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Top of the Net:
The Ten Best Websites for Wasting Time
Okay. It's pretty obvious that there are plenty of ways to waste
time online. There are literally hundreds of news and magazine sites,
shopping sites, and especially gaming sites that you could easily spend the
entire day on. But those can't really be considered a real waste of time
- with news and magazine sites, you're rreading, and you might even be
learning something.
With shopping sites... well, you're shopping, of course. And, with gaming
sites, there's a goal, a purpose, a competitive spirit. To really, truly
waste time, you need to find those unique sites that encompass so much
useless bandwidth that you walk away much like you do after you've had
Chinese food for dinner - it was great while you were there, but you're
going to be looking around for something else in about half an hour.
But isn't there something to be said for just letting your brain numb out
and be entertained for a while? Yup. And that's exactly what time-wasting
websites are for.
We think that these are among the best.
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1.
The Institute of Official Cheer (http://www.lileks.com/institute/index.html)
Their slogan is "Where the Past Comes to Life, So We Can Promptly
Beat It to Death Again" -
and there couldn't be a much
more appropriate saying to accompany this cheerfully sarcastic
site.
The IOC is a gigantic look back
at the quirky side of retro-land - WAY quirky, to be accurate.
A good place to start is The
Gallery of Regrettable Food, which showcases a wide range of unsavory
culinary horrors, from the ease
of "Gel Cookery" (suspending various food matter in jello
products) to the
"Butter-Cup" - the
perfect beverage for your ladies' bridge night - consisting of a glass of
heated canned
vegetable juice garnished with
a floating butter pat and a stalk of celery. Hey, they said it was
regrettable.
Once you get that queasy feeling out of your stomach, you can move on to the
more palatable sections of the site - The Grooviest Motel in Wisconsin showcases
the real Gobbler Motel and Supper Club, where the ugliest motel possible (its
design and exterior were modeled after... you guess it... a turkey) serves up
(you guessed it again) turkey dinners 365 days a year.
Once you escape the Gobbler, you can browse through The Dorcus
Collection of unbelievably geeky men's fashions from the '50's, '60's, and
'70's, or the other highlight of the site, The Orphanage of Cast-Off
Mascots, where you can shed a tear or two for such commercial rejects as
Mr. Coffee Nerves, Kraut King, or Comfy and Minty - The Mentholatum Twins.
Sheesh, we've wasted two hours already just looking over this site
for the sake of this article! |
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2. Huge Magazine (www.hugemagazine.com)
Man, oh, man, guys and gals - if you wanna be so hip it hurts, there are
downloads on this site that'll make the most un-hip of you cooler than a
polyester-suited cucumber. And that's probably a good place to start
out - get the feel for Huge Magazine by checking out their large library
of Desktop Patterns, from swamis and poodles to Mexican skulls, tikis, and
all manner of strangeness.
Speaking of tikis, you can browse their Tiki Mug Collection next, and then head
on over to the Thrift Store Art Gallery for an extra-large dose of "artistic"
weirdness that'll put your Velvet Elvis paintings to shame. The Post-It Gallery
offers even more browsable images (who ever said that doodling on sticky notes
wasn't an art form?), and you can wrap up your visit to Huge-land by taking in
the latest episode of "King Slod Cazimo - Big Head at Large," wherein our hero
"discovers that he has no arms." Well, at least he has a great collection of
tiki mugs.
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3. Hecklers (www.hecklers.com)
One part search engine, one part mockarama, the Hecklers-Dot-Com site is
well known among those looking to poke a little fun at... well, just about
everything and everyone.
With the new Star Wars movie getting ready to hit theatres this spring,
one of the most popular features on the site is the Jar Jar Torture
Engine, the perfect outlet for those hoping not to see the long-eared
computer-generated annoyance in the next film - and the Torture Engine's
second-in-command may just be the William Shatner Acting Simulator, where
you can put Cap'n Kirk through his spoken paces by simply choosing your
weapon - er, button.
As for the rest of the site, it's arranged much like your typical
search engine is, so you can sift through categories like TV Music and
Movies, Computers and Technology, Work and Money, and Kids and Toys with
ease - the only trouble, if you want to call it that, is choosing which of
the long list of amusements to pick from. Interested in
History? Try playing "Let's Conquer France!" or find out
about the role of "The Afro in History."
TV more your style? Try "Lessons from Television" or
"Beat the Hell Out of Regis." Short attention span? Maybe
you'll like their 3-line novels. Heck, you could read two or three
dozen books in just one day, and won't that impress your summer book club? |
 Beans
Around The World |
4. Beans Around the World
(www.geocities.com/beansaroundtheworld/)
One can (pun intended) only wish that they'd traveled as much as this
humble little can of S&W brand black beans has. It's an amazing
and true journey of the little can that could - crisp, clear photos show
our beany friend at Graceland! in Teotihuacan, Mexico! At the
2002 Olympics! In Omaha, Nebraska! But you can do more than
just admire the beans' travelogue. Download your very own bean can
label, send in your own bean can tales, or write to the webmaster and tell
him that he's full of beans! It's endless fun for the whole family - but
is it performance art, or a colossal waste of time? We're busy
looking at all the pretty pictures.
You decide. |
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5. Useless Knowledge
(www.uselessknowledge.com)
Recently featured on Tech TV's super-geek Screensavers show, this almost
doesn't qualify as a total time wasting site because you actually get to
use your brain for part of it. Facts, quotes, words, and riddles of
the day share web space with quizzes and polls ("Are You a
Geek?" "How Much Do You Know About Movies?" "Who's
Your Crush?"), but that's not where it ends - move on to their lists
of Unusual Town Names and Famous Lefties, E-Mail Shorthand Symbols and
Presidential Inaugurations. Now you're getting there.
Once you reach the Imponderables section, where
you read "Why Do People Snore?" "Who Invented the
Zipper?" "Why Are Glow-in-the-Dark Things Usually
Green?" and "Why Is It Called a Hamburger When There's
No Ham?" you're right back in time-wasting land once
again. Finally - answers to all of life's really important questions.
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6. The Big Waste of Space (www.bigwaste.com)
Perhaps the internet auntie or uncle of Useless Knowledge, The Big
Waste of Space is yet another paradise for the hard-core time-wasters among
us. Kick off your trip to the Big Waste with a "Shake and Bake Road Trip"
- The BWOS will conjure up a random tripp to a nutty, campy tourist
attraction just for you. See the Sinclair Dinosaurs!! Visit the real
Brady Bunch house!! The BWOS has loads of TV and film locations for you to
check out both online and in the "real world," so that you, too, can be a
pesky tourist.
To put your sense of perspective in awe, browse through the Really
Big Stuff section, featuring the world's largest just about anything, from
the Largest Lemon and the Largest Donut to the Largest Thermometer. Get a
good laugh from the hilarious real-life Messed-Up Signs section ("Would you
like some hose raddish dressing on that sandwich, sir?") where the signs
are misspelled and mangled at places and on products you wouldn't believe.
If all of the content on the BWOS isn't enough for you, you can even do
something about that - just click on one of the "blobs" on the homepage,
and a brand new site design will appear before your web-blurry eyes.
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7. Yesterdayland (www.yesterdayland.com)
Whether you grew up in the '50's, '60's, '70's, '80's, or '90's,
Yesterdayland is your place for a gigantic dose of time-wasting nostalgia.
Broken down into easy-to-surf categories - Saturday Morning, Toys, Movies,
Games, Prime Time, Fashion, Music, and Lunchboxes - you can sift through
your entire childhood on this site, checking out the stuff you had and the
stuff that the neighbor kids had that you always wanted. Darn ol'
Timmy Ferguson and his Stretch Armstrong! Read about all of those TV
shows that only you and your friends understand (Hey, look! It's
Hong Kong Phooey and Sid and Marty Krofft!), remember how you used to rock
out to the music of the day (Whatever happened to American Bandstand?),
regret all of the giant fashion holes you fell into (Pompadours?
Izods? Leg-warmers??) and take a second look at those toys and
gadgets you totally forgot about (Cootie! Shrinky Dinks! Super
Elastic Bubble Plastic!). And it's not just mere civilians that hang out
at Yesterdayland - you can read interviews with celebrity reminiscers like
Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu, too. |
8. Derek's Big Website of Wal-Mart Purchase Receipts (http://lightning.prohosting.com/~receipts/)
Yes, folks, you read that right - a young upstart named Derek has
actually gone through the bother of keeping and organizing all of his
Wal-Mart purchase receipts (from November 17th, 1996 to the present, mind
you) and has scanned 'em and put 'em on line for your perusal.
Highlighting Derek's shopping habits at the Wal-Marts in Dilworth,
Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota, this site is pretty no-frills - kind of
like Wal-Mart itself - but it's oddly compelling to check out every single
thing that Derek has ever bought at the corporate superstore. Even more
bizarre are the extremely active message boards that accompany each and
every receipt - there's a whole range of folks that have all got something
to say about what Derek's bought this time. And, just to keep things fair,
there's a list of both pro-Wal-Mart links AND anti-Wal-Mart links.
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9. Cap'n Wacky's Boatload of
Fun (www.capnwacky.com)
Another giant time-wasting portal (this one with a bit of a nautical
theme, matey), Cap'nWacky really pulls a diverse collection of
randomness together on this site. One of the most notable sections
is perhaps eGad, the cynic's answer to eBay - the interface looks
startlingly like the real thing, but, luckily, you can't buy a darned
thing, since all that's really available are things like "shiny new
black shoelaces," "LUNCH - like new!" "Rejected iMac
'Think Different' posters," and "a year's supply of
ellipses." There's even more Flotsam and Jetsam on this site
(literally), from a wide selection of Unfortunate Cards ("The Wrong
Card For Every Occasion"), to the "Ask Zonar" department
(he's the only advice columnist from outer space, you know). And, if
that's not enough, you can even delve into the life of "Stick Figure
Warning Man" to find out what it's like to be the only real daredevil
sign model out there (hey, someonehad to pose for all those
"Flammable Vapors" signs). |
10. Perpetual Bubblewrap (http://www.urban75.com/Mag/bubble.html)
This is the last of our pack of time-wasters, so we'll make it
short - not that there's much to say about this site, as it pretty much
speaks for itself. Let it load, and simply run your cursor over the
virtual bubbles - and they'll pop with almost as cool a sound as the real
bubblewrap. The difference is in the programming - these bubblewrap
bubbles reappear almost as fast as you can pop 'em, so you can drive those
around you crazy for even longer periods of time. Thanks to this site, one
of the best "real world" timewasters has finally made it into cyberspace.
And that's our list of The Ten Best Websites For Wasting Time - so
boot up your computer, sign on to the 'net, and have fun checking out this
month's Review Magazine's Top of the Net. Happy surfing!
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