I spend several days a week sifting through some of the most ridiculous content on the Internet and sometimes I just get too comfortable in my surroundings. I come to expect insanity in certain places while I assume it won't blossom in others. But the Internet never ceases to surprise me. It inverts my assumptions and proves that this young technology is still so unpredictable. Over the weekend I stubbed my electronic toe on two different kinds of madness. One was eerie paranoia and the other was classical pants-on-head goofballism.

First, when I came across a link to the Peoples' Patriot Coalition I stuck a bag of kettle corn insta-pop in the microwave, cracked open a tall beer and settled in for what only could have been pages upon pages of gun fetishism, bigotry and impotent anti-government rambling. Except that it wasn't. Scan through the PPC's website and you'll find hardly a trace of the usual American militia garbage. Sure, they've got a sideways Stars-and-Bars flag toward the bottom of the left column and their forum is thus far empty (indicating that this may just be the fantasy of a single hick with a small arsenal), but PPC isn't even close to being the quasi-KKK you'd expect from an Internet militia. They quote Greek philosophers, Jewish thinkers and freaking Amy Tan. Amy Tan!

Scour the PPC's website and you'll find precious little overt insanity. Aside from the fact that it's an organization that believes the people of this country ought to be armed and trained for war whenever they've got free time on their hands, it actually passes for reasonable. Sort of. We'll get back to the PPC in a moment, but first another three-letter organization, CNN.

CNN, or more specifically its website, doesn't traffic in outright insanity very often. Stupid time-filler and entertainment non-news, yes. When it comes to overt craziness, CNN relies on its audience to potluck their own stupidity and dysfunction a la their unnecessary comments section. Take their recent article about NASA's LCROSS mission that recently confirmed the existence of water ice on Earth's moon. For reasonably intelligent people this news is interesting and a bit exciting. For insane and/or ignorant people it's a chance to be morons in public. The comments section for the article contains such phrases as, "I agree Fart...2012 is almost here!" and a comment that, in so many words, unironically suggests that the next Indian moon mission will likely find animals as well.

The lesson I learned from CNN's comments section is that the insanity doesn't need to be in the original content, but only in association with it. That's why I decided to take a second look at PPC's "Media Links" section. There are currently only two links there. On is Fox News, which is predictable considering that the liberal population of America tends not to be into the whole "guerrilla army" thing. But the other link is to Outside the Box, a website cataloging the myriad nonsense of Alex Ansary. This includes 2012 apocalypse preparation, talk of vast government conspiracies and even strands of general religious mysticism. If your gun-toting freedom fighters look to Fox News and a doom-obsessed idiot for their clean media, maybe you ought to think twice about taking marching orders.

Amount of Time Likely to be Wasted: Eh, less than 15 minutes. PPC isn't at all entertaining, but maybe you'll be enticed into the realm of stale kookiness that is Outside the Box.

Likelihood to Result in Arrest in Real Life: Guys with guns who think the President is the head of a vast conspiracy to do awful things for no good reason... what do you think?

MCDR: Jon Stewart's got a show on four nights a week that gives good perspective on the news. Let a pro make the right adjustments.

Internet Depth by Preposition: Definitely In. PPC aspires to the creation of a real army, but it'll never be anything but another gun-nut depository.