Amusements
If you are looking for something to amuse yourself for a while, as you make
your pilgrimage through the web, here are some sites that I find entertaining.
Feel free to browse through them and take a walk through the World Wide Weird.
- Word games are fun--online group word games with clever people are
even more fun! I play a game online where the object is create a sentence
from a screen full of semi-random words, and then each player votes for the
one he or she likes best. Join in the literate fun at Farragomate,
or Pseudobabble
(look for me as LukeysBoat). (The original Psychobabble,
which was the inspiration to these games that was created by and hosted at
Popcap.com, is no longer available. Check out my Psychobabble
page here, and see the fun you missed.)
- Did you have Tinkertoys, Meccano, an Erector set, or similar toys
as a kid? Want to relive those days of construction toys via an interactive
computer simulation? If you've got a fast connection, check out Sodaplay.
- Do people keep sending you chain letters about Bill Gates offering
your money or free trips to Disneyworld? Before you send them on, check out
these and other "urban legends" that are spread like viruses over
the net here at the Urban Legends Reference
Pages. Your friends email providers may thank you.
- Rex the Runt
is a series of clay-animated shorts done by Aardman
studios. Aardman did the
award winning Wallace
and Gromit shorts, as well as the feature film Chicken
Run. These short films feature the (sometimes surreal) adventures of four
dogs: Rex the Runt, Big Bad Bob, Wendy, and little Vince. Let me warn you
in advance, Rex the Runt is MUCH more British in flavour than the others.
If you don't like British humour, then pass this link by. But if you do--check
it out.
- Want to join the fight against ignorance? Want to cut to the chase
and know the straight dope about a variety of conundrums, confusions, and
quandries? Visit Cecil Adams' online version of his Straight
Dope column, and the often amusing message boards featuring a lot of often
amusing and sometimes intelligent folks.
- Before I waste any money on a movie, I check out the reviews at Rotten
Tomatoes. You may think this is just another movie review site, but it's
not--the format here is to compile a list of a wide variety of published newspaper
and magazine reviews, and then to rate the movie depending on how many favorable
or unfavorable reviews it receives. Highly accurate, and educational (people
actually like some of this stuff?), if you have a fast internet connection,
you'll be glad you went here first.
- Check out the "Knights
of the Round Table" song and dance piece from Monty Python and
the Holy Grail--done with LEGO stop-motion animation, here in streaming video
form. It's a scream.
- What? You want more Python? Okay, masochist, here it is, the home
of most things Python on the web.
- Read the Acts of Gord, in
which a poor video game store owner records, for the hilarity and perusal
of all, just how much difference there is between most humans and a mushroom,
in his battles with customers, stupid customers, criminal customers, and just
plain idiots. Yea, go thou and DO NOT DO likewise.
- Homo Sapiens, meet Computer. Computer, meet Homo Sapiens. Meet the
many weird things that people think about and do with their computers, documented
at the Computer Stupidities
page. Why is it that many who do know so much about life in the 21st century,
or even how their car works, or another intricate, yet everyday piece of equipment,
know so little about their computer?
- How many languages are there in the world? See what you are missing
by being a monoglot by looking at the Ethnologue
pages, which describe the thousands of languages (many of which are endangered)
in the world.
- Need an online translation of an Icelandic document? Or perhaps you
need Welsh, Swedish, Croatian or Finnish? Try InterTran
for your unusual language needs.
- Wanna see something scary? If you're using Internet Explorer, check
out the Asian Prince
page (caution--PG13 rating), a man in search of a princess--could it be you?
Is he for real, or not? You make the call...
- Something amusing by Weird Al Yankovic
that I was directed to lately. Hey, isn't that Donny Osmond back there....?
- Science combined with art, with a soul--the
Periodic Table table. This is an actual wooden table that contains samples
of all the elements possible to actually own. I love it! Not only is it geek
chic, it is a labor of love.
- The friendliest exam you'll ever take.
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