12 posts tagged “weird internet”

Who or what do you really love?

You already know how much I love Hubbicula, so today I want to talk about another great love of my life: the internet.

Some of you young folks will hardly remember life without the intrawebs, but as someone who started college in 1987, when the internet was nothing but a gleam in Al Gore's* eye, it still feels pretty darned revolutionary.  In 1987, K-State had an intranet that allowed students to access files on the university's network, play rudimentary role playing games together and exchange e-mails and instant messages with other students.  It was so new that back in those days, most people's e-mail addresses were just their first names@ksu.  

Even back then, you could see the dangers of the internet: people sitting in the same computer lab, messaging each other for hours, instead of walking across the room and talking face to face.  It was the dorkgasm of it all.  It was new, exciting, a little scary, and sexy.  Even by 1993 when I got my first AOL account, things were still new enough, innocent enough that you could chat fearlessly with total strangers.

Despite the ick factor of some elements of the internet, it is still one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced.  I'm naturally a hermit, and in my real life I have about 5 close friends.  That's it.  Five people I could call if I ever desperately needed help or needed someone to talk to or just felt like shooting the breeze.  The internet has introduced me to dozens of other people I now think of as my friends.  I've even met some of them in person.

It used to be, if you were lying in bed and couldn't think of that actor who was on that show with that other actor, you were just going to lie there and wonder.  Three days later in the middle of a staff meeting you'd blurt out, "Phillip Michael Thomas!"  With the internet, you can just get out of bed, turn on the computer, Google Miami Vice, and go back to bed.

You can learn all kinds of random information, access libraries' databases of knowledge, see art and hear music you would otherwise miss.  Plus, the weird.  I love the weird and the internet has a steady supply.  Spucko compares Leslie and the Lys to Laurie Anderson, and after watching some of Leslie's videos I couldn't help but remember back in college having tickets to Laurie Anderson and being so sick I couldn't get out of bed.  Instead my jerky ex-friend Fat Andy went to the show with Spucko.  Cheated.  It was four years before I finally got to see Laurie Anderson.  Sure, live is wonderful, but the internet allows you to access weirdness that takes place far away and only rarely.

In short, Internet, what I'm trying to say is that I...I love you, man.  Be my valentine.

*I kid.  Poor Al Gore.  He really was instrumental in getting the funding that ultimately led to the internet's availability, but the media sure skewered him with that lie.

Thanks, Spucko.

More videos here...
And the Leslie and the Lys site: www.leslieandthelys.com.

While on my usual troll of the internets, looking for weird, I came across this little gem: an excerpt from A Treatise Of all the Degrees and Symptoms of the Venereal Disease, In both Sexes, The Sixth Edition corrected and enlarg’d, by John Marten.  (Corrected and enlarg'd!)
 

I had almost forgot to acquaint the Reader, that there is yet another way of getting the Venereal Infection....by a Man’s putting his erected Penis, into another Persons (Man or Woman’s) Mouth, using Friction, &c. between the Lips; a way so very Beastly and so much to be abhorr’d, as to cause at the mentioning, or but thinking of it, the utmost detestation and loathing....a Man so Infected....assur’d me...that he contracted it no other way.
....

I being desirous to know the whole of this abominable Encounter, (having never known, tho’ before had heard, that such beastly Abominations were practis’d) ask’d him if ’twas any Pleasure to him, and how he dispos’d of his Semen? he told me ’twas great Pleasure, and that he ejected it into the Person’s Mouth he had to do with, who both willingly receiv’d it, and assisted, as he said, in this foul Act, by sucking his Penis. O monstrous! thought I, that Men, otherwise, sensible Men, should so vilely debase themselves, and become so degenerate; should provoke God so highly, contemn the Laws of Man so openly, wrong their own Bodies so fearfully; and which is worse (without sincere Repentance) ruin their own Souls eternally. A Sin so heinous and aggravating, that God particularly expresses his Anger against those that commit it...

Found at the website of Rictor Norton (Ed.), "Venereal Disease, 1709," Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook. 24 February 2005; updated 5 December 2007 <http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/venereal.htm>.

As I've mentioned before, my husband is doing his Master's thesis on internet pornography.  Sure, it sounds like a joke, and it makes Bobavey jealous, but that's really the bulk of his thesis.  It requires research.  (Stop laughing!)  Sometimes research yields some funny stuff. 

For example, the Adult Video Network charts for top DVD sales and rentals. #1 on the "Ethnic" DVD sales chart?
My Hot Wife Is Fucking Blackzilla 11.  11.  Eleven, my people.  My Hot Wife Is Fucking Blackzilla 1 through 10 were such big hits, how could they say no to another sequel?  (Okay, now you can laugh.)

No surprise, there are a lot of sub-categories and specialty markets.  For instance, there's a Top 50 MILF video list. #1 is Horny Latin Mothers, but #4 is a little gem called Aww Shit White Mama 4.  4.  Four, my people.

I can't make this stuff up.  There are more laughs if you dare to click the link.

October seems like a good month to think about bats, and Lauri's profile pic of little white bats under a leaf started my daily internet wandering.  I strolled around on Google, looking at leaf-nose bats and vampire bats and fruit-eaters and flying foxes.  All so cute and amazing.  Then I ran across two completely opposite things, one of which definitely counts as internet weirdness.

It's a website dedicated to debunking the myths of evolution, carbon dating, and geological layering.  The main points are: humans and dinosaurs lived together, the earth isn't that old, and evolution is silly.  Among the highlights are a very brief photo essay proving that some stalactites and stalagmites don't take very long to form.  Yup.  (Never mind that some do.)  As proof--a stalagmite formed over a dead bat that formed before the bat could decay!  Gasp!  Of course, in tradition of nutjob hyperbole, the headline that goes with the photo is: Bat "Caught" by Stalactite.  It's hard to ferret out exactly what this proves.  Unless the photo is upside down, what we're really looking at is a stalagmite, formed over a dead bat on a cave floor.  If it is a stalactite, well, even if it took years to form, tendons take years to decay.  A bat's foot tendon is what keeps it clinging to a cave ceiling when it's asleep, and yes, after it's dead, too.  So, no matter how quickly stalactites can form, it's unlikely that the bat was "caught," isn't it?

Another highlight is the proof offered at Angkor Wat that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.  Here it is:

I don't know if the people who run this website don't understand that this is artwork, or if they're willing to accept artwork as proof while they dismiss science.  Look, as an artist, I appreciate their faith in the truth of art and literature, but really?  Does this mean unicorns co-existed with humans in the 15th century?
Ah, well, we've had a few laughs, so let's move on to the second thing I found in my search for cute bat pictures:some photos of bat embryos.

Look at him!  Wif his widdle hand up over his face.
Interesting, though, how hard it is to tell an early stage human embryo from an early stage bat embryo.  As though we mammals are passing through the history of our genetic forebearers as we grow in the warmth of our mother's womb, as she flies through the night, devouring insects.

It makes a mockery of the idea that evolution isn't real, and the belief that evolving from an earlier mammal form would somehow make humans less wonderful.  In truth, it makes us more amazing.  We are a work in progress.  (Or in progress of splitting into new forms, if you believe Oliver Curry.)  Which brings me to my last internet discovery for the day: an essay by Lee Silver about what makes a human a human.  Are we human the instant sperm and egg meet, or does it take something more?

Sorry folks for all my wackiness today.  A week or so ago, Val asked her neighbors to compile a "getting to know you" post that would showcase some sample posts for people new to your blog.  I've been trying to get on board and it's provided me with that last bit of motivation I needed to import all of my older Blogger posts to Vox.  That's why you're getting a whole bunch of "new" posts from me that actually from a year ago, or two years ago, or gack! three years ago.

Anyway, it's Val's fault. ;oP

I readily acknowledge that at least 50% of all the people on this planet are not particularly bright.  I used to think that of the other 50%, about half of us were crazy.  Since the internet really took off, however, I am rapidly revising my original crazy assessment upward. 

You know how I like to carouse the internet, looking for weirdness--it's one of my callings, like a kind of ministry of weirdness.  Hallelujah.  (Remember Tom Selleck? Or Ted Bundy = Israel?)  Recently, I found this crazy website.  It is primarily a message board where people can post what they consider "prophecies" of the future.  What struck me immediately was that a lot of the people posting on this site described their prophecies as having come to them in dreams. 

I've had a lot of crazy dreams, including ones in which the whole planet was destroyed by a crazy government plan to harvest geothermal energy.  I had a dream where a certain someone who shall remain nameless was assassinated.  I once dreamed that George Harrison had a sex-change operation and married Prince Charles, although maybe that was just an unflattering dream about Camilla.  My people, what can I say?  I have dreamed some crazy things.  Not once, ever, have I woken from a crazy dream and thought to myself: I bet that's going to come true.  That's a prophecy!

Of course, if as Anonymous claims, there's going to be "a catastrophic eruption of lava in central-Northwest- USA on September 29th, 2007.  MILLIONS WILL DIE,"  I'll apologize for having mocked Anonymous.  Unless I'm one of the millions killed.  Oh, and Anonymous suggests that you "PREPARE YOURSELVES."

(And speaking of Larry King, did you see the headline about Paris Hilton saying God had a plan for her in jail.  So, great, even God is riveted by the Paris Hilton story?  We got people being beheaded in Baghdad, people drowning in Texas, and God's busy making plans for Paris Hilton?  Does she think the hierarchy of wealth and fame goes all the way to the top?  My anger over this all goes back to my original instincts that I wouldn't have anything against the idea of God, if so many people who claim to believe in God didn't have completely insane ideas about their deities.)

You'd think it would be quite the opposite--that with so much information about so many things out there, that people would educate themselves.  Alas, no.  Instead, ignorant people are able to disseminate their ignorance to even more people.  Like this guy who has a website devoted to alien and ufo pictures.  I'll be honest--I accept as completely plausible that there may well be other inhabitable planets on which other races of sentient creatures have developed.  Earth exists and we evolved on it.  I accept as completely plausible that these other races of sentient creatures might have developed vessels which allow them to travel in space and visit our planet.  I'm feeling generous today, so I'll say that humans have accomplished space travel and even visited the moon. *cough*  If we exist and have that capacity, why wouldn't it be possible for other species to exist on other planets with that same capacity?

That said, here's some of the evidence UFO Guy posts on his website to prove that aliens have visited Earth:

This is a picture I took in Egypt, notice the heads of the 2 figures in the picture. The abdomens of the 2 people or aliens is also different. It is stuck out a bit, many of the pictures in Egypt portray what I am positive are aliens and many of them have larger stomachs than a normal healthy human would have, they are not a cause of obesity. They also often have larger than normal thighs in association with their bodies, in comparison with normal humans. This picture shows 2 young aliens as their thighs are proportionate. On the next page you will see that they have larger thighs and also longer and more slender fingers. This feature (long fingers) is shown often in Ancient Egypt paintings.

Uh-huh.  Sure, UFO Guy.  So we're saying that this drawing is proof that the Egyptians were aliens?  This drawing?  We're not willing to concede that this drawing might be a product of a.) aesthetic values of the times, b.) generations of purposeful inbreeding among Egyptian royalty, c.) purposeful body modification of Egyptian royalty by means of head-shaping bands, or d.) the artist's interpretation of reality?  It's got to be aliens, huh?  I guess that means all those pictures of gods with dog heads or bird heads--those were realistic representations, too?

I am an internet explorer (no, not the software).  I cruise around in the obscure corners of the web, looking for oddities.  Remember the one about Jesus being Tom Selleck?  This one is even weirder:

The folks at Bible Doctrine News would like to present for your consideration, the ways in which Ted Bundy's life is a parallel of the life span of the state of Israel.  See?  I can't make that kind of thing up.  It's too crazy to be fiction.

If you can't quite bring yourself to click on that link, just have a little taste:

Ted Bundy was one of history's most evil domestic terrorists.  A psychopathic necrophiliac and rapist who preyed upon college girls from 1973-75, he was a cold-blooded murderer.  Born a bastard and rejected by his mother, he became the servant of Bel, the ancient god of Babylon. God sent him as a sign of the diaspora, and his life paralleled the birth and rise of the nation of modern Israel.

Not crazy enough for you?  How about that story about the duck who survived being shot and refrigerated for two days.  Here's what Larry Wood--the mastermind behind Bible Doctrine News has to say about it:

The Florida duck survived two near-death experiences in her rise to fame.  Now, with the duck's picture on the weather map, it has become obvious that the angels orchestrated all this.  The duck's rise to fame is somewhat analogous to Nancy Pelosi's.  She became the first woman Speaker of the House this year after the Democrats won the elections.  She was born March 26, 1940, where 26 is for Political Babylon and 40 is for maximum divine discipline.  It was Day 86, for the Arab persecution of the Jew.  Her dad was Jewish, but she is Roman Catholic.  Her trip to the terrorist land of Gad in Asia this weekend corresponded to the Florida duck's picture over the Arizona-New Mexico desert and second near-death experience.

I don't want be too harsh on Larry, but I think he's a nutjob of the first degree.  Of course, Larry has a ready retort for me:

For those who have never made the greatest decision of life to accept the free gift of Eternal Life, please go to the Salvation page.  Otherwise, the information presented on this web site will be meaningless.  Those who aren't saved do not have a human spirit and cannot understand Spiritual information.  What's worse, it is foolishness to them.

Yes, it is, Larry.  Yes, it is.

*shit.  Censoring myself so people can read at work