If it's morbid, surreal, outrageous, or maudlin, and simultaneously implausible or difficult to verify, then you'll find it here. This collection of urban legends and contemporary folklore distinguishes itself from some of its peers by classifying its entries as true, untrue, or unproved. When your waking moments are filled with worries about kidney theft, contaminated food, exploding whales, wedding day betrayals, haunted toy stores, cat and rat ranch investments, cyber-incest, or anything else you find too evocative to ignore and too obscure to check out, let your Auntie Barbara provide a reality check. Odds are whatever you heard about in that fax or that forwarded e-mail is utter bunk. Skepticism will almost always work in your favor. - Gary Barker
Sarcastic, says Webster, implies an intentional inflicting of pain by deriding, taunting, or ridiculing. Oh, and how true that is. Upon arrival, you should immediately feel nauseated and disorientated due to pain caused by derision, taunting, or ridicule. Before I could figure out what the heck I was doing, I was under Sarcasm.coms power. The folks behind this site deserve a lifetime supply of Pocky for their lampooning of Netscape, the Microsoft Network, and anything else techno(il)logical, cyber-corporate, and downright boring. Please do visit, listen, and talk to Ween (www.sarcasm.com/Ween/music.cgi) for the ultimate primer on pain infliction. - Ismael Marrero
An online Etch-A-Sketch? Now that's genius. Besides he Amazing Net-A-Sketch, youll also find several other guffaw-inducing bits and gimmicks at Wacky.com. Take the Bill Gates and Me section, which explains the fundamental differences between Wacky.coms Webmaster and that other guy: "'Howie, my mother-in-law trilled, you work with computers don't you?... Well, I was just wondering why you're not as successful as that Bob Gates I hear so much about.'" Add a daily joke and the Tantalis Program (a long-distance fantasy killing based on a Star Trek plot), and you're in for a snickering good time. - David Pescovitz
Were you into that 1980s coin-operated arcade game Joust? If so, you'll dig Pork Wars, an impressive Shockwave game found at Xtreme Media. Heres the gist: You're a pink flying pig, and you have to land on the flying blue pigs to eat them. If they land on you, you're lunch meat. Nice graphics and smooth game \play kept my hand from clicking to a new URL each time I visited the siteit's difficult enough to be annoyingly compelling. Pork Wars is ... ahem ... fat! - David Pescovitz
Legopolis.com is an Internet Service Provider for the "minifig" citizens of Legopolis. Yes, Legopolis as in LEGO. Everything in Legopolis is made out of LEGOs. Even the people. Even the "Under Construction" icons. In the Commercial Page section, be sure to pay a visit to the Sparkle Bathroom Fixtures company site and marvel at the finely crafted, albeit squared-off, bath designs. Then check out the beginnings of Martha's Tips, a personal page devoted to decorating and entertainingits a good thing. Beautiful photography and expert building skills make me wish I was made out of LEGOs. too, because then I could become part of the great Legopolis community. - David Pescovitz
MeatMation is the hearty photography of one Stephanie Rose. Its a story of sorts, taking place in a "parallel universe where the men are meat and the women are, well, meat." Rose does a dementedly perfect job of assembling creatures out of foodstuffs and telling a twisted story of innocence found, lost, and eaten. (Mr. Beefy even enjoys an after-dinner smoke.) As the tag line says, "If it ain't weird or edible, it ain't here." Vegetarians steer clear. - David Pescovitz
Equal parts Lake Wobegon and Twin Peaks (with maybe a dash of The Addams Family), Antlerville Oracle seems like a proposal for developing a larger story in some other mediumthe TV-sitcom vibe here is pretty intense. Supposedly, the site's sponsor is a chain of supermarkets called Slaveway, "home of delicious and semi-permanent genetically engineered food items."The aliens have landed in Antlerville, the heroine's baby has become suddenly fluent in 33 languages, and Grandma's been channeling entities again. You can get a Tarot card reading (you'll soon be dating a woman with antlers, you really ought to eat more red meat, and it would be prudent to contemplate an elephant on jet skis) or read the Antlerville Gazette. - Gary Barker
Would you like to be the master of your own destiny? Are you tired of having to step outside your home in order to eat fluorescent, faux food filled with such ingredients as trans-fatty acids and disodium inosinate? Your salvation has arrived. Now you can be a McMuffin maven, a Snapple snob, an Enchirito enforcer, a Twinkie technician, or a Fiddle Faddle facilitator in the privacy of your own trailer park. Of course, your results won't be precise matches for the originals (unless you own a pharmaceutical/petroleum conglomerate), but that's the price you pay for eliminating convenience from your life. And if you love the Web site, be sure to read the books and watch the TV talk show appearances. It's harmless fun. - Gary Barker
You got the job at the Corporation, and now you're in charge of quality control. From its sky-scraping headquarters in Hartford, Conn., the Corporation "has generated quality humor product for generations of consumers." This straight-faced joke site tries to be edgy and antiseptic, offending no one in the process. It's either a labor of love or somebody's portfolio piece, because there's no other reason for it to exist. The graphics are very attractive, and some of the jokes are pretty funny, so it's certainly worth a look around. What the Corporation really lacks is the sort of whimsical perversity that grabs you by the collar and gives you a shake. - Gary Barker
Nice lilac wallpaper is the indication that youve arrived. Stories and photos abound depicting girls first encounters with cigarettes, and the stories invoke the good girls gone bad pulp novels that often insinuated lesbianism (another theme here). Even admirers of Anne Frank and other persecuted young girls will appreciate the underlying principle of this page, which is to provide safe haven from the Nazi-like hordes who say that smoking is BAD. Although the photo of her resembles the back-page ad on a TV Guide, Jenny comes across as more intelligent than half the nitwits who send her e-mail, I must say. - Ismael Marrero
Site of the month!!
If you ever wondered what would happen if Marshall McLuhan and Douglas Rushkoff were given free reign to change things around at Disneyland, wonder no longer. Deluxoland is it. A strange brew of subversive media disassembly, Deluxoland is alternately surreal and too real for comfort. This is a land of mutant politicians, rock star junkies, gun-toting maniacs, and hot dogs full of grape jellya weird cast of characters who are the bastard brainchildren of the De-lux'o company, a multimedia producer in Southern California. Deluxoland is a showcase for its strange wares, namely some whacked-out CD-ROMs. Cyclops Boy, a detective and snappy dresser, has no facial characteristics of any kind on his thumb-shaped head, except for the abnormally huge eye floating in the center of what passes for his face. Chicken Jim (part poultry, part end table, part human, part kitchen gadget, and all politician) is not only running for president, he's the predicted winner. Visitors can hear eight Chicken Jim sound bites or participate in his poll. In Deluxoland, arch-conservative radio demagogue Blimp Rambo has written a book entitled Me, and a lengthy excerpt from the book is available online. Mr. Rambo is a pompous windbag from a long line of violent, psychopathological fascists of whom he is proud beyond measure. His people are hard-drinking, bomb-making, paranoid sentimentalists who believe AFDC payments lead to crack addictions, and who think their rights have been abridged if their children are prevented from speaking in tongues at school from atop a history teacher's desk during class. In Deluxoland, you can get a cup of Columbo Coffee ("the biscuit-flavored coffee") and smoke Pottersfield Cigarettes (what an unfortunate coincidence that a "potter's field" is a graveyard for unclaimed bodies and the indigent). You can build a big belly with Blat'o Beer (and go cross-eyed looking at the ad that recommends drinking no fewer than six in a sitting), then eliminate that belly with the Ab Blender 2000. Play the rockin' little Shockwave diversions incorporating such media darlings as bloated junkie Elvis Presley (against whom visitors may compete in a civilized game of Gimme That Dang Pill) and Richard Nixon. But beware boob-tubers: One Shockwave piece here has the gall to suggest that television may not be the best of all possible teats from which to suckle. What do you think of that? - Gary Barker