If the Internet is a city in a 1940’s noir movie, I’m the poor gumshoe who gets beat up a lot in his search for the truth. I find the weirdest, most ridiculous stuff on the World Wide Web and endure the absurdity so you don’t have to.
the face of terrorWe could hear the sound of "Never Gonna Give You Up" echoing from all directions. It had been going on for days, so long that less savvy travelers would let it fade into the background, would sleep easy through it. But not me. The key to staying sharp on the river between the Chans is to constantly remind yourself that everything you see, everything you hear, everything you smell is an affront to all things good. So much rickrolling... the body count must have been astronomical. The only consolation I had was that anyone who would go this deep into the Boards was already lost, in one way or another. When our compass started going crazy, I had to ask which one applied to us.
yep.Ah, Texas. The only American state with an extraterrestrial origin. For those who aren't aware, the entire landmass known as Texas is actually an errant chunk of the planet Mars that was forcibly ejected from our second-nearest neighbor in the solar system for being somehow more desolate and inhospitable than the rest of Big Red. Until humanity can figure out a way to do the same, Earth is stuck with Texas and all the terrible presidents it unleashes into the government of America. But Texas isn't all bad. The state makes some awesome food for those who don't care about heart disease and its sheer massiveness has the ability to alter a road-tripper's perception of time. But really, Texas isn't just one place. It's more like a country unto itself with distinct regional flavors. Of course, the many Texas craigslist pages reflect this.
/b/ is so, so hungryI was on my twelfth cigarette in two hours when I got the call. Some wannabe adventurer, one of those jerks who grow thick mustaches and tart around with elephant guns, went and got himself stuck in /b/ again. Happens every damn week, but I wasn't about to say no to a paycheck. I finished off my last ounce of Wild Turkey and put a bullet into the back of my epic mount's skull. I couldn't take her where I was going and I sure as hell wasn't about to leave her for someone else to steal. It's a brutal Web and I don't pretend to be the exception.
Ya know, I was gonna try to be nice to the laughably untalented altar boys of ironic Internet sensation Final Placement, but then they had to go be jerk wads and force Youtube to remove the smorgasbord of videos the online community painstakingly recorded in tribute to the band's tone-deaf song "Shine". Yeah, I was prepared to dismiss their out-of-tune guitars, complete inability to keep time with one another, puberty-tastic vocals and horrible, horrible lyrics as par for the course where Christian rock is concerned. But oh no, Final Placement had to be dicks about it, so I'm not going to be decent. Of course, it's likely that none of this stuff is real, so I'll try to channel my indignation into a wave of skepticism instead.
Hello, everybody! Come on down to Net Insanity Studios for another heart-stopping, jaw-dropping, potentially illegal round of What's Wrong With That Free Stuff?! It's the Internet's tenth favorite game show where we go to craigslist and peruse the Free Stuff section for the most questionable items and try to determine why their owners are willing to give them away for no cost whatsoever. We've got a particularly disturbing series of cheap as free garbage in the offing today, so let's dive right in and figure out What's Wrong With That Free Stuff.
The Internet is full of fan fiction and most of it lives up to the stereotypes. Take the top movies, TV shows or books that are popular with the early teen set and remove any obligation to quality or coherence and you have a decent idea of the stuff that sprouts up in the tubes. But I'm not here to find the typical. Browsing some of the most recent additions to the infinite library of crap that is the whole of online fanfic, it's surprisingly easy to stumble across the weird or out of place. I can understand why there's so much Twilight fanfic, but every now and then somebody posts a story that just doesn't make any sense among its contemporaries. Sometimes this is just the result of people being unaware of what fan fiction really is, but in other cases it's because of a deliciously specific love that maybe no other person has. Observe, unusual fan fiction. I will be using Net Insanity's 1 to 5 Gillespie fan fiction rating system for each selection.
Every job has its compulsory moments. For instance, if a police officer, whether on duty or not, witnesses a person attempting to rob a store he is obligated to protect and serve his community. "I was off the clock" isn't a good enough excuse for letting the Gas-n-Go get knocked over by a meth head. Similarly when I log on to Youtube and see a video titled "Drink My Breastmilk?" it is my sworn duty to click that link, to watch the video in its entirety and then go drink myself uncouth in a vain attempt to erase the sheer stupidity from my mind. Since no amount of glorious, holy vodka can turn back my experiential clock to the moment before I watched Spricket24's video, I suppose I'll just have to perform some Internet jujitsu and redirect its aggressive energy into an elegant blog-throw.
Back in the heady days of Internet idealism (aka the mid to late 1990's) there was this misconception that the Net would destroy all the fleshy borders of the world, leaving only a single, global community of individuals who finally realized that they have more in common with others than they once assumed. This all sounds nice on virtual paper, but the truth is that we're all still products of our environments. Just because some guy in Hong Kong is playing the same Flash game as me doesn't mean we don't still have substantively different lives. Really only the basics of life are the same wherever you go. Take craigslist, for instance. Every page regardless of location is still choked with human ugliness and woeful misconceptions of how reality works, but each iteration of the List is still a reflection of its corresponding location in meatspace. Having just come back from a stay in southern Florida, I thought I'd pop over to its craigslist page to find its unique flavor amid the samey stuff of CL.
Andy Ward saw you on the bus yesterdayThe thing about Valentine's Day isn't that there's somehow more love on a particular day in February than there is on every other day of the year, it's that the holiday gets people thinking about love so the feelings become more intense. It's sort of like concentrating on the fact that you have a headache. So, when this time of year rolls around, I can't help but linger on the thought of unrequited love, the only kind that actually exists on the Internet. Thankfully, craigslist lives up to its reputation as a site that has everything by maintaining an entire section devoted to woefully one-sided romances. That place is Missed Connections. Today, I'm here to give hope to all those hopeless romantics who post in MC.
