THERE is something fascinating about disgusting things; I hate lizards. Sometimes when I have the ill-fortune to spy one darting out from behind the sink, I wash my hands with soap even though I have had no contact with that reptile; it’s just to make myself feel normal again. And yet, when my eyes do fix on a lizard, I can’t take them off the sight and stand mesmerized, its light brown scaly skin, the tiny ripples in its body as it flicks its tail and inches forward on the wall.
However, this is nothing compared with other people’s obsession with all that is disgusting, bloody, inhuman, smelly, associated with human waste, etc. Search any of these words and the abundance of the sites created solely to pay homage to such things makes you doubt the sanity of the present age. Surely, anyone wild enough to create a web site that informs all people innocent and corrupt of the consistency of the bloggers stuff in your eyes when you wake up, must be very, very stupid. That person, you would think, is begging to be isolated. Not so.
Once I started on the subject, I kept visiting one link after another and had quite a good time. One noticeable thing here is that these web sites are generally colourful, interesting and quite fun (perhaps to make the best of a bad situation). Furthermore, some of them are educational. It doesn’t go to your credit if you can’t even explain the particular smells and appearances of the phenomena of your own body. Remember the Law of Conservation of Energy? That gooey stuff in your eyes was not magically conjured; it’s a part of you. To find out all about it and more, the following sites are quite useful.
An amusing site to scroll down when you have the time is http://www.interstice. com/~max/disgusting.html. It presents you with a ‘Disgusting Food List’. The object of this is to list combinations of foods that people would otherwise eat, but that taste awful together — inedible disgusting ingredients such as vomit and toenails do not count. Some examples are: pickles and milk, tuna milkshake and liver meringue pie. Though a lot of ingredients are foreign to us (minestrone soup, sauerkraut, etc.) the list is still disgusting! They also suggest disgusting things to do with food, and Disgusting Food Games (new!). You are also invited to make a few suggestions to add to the weird concoctions that would make a person throw up instead of belch (though both are closely rivalled in their ability to disgust by “potato-skin toilet paper”, one of the suggested creativities).
One excellent site is http://yucky.kids.discovery.com/flash/body/. Though it is meant for kids but the site will definitely be of interest to the fully-grown individual too. Supposedly “the yuckiest site on the Internet” it is actually quite kewl. It tells you amazing disgusting things about your gross and cool body, from pimples, farts and poop, to dandruff and earwax — what more could one ask for? There is a great deal of multimedia on this site as you are also treated to the gross sounds your body makes! Hey, it’s your body. You can also take the New Gross Out Quiz and teachers can check out the Teacher Centre. A must-explore.
And yes, this is the site that tells you all there is to know about eye gunk.
The site, http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/ is not strictly disgusting (phew!). It promotes awareness about the hoaxes that museums have pulled on us in the past. What is strange is how readily people believe completely abominable and disgusting things: “Women who give birth to rabbits; Swiss spaghetti trees; Lunar bison”. The photo gallery, which features pranks and hoaxes cries out for a visit. You can take a test on the site to see how gullible you are and try a suggested experiment that you can prove whether you are superstitious or not. A special section is dedicated to the Gross Prank and what’s more, there is also a report concerning the sale of Britney’s used chewing gum on Ebay!
www.bloody-disgusting.com is dedicated to horror movie entertainment. Naturally, the more blood and inhuman crassness there is in a movie, the lovelier it is. There is an archive of reviews covering horror movies, like Return of the Living Dead 4 and London Voodoo. A certain Festival of Fear, by Rue Morgue magazine is also featured. It’s best to find out what it really is than have nightmares about what it could be. Like all web sites on entertainment, this one is not without its share of gossip, interviews and celebrity updates. They also offer you “Horror Chat” and you may buy horror movie CDs, horror movie figureheads, etc. from their online store. The images used here are of course, gruesome and quite bloody, but in an overdone and ketchupy kind of way. This web site is not really intended for the faint-hearted, but all types of movie buffs will enjoy it for the first three minutes at least.
Strangely, www.strangemag .com is not disgusting. It focuses simply on the strange and wacky true incidents that occur throughout the world. A free e-mail newsletter, you can also check out the previous issues in the archive or search for the weird things you desire to know about, from a conference of ghost hunters, crystal skulls to the infamous Luzo-Brazilian black magic cult. A very clean site and a must-see for those people, especially teenagers, who are obsessed with facts and figures to add to their vast store of trivia. What they do with it, is beyond me. All these web sites feature stuff that is weird, wacky, and disgusting, yet true. But all the same, I have steered clear of another vast category of sites on the Internet. These sites are chock-full of perverted, excessively disgusting and unwatchable stuff that, unfortunately, is readily available to all kinds of people.
Naturally, it is expected that all mature individuals will know where the limits of “weird” and “disgusting” things, that they can be exposed to, lie. Within that range you’ll get quite a lot of good laughs but beyond it, the revolting content of certain web sites more often that not undermine your faith in human goodness and decency.
THERE is something fascinating about disgusting things; I hate lizards. Sometimes when I have the ill-fortune to spy one darting out from behind the sink, I wash my hands with soap even though I have had no contact with that reptile; it’s just to make myself feel normal again. And yet, when my eyes do fix on a lizard, I can’t take them off the sight and stand mesmerized, its light brown scaly skin, the tiny ripples in its body as it flicks its tail and inches forward on the wall.
