November 9, 1998

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Some people are apparently consumed with the desire to catalog absolutely everything about their lives. The maniac behind Icepick has taken it beyond silliness with the world's most wired house. Not only is there a local area network in the house, but several indoor and outdoor webcams, telephone call logs, refrigerator content logs, even a doorbell cam -- and all of it is accessible via the web. Sound strange? I haven't gotten to the good stuff yet. Whenever this man flushes the toilet, the time is logged. (Where exactly is the ethernet port on a potty?) When he throws something away, he barcode scans it for posterity. The kitchen webcam is wired to the refrigerator door. And worst of all, there's a cat living in this house! I don't know what kind of cat would put up with this, but I'll tell you one thing -- if that man wires up the litter box, I'm putting in a complaint with the relevant authorities. The caretaker of ShoEboX World, on the other hand (are the capitalized letters intended to make us visualize "hobo sex?"), probably doesn't have time to flush his toilet, much less hook it up to the internet. He's too busy constructing the First Church of Pac Man (a worthy pursuit, I'll admit) and appreciating hyphens. You heard me, the man (known mostly as "Rev. Shoebox") appreciates the hyphen in a big bad way. He also has a series of pages that allow one to get a thrill by virtually beating hell out of Tipper Gore. Give a man a few hours and Adobe Photoshop, and the possibilities are endless. Give him Internet access, and he can share it with us all. Aren't you glad? Quick: what was the name of Kitt's "evil twin car" from that early episode of Knight Rider? Who played Sheriff Thompson in the sixth episode of The A-Team? And finally, with what was John Cage charged in the second episode of Ally McBeal? Sorry, the IMDb isn't going to be of much help here. To the rescue comes Hu's Episode Guides, a collection of television synopses from the web in one place. Although the content is from other sources, the layout and organization of information from nearly 40 different tv series is massively useful -- if you need mostly useless information like this. Shows range from the various Star Treks to Home Improvement to The Outer Limits to Ellen. Also of interest are the picture and multimedia galleries that complement the episode guides. While we're perusing television-related sites, perhaps a trip to Ian Trembirth's Kid TV website is in order. Trembirth has put together a list of children's television programming, both old and new, complete with pictures and synopses. The most interesting part is comparing the British tv series with the American ones. Plus, running commentary by Trembirth and (presumably) other contributors keeps the proceedings lively. An example: Ask The Family : Quiz with Robert Robinson. Each team was made up of Dad, Mum and two kids. Famous for the "What's This" round where the teams are shown a close-up of an object and the camera gradually moves out. This is one of those programmes that you thought "This is fantastic" at the time but if it came on UK Gold you'd realise it was a pile of cack. Also from this site comes the picture at right of "Bagpuss," some sort of British puppet show featuring a fat pink cat. Oh, the indignities heaped upon the feline kind! Do they show dogs with pink fur on tv? Certainly not! So why did this poor puppet of a cat have to endure such treatment, or share screen time with "Professor Yaffle," the woodpecker? Next week: a look at comic books. Can you say Catwoman? Rowr. Next update: 11/16/98