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Hamming it up
LIFE is pretty serious and complicated at the moment. Kosovo, Timor, the
forests, and spies getting their cover blown on the Web. If that is not enough, Senator
Brian Harradine decides against the GST. Where that leaves the Federal Government's
Internet censorship regulation -- given that its critics saw it as a way to win over the
Tasmanian senator -- is unclear to say the least.
There is only one answer to all this heaviness . . . an escape into the sort of
time-wasting that only the Net can bring. One way to do this is to plug whatever comes to
mind in the window of a search
engine, then surf through the results to see where it takes you. Senator Harradine has
actually provided inspiration for such an escapist quest. He is on record as telling a
Senate committee inquiry that one only has to type "p" into the Web and all
sorts of free smut result.
His committee colleague, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja of the Democrats, rather kindly
described this as an exagerration. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a go at the weekend,
and see whether I might happen on consenting couples doing interesting things with whipped
cream. No such luck. I tried Web Wombat, Google, Excite, Web Crawler, HotBot, Alta Vista
and the extremely fast FAST search engines Not a bean from three of them which objected
that "p" was not a word, and nothing more salacious than a page on the PS/2
mouse driver for serial port connections from the others.
Still seeking easy amusement, I abandoned the search engines and headed for the Centre for the Easily Amused site. This is a godsend on
those days when the computer screen looks like a blank canvas or a homework assignment
that had to be in yesterday.
Prominent at the Centre for the Easily Amused is a link to the Hampster Dance, the site that displays hundreds of
furry cartoon characters dancing to some awful rockabilly music. It is silly, a waste of
time and amazingly addictive. And it has spawned more than 100 lookalike sites. The centre
has links to them all. There is even a Genetically Modified Hamster Dance.
People, who probably have a lot to do but have had their minds altered by the Hampster
Dance, have created animated dances by pigs, sheep, ancient Romans, aliens, Austin Powers,
Cartman from South Park, and vampires. An American by the name of Melissa Ping has even
launched the Animated Dancing Pages
Web Ring to link them all together.
So anyone who has created a page of animated dancing characters with accompanying awful
music can join the ring and know there are thousands of people around the world just
clicking on the button that shuffles the next ring site into view and staring in mindless
wonder. The Hampster Dance has even started selling things like posters and bumper
stickers, according to Jack Schofield, the Guardian's computer editor. He says that the
popularity of dancing pages has also produced an answer to the intriguing question: Why is
hamster misspelled?
Schofield says that the creators of Hampster Dance have announced: "Everything here
is named with a p because the name of the original Hampster Dancer is Hampton Hampster, a
little hamster from Canada."
The Net has an answer for everything.
All articles Copyright: © West Australian Newspapers |
