We've learned an obvious fact this week: all things are relative. For instance, while "Toy Teen" may mean one thing to somebody in, say, Peoria, Illinois, in New York it very specifically means "one less than fourteen". While "Tars" sounds like the name of some Midwestern minor league baseball team, apparently in Atlanta "a car has four of them". "Have Id" sounds like your psychiatrist's latest two cents. Turns out that in Boston it's "our famous University". You get the point. The folks at American Slanguages have collected a number of these slang gems on their website. Choose from several U.S. cities - including Gnaw Lynn's, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and the Big D - and learn how to talk like the locals. You can also submit your own city's Slanguage with the chance of winning a free book, or cruise the international listings.
Sometimes talking like the locals just isn't enough. Take Gary Apple for example. He needs a job. That is the plain and simple truth of it. He's a sitcom writer in Los Angeles and the staffing season is almost over. Does Gary have anything to show for it? Well, no. However, in the worthwhile tradition of turning angst and pain into art, Gary has created what may just be his last great work: an online resume. Give it a try; even if you can't hire Gary it's worth experiencing each of his hard, soft and poorly conceived pitches.
Unless things take a turn for the better, looks like Gary will be joining a lot of reading groups this summer. Thanks to Vintage Books Reading Group Guides, now he can do it in style. Vintage Books, publisher of many of those nice looking quality paperbacks in your local bookstore, designed the guides "to enhance a group's reading and discussion of a book." Each useful guide includes a description of the book, questions, discussion topics, author biography, notes for further reading and more. Focus on Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson; Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner; A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, amongst others.
If you prefer comics over books, try Jeff Seifert's burgeoning list of online comics. Choose from a large number of links to daily, weekly and editorial web comics, including the likes of Secret Agent X9, Cyber Chicken, and Zippy the Pinhead. (More from Zippy later.)
Seems like having the chance to email President Clinton isn't enough for some people. These folks tend to prefer more direct methods of communication, like jumping the White House fence, or flying planes into the Oval Office. As a result, after a rash of strange happenings, last year the Treasury Department opted to close the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, restricting it from "vehicular traffic". Now the National Park Service is working on a project to create President's Park, which we imagine will be exactly what it sounds like. Currently the project is undergoing public review and comment. Read about it at the NPS site. Or, you can join the ranks of good citizens, led by Senator Rod Grams of Minnesota, who oppose the idea of a park and want to Return Pennsylvania Avenue to the People. Senator Grams has created a page to "collect the views of those who have not accepted the idea that Pennsylvania Avenue must be closed forever." Once the public comment period has ended (June 28, 1996) responses to the plan will be forwarded to President Clinton and the Park Service.
Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation is now online. The non-profit organization, founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994, is "dedicated to videotaping and archiving interviews of Holocaust survivors all over the world." Interviews will be made available "via online networks to museums, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations and through educational documentaries, books and CD-ROMs." Read about the foundation at this new site, and about its plan to create the most comprehensive library of testimony ever assembled. As of June 4 of this year, 15788 interviews have been conducted.
From the "Where Are They Now?" department we have C'Mon, Get Happy, the unofficial homepage of the Partridge Family. The site includes links to interviews with various "family members" as well as a whole psychedelic bus-load of regular features, including the PF Collector's Corner, the all-new PF Newsletter and "A Brush With Velvet", true stories by PF fans. Turns out people have actually met David Cassidy. The thought of it.
In similar news, you might want to stop by Win This Full Size Gemini Spacecraft!. We're still trying to decide if this is a trip through wacky nostalgia or yet more proof that you can indeed find anything on the web. The brief page offers a reproduction of an ad found in a 1967 comic book for "Revell's Gemini Sweepstakes". First Prize was a Gemini Spacecraft. When he created the page, Scott Cook asked: "Who won the damn thing? What did he or she do with it, and where is it now?" Well, somebody knew the answer. Somebody told Scott. Scott posted the answer. Find out fer yerself.
Having trouble with big words? Wish there was some kind of site out there - "an experimental system for automating reference lookup on the web" of sorts - that ran a program that allowed you to look up the definition of every word on any web page, simply by clicking on said word? Easy enough, visit Wordbot, which provides clear, careful instructions that are certainly worth read before you give the program a try. After you've seen Wordbot ask yourself what would happen if the ever-zany Zippy got his hands on it. You should arrive at something like Zippy Meets HTML, described as the HTML filter that "freshens up any web page." Type in your favorite URL and get back a Zippy-fied version of the document. Follow on-site links to redone versions of Yahoo!, GNN and Netscape to see how it all works, and before long you'll be having hours of fun, if not minutes.
Finally in sporting news, Euro 96, the 1996 European Football (read Soccer) Championship, began this past weekend. Follow the latest news and developments of the competition, including a daily recap and the latest scores, at Yahoo!'s Euro 96 Scoreboard. The page also includes group standings and a schedule, as well as links to related sites. Yup, seems like all that's left for you to do is (you guessed it) take your pick(s).