phreaky phun

December 6, 1996


Art of Joan Stennick
Joan Stennick paints like a long-lost sister of Alice in Wonderland. Look at her nightmarish art of floating cat heads, dripping flowers and grimacing women.

The Infamous Nerdity Test
Can you count in hexadecimal? Is your IQ greater than your weight? Do you read archaic computer manuals for fun? You could be a nerd and not know it. Uncover your hidden geeky personality by answering 500 detailed questions. Try to control yourself from computing your score in scientific notation.

The Residents
As one of the most obscure bands in alternative music, the Residents have a cult following that make Star Trekkies look normal. Read about this band and its musical collaborations with John Cage, Negativland and others. The band also produces CD-ROM games such as Freakshow and Bad Day on the Midway. To date, no one even knows who the band members really are or what they look like, since they all wear huge eyeballs with top hats over their heads.

The Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum
Tourists driving through Grand Rapids, Michigan, should stop and visit the Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum to see an American flag made out of dollar bills. As one of nine presidential museums in the country, the museum's Web site has 100 out of the 285,000 candid photos taken of Ford during his presidency in the 1970s. The photos also include the family pets over the years and Ford doing the dishes.

Gap-Toothed
Perfect teeth are overrated. See why celebs with crooked smiles, such as David Letterman and Lauren Hutton, are cooler than the John Tesh straight-chompers crowd. Test your pearly white know-how with the challenging Whose Gap Is It Anyway? photo game. The site offers an amazing array of stories, poems and even book reviews about diastemata.

Project Denny's
Greasy burgers and Grand Slam breakfasts make Denny's an oasis for many teens and college students. The site captures the essence of its cult following with a quest by the webmaster, Jason Alan Pfaff, to visit as many Denny's as he can in his old school bus before he dies. Jason documents which Denny's he visits, what he eats, who he meets and why it all matters.

The Slot
Go inside the head of a copy editor who doesn't understand why Prince just doesn't spell his name out like everybody else. Bill Walsh rants about his worst problems as an editor and explains why so many journalists have yet to understand the English language. Look up various grammar questions in the Curmudgeon's Stylebook. The AP Style Follies section lists the most common mistakes in using compound words.

The Mad Scientist Network
Science can be fun if you know the right questions to ask. Now you have your very own mad scientist at your fingertips to answer tough questions on topics such as zoology, botany, medicine and more. Some of the injuries are downright odd. Find out what's really in a school lunch and why your voice gets higher when you suck the air out of helium balloons.


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