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Adult Movie FAQ
Everything you've wondered about porn movies, including how to break into the business. It ain't what you think — the hot lights, getting hard on cue, the risk of STDs — but I can still think of tougher ways to earn a living. The site also has some suggestions for video rentals and discussions of philosophical questions such as "Why do the men always orgasm on camera but never the women?"

Animal Dildos
Sex toys based on animal penises (e.g., dog, dolphin, lion, kangaroo, bear). Is it funny, or disgusting?

American Memory
The Library of Congress has placed more than 50 collections of historic images online for viewing. It includes a collection of old baseball cards, selected Civil War photos and 4000 panoramic photos. Another great site for historical artifacts is the National Archives Online Exhibit Hall, including "When Nixon Met Elvis" and "Posters of World War II."

American Paper Optics
An online store devoted to 3-D glasses! Unfortunately the site is geared toward promotional purchases and doesn't accept small orders. However, it does have a gallery of online 3-D art if you already have a pair of paper glasses.

American Song-Poem Music Archives
This site was established to "document and celebrate the rich history of the set-your-poems-to-music industry." Long overdue.

Andy Kaufman Fan Page
Gone but not forgotten.

Annals of Improbable Research
Experiments you can try at home! My favorites include Fun With Grapes, which describes how to coax sparks and flare from green grapes in the microwave. The best of the annals has been collected in a book.

Are You Biased?
Take any of a series of quickie psychological tests posted by the Southern Poverty Law Center to reveal if you have unconscious prejudices against others based on their age, race, gender or body size. "The results of more than one million tests show that unconcious bias exists in most of us."

A.Word.A.Day
My reaction to the daily word is typically "So that's what it's called." Because the words aren't always practical (who uses nictitate instead of wink?), I tend to forget them. But I have saved a few that I'm determined to work into conversation, including Brobdingnagian ("marked by tremendous size"), Cyrenaic ("an adherent of the doctrine that pleasure is the chief end of life"), claque ("a group hired to applaud at a performance"), footle ("to talk or act foolishly"), declivitous ("moderately steep"), imago ("an idealized mental image of another person or the self"), nidicolous ("reared for a time in a nest"), latitudinarian ("a person who is broad and liberal in standards of religious belief and conduct"), fubsy ("chubby and somewhat squat"), caterwaul ("to make the characteristic harsh cry of a rutting cat"), pasquinade ("statue in Rome on which lampoons were posted"), sinecure ("an office or position that requires little or no work"), risibility ("the ability or inclination to laugh"), cathect ("to invest with libidinal energy") and the German word that often describes my mental state, weltschmerz ("depression or apathy caused by comparison of the state of the world with an ideal state"). I'll get over it. Random House also has a "word of the day" feature — and a sometimes brave one. Here's why I say that.

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Bad Sports
The National Association of Sports Officials presents a collection of video clips of fans and coaches attacking referees. Be sure to check out the NASO Special Report, Officials Under Assault (PDF download) or its news items about attacks on refs.

Bang Bang Bang
A catchy, entertaining little tune.

Bizarre Magazine
A twisted read from Great Britain. Check out my favorite section, Ask Bizarre.

Book Clubs Directory
A guide to 150 discount book clubs such as Doubleday. There are similar guides for residents of Canada and the United Kingdom.

Book of Zines
My guide to e-zine and zine culture.

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Catholic Apparitions of Jesus and Mary
These two get around.

Celebrity Breast Match
Match the celebrity to her boobs.

Center for UFO Studies
If you've seen Independence Day, you're curious about whether aliens are really such assholes. CUFO has the answers, including background on the infamous Roswell incident and an FAQ about UFOs. There's also advice in case you're abducted: "Although no one can prove that people are actually taken aboard UFOs, if you should find yourself in this predicament, remain calm. Observe and remember as much as you can; even ask questions. Grab something and bring it back with you as evidence."

CIA Kids' Page
"When can I topple democratically elected governments like you, Dad?"

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
This is a great site when you need to ground yourself in reality. The committee publishes the Skeptical Inquirer, which debunks the most outrageous stories of our time such as Roswell, Shroud of Turin, crop circles, psychics. The article Strange Hoaxes That Endure is a good place to start.

Cut-Up Killer
I wondered how long it would be before I'd be able to download an entire human body. The National Library of Science site took color photographs of the body of executed prisoner Joseph Paul Jernigan after it had been cut into 1,871 slices at 1 millimeter intervals. A few samples are available for immediate downloading; you have to contact NLS researchers for the whole shebang. Jernigan's cross-sections look like ham hocks, mostly. Makes a great screensaver.

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Deal Dude
Coupons and discount codes. Sign up for free deal alerts from stores, or browse the cheapskates' hall of fame.

Death Clock
Calculate the day you'll die in a few seconds. Alternately, spend about 10 seconds of what's left of your time to take the Northwestern Mutual Life quiz). Finally, you can spend two minutes on the Spark Death Test but you'll have a few laughs, which might relieve some stress, which could give you a day or two longer.

Deep Throat ASCII
ASCII art is images — including nudes — created entirely from computer keyboard symbols. Here are some examples. When you make these images move, you have an ASCII movie. The ASCII Art Ensemble converted the classic porn movie entirely to ASCII. It's much less erotic. Here they explain their motivations. The ASCII Picture Maker freeware program for Windows will turn any digital photo into text art.

Dermatologic Image Database
Enter at your own risk.

Donors Choose
This is a great site for charity giving. Teachers write grant proposals for supplies or projects or field trips they would like to take with their classes, and donors can contribute the full or a partial amount to help fund it. The site handles all the money and purchasing and donors receive thank-you notes and photos from the event or of the supplies.

DuckJob
Donald Duck getting head. I'm on a bus in Austin, Texas, and this woman and I are talking and suddenly she goes, "Who's your daddy?" in her best duck voice. Always cracks me up, but I'm easy. (WAV, 448K)

DVD Online Rental Guide
This guide lists every DVD rental club known to the be online (click on the "All Clubs" link at bottom of page to see complete matrix with prices and trial offers). There are similar guides by adult dvd rental clubs and video game rental clubs.

-E-

Earth From Space: An Astronaut's View
Selections from NASA's collection of 400,000 images taken from the Space Shuttle. You also can order prints. To zero in on your neighborhood, visit Microsoft's Terra Server or Google Earth. Or check out NASA's Big Blue Marble photo project, that brings all the images together.

Edgar Allan Poe Crypto Challenge
Damn! I almost had it solved.

The Empire That Was Russia
This is a stunning exhibit at the Library of Congress of photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who did a photographic survey of the Russian countryside in the years before the Communist revolution. He figured out a way to make color photographs long before it was common and took hundreds of images. The LOC owns 1903 of the plates for these photographs, which could only be printed with great difficulty at the time they were taken. Computers have made the process much easier and produced spectacular results, so we can now see what would seem impossible: color snapshots taken in Russia around 1910 of a culture that was about to be lost. The exhibit includes an explanation of Prokudin-Gorskii took his photos and how they were restored digitally.

Erotica Clichés
Compiled from alt.sex.stories.

Exploding Whale
In 1970, Portland TV reporter Paul Linuman and his crew recorded highway workers destroying a dead, beached whale with cases of dynamite. "The humor of the situation gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere," Linnman explained in the aftermath of the blast. One chunk of blubber crushed a car parked more than a quarter-mile away. This site archives the frighteningly funny news clip.

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FAQ Archive
Collected human knowledge (and ignorance). Includes full-text search.

Feels Like Forecast

Fetish Map
Katharine Gates maps the world of fetishes, from her entertaining book Deviant Desires. Where do you fit in?

Former Child Star Palooza
An e-zine that reports on the whereabouts and careers (or anti-careers) of one-time child stars.

Found Magazine
A magazine and website that reproduces personal notes, letters, photos, lists, etc. discovered by contributors mostly on the street/sidewalk or in old books.

-G-

Gallery of Obscure Patents
This page highlights weird patents discovered by surfers using Delphion's Patent Server.

Ghost Sites of the Web
A lively monthly report on "sites whose tragic deaths are underreported, overlooked and otherwise ignored." Take down your neglected site down before it ends up on this list.

Guide to Animal Sounds on the Net
Birds (many), mammals, frogs, crocodiles, lizards, snakes, fish, insects.

Guide to Urinal Etiquette
Most guys follow the rules instinctively, but it always wise to review. Also see Restrooms of the Future, which includes a woman's guide to peeing while standing up.

-H-

Hidden in a Chair
This site is in the science section because it took some figurin' to do it — a guy tried to cross the border from Mexico hidden in the seat of a van. You have to feel for the guy; he looks so forlorn at being caught.

History of Things That Never Were
Edgar Governo maintains an extensive collection of timelines for history that never happened, mostly in science fiction but with other genres thrown in.

How Common Is Your Name?
Enter your first or last name in the search input provided by the U.S. Census Bureau and it provides your national ranking. Another cool site, the Baby Name Wizard, tracks the popularity of names over the decades.

-I-

Infiltration
In his "zine about going places you're not supposed to go," Ninjalicious chronicles urban explorers who find ways to explore abandoned buildings, transit tunnels, hotels, hospitals, drains and hidden places.

Inflatable Animal Fetish Page
"Do you enjoy blowing up inflatables? I mean, do you really enjoy blowing up inflatables?"

Insects as Sexual Fetish Objects
An article from Digest: Cultural Entomology by G.A. Pearson of North Carolina State University.

International Trepanation
You need this site like a hole in the head.

Internet Anagram Server
My friends call me Chow Ripe.

Internet Beatles Album
This site, which is bigger than Jesus, includes audio clips, articles and other assorted remnants of the Fab Four. There's a list of myths about the band and its music, the story behind "Paul is Dead," and a few never-before-seen snapshots of the boys taken by fans.

Internet Scambusters
A site to help protect you against scams.

-J-

Jester the Joke Recommender
Rate 25 jokes on how humorous they are to you and the program spits out more jokes that it thinks you'll find funny.

Jesus of the Week
Peter Gilstrap posts a campy found image of Jesus online each week and invites visitors to submit a Jesus. Don't delay visiting the Rapture Ready to preview upcoming events. Or check out omnipresent (and creepy) Jesus here.

Jesus Sports Statues
For $20 each, you can own Jesus playing baseball, football, soccer, hockey or a variety of other sports with nubile children. From Catholic Supply of St. Louis. Just added: Skiing, Martial Arts, Golf, Gymnastics, Ballet.

Jump the Shark
A site that documents the moments when TV shows begin to go downhill.

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Let's Talk
A classic Mad TV skit.

Longest Bird Penis Ever
It's curly.

Lust on Gilligan's Island

-M-

Magic Trick
It's obvious once you figure it out.

Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus
This is a paper (with photos) by Dutch researchers who put couples into a magnetic resonance imaging machine and snapped photos of their genitals during sex (the couples' genitals, not their own). Their conclusion: "During intercourse in the missionary position, the penis has the shape of a boomerang."

Marilyn vos Savant is Wrong!
A columnist for the Sunday magazine Parade ("Ask Marilyn"), vos Savant claims an IQ of 228. That's never impressed Herb Weiner, a software engineer who maintains this site devoted to correcting her most serious blunders.

Meatmation
Like animation, but good on the grill.

Medusa Realm
This is the animated image page of the Medusa Realm, a site for guys who get turned on by the idea of women turning to stone. Click on the animation links to see it happen.

Missing Money
The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators and state governments have joined forces to find people who are owed money from unclaimed tax rebates, legal settlements and the like. Are you on the list? Probably not. But it doesn't hurt to check. There are no fees.

Monty Hall Dilemma
This made my brain hurt until I diagrammed it.

Muki's Kitchen
Hungry?

-N-

Naked Guy Playing Basketball Video

Needcom: Market Research for Panhandlers
Needcom, a challenging site posted by PBS, addresses this issue in a creative way. You are presented with the photos and "sales" pitches of six actual Manhattan panhandlers and asked how much money you would give each. The site then tallies which panhandlers did well and interviews each person about their actual income and life on the street. The best part of the experiment is the letters that visitors write expressing admiration or outrage at the site.

Nerdity Test
A 500-question test that calculates the percentage of nerdibility you possess — automatically! (If that appeals to you, you're ahead of the game.) I scored 10 percent, making me a nerd-wannabe but still a major geek. The average is 29 percent.

News of the Weird
Chuck Shepherd's collection of slap-your-forehead antics, culled from the nation's newspapers. Includes a keyword search (or browse categories such as Drunkenness, Marriage and California) and instructions on how to receive Chuck's column by e-mail. A similar free weekly dispatch, This is True, is available from Randy Cassingham.

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Payphone Project
A database of phone numbers taken from the front of pay phones around the world. Contribute your own, or make a random call and see who picks up.

Peter Pan Home Page
Randy's got it going on. This site was better before he got famous and started vamping.

Play Ball!
Using her panties for clean-up was a classy touch. (avi, 3.1M; or RealAudio).

-Q-

Quackwatch
If you've ever received spam about some herbal treatment that will make your penis or breasts larger, cure your allergies, comfort your colon or help you lose weight, stop by this site. It debunks a variety of health scams.

-R-

Real Doll
The easy way to fill out a threesome, and the first site to put a value on a butthole.

Rectal Foreign Bodies
Things people have stuck up their butts.

-S-

Set Your Computer Clock
The National Institute of Standards and Technology maintains a collection of atomic clocks that are so accurate that the best of them won't gain or lose a second in 20 million years. You can set your computer clock to the NIST standard with a free downloadable program from its site, available for both Windows and Macintosh users. It takes only a few seconds to download—give or take.

Share the Technology
A list of nonprofit agencies that will help you hook up your old equipment with a school in need.

Skeptic's Dictionary
Robert Todd Carroll, a professor of philosophy and author of Becoming a Critical Thinker, presents more than 300 deconstructions designed to blow away your belief in everything from God, ESP, the Easter Bunny, channeling, cattle mutilation, Bigfoot, biorhythms, the Bermuda Triangle, graphology, the Roswell landing and pyramid marketing schemes. As Carroll notes, "The only thing infinite is our capacity for self-deception."

Software Museum
An archive of the file directories from antique software such as PC DOS 1.1 and Microsoft Word 1.1. Submit your clunkers.

Solar Power on the Roof
Have you ever wondered why more people don't put solar panels on their roofs? Here's why.

Spinal Tap Fan Site
As many people know, I am a serious student of one of England's loudest bands, Spinal Tap. This site includes links to everything Tap, along with my 500-entry Tap encyclopedia. Proceed with caution.

The Story Minute
The website of cartoonist Carol Lay. I have never read one of her clever, life-is-a-circle strips that I haven't wanted to clip and hang on the refrigerator.

Straight Dope Archive
Cecil Adams answers the questions that you always wanted answered. Start with his discussions of cow-tipping, envelope-stuffing jobs, the dangers of pissing on rails, Hitler's missing testicle, vacuum penis wounds and ice cream headaches.

Stumpers
The home page for a mailing list on which reference librarians try to stump each other. I love this shit. Check out the FAQ, which deals with the most common questions that reference librarians receive, although the FAQ at the unofficial Stumpers page is easier to navigate.

-T-

Tall Clubs International
The weather's fine at the 6'6," and yes, I do play basketball. Nearly every guy — even Michael Jordan — wishes he were taller (Jordan is listed officially at 6'6" but only reached 6'4" when the U.S. Olympic Committee got its tape measure out). This is a gathering spot on the Net for tall men and women who are tired of the inane questions, cramped airline seats and shirts that won't stay tucked in. Don't miss the Miss Tall International contest.

Translate Your Name to Japanese
The site provides translations from English into katakana. Here is my name, Chippu Ro, in Mincho font, which I received from a similar service offered by Cameron Switzer:

Translating the Internet
This interface translates Web pages or email to and from any of 11 languages (including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Spanish). It's not perfect but you can usually fight your way through.

-U-

Underground Origami
Instructions on how to turn paper into porn.

Urban Legends Reference Pages
All those stories that happened to a friend of a friend.

-V-

Virtual Blow-Job
From the perverted minds at Hoot Island (joke only works on straight guys).

-W-

Warm Words for Don Knotts
Don Knotts is the poster child of retro cool — you think he's a goof, but at least what you see is what you get.

Weird Tales from New Scientist
Odd (but true) stories from great minds.

Where's George?
Type in the serial numbers of your dollar bills and see where they've been. If they aren't already in the database, they'll be added.

World Sexual Records
College student J. Means spent a lot of time at the library to compile this list of records. Its categories include such treasures as largest penis, largest breasts, most orgasms, most virgins allegedly deflowered and oldest recorded dildo.

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Y?: National Forum on People's Differences
An ambitious site designed to "give you a way to ask people from other ethnic or cultural backgrounds the questions you've always been too embarrassed or uncomfortable to ask them." Some of the discussion has been collected in the book Why Do White People Smell Like Wet Dogs When They Come in From the Rain?

-Z-

Zinebook.com
This is my guide to creating your own fanzine or e-zine. It's a companion site to an anthology I edited of writing about pop culture, The Book of Zines.