Fun Stuff
This page:
Fun News and Other Writing |
Fun Lists |
Fun Places |
Fun Pseudo-Nation-States and Quasi-Religious Institutions |
Fun Comics
Fun News and Other Writing
- 27b/6 - E-mails to and from David Thorne
- Ananova Quirkies - Across the Pond, they're not crazy, just eccentric
- AP Strange News (via Yahoo)
- Buzz Page
- Fark - A collaborative Web site that links to humorous news stories.
Advisory: Like the editors of British tabloids, some of the contributors to Fark enjoy displaying pictures of women's breasts. However, those links are clearly marked, so you can avoid them if you want - News of the Weird
- Obscure Store and Reading Room
- The Onion - Sometimes satire is only slightly sillier than real life
- PostSecret - People send their secrets on postcards
- Thomas Friedman Op/Ed Generator - Surprisingly close renditions of columns by the globetrotting New York Times columnist
- The Watley Review
- Worldwide Weird Holidays
- Yahoo News: Oddly Enough
Fun Lists
- Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia - Pranks, hoaxes, etc.
- Darwin Awards - "Commemorating those who made the ultimate sacrifice by eliminating themselves from the species in an extraordinarily novel fashion, thereby improving our genetic pool. This citation is almost always granted posthumously."
- The Drawer: WWWeirdness
- DUMB.domains - Generates a random dumb domain using the new top-level domains
- Encyclopedia of American Loons - Blog chronicling our crazed countrymen. Who knewe there were so many?
- Hyper-Weirdness on the World Wide Web - Alas, no longer updated, but some remnants are here
- Jokes.com - Jokes by category or just choose a random joke
- Mr. Gradgrind's Literal Answers to Rhetorical Questions - Such as, "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" and "Would you like to swing on a star?"
- Ted Nelson's Junk Mail - This pioneer of the Internet saved his junk mail — much of it about technological marvels of the time — going back to 1963. Naturally the Internet Archive" put it online.
- Unreliable Facts - "Because everything you read on the Internet is true"
- Useless Pages
- Weird Places
- The Weird, Wild and Wonderful on the WWW - Lots of hip and groovy stuff (formerly Justin's Links from the Underground) (very old links, though)
- Worst of the Web
- EarthCam - Categorized by subject
WebCams, etc.:
Fun Places
- Atlas Obscura - "Wondrous, curious, and bizarre locations around the world"
- Anger Central - People rant about what makes them angry
- Annals of Improbable Research - Home of the Ig Nobel Prize
- Ask Dr. Science - He knows more than you do
- Behold the Psychic Burrito - It's back: the burrito test that was a highlight of the early Web
- Book Happy: World of Weird Books (former home of the Kooks Museum, Donna Kossy, curator)
- Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - Annual contest to come up with the worst first line for a work of fiction
- Centre for the Easily Amused - Random Silliness, Short-Attention-Span Site of the Week, and more
- Check the coffee pot at Cambridge University, England
- Crank.net - "Cranks, crackpots, kooks, and loons on the net." This will help me abide the discontinuation of the Kooks Museum. Every, um, unconventional belief imaginable, you'll find someone who believes it here
- Distorted Barbie - The pictures M*tt*l tried to censor
- Duct Tape Fashion Show
- Archie McPhee -
Outfitters of popular culture; be sure to visit their
store in Seattle!
(What's this?) - Johnson-Smith Co - "A household name in novelties, gifts and collectibles since 1914."
- Unemployed Philosophers Guild - Tschotschkes, philosophy, what more could you want?
- What on Earth - That's what you'll say when you feast your eyes on the merchandise here
Fun Places to Buy Stuff:
- Gail.com - Where you end up if you mistype Gmail.com
- The Official Rube Goldberg Web Site - Kids can compete to invent their own Rube Goldberg machines
- Kiss This Guy.com - You know, from the Jimi Hendrix song. The archive of misheard lyrics
- h2g2: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Earth edition of Douglas Adams' guide to life, the universe, and everything. (It's on the BBC site, but most articles are contributed by self-described researchers, though there is a system of peer review.)
- The Magic 8-Ball®: An Unofficial Home Page
- Museum of Jurassic Technology -
"Educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the
public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic" — or so they say. Read
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler (Pantheon Books,
1995)
(Find it in a library) - Museum of Questionable Medical Devices - Quackery through the ages, in Minneapolis - Worth a detour!
- Oracle of Bacon - How close a connection is there between Kevin Bacon and any other actor? (Similar to the former site, "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon")
- Pong! It's back as Web Pong (or Pång, as they say in Swedish) and all done with DHTML (in case you care)
- Rainy Mood - Rain sounds (available as an app, naturally)
- San Francisco Cacophony Society - Some of the people who make the City what it is
- Straight Dope - Words of wisdom from Cecil Adams, who has been "fighting ignorance since 1973 (it's taking longer than we thought)"
- Talk Like a Pirate Day - Official British HQ
- Talk Like a Pirate Day (U.S. site)
Talk Like a Pirate:
Celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19 every year
- Snopes.com - Urban Legends Reference Pages
- AFU and Urban Legends Archive - This grew out of a FAQ for the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban
- Metabunk - "Dedicated to the art and pastime of honest, polite, scientific debunking. It is primarily a discussion forum, however the focus is on providing concise useful resources, and attempting to avoid repetitive debate and arguments."
- Museum of Hoaxes
- Purportal - Search engine and directory of sites on hoaxes and urban legends
Urban Legends:
- World's Largest Roadside Attractions - I've actually seen the world's largest thermometer
Fun Pseudo-Nation-States and Quasi-Religious Institutions
- Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
- Church of the SubGenius and its guiding spirit, J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
- Forvik - Stuart Hill, the lone inhabitant of this island in the Shetlands, has declared it a Crown Dependency, rather than part of the United Kingdom (June 2008)
- Freedonia, Principality of - Seems to be run by rather humorless libertarians having nothing in common with the benevolent rulers portrayed in Duck Soup
- Knights of Malta -
Founded in 1099 and known as the Knights Hospitaller because they provided medical service to the Crusaders, this Catholic military order was forced to leave the Holy Land in 1291, then Rhodes in 1523. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta hasn't governed Malta or any other territory since 1798 — they do have a palace in Rome, though — but the Vatican decided in 1953 that they were "sovereign" anyway, and they are even recognized by some nations. The important thing is that they seem to do good international relief work. See the History page on the U.S. branch's Web site
- Landover Baptist Church
- Dominion of Melchizedek - The DOM, as they call themselves, claim some islands in the South Pacific. They also claim some connection with the Melchizedek in the Bible, who was king in Salem (Jerusalem) at the time of Abraham
- An article from the Washington Post (with rebuttals from the Melchizedekians) describes the DOM's declaration of war with France, its spiritual alliance with the Ruthenians in Eastern Europe, and its leaders' history of run-ins with the law.
Melchizedek:
- Molvania - "A land untouched by modern dentistry"
- So you want to be alone? - Book review of the travel guide to Molvania (Guardian)
- Navassa Island - A little-known U.S. territory, Navassa is a two-square-mile island near Jamaica
- Oceania - A concrete island
- Partenia - The virtual diocese featured in the New Yorker
- Raelians - This religion believes aliens created life on Earth and they will come again. They claim to be working on human cloning
- Rosicrucian Order (Americas), San Jose, California - See the Egyptian Museum; the Rosetta Stone is fake, but the cat mummies are real!
- Rosicrucian Order (International)
Rosicrucians:
- Satanic Missionary Society, Olympia, Wash. Operates the Satanic Prayer Line. As heard on This American Life, episode 666
- Sealand Official Home Page - This one actually has more of a claim to sovereignty than most others on this page. It's a platform off the coast of England — yet not part of the U.K., a British court has ruled — founded by Prince Roy and Princess Joan. It has its own passports, money, stamps. It's even hosted a German diplomat, who was there to bail out a prisoner!
- The principality's major business is a Web colocation service.
- Wired magazine did a story on this aspect called "Welcome to Sealand. Now Bugger Off."
- The Rough Sands Gazette disputes Prince Roy's claims to sovereignty. (The site seems to be run by someone who once ran a pirate radio station on Rough's Fort, a.k.a. Sealand)
Sealand:
- Tuva - The land immortalized in Ralph Leighton's book, Tuva or Bust: Richard Feynman's Last Journey. (Find it in a library) It was independent from 1920 to 1944, when it became part of the Soviet Union. It's now an autonomous republic of Russia
- Unarius Academy of Science
- Universal Life Church
- Urantia Foundation - Publishers
of the Urantia Book, a supposedly divine revelation about Jesus
and various celestial beings, first published in 1955
Web Directories of Pseudo-Nation States and Quasi-Religious Institutions:
- Great God Hoax - Hoaxes in the name of religion, from the Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia
- The Micronation and Sovereignty Website Index - Lists of real small states and less-official nations. Includes a page of warnings about frauds
Fun Comics
- Cartoon Bank - Home of cartoons that originally appeared in the New Yorker. Look up old favorites or make new discoveries. License them for other uses, buy a print, buy the original art
- Comics.com (United Media)
- Dilbert Zone - Where you can find every office's favorite cartoon
- Doonesbury
- Existential Comics - Comics featuring famous philosophers, not just the existentialists. Learn about philosophy and have a laugh!
- GoComics (Universal)
- Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer by Ben Katchor - These trips are wonderfully surreal, like a glimpse of a parallel universe
- The Oatmeal
- Red Meat
- Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World - And you thought Doonesbury was political!
- XKCD
- Zippy the Pinhead
- Yahoo Comics