Brave New World of Useless Stuff

Technology isn't here just to make the world a better place, you know.

Visionaries who insist that the faceless nature of the Net will break down all racial and national boundaries as the society goes on-line en masse forget to mention that you can get on the Internet Monday, get off Thursday, and never find anything useful -- but you may find much proudly identified as "useless."

These dead ends on the information superhighway are mostly on the World Wide Web, a colorful Net segment organized in interactive chapters called "pages."

It figures the White House wants to educate with their page and your neighbor may be busy providing daily pictures of his Mr. Potato Head in weird positions through his.

There's even a special name for finding ways to waste on-line time. It's called "Because You Can."

Why have access to a computer that counts the inventory of a soda machine -- in Switzerland? Because you can. Why have a pitching machine attached to a computer and throw snowballs with the click of a mouse? Because you can. There's even a site that lists all the vending machines hooked up to various computers.

Cathie Walker runs the Net's "Centre for the Easily Amused," a popular one-stop electronic shop for useless pages that had to be put on a timer for a period when it was overwhelmed with 25,000 calls before noon.

Walker, an administrative secretary, decided to become the "yellow pages of fun stuff," Walker said, and tried her hand at web page design.

"Considering that there are a thousand or so Web pages coming out daily, most of them are useless -- pictures of a guy and his cat or whatnot -- so material for us isn't hard to find," Walker said.

Setting up a Web page -- useless or not -- is "one way of having that 15 minutes of fame," Walker said in August. "Mine's lasted for a month."

With that in mind, here are some places on the Net that define worthlessness, inspired or otherwise:
• Alt.Buddha.Short.Fat.Guy -- Dedicated to making fun of Buddhism through aimless arguments. Example: "Since the last thing Buddha wanted was veneration, perhaps we are not insulting him by insulting him." A Net must.

• The "Annoy Rodeo" Web Page -- The creators have downloaded a picture of their friend, Rodeo, and give you the opportunity to click various boxes and send him hate e-mail.

• Alt.ketchup -- A newsgroup (a.k.a. elaborate bulletin board systems centered around one topic) that discusses the world of ketchup. Look for heated discussions about whether or not mustard is underrated. Also available: alt.McDonald.and.ketchup.

• Alt.destroy.the.earth -- Obsessed with how the world will end or how it would end if it were up to you? This newsgroup is. If you just want to mess with the Earth, there's also alt.pave.the.earth, which features heartwarming conversation such as this: "Pave a continent or two. You'll feel better almost immediately."

• House of Socks -- Missing a sock? Possible locations (the dryer, under the bed) are available and evaluated with a click. I clicked "Other" and got this: "Did you leave it at, uh, SOMEONE ELSE'S house, maybe?" It's a hoot.

• The Amazing Fishcam -- At this site developed by Netscape, the same company that developed the popular Web browser, workers have pointed a camera at their fishtank. Why? So every few seconds the camera takes a shot of the tank, that's why.

• The Squashed Bug Zoo -- Images of the squashed are scanned into a computer complete with a funny tale -- and how the squashing happened.

• The Nipple Server -- "It was only a matter of time until someone made updated pictures of my left nipple publicly available," writes this page's creator, who downloads a new picture of his left nipple every day. You can even rate his nipple on its daily color, panache, and "overall nipplish quality."

• Spooky Pez -- You know those Pez candy dispensers? The creators of the "Dark Side of Pez" page have downloaded a number of dispensers that they find frightening. Obsessive.

• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hack Gallery -- A celebration of elaborate pranks that students have played over the years, including placing a Cambridge Police squad car on the dome of a building. Quite comprehensive in its historical scope.

• The Flaming Pop-Tart Experiment -- Complete with an official looking science report on the "social effects of overheated pastries," the punch line is a few pictures of the page's author -- displaying burnt Pop Tarts.

• The Automatic Complaint Letter Generator -- After typing in someone's name and relevant information, Net surfers are given what is advertised.

• The International Junk Mail Clearinghouse -- Wastefulness that keeps on giving. Random thoughts, strange essays, and self-help stuff like "How to tell if your head is going to blow up" are left daily. If you leave an e-mail address, the page's creators will send something useless regularly.

• The Loser Living Upstairs -- One man's hysterical, and biting, journal of the coming, goings, and 2 a.m. meetings of his strange neighbor. Updated daily and indispensable for anyone who has had a neighbor they've wondered about.

• Cows Caught In The Web -- Designed by a 17-year-old guy from Canada who started college at age 12, this is about all things cow. Cow trivia, cow price guides, cow sounds, links to dairy pages, etc. It's overwhelming.

• Breakfast Cereal Hall of Fame -- An exhausting and colorful history of cereal history. Actually interesting.

• And finally, The Toilet Cam, a Web legend. Funny thing is, it's a big scam. Thought to be live video of a toilet and its contents, the Web address normally attached to it never worked. Here's what the hoaxsters had to say (via a separate Web site set up to dispel rumors of the fake Toilet Cam Web site) about their prank. "It was meant to make fun of all the idiotic cameras pointed at coffee pots and other hardware."

• The Centre for the Easily Amused -- Walker's brainchild. Includes the Short Attention Span Site of the Week, and links to tons of goofy stuff.

• The Mediocre Site of the Day -- This is a link to "the mediocre, the unremarkable, the so-so, average pages that we encounter on a daily basis," according to creator Jensen Harris.