Ah, the Internet. Back in 1998 when everyone first got 60 free hours of America Online, the world seemed to open up into a new and glorious place where you could seriously talk to someone who lived in Los Angeles and liked the same No Doubt albums you did! A community was built - a "World Wide Web," if you will.
Now it's 2k6, and our whole lives seem to revolve around the Internet, between LexisNexis-ing entire term papers or forgetting how to turn the TV on because all our news comes in dot-com form. Lest we forget the veritable treasure trove that is THE INTERNET, it is important to remember some of the truly bizarre things that can be learned and observed there. Case in point.
Mydeathspace.com
By now, MySpace is a cultural phenomenon that is so all-encompassing that in a year or so, even your mom will have a profile (if she doesn't already). National Public Radio's "Day to Day" recently aired a story on a group of students in California's Central Valley that organized a protest against immigrant treatment policies via MySpace bulletins. It's that big. So what happens when you shuffle off this mortal coil? Will MySpace live on? The answer is yes, and it is horribly, horribly creepy. Mydeathspace.com is a Web site that archives the MySpace profiles of people who have recently died and links articles in local newspapers about their death. The whole thing is done under the guise of trying to provide some last legacy for these people but in reality it comes off as morbid and disturbing. It is certainly an example of the oddity that is life, death and the Internet.
Demonbaby.com's Annual MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards
While we're on the subject of MySpace, Demonbaby.com recently posted the results of their Second Annual MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards. The ubiquitous side-swept bangs and sideways glance has been turned into an epic photomontage called "The Grid of Bad Emo Hair." The remainder of the awards is dedicated to what the moderators refer to as "folic atrocities." With every gigantic pink mohawk or mop of rainbow-colored dreads, there is the appropriate comic book character that these real-life MySpacers emulate. It is unreal how accurate they are, or to think about how many profiles and comic books they had to sift through to find these people.
Books2Eat.com
The International Edible Books Conference "unites bibliophiles, book artists and food lovers to celebrate the ingestion of culture and its fulfilling nourishment." All participants create edible books (no joke) and exhibit them at the conference. The Web site, Books2Eat.com, is especially intriguing because of the gallery showcasing past entries in the contest. One Italian submission is a slab of tiramisu lovingly crafted into a hardbound novel. Another is a book of maps seemingly created with raisins. If only we could legitimately incorporate this kind of eating into the literary world, we'd all be so well read.
Vaginasinnature.blogspot.com
With only four posts in its archive, vaginasinnature.blogspot.com has a long and prosperous future ahead of it. This fledgling blog is dedicated to but one thing: putting up pictures of things that look like vaginas naturally occurring in nature. Be it a strange rock formation at Joshua Tree in California or a weird looking mussel from someone's soup in Japan, no holds are barred as this blog attempts to bring these natural vaginas to the rest of the world. Any fan of the female form or even the late, great Georgia O'Keeffe room in TDR will not be disappointed.
