Technically Incorrect

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.

This is Chaka Khan. She does not live in Sweden.

(Credit: CC Maveric2003/Flickr)

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.

It's all California's fault.

At least that's how London Times columnist Bryan Appleyard sees it, in a heartily vicious attack on Web culture and everything it has wrought along its socially destructive way.

In his post, cheerily titled "Break Free of this world wide delusion," Appleyard excoriates the cult of the Web, which--he firmly believes--resides in the masturbatory den that is the West Coast.

And while his angle of attack differs a little from that of Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton, it is just as pained.

Web 2.0, he says, can be defined in many ways. But "its principal features are, as with everything else in California, freedom, personal expression, letting it all hang out and making shedloads of wonga."

In case, you were not familiar with the term "wonga," this is an English term for "loot." Yes, wonga was, indeed, one of the prime motivators behind, say, English colonialism.

But that was then. And this is very much of the now. Appleyard, you see, believes Web lovers are "historically ignorant."

The Web, he says, is not ushering in a post-industrial world. The crises of the last few years have proved that ancient stuff like oil and coal are far more significant to our survival than is the energy-guzzling, lap-dancing entertainment that is the Web.

And yet the Web mindlessly pursues the glorification of the individual: "The key feature of web 2.0 that is currently driving change is its intense focus on the individual. Google's power springs from its ability to advertise not to populations or groups but to individuals."

A shot from inside the London branch of one of California's individualism peddlers.

(Credit: CC Jon Rawlinson/Flickr)

Perhaps too much sitting in damp, inclement weather has made Appleyard envious of a life lived in shorts. But he accuses California of being a paradise in which the individual is set free.

Ready for a little twist? Well, apparently, this individualism creates conformity.

"The banking crisis may not have been caused by the internet but it was certainly fueled by the way connectivity and speed created a market in which everybody was gripped by the hysteria of the herd," he argues.

Naturally, this all ends with a high flourish and bullets over Broadway (the one in San Francisco, naturally): "It is the cultists who threaten the web. They are the ones encouraging dreams of a utopia of the self. They fail to see that the web is just one more product of the biology, culture and history that make us what we are."

You still breathing? OK, finale time: "In the real world, it is wonderful, certainly, but it is also porn, online brothels, privacy invasions, hucksterism, mindless babble and the vacant gaze that always accompanies the mindless pursuit of the new."

Now then, I know many of you will have your own feelings about this riveting perspective. Some might think it interesting that it comes from a nation that occasionally gives the impression of enjoying the mindless pursuit of the old.

Some might also wonder that it comes from an industry that failed to anticipate the Web's direction (and its culture) and lost rather a lot of, um, wonga in that failure.

Some might also consider that the Web doesn't celebrate individualism at all costs. Even the most mindless detractor might admit that it connects many people who otherwise would be permanently apart. Some might also add that the Web does give you a choice in how to use it. Which old media, traditionally, have not.

But perhaps I might offer my own highly individualistic perspective. You see, I lived in caring, sharing London for quite some time. I was, in fact, brought up in caring, sharing England. I have a lot of friends there. I love to go back. For a week or two in July.

And now I live in the self-centered purgatory that is California. I cannot help, therefore, but take this besmirching of my state with a touch of both caringsharingness and individualism.

You see, for all the self-centeredness that exists in these painfully sunny parts, it is largely an honest self-centeredness. While I am sometimes still agog at how quickly people here will divulge information about their kidneys, livers, incomes, and sexual proclivities, there is something charmingly sincere about it.

There is little more tiresome than the perspective, which, I must sorrowfully admit, I can happily associate with England, that we are one nation, the Land of Hope and Glory.

Because it simply isn't true. On a Sunday lunchtime, many folks in England find it hard to share anything more than talk of the piddling rain and the geraniums. Is that what makes a nation, a collective, so great? Is that really the ideal toward which humanity should strive?

Some Californians feel that openness is often seen by the English as dangerously disruptive to their social fabric: instead of saying what we think, we'll just be it. It is a little easier, they say, for the English to live with the truth tucked behind their forked tongues. Well, at least until the third pint of beer.

One of the greatest dangers (for some) that the Web has generated is that there are far more outlets for a slightly Californian honesty as well as for dishonesty. Both can be shared by groups just as much as they might be an expression of one individual. Both give us a larger idea of the ultimate difficulties of the human condition.

I get a little frisson of refrigeration when I look at the words Appleyard uses to describe the ills of California: "freedom," "personal expression," and "letting it all hang out."

If these are bad things, we should be supporting their opposites. Which would be "slavery," "personal silence" and "keeping it all in." How terribly odd.

I'm not thinking of yet suggesting that California should invade England (I mean, come on, man, invasion's not cool), but is this Golden State really in the grips of a cult? No more than the financial center of England is gripped by those who went to certain schools and universities. And they didn't need Web 2.0 to create that little pre-Facebook group.

I wouldn't dream, however, of arguing with Appleyard's final words: "The web is human and fallen; it is bestial as much as it is angelic. There are no new worlds. There is only this one."

But is California really wrecking the world with the cultish iniquity of the Web? Or have other places had a far more lasting deleterious effect? I won't say which places. Best to keep it left unsaid.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you see something and you know it is so extraordinary that it requires words? Many evocative and pulsating words.

However, the part of your being that is responsible for vocabulary sends you a message: "Oh, no, buddy. You're not bringing us into this. You're on your own. Just stick to facial ticks and gestures. You'll be fine."

Well, this just happened to me when someone sent me the latest and, perhaps, most extraordinary Web site sensation of the year.

It has been created by a company called Sharper FX on behalf of the International Congress of Churches and Ministers.

It has already enjoyed more than 6,000 Diggs. It has already been sent to me six times today. And it has already made me feel as if I am in the presence of at least six beings from a world not akin to any yet discovered.

The tone of the intro is set by the music. To call it somewhat portentous would be to call John Belushi somewhat less than alive.

This is the closest picture I could find that represents my feelings when watching Sharper FX's work.

(Credit: CC Mikelehen/Flickr)

As the orchestra of celestial power clutches your ears, twists them, and orders you to obey, letters fly at you as if they are mere flares that warn of your impure nature.

Then it appears that lightning strikes. Or are those darting bolts simply fast-moving arrows shot by angels from on high? Sound effects soar, crash, boom, belch, roar.

There are some words, some hands, a globe, burning torches.

Is this a warning of the Apocalypse? Is this every possible creative tool being used simultaneously to tell me God has my number alright?

You see how the words are failing me? And this is just the intro. So please enjoy it for yourself.

Shortly after I tell you a little about the rest of Sharper FX's work.

Its Web site for the Truth Transformation Ministries also has portentous music and flashes and roars and rocks and lightning. While for the Evangel Cathedral, there is portentous music, lightning, flashes, roars, and the face of a very kindly looking bishop.

"Star Wars" is but a soap opera in mono, a Michael Bay movie is but a whisper compared to the power coiled here into short, sharp emoteathons.

Please let me be clear, I mean absolutely no disrespect to the religious organizations that are the clients of Sharper FX.

So many sites bore viewers into neutrality that to see something that cannot possibly leave you in any gear other than sport or reverse is truly the most astounding experience.

But before you leave this company's work (and there are at least 10 sites worth looking at when you go to SharperFX.com), you must at least donate one minute of your life to the Flash intro for K&K Mime.

No words can describe it. No thoughts can be transmitted that might even come close to relaying the feelings it might engender. All I can say is that I have never, ever seen anything like it.

I intend to lie down now. For quite a while.

Curt Sleeper is a man ahead of the curve. The curve that begins the downward spiral.

Understanding that humanity is regressing to its cave-dweller roots, he and his wife Deborah bought their own cave in Festus, Mo., back when most people were tossing their home equity down a cavernous hole.

The Sleepers even sold their DVD collection to buy the 17,000 square foot cave. I don't even want to think what their heating bills must be. However, I know they are now experiencing a deep chill.

The cave cost $160,000, of which the Sleepers put down half. The other half they borrowed from the people who sold them the cave. (No, they were not called the Crusoes or the Robinsons from Switzerland.) It was a five-year loan with one so-called balloon payment at the end, which would be this May.

This, apparently, is a bedroom.

(Credit: Curt Sleeper)

Sadly, with the banks in a self-induced coma of convenience, the Sleepers are unable to refinance. Mr. Sleeper, a computer consultant, told ABC News: "Right now, banks are not interested in anything odd." There is, indeed, nothing odd about taking taxpayers' money to cover for decisions made in large echoing heads.

So Mr. Sleeper has gone Web 2.0 to achieve his required zeros. He has requested bids on eBay.

He and his family have spent five years turning the cave, which was once an ice rink and also a concert venue (Yes, Bob Seger played there. Ted Nugent's hair performed there, too.), into something Ali Baba and his 40 thieves would have loved.

"The goal is not notoriety," he said. "The goal is either to finance or sell my house."

10,000 people have already shown some interest in cave-dwelling. 70 have declared their pre-registered interest in bidding.

The delight of it all is that the Sleepers actually found their cavernous dream on eBay too. So I am sure there must be someone who appreciates that cave-dwelling is the future. Just think of the number of hairy roommates you could fit into 17,000 square feet.

This is not something I would tell everyone. But I had an acquaintance in college who was obsessed with inserting bananas into parts of his body that were not meant for fruit.

Please don't ask me why. Or even how.

But I'm reminded of dear Robbie because I have just learned that therapists believe there has been a significant recent increase in what might politely be termed paraphilias. This is the frigid word for sexual practices that not everyone might find normal. Or natural. Or clean. Or something they would put on Facebook.

It is apparently an accepted truth amongst those who make money out of this sort of thing--therapists--that couples are becoming more and more interested in saying "Dr. Livingstone, I presume" to more outlandish sexual amusements. Like bestiality, bondage, sadomasochism and swinging.

You will reach something short of a satisfied sigh to hear that the explanation is, allegedly, the Web. "It's a totally new revolution and it's really exploded," Robert Dunlap, a sex therapist and filmmaker (I don't know if he combines the two) told ABC News. "The Internet has changed everything. So many people can go online and say, 'This is me. I love this. I am finding like types.'"

I am fairly surely that Mr. Kinky has never been a congressman.

(Credit: CC Larry and Flo)

Because readers generally love posts that include lists of things, I know you'll be wondering just what might find itself in a list of like-type kinky activities.

Well, Mr. Dunlap interviewed academics, doctors, lawyers, even one member of that most chaste profession, congressman. Their admissions included: "pouring candle wax on his testicles" and "being gang-raped by many sets of twins or, even better, triplets".

My own fantasy is that the former was the admission of a lawyer, whereas the latter must, just must, be the congressman.

I won't go on to discuss the merits of paraphilia versus paraphernalia. However, because Valentine's Day is stalking us like an old man in an open raincoat, I would like to offer you one example that I hope cannot be pinned on the web.

Binder Park Zoo in Michigan is offering a special Valentine's treat. For $50, couples can watch animals have sex. They call it Zoorotica.

Oh, yes. It's sold out. And it appears that not one ticket was made available online.

You have surely heard of Nadya Suleman. Perhaps you even know her well. She is the woman who, despite already having 6 children, decided to enjoy a little fertility treatment that recently brought her octuplets.

This despite having being allegedly diagnosed with depression, paranoia and wild mood swings. Oh, yes, and post-traumatic stress syndrome. There is also speculation that she may have a fixation about Angelina Jolie.

But who are we to judge whether a woman should have 14 children or not? Or whether, indeed, like Ms. Suleman, there is anything wrong with having these 14 children using sperm donated by the same generous gentleman. We all make some interesting choices in life and sometimes we have no idea if they were the right ones for years.

The important thing is that we are all now free to give money to Ms. Suleman's suddenly inflated family. Ms. Suleman seems to be somewhat unemployed, so she would like you to help her bring up her soccer team and burgeoning bench.

Isn't Easter coming soon? I like Easter.

(Credit: CC Normanack)

She has launched a website, thenadyasulemanfamily.com, through which you can use your favorite credit card to help Ms. Suleman make more money. I'm sorry, I mean to help Ms. Suleman bring up her little bunnies.

Interestingly, the site also includes an address to which you can send gifts. It appears to be the address of the Killeen Furtney Group, which seems to be rather less involved in child relations and rather more involved in public relations.

I am now going to go for a walk and give out $20 bills to the first ten homeless people I encounter. What will you do?