The Iain Lee Column: The Magic of the Internet
I have been struggling to recall what life was like before the internet, and I honestly can’t remember much of it at all. It’s just a hazy blur of moping around, standing at bus stops and reading things that I believe we used to call books. Sounds hideous, doesn’t it? The www has enriched our sad, pathetic lives by allowing us to access ANYTHING we want. The world is out there and we can peak at it anytime. Want to take a virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel, then tap in this catchy little URL http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/x-Pano/CSN/Visit_CSN_Main.html and you can.
If you’re curious as to what every Beatles song played at the same time sounds like, then go here (I warn you now, it sounds blooming awful) and if you have ever wondered the height of every American president, then you need to visit the Presidential Height Index which is here – Abe Lincoln is the tallest at a staggering 6ft10!
With all of this knowledge and art available to us at just a few taps of a keyboard, why then do we spend 98% of our time looking primarily at pornography and pictures of cats (statistics from The Office Of Made Up Statistics)? These two things dominate our online experience. Luckily, no one has yet managed to successfully combine these two experiences.
…Oh hang on, I just Googled it. They have.
You can find that for yourself, you mucky little things. There is no chance of me fouling up my history folder on my browser with filth like that. Again.
By the way, if you own more than one cat you are mental. If you film your harem of cats and put those films on YouTube, you are completely certifiable. If those videos then get nearly 30,000,000 views, you’re still mental but also a genius, a bit like Ronald McDonald. Japanese cat-o-phile Shirone Koshiro is all of these things. Why are these films so popular? I have literally no idea. Have a look and see what you think.
Speaking of mental, after a plea for websites that I could write about in this column, I received loads of suggestions (send them to iainATiainlee.com – you know replacing AT with @ so the spammers don’t get me please). But as soon as I saw the subject heading ‘Women Laughing Alone With Salad’, I knew this month’s search was over. Whoever came up with this site is either a lunatic on a par with The Joker from the hugely popular Batman series of comic books, or a genius on a par with Brainiac from the virtually unknown Superman series of comic books. It is literally pictures of women. Who are laughing. On their own. Whilst being near salad. Even thinking about it is making me chuckle. Seriously have a look now, because this will be your new favourite website of all time ever for today. It’s websites like this that make me think some people have way too much time on their hands. Why would you do this? Why?
Finally, I feel bad for pointing you in the direction of that unlistenable Beatles ‘thing’ at the start of this piece. Let me try and rectify that by playing you the most amazing mash up of songs by the 60’s mop-top-pop-quartet. Every note comes from Liverpool’s finest and Hank Handy really has done a fantastic job. Magical.
You can read Iain Lee’s very own take on the internet here on the 123-reg blog every last Friday of the month.
A familiar face on television since he got his first break landing the job hosting Channel 4’s thrice weekly topical comedy show the 11 O’Clock Show at the age of 25, Iain is also an award winning radio presenter, top podcast creator and a genuinely funny guy with an eye for the bizarre.
