American country people are a mystery to me. More so than remote tribes in the Amazon rainforest, even more than the countless minuscule quasi-nations that sprung up around the Black Sea after the Iron Curtain fell. As an American myself, I just can't wrap my mind around the motives and practices of the provincial set. I'm avoiding the term "hicks" because I think there's a major distinction between hicks and country people. A hick can live anywhere, even in the middle of a thriving metropolis. Hick-ness is a state of mind, a set of predictable behaviors stemming from a dire lack of culture and an outright dearth of intelligence. Country people, just like city people, have to deal with hicks in their midst, but that's all. Hicks in the country, like fundamentalist Christians when they need a convenient excuse for moral apathy and tax evasion, are in many worlds but are not of them.

One of the admirable qualities of non-hick country people is that they're quite industrious. The Internet contains a plethora of examples to verify this. From a hilariously anachronistic photo blog of a family building an actual freaking log cabin in the middle of the woods to some dude and his dad constructing a house boat from raw materials, these meaningless but still very impressive projects have an outlet, like all meaningless things, on the Internet.

Then there's the case of Cy Brown, a tinkerer of the highest order. When I found out about his Internet debut, the famous Hole, I was prepared to mock the guy (if you'll excuse the pun) into the ground. I mean, if you heard that some dude in the middle of nowhere chronicled the digging of a hole in his back yard, wouldn't you first imagine a waste of precious phosphorous dicking around with a shovel while ranting about "them lib'ruls what wanna take m'guns"?

Cy Brown is not that guy.

Over the course of months, Brown shaped the very earth into a neat, respectable alcove that would have made him the I.M. Pei of the Neolithic world. Granted, the chief purpose of this hole, aside from the sheer pleasure of making something, was to provide camouflage so Brown could hunt animals in his own back yard. From the comfortable distance of the Internet in my very modern city, I can accept Brown's ambition even if I wouldn't find his endeavors nearly as charming in the flesh.

Amount of Time Likely to be Wasted: The Hole has eight rather ugly but functional, photo-rich pages complete with amusing captions. I don't recommend the site to animal rights activists (stone-cold capping and eating of snakes contained therein), but everyone who isn't a whiny hypocrite should get a fun half hour out of the site.

Likelihood to Result in Arrest in Real Life: Maybe. I'll admit, I'm not well-versed on the probably loose rural laws addressing hiding in a camouflaged bunker with an AK and a Glock, but Cy Brown seems like a stable enough guy that nothing untoward should result from his unusual projects.

MCDR: Read an issue of Vanity Fair, comment on the relative merits of regional wines and then struggle to not punch yourself in the teeth while gazing hatefully into the mirror.

Internet Depth by Preposition: On. Brown's websites are so lazy and his projects so involved that he's obviously not looking for Internet stardom.