Day list.
And Discover Magazine's past April Fools pranks should have been easy for their readership to spot, but amazingly, many folks took such "discoveries" as the actual Holy Grail and an enormous bellows blowing smog away from the Los Angeles basin quite seriously. Enjoy the fun here.
Aw! Drum roll please, as here's the GrandMommy of them all -- The Museum of Hoaxes -- wherecountless hours of the one single life you'll ever have may be cheerfully frittered away.
But wait! Before you go back to actually working, it's imperative that you take the Gullibility Test, in which certain FWA'rs scored low on intelligence and high on gullibility by only getting eight of the 20 questions right.
And Rob gets all cheerful over the crotchety fun found at Crank.net, a site merrily devoted to "crackpots, kooks, and loonies."
If gray is the new black, then it makes perfect sense to read Fat: The New Thin
Practical Alchemy keeps a lovely obsession with the work of boy genius Arthur Rimbaud
The Urban Lore debunking site particularly disabuses us of the cleaning powers of Coke.
The Francis Bacon Image Gallery's off-putting punk aspect belies the excellent writing, research, and analysis of Bacon's work found here. Well worth an informative hour.
Take "The Great Gatsby" trivia challenge and prepare to re-read the book.
George Harrison may have left the Earth, but he returns to our solar system in the guise of Minor Planet 4149. Be sure to take a step outside and give a good wish to George, who succumbed to cancer Nov. 29, 2001 at the too young age of 58, damn it.
The quite marvelous Australian mag Undercover offers their relaxed interview with George Harrison, done sometime after his 1992 "Live in Japan" album was released, and reprinted now for the first time in full.
Is this e-joke in terrible taste? Oh, absolutely!
Wish it weren't funny? Shout out to RAWA.
Adolph, Allah, or All One? Take the quiz; bet you lose.
Eh? What's that you say, eh? You're in the Great White North but can't speak the language? Fear not. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary is full of Canadianisms and here for you.
Before you do another thing, be sure to show your support for the Partnership for a Poll-Free America, sponsored by Arianna Huffington and Harry (This Is Spinal Tap) Shearer. Big fun just because.
Discover your inner Bilbo at the Hobbit Name Generator.
Wish to gift a loved one with a gorgeous sonnet but quail at the prospect of devising a perfect 10-syllable rhyming scheme totaling 14 lines? Makes sense to us, which is why we urge you to cheat with Cybersonnet, a random program that only requires a poetic (ages 18 and over) knowledge of the "return" button.
JOY gives more than her namesake by suggesting these bits of cybertomfoolery, proposing Kunda Buffer, exclaiming: "this genius has detected the actual organ that generates cynicism and blocks enthusiasm! And he has found a hospital where you can have an operation to remove it! A multimedia performance/meditative art based on Gurdjieff's work."
And then of course there's My Cat Hates You, about which Joy chuckles, "a simple idea, a universal experience; for some reason I laughed and laughed. Why do they hate us so?"
The Smoking Gun Web site ostensibly and actually truly does use the wonderful Freedom of Information Act to obtain real government documents, photograph them, and post them for all the world to see. It's a great service, and among the better perks of a democracy. But for our time-wasting purposes, it's the backstage riders of such acts as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jennifer Lopez, Matchbox 20, Prince, and other vanity queens that provides the highest interest.
Say "Thank you!" a thousand times over.
Indeed, who would buy that? Guarantees are that someone will.
Sweet Fancy Revenge
Suffer the sere aridity of prodigious vocabulary lack? Fear not! Try some fave words or browse the serious fun of the Pseudo Dictionary. Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary is a true thrill for the word-lover, as are The Grandiloquent Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary's Word of the Day, the Church of the Sub Genius' dictionary, or any of the other good suggestions compiled here.
Had much luck spinning straw into gold lately? Us neither, but this great alchemy Web site has got plenty of text and images to help pass the treadle time.
Tired of retching into generic-looking airline bags? Well wipe that tear away friend, as Design For Chunks has vaunted the barf bag into a high falutin' objet d'art.
Does sound affect the formation of water crystals? Can you believe what you see?
Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers. Pure, plain, silliness plus a darn good corn muffin recipe.
Keep the leader of the free world in your pocket!
Wit City -- a Best Of compendium of online humor
Sweet Fancy Moses -- a terrific larder of laughs
Have a cup of Rosy Lea before hitting the frog and toad with the ole trouble and strife! Understand? Of course you do.
Microsoft Tech Support or the Psychic Friends Network: Which gives better service for your computer buck?
Sir Huckleberry Insurance: Guarding against bigamy, freak disaster, and the happening of shit
Shout out to the Citizens In Appreciation of Powerful Entities
