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Humor (Procrastination Aids)

You wouldn't know it from the rather drab and serious content on most of my pages, but I love the quirky things that one finds on the Internet.  If you've got time to kill -- or if you just want to laugh in the face of looming deadlines -- help yourself to this list of procrastination aids. -- Dennis G. Jerz

• All Your Usenet are Belong to Wesley
  I tracked down the first Usenet references to the hated Star Trek character Wesley Crusher, and to Wil Wheaton, the child actor who grew up to gain some serious geek credibility.
• Last Page of the Internet
  Who first created the "Last Page of the Internet" joke? I have no idea.  Here's a list of variations, dished up in the order that Google served them on April 9, 2001
• Online Text Adventure Games
  Interactive fiction (IF) is computer-mediated narrative, resembling a very finely-grained "Choose Your Own Adventure" story. The interactor reads a short textual description ("You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building."), and types instructions to the computer ("enter building"). The plot can change based on what the interactor types. It is more truly interactive than hypertext.
• Rainbow Hector Weblog
  For reasons I have yet to articulate to my own satisfaction, I created this tribute to my son's favorite toy. (Full disclosure. I actually bought the toy before my son was born.)
• Florida Election 2000 Humor 
  • Dr. Seuss Goes to Florida
  • Shall I compare thee to a hanging chad?
  • The Talk about Elections
  • Jingle Bells 2000

Other Useful Procrastination Aids

2002: A Palindrome Story
A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards:  "Madam, I'm Adam." Nick Montfort & William Gillsepie have written a whole palindrome story.

Battleground God: How logical are your beliefs about God? This exercise asks you a series of true or false questions, which is fine, but since faith isn't faith at all when it's completely supported by logic. The questions are too rigid to be theologically enlightening.

• This exercises puts faith on trial in the courtroom of logic.  Human faith in anything (including, for example, your belief that your science professors aren't lying to you) is much more complex than that.  

• One question asked whether a person suffering from a horrible illness would "need" to suffer for a higher purpose... what does "need" mean in that case?  Who or what is doing the "needing" -- the person suffering, or you, as you try to align a belief in a just god with the observation that suffering exists in the world.

09 Apr 2001 -- first posted 
18 Mar 2002 -- last modified

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