Illustration by Richard Stevens © 2004 R Stevens

The Results are in! Bacon is officially a vegitable, trading off with asparagus, which is now a fried breakfast delight.

Time for a new semester! Are you bored already?

Dan Whelan

I Hasn't done no homework since I was six

A new semester is upon us and that means there will be tons of homework that you are not going to do. I mean, how are we, as college students, supposed to represent the best years of our lives if we are standing/sitting/lying down while reading how Shakespeare threw all of the tea into Boston Harbor to get Ronald Regan to stop driving his Delorean over 88 miles per hour? “Done be it cannot,” said the Yoda voice in my head. We must make some sacrifices to make America’s dreams come true.

The real problem is we cannot just sit around and do nothing. TV has ruined our lives forever by giving us the shortest attention spans in history. We have fallen so far from the 1950s super babies that did algebra backwards while teaching a young Jackie Chan all of his moves. Take a communication class, specifically electronic media or journalism, and you will see. News must be snappy, flashy and funny to get our attention, but it better end before we can change the channel.

So what is there to do? Well, if you are like me and the other not quite locals who live on campus, you have access to high-speed Internet! Then again, maybe, during your wild and crazy romp called freshman year, you used bit torrents, restricting your bandwidth until you transfer to UW-Milwaukee.

Perhaps instead you live off campus, but successfully badgered your parents into subscribing to something better than AOL’s 56.6 modem-driven dial-up. Either way, there are dozens of things to distract you online rather than taking the time to do homework assigned in the classes you are actually paying for.

I am gonna break my findings down into categories, allowing you to truly find what you are looking for, rather than sifting through it all.

First up are the profile-based sites. These are free sites where you can broadcast that one great idea, quote, picture or whatever across the Internet for all to see. Perhaps you have some not-so insightful thoughts to share with the world at 3 a.m. Whatever your reasoning, these sites allow you to sign up, post your information (whatever it may be) and connect with others.

A great example for all of us students would be Facebook.com. This Web site is well-known to students across the United States … as well as anyone else now. Originally, the site was intended for college students to connect with one another across the nation, but the makers, competing with Myspace.com, have opened up the site to the masses.

Photo provided by thesneeze.com

I would give this site an Addiction Level of four. There are so many things you can do or see on the site that you can probably check it every hour and see something new. Post a message to a friend, join a group, post personal quotes, pictures, share videos — the works.

Another version of this site would be the blog sites. If you have kept your nose in the books for the past few semesters, and have no idea what a blog is, I can give you a simple definition. A blog is an online application where anyone can say whatever he wants about anything. Some people write sad blogs, funny blogs, serious blogs or crappy blogs. A few great examples for these Web sites would be xanga.com, livejournal.com or blogger.com.

Personally, I have a Xanga account, but you really have your choice of the group. My girlfriend introduced me to a funny blog on Blogger titled as “Indexed,” where blogger Jessica Hagy posts hilarious graphs and charts on three by five index cards. These index cards are covered with Venn diagrams, bar charts, dot graphs and so forth establishing where bacon stands on the chart of good and evil. Feel free to jump in wherever you want on the 596 cards Hagy has posted so far. They are all hilarious. On the addict-o meter, I give Hagy’s work a wonderful welve. (Yes, I understand welve is not really a number, but I wanted to say twelve and use alliteration). Seriously, it is a five on the scale.

The final piece of this delicious ice cream pizza of a section would be the blog/zines. It is true that you are not necessarily broadcasting your own personal ideas here, but I used the word (or variations of the word) blog 11 times, so I figured it was relevant.

Another Web site introduced my way via my g/f was thesneeze.com. From what I have gathered through my own muffled girlish giggles and the wiping of tears, Steve writes about gosh-darn anything, but it is hilarious. At the recommendation of the g/f and the site itself, I started with “Steve, don’t eat it!” where the writer subjected himself to taste-tests of horrible looking or bizarre foods such as Potted Meat Food Product, Breast Milk, Beggin’ Strips and Urkel-O’s from 1991. This is not just a sentence describing the food itself and the taste. Oh, no. He really gets into it.

Another great section of his site would be one of the more recent posts, “Raisins v. Drum Set.” I really do not want to ruin the story, so I recommend you check it out. Addict-o meter reads at about four and three Urkel-O’s.

The next section would be the entertainment industry that is the Internet. These sites include Web-comics, live action and animated short videos as well as the largest collection of possible “America’s Funniest Home Videos” submissions ever.

Tied in first for Web-comics I read would be dieselsweeties.com and nataliedee.com. At completely different styles altogether, both tickle that funny bone I have named Sven.

Illustration by Jessica Hagy

Nataliedee.com is a Web-comic drawn by the artist of the same alias. ND’s comic does not follow any specific story, but tickles the hell out of me. Constantly drawing her pugs, husband Drew as well as her own character, Natalie draws tons of things from Ghostbear to a bar of soap. She also collaborates with her husband on Web-comic marriedtothesea.com while Drew works on his own comic toothpastefordinner.com. All these comics are archived wonderfully, allowing you to burn through the entire collection, taking in the wonder that is Dinosaur Vice Principal.

The other comic I cannot get enough of right now is dieselsweeties.com. This comic has recently transferred from exclusive online distribution to newspaper publication in select cities. Following the lives of retired porn star Maura, her little sister, Clango the robot, Indie-Rock Pete, Heavy Metal Steve and others. The trick with this comic is that there is a story going on amongst side jokes. Right now, there are 1,660 comics to read, but don’t let that scare you away. They are easy to read, allowing you to blow through hundreds at a time without realizing an hour has gone by.

This comic tops my addictive chart with a 7.436 as I set a number to read before I do something else, and by the time I realize it, I have blown far beyond my goal.

All right, by now, if you haven’t found something to distract you from the homework you face today, I have a few more suggestions up my sleeve, but I warn you, you may never see all there is to see within these sites.

First up is baratsandberetta.com, a Web site of short videos shot by writers of the same names. These videos cover topics such as God’s presence on Facebook.com, the rap hit “Suburbanites” and suggestions for a flag makeover for the United States. These videos are also downloadable to share with your friends who still have a 56.6K modem.

Switching over to animation, there is homestarrunner.com. I was a big fan of this site through high school until last year, but recently, I have not seen a lot of great new stuff on the page. You may already know this site thanks to Strong Bad, a character that wears a luchadore wrestling mask. This site has a few different types of videos to offer: there are shorts, longer animations and the Strong Bad e-mails. I recommend the e-mails and older Halloween vids.

And if you are still hard-up for something to check out online, there is always YouTube.com. I recommend you check out anything by Smosh. The  Dec. 13 issue of Time Magazine made the group famous for some of the short videos posted on their site smosh.com as well as YouTube.com. My personal favorites from this comedic duo would be their performances of “Mortal Kombat” and the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” theme song.

Really, you should probably do your homework, but as long as you don’t mess with the curve, I’m OK with it.