Let us be frank. Frank will do anything for sexual pleasure. So will Harry, Dilbert, and Freddie. Yes, and perhaps even Mao.
I have come to this revolutionary conclusion thanks to a story that will undoubtedly go down in legend--if it didn't already start there.
You see, a number of reports from across the world are suggesting that the Web in China is being stressed to distraction by Chinese men searching for a very particular sexual distraction indeed--Chako Paul City.
Should Chako Paul be less familiar to you than, say, Chaka Khan, might I tell you that legend has it that Chako Paul City is in Sweden. And it is populated mainly by lesbians.
Well, when I say "is," I really mean "isn't."
However, the male population of China has allegedly got it into its collective hollow head, and perhaps its collective nether regions, that there is, indeed, a Swedish city with 25,000 women and no men. This knowledge seemingly has encouraged them to search madly for ways of espying this singular place.
According to The Australian newspaper, which, might I say, is a rather serious publication, Chinese Internet providers are being swamped to paralysis by the sheer volume of men choking for a taste of Chako Paul.
The rumor is that Chako Paul City was created in 1820 in the deepest, darkest, and most uncut woods of northern Sweden. The founder is said to have been a widow who loathed men more, perhaps, than she must have loathed sunshine.
The city is said to be guarded by two blond women, who keep men from scaling the ramparts of its medieval castle.
This all sounds like ten tons of bunkum to me (especially as most Swedish women are, well, brunettes), but not, allegedly, to men who crave the fantasy of 25,000 blond women frolicking in the woods.
Claes Bertilsen of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions seems to think that anyone who has been inclined to swallow this tale might have been smoking rather wacko tobacco.
He told the Swedish news organization, the Local: "At 25,000 residents, the town would be one of the largest in northern Sweden, and I find it hard to believe that you could keep something like that a secret for more than 150 years."
I find it hard to believe that anyone might think you could guard a city of 25,000 with just two blond women--who may, according to this rampant rumor from the ramparts, turn out to be lesbians.
You see, the Local quotes the Chinese news service Harbin News as declaring that many of Chako Paul's inhabitants turned to homosexuality "because they could not suppress their sexual needs."
There is also the quite colorful suggestion that most of the inhabitants are employed in forestry (no, never) and that many have, according to the Xinhua news agency, a "thick waist belt full of woodworking equipment."
I am not sure how many more days that Chinese Internet providers can cope with their male population's enthusiasm for these Swedish logger lesbians.
If indeed they are truly struggling with the phenomenon at all.
However, just in case, I can only hope that the women of China slap the men of China firmly about the ears and solar plexus before the world's most important nation grinds to an undignified and unwarranted digital halt.
When stars need to wean their bodies off an excess of alcohol or drugs, they waft off to the Betty Ford Center or the Priory in London.
Now those who have allowed gaming or the Web to take over their lives have their own place of salvation in the United States.
Heavensfield Retreat Center in the kindly named Fall City, near Seattle, claims to have the first Internet addiction detox program in the States. Called ReStart, it essentially offers a 45-day detox from the need to socially network and game until your mind and fingers are more numb than a Jonas Brothers fan after a concert.
For $14,500, you can be saved from yourself and your virtual world. However, the criteria that the center uses to define Internet addiction make for interesting reading.
The first, for example, is: "Have a strong desire or impulse to use the Internet." I would have thought that, if this were the most important element, we should all be checking in now. And who among us could resist blogging about it afterward?
Here's criterion No. 4: "Use of Internet in spite of its harmful effects; despite knowledge of harmful effects, Internet use is hard to stop."
Do we really know just how much the Web is harming us? Isn't it supposed to be enlightening us, bringing us closer together, and turning us into the human informational machines of the Singularity Age?
Still, the center's last criterion, No. 9, does come some way toward defining the serious and painful nature of Internet addiction: "Everyday life and social function is impaired (e.g., in social, academic, and workability.)"
King 5 News reported on the program's first patient, 19-year-old Ben Alexander of Iowa City, who became addicted to World of Warcraft.
"I would play until I fell asleep at my keyboard," he said.
His schoolwork began to suffer, and his parents checked him into the center. Now he looks after the goats and chickens, and goes cross-country running. He said he knows that the Web will still be a part of his life but that he feels the center has given him a new balance.
Indeed, there is much concern generally about gamers' health and whether, for example, a lack of light is contributing to their alleged ill-being. Are those who become overweight or depressed already inclined to do so, or does gaming have some influence?
As has been shown over the decades, sometimes rehab works, and sometimes it doesn't.
So perhaps the most valuable information to come from the center in the long run is whether, as with other addictions, there are certain psychological predispositions to Web addiction and whether there really ever can be a cure for something that has become so central to the way we live.
In case any of you were wondering, the ReStart program is not covered by health insurance. Yet.
Vomit throws up viral views.
At least that is the conclusion of the strangely anal examiners of viral video at Visible Measures.
Perhaps some of you may have avoided the splashback from the Internet Explorer 8 vomit ad, featuring a husband, a wife, and former Superman Dean Cain.
The ad was slipped online and was pulled shortly afterward, as some people thought watching a housewife throwing up in the kitchen after seeing something untoward on her husband's laptop was not entirely edifying.
However, the Visible Measurers have offered some pleasantly risible measurements.
Apparently, 57 percent of all the views enjoyed by the various ads in the IE8 "Browse Better" campaign came solely from the vomit ad.
There were four spots in the campaign, which means that the other three might have suffered from a lack of open-mouthed self-expression.
Visible Measures surmises that before the "Oh, My God, I'm Gonna Puke!" ad was pulled, enthusiasts of yellow projectile liquid copied it and reposted it to their blogs, their friends and, who knows, their mothers.
The company then offered this view of the numbers: "We're left to wonder whether or not this was part of the plan all along: publish a controversial though on-message ad, create some heated dialogue, apologize for offending customers, take it down, and drive big viewership numbers."
Such faithless cynics, those Visible Measurers.
Editor's note at 10:25 p.m. PDT: Since this blog was published, the video has been removed from the hosting pages. But this copy of the video remains on YouTube.
I know a girl who gets somewhat uptight when she's in the passenger seat of a car going any more than 70 mph. However, put her on some insane roller coaster, and she's just fine.
The driving dangers are real, you see. Whereas the roller-coaster ride just feels wonderfully stomach-turning.
And so it is with this charming new online ad for Internet Explorer 8 from Microsoft. In most of its advertising, Microsoft has rarely reached 70 mph. But someone, somewhere deep within Microsoft, finally had the craving for the roller coaster.
Here we have a couple at the breakfast table. The husband is examining his laptop. It is not a Mac.
His wife asks to borrow his laptop for a minute. To be fair, shortly before she does this, she shows all the symptoms of being a little stressed. Her lips are tight. Her eyebrows seem even tighter.
She looks at her husband's screen. She is surprised at what she sees and says: "What's this?" Then her body begins involuntary motions. Will an alien being pop from her stomach, leap onto the table, and begin to sing a Celine Dion number?
Will she turn toward her husband, enraged at what she has just seen and assail him with words and fists and spittle and quotes from Joan Crawford?
Not quite.
In fact, she turns away from the kitchen table, not wishing to soil his PC. And then she vomits.
Yes, she vomits. She pukes. She throws up. She upchucks. She phones Huey and Ralph down the big white telephone. (This last phrase is peculiarly English. You need to say the words "Huey" and "Ralph" with an echoing timbre.)
Her vomit is yellow, powerful, and a decent, if distant, relative of the turbo-charged green liquid emitted by Linda Blair in "The Exorcist." Although, truly, one wonders what there really could have been on that screen to make her do so. Most wives have surely seen it all.
Still, her husband, the sinful, disgusting, smug pervert, slips on the vomit as it hits the kitchen floor.
What could possibly happen after all this drama? Does Superman turn up? Actually, he does. In the shape of actor Dean Cain. Dean, who appears unaffected by the detritus at his feet, asks, "Do you suffer from OMGIGP?"
This acronym, for those of you still in control of your diaphragm, stands for "Oh my god, I'm gonna puke."
Superman then goes on to explain that IE 8 has InPrivate Browsing while the husband, still prostrate on the kitchen floor, is privately adorned with even more of his wife's mellow yellow.
As the wife wipes her chin, all I can think about is that Superman's turtleneck is yellow too--and that, even a year ago, no one would have ever expected Microsoft to make a spot like this.
This work is not, as some have surmised, the work of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency responsible for both the "I'm a PC" and Gates-Seinfeld campaigns. It is the brainchild of Bradley and Montgomery, the folks that brought you the Mojave Experiment.
The vomit ad is one of a series, all featuring Cain. The series is taglined "Browse Better," and like the Mojave project, it has its own site, BrowsefortheBetter.com.
Interestingly, and perhaps, for some, ironically, the BrowsefortheBetter site says that for every download of IE 8, the company will donate 8 meals to Feeding America, an organization trying to stop hunger in the U.S.
Of course, some will say of this vomiting ad: "Out, damned spot." Harry McCracken of Technologizer has already dubbed it as "Worst. Tech. Commercial. Ever?"
I will say this. Microsoft has realized that it needs attention. It is finding many and varied ways of doing so. In this case, I suspect that someone has said in a long, long marketing meeting: "Hmm, maybe snot-nosed, filthy T-shirted, gross-out humored, socially inept children really do have an influence."
When it comes to things Web-related, sometimes you just want to read something sensible, for a change.
So it was with some relief that the recent words of Tim Berners-Lee swam through my left ear without entirely exiting from my right.
Speaking to a bunch of possibly sober British politicians, Sir Tim, as he's known over there, said it's time that we should really have a jolly good think about who is crawling all over our Web behavior.
"We use the Internet without a thought that a third party would know what we have just clicked on," he said. "Yet the URLs people use reveal a huge amount about their lives, loves, hates, and fears. This is extremely sensitive information."
You can hardly argue that it's being treated sensitively when your information might be sold off to third parties for their commercial or even psychological gain.
Referring to our personal data, he said: "The principle should be that it should not be collected in the first place."
He went on to talk a little technical, saying encrypted surfing might be an idea, except for the fact that it would make everything slower and more expensive.
Surely, he spoke the truth. Like teenies snorting a particularly zippy strain of coke, we have grabbed the Web and slipped our tongue down its throat without for one tiny second considering the longer-term consequences of our snogging.
In some sense, this is the same philosophical dilemma that Facebook is contorting itself around and that Google seems, at times, reluctant to entirely embrace.
But who will ever make a decision about it? Will we just bungle our way through it all until there is no privacy, and the folks who hold the information become, to some extent, at least, our voyeuristic puppeteers?
I am having a fanciful notion this afternoon that neither business nor government can be trusted with legislating the Web. Instead, because the Web is worldwide, it needs a worldwide Web czar honcho chappy--with a little of LeBron James' powerful talc, added for good measure, and without any of that United Nations/International Olympic Committee horse-trading nonsense.
We need someone who can be clever and honest enough to set rules that enjoy some harmony with a philosophy that the majority might consider human. I know that it might be a little difficult to get China, North Korea, and--I don't know, France--to agree. But surely, some way has to be found before it all gets very, very messy.
I'm nominating Sir Tim, just because he sounds so bloody sensible. I welcome other suggestions for solving this creepy, creepy little problem.
I have been almost permanently disturbed since reading Dawn Kawamoto's revelations about a survey suggesting that women would rather forgo sex for two weeks than give up Internet access.
When I read that nearly half the women surveyed felt this way, I had a number of purely instinctive reactions.
First came the notion that the Harris Interactive surveyors, at the behest of Intel, had merely been screening women who work in information technology. This would have made the results entirely understandable--for so many reasons.
However, then I shook off this conception in favor of a simple explanation: perhaps it's the men these women are choosing (not) to have sex with. The slightly more than 50 percent who could not give up on, as Richard Nixon would put it, fornication, were possibly either fortunate to be in a rare, healthy relationship with a man or preferred the intimacy of women.
So many men can be, as they put it across distant shores, toerags. And the sexual quality that was (not) enjoyed by this worrying percentage of females might reflect male insensitivity and incompetence, rather than some lasting lust for the Web.
While I am obviously unable to help with the immediate need for finding better sexual partners, I can, in an attempt to influence Dawn's poll, offer Six Deadly Reasons why sex will always outscore the Internet.
- When a man crashes, he generally does so after sex. A laptop will often choose to crash right in the middle of the video you've been just dying to see.
- Sex takes up so much less time than the Internet. With sex, 20 minutes can give you a considerable spike of adrenalin and even a little tingling of the fingers in the company of a living and, usually, breathing human being. With the Internet, you can lose untold days socially networking, till your fingers believe they've just played Rachmaninoff's 3rd at the Lincoln Center. And what do you get for it? A bunch more imaginary friends.
- When it comes to sex, you've normally had dinner first. Which means that it is far less messy than most people's evenings on the laptop. They perch it on their knees, fingering the keyboard with their left hand while reaching for Domino's finest cheese, pepperoni, and green pepper with their right. If they're not crisp with their bite, the cheese stretches out like a ghost in a cartoon movie, until it makes contact with the keyboard, sticking to it and sliding into the cracks between the keys. Before they know it, their Apple is cheddared.
- Sex exposes you for exactly who you are. There you lie, entirely denuded of pretense, being as much yourself as you could ever be outside of, perhaps, when you play golf. On the Internet, by contrast, everyone lies. The interactions you have are as false as a flamenco dancer's eyelashes. How can anyone take pleasure in that?
- Sex gives you something to talk about. It gives the tabloids something to write about. Which gives people something to read about. Which gives them something to talk about. Can you ever imagine a publication solely devoted to what Britney Spears and her fellow cohort of stars do on the Internet? How crashingly dull that would be.
- The internet will always be there tomorrow. What about your lover?
It's a wonderful headline for a wonderful life: "Technology found to strengthen U.S. families."
Technology doesn't allow people to ignore their parents, siblings and pet rats and disappear into their own hugely self-referential, self-reverential world, otherwise known as Facebook.
No, technology promotes family love.
So, at least, say the headlines from a survey published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an organization that "creates and funds academic-quality research."
Because life and love interest me greatly I decided to look at the report, which was prepared by two researchers from Pew and two from the University of Toronto.
Here is the good news: "American spouses often go their separate ways during the day, but remain connected by cell phones and, to some extent, Internet communications. When they return home they often have shared moments of exploration and entertainment on the Internet."
Thankfully, despite the immeasurably positive headlines this report has already enjoyed, it doesn't actually avoid honesty. The next paragraph is headlined: "Busy and tech-using families are less likely to share meals and less likely to report satisfaction with their leisure time."
But let's not think about that for now. Let's stick with the positives. Thirty-three percent of those Internet users surveyed said that the Web had improved their connection with friends "a lot." Meanwhile, only 23 percent said it had increased the quality of communication with family members with a similar intensity.
Ah, well, hmm. So where do headlines such as "Technology found to strengthen U.S. families" come from?
They don't seem to come from the 11 percent who said that the Internet has increased the amount of time they spend working at the office. Or the 19 percent who said it made them spend more time working at home.
Here it is. Barry Wellman, one of the research team and a sociology professor at the University of Toronto said: "There had been fears that the Internet had been taking people away from each other. We found just the opposite." Indeed, the report claims that a majority of adults said that technology allows their family to be as close or closer than they experienced in their own families when they were growing up.
I can hear you cheering. You are cheering very loudly. But wait, I have just rummaged to Part 5 of the Report, where it says quite clearly that 60 percent of respondents actually thought that cell phones and the Internet "hadn't made much difference" in bringing their families closer together. Only 25 percent actually said it had made relations better.
Perhaps sociologists have a different interpretation of "just the opposite"
What would you like to conclude from all this? Here's an entirely unscientific attempt.
Life is harder. Employers are using technology to make you work harder. You feel like you don't see your families as much. You feel that sometimes the only way you can connect to them is with an amusing e-mail ("Hey, did you see this funny picture of the elephant kissing a baboon?"), a text or a quick phone call as both you and they are on their way to somewhere else. Life has changed. And technology is perhaps the only thing that keeps families from going just very slightly nuts.
The survey, which was very light on single-parent respondents, concluded that married families with children are far greater users of technology than either single-person households or married people without children. But aren't single-person households now the majority in America?
Oh, I don't know. Research is such a difficult thing to interpret. So I thought I'd go check out divorce rates. Seems like they're pretty steady.
So perhaps this might be evidence that technology is actually keeping families together. How are things in your family?
By the way, I forgot to tell you how they did this research. On the phone, naturally.
I am sure that you were fearing censorship at these Beijing Olympics.
No, not censorship by the Chinese.
Censorship by those folks at NBC who would prefer you to watch what they want you to watch and, most specifically, when they want you to watch it.
Well, here I am live on a Friday night, freely watching NBCOlympics.com, and witnessing the quite glorious sight of a Chinese cyclist trying to mend his bike.
It looks to me as if his back wheel has suffered a case of the bends.
Looking beneath the screen, I see that his name is Zhang and he is in 135th place. Who knew there would be that many riders in this, um, race over some sort of distance along misty roads that resemble London at six o'clock in the morning (except that there are no drunks visible)?
Here's what is strange about NBC's online coverage: I have no idea what I am watching. Yes, I have clicked on the commentary, which takes the form of a live blog stream--except that the writer is endearingly honest about his predicament.
This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: "The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps."
So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.
The Beijing Olympic mascots. One from the right, The Tibetan antelope. Really.
(Credit: CC Tama Leaver)If this commentary had appeared on NBC TV, the commentator in question would have been removed from his post quicker than persons of color and Mongolians have been asked to be removed from the bars of Beijing by the authorities. This commentator would have been sent to televisual Siberia.
There is a wonderfully eerie quality to the live online footage of this Olympic Some Sort of Cycle Race Along Roads.
The picture quality is quite spectacular. The mist is so real it could not possibly have been photoshopped in there by the Chinese authorities to provide some extra menacing ambience. This makes YouTube seem like student video. (Which I know some would contend it is.)
Meanwhile, the NBC livestream commentary is now telling me this: "Apologies for the data stream in the play-by-play window. We are trying to remedy the situation."
They cannot get a handle on the data. They are out of control. We have a situation here, people.
The riders, however, ride on. To the muted shouts of spectators who bang thunder sticks against the roadside barriers, as if they were praying for Kobe Bryant to miss another free throw.
Ah, NBC has heard my pleas and an overlay has appeared to tell me that we are watching a men's road race. The overlay, however, only stays on for a few seconds. Then it disappears again. So now I must rely on the official NBC Olympic online commentary. Here is the latest:
"The leading pursuit has shed some riders as they press towards the finish line 4'11" down on Patricio Almonacid."
No, I don't think they are four feet, eleven inches down. I think those are minutes and seconds. But all I can hear is the silence of a few rubber tires passing through a tunnel.
No voice is there to lead me through my bewilderment. No words of wisdom help to create excitement. Just the vague whistle of a spoke in the wildnerness. This is the live NBC Olympics.com experience.
Wait, wait.
The scrolling commentary has political news: "Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran's climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA's Jason McCartney."
We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is "We think"?
I continue to ponder these words, watch the struggling bottom of the Iranian cyclist, and listen to the echoing nothingness that accompanies these besottingly shiver-making live images. It is as if NBC has hired John Carpenter to direct their online Olympic coverage.
And I can barely wait to see what he will do with the Romania versus Kazakhstan women's handball game.
I am tired, however. This has been live, uncensored (by NBCTV) online footage from the Olympics. I am comforted to know that I will slide beneath my comforter still a free man.
Free from the tyranny of NBC TV and happy in the otherworldly bosom of NBCOlympics.com.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
The more you tell people they can't do something, the more they'll try to do it.
It's the same with drugs. It's the same with turning your cell phone off at the movies. And it's the same with censorship.
There are many journalists lifting their laptop lids in horror at discovering that the Chinese government is now dancing the censorship two-step.
After all, the journalists wail, the Chinese, when they were bidding for the games, promised open Internet access. They promised it would be 80 degrees and sunny every day, too.
However the Internet, just like the commenters on this very site, has a robust constitution.
So perhaps it's worth considering how this supposed censorship will actually work.
According to those who are already busy carving their protests in digital stone, any sites with the dreaded word "Tibet" in their URL will be blocked. Same goes for the subversive propagandists at Amnesty International.
Yet what is to stop Jonathan Jockstrap, intrepid journalist employed by the Western Significant Times, from e-mailing his close friend in, say, some sickeningly uncensored Western country?
Jockstrap asks the friend to access one of the banned sites, copy and paste any relevant information to his e-mail, and send it right along with his best wishes.
Jockstrap will then have circumvented the ban and be able to report on anything he chooses.
Will the Chinese be upset? Well, only after they have read the malevolent (to them) Jockstrap column.
That's because they will surely not be willing to censor every personal e-mail (and phone call, for that matter). Could they possibly have employed enough censors? Would they possibly risk the ridicule this might bring? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But they surely cannot entirely stop communication between journalists and their editors and friends outside of China.
It's so easy to blame the Chinese (although I have to say they did themselves no favors by having their own neurotic Secret Service people running alongside the Olympic Torch and barging into conscientiously acquiescent objectors in San Francisco, for example).
But it will be relatively simple for the Western journalists to see if their own personal e-mails and other communications are being tampered with. (Phone call between journalist and editor: "You sent me a naked picture of your new boyfriend? What naked picture?")
And it will be relatively simple for the Western press to publish anything that the supposedly banned sites are saying about the games, the Chinese government, the dubious powers of Chinese medicine, or the real age of some of the Chinese competitors.
The real question is whether they will want to. The real question is whether there will be a lot of athletic spiking going on in newsrooms around the world.
The likelihood is that if we don't read anything that even borders on the controversial from the world's free press, it might not be the Chinese who will be the censors.
It might equally be the politically sensitive, revenue-reverential folks back home.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
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