BeautifulAgony.com This Australian pay-per-view site is subtitled "Facettes de la petit mort," or "faces of the little death," a reference to the French slang for the "little death" of the Big O. The site shows everyday men and women pleasuring themselves to orgasm, but the trick is that they are shot from the shoulders up; no naughty bits, only eroticism. It is part-art, part-porno, and one critic has called it a "gallery of faces whose expressions of rapture are so intense, they could be postmodern, high-tech holy cards."
fark.com The best site for bizarre news stories, listed under categories like "dumbass," "unlikely," "amusing" – and, in a class by itself, "Florida." Local oddballs provide plenty of fodder, as in the report (from the St. Pete Times) about the naked guy in Inverness who invaded his neighbors' house and stuck his finger in an electrical socket. Our favorite, though, reveals the courage of Florida's ground-breaking legislators: "House votes the orange as official state fruit."
TheOnion.com "America's finest news source." Seriously, we can't live without our daily dose of funny-as-shit "news" bits from the leaders in print parody. With headlines like "Heaven Less Opulent than Vatican, Reports Disappointed Pope," "EPA to drop ÔE,' ÔP' from Name," "America Still Searching for Funniest Home Video" and "Scientists Isolate Gene Simmons," The Onion makes The Daily Show with Jon Stewart look like 60 minutes. Sign up for its weekly newsletter and try not to piss yourself.
Weather.com OK, so this one is functional, and a lot of people use it daily. But every waking hour of every day? It's an obsession; we're seeking treatment.
Scrabble.com When office Scrabble gets a little too heated, the .com dictionary settles most disputes. And when you're stuck with T I A E L R U, the site will hook you up with the perfect bingo (uralite). (Last feature only used by the severely morally challenged.)
Wordspy.com It's a website devoted to new words. Yes, you can make one up if you like — anyone who says "nother" (as in "whole nother") or "supposively" uses made-up words already – but this website finds arcane words and catchphrases documented in actual newspapers and magazines. A personal favorite: "manscaping (MAN.skay.ping) pp. The artful shaving and trimming of a man's body hair. (Man + landscaping)."
rhymezone.com Plug in your word and this handy tool brings up a slew of other words that rhyme.
MailOrderHusbands.net Finally, a little somethin' for the ladies.
Allofmp3.com Download songs at incredibly cheap prices (pennies per song). But do we really want to get all our music from Russia?
archive.org You can access just about anything on archive.org, but the music library (www.archive.org/audio) is absolutely the largest source of live show recordings you'll find anywhere aside from bt.etree.org. And don't worry, it's not that guilty a pleasure – all of the recordings are perfectly legal, often posted by bands in order to garner fans.
audioscrobbler.com Audioscrobbler is a computer system that builds up a detailed profile of your musical taste. After installing an Audioscrobbler Plugin, your computer sends the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler Server. With this information, the Audioscrobbler server builds you a "Musical Profile." Statistics from your Musical Profile are shown on your Audioscrobbler User Page, available for everyone to view.
There are lots of people using Audioscrobbler, but you probably won't be interested in most of them. The Audioscrobbler Server calculates which people are most similar to you, based on shared musical taste, so you can take a look at what your peers are listening to.
Jambase.com The ultimate resource to find out who's touring on the "jam band" scene.
Pollstar.com The ultimate resource to find out who's touring, period.
drudgereport.com We know Drudge has, shall we say, a bias. But he does come up with scoops, sometimes even accurate ones – and the site's mildly addictive no matter what.
Thesmokinggun.com For a culture obsessed with celebrity, this site gives you what you really want: celeb mug shots, outrageous rider demands from some of the music industry's biggest acts, police reports, etc. You name it, and The Smoking Gun's got the dirt on it.
Kubrick2001.com The late director Stanley Kubrick said of his landmark 2001: A Space Odyssey that viewers are "free to speculate about the philosophical or allegorical meaning" of the perplexing film. This multimedia website, Kubrick 2001: The Space Odyssey Explained, does just that, walking the viewer through the four parts of the movie and what they really mean.
Sidestep.com Searches multiple travel sites, so it's the best place to find where to find low fares. Not exactly a guilty pleasure, unless you feel guilty about robbing the airlines blind.
Flalottery.com We don't buy tickets, because we're sure we won't win, but we check the payout amounts twice a week, and create little scenarios in our heads.
muppets.go.com Muppetry galore. What's not to like?
Bill Simmons on espn.com And old Boston guy who writes about the Red Sox, the NBA, Rob Lowe movies and reality TV. (Find him at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index)
sonofsamhorn.com Red Sox fans gone crazy.
Random Name Generator Using a formula and data taken from censuses, this site – http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm – generates random and sometimes hilarious names. You can choose to set it for a range from common names to obscure. Good for novelists hunting for that perfect character name (Holden Caufield is taken).
CBS.com/survivor10 Our favorite redneck was voted off, but we can visit him on the site, and watch clips of him talking about fornicatin' with his wife, chewing Ôbacca, and teaching his kids to mow the lawn by the age of 5.
T-shirthumor.com We can't afford a lot of silly shit (we're journalists, remember), but that doesn't stop us from looking. Check out the shirts, hats and mousepads on this site for a Christmas/birthday/bar mitzvah gift for everyone from Grandma to Grandson.
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Arrests An online resource – http://www.hcso.tampa.fl.us/pub/default.asp?/Online/sname01 – that lets you look up folks arrested in Hillsborough County, including their booking mug shots. Look up friends and family. And go ahead, type "Lafave Debra" in the search engine while you're at it. You know you want to.
This article appears in May 12-18, 2005.