Welcome to the 134th issue of the Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter offering weekly insights into new, cool, useful, fun, unusual and interesting sites on the Internet.

In this issue:

- Idiot Box
- The Cold Wars
- Biting Satire
- Short Takes
- Internet Mind Food
- Follow the Sun
- The Bard
- Cyber Comic Relief
- Recycling Plastic
- Subscribers' Sites


Idiot Box

With the unprecedented growth of the Internet, and features like streaming video, it is becoming harder and harder to justify spending time loafing in front of the television. After all, why vegetate in front of your TV when you can be just as lazy and entertained in front of your PC?

IdiotBox.com is an aptly named website that turns your monitor into a television, through which you can choose from a selection of original cartoons and stories. The programs are irreverent and entertaining, with a regular cast of outlandish characters.

Check out 'Mort's World Episodes' and some of the other cartoons, or kill some time playing 'The Fly Game', where you can practice catching those elusive insects with a handy set of virtual chopsticks. Now you finally have an excuse to surf the web from your couch.

The Cold War

Wintertime brings with it some of our favorite things, including holidays, skiing, snowball fights, and even a brand new year. Unfortunately it also delivers a not so welcome gift known as 'the common cold'. But what is this medical nuisance, can it be prevented, and how is it properly treated?

The answers to these and many other questions can be found at Commoncold.org, a website that explains just about everything there is to know about this unwanted condition.

The site covers the physiological details of the cold, as well as a list of tips and explanations regarding its prevention and treatment. The best part of the site, is the section on recipes……we don't know if they work, but Grandma's Brown Sugar Pie sure sounds tempting.

Biting Satire

World news can be a very serious topic, or it can be hysterical, it really depends on your source. Modeled in the same style as The Onion (the legendary and satirical Wisconsin-based newspaper), The Nervous Dog brings that same tradition of political and social humor to the net.

Self-proclaimed as 'funniest newsmagazine on the Web', The ND is a great way to lighten up your day. Stories such as 'Where in the World is Salman Rushdie' and 'Collegiate Spring Break Hits Low' are absurd, witty and a lot of fun to read.

Some of the content could be perceived as slightly offensive, so definitely visit the site with your sense of humor in tow.

SHORT TAKES:

Your Daily Nerd

NerdOfTheDay.com is the 'definitive source for studying and ridiculing the nerds among us'. What the site lacks in compassion it makes up for in raw humor, providing hours of cheap entertainment with its archive of 'nerd pictures'.

You can scroll down the 'Top Ten Nerds' list, send a 'Nerdgram' to a friend or simply browse through endless archives of the socially challenged. One thing is certain; you'll feel a lot cooler when you're done.

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High Voltage Cooking

If the future of food preparation is anything like it is on 'The Jetsons', then we're in good shape. However, at Voltnet.com they have a different, more humorous take on the evolution of kitchen technology: High Voltage Cooking.

This site is a facetious, fictional peek into the future of cooking. Don't miss the demonstration of the new DL-1000 cooking range, it can be a little, um, dangerous.

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Super Greg

Super Greg is a small time DJ whose cheesy style and laughable character has elevated him to Internet Pop Icon. Look through pictures of Greg and his friends spinning records and being 'hip', read his outlook on life and music, and be sure to listen to his 'two classic performances'.

Internet Mind Food

Browsing through FrootPickers.com, it is easy to see how dedicated the staff and guest editors are to producing a high quality, fascinating and evolving website that refreshes and refocuses itself with each coming day. With the subtitle 'motion web mind food', the site is aimed at scouring the web for 'diamonds' of moving visual imagery, then presenting it to visitors in an organized format.

The site targets web designers, but can easily be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates the creative process. Everyday the staff, otherwise known as 'frootpickers', comes up with a theme and then searches the web for anything and everything of interest that relates to it.

For example today's theme is 'kitsch', so browsing through the website you'll find links (complete with critiques and pictures) to a number of articles, animation, interfaces and other mediums that ooze kitsch. You are also invited to submit your own material for review and possible display, as well as to take part in any of the active forums on the site.

Australian Posters

Australia is known for its diverse and breathtaking natural beauty, laid-back attitude and great surfing. But before television, the Olympics and the Internet made Australia so visible to the rest of the world, how did this far away land manage to attract visitors from over twelve thousand miles away?

Follow the Sun is an online gallery of Australian Travel Posters released between the 1930's and 1950's, filled with lithographic art donated by the National Gallery, National Archives and National Library of Australia.

These posters were originally commissioned for the National Travel Association and gleam with Australia's many wondrous attributes, from kangaroos to the golden beaches of Perth to Tasmania, otherwise known as 'The Angler's Paradise". You can search through the collection by artist or geographic location, or read through a detailed article on the art of lithography.

The Bard

The name 'Shakespeare' has become synonymous with all things literary; his works are probably the most heralded and studied text in the English language and have been adapted to stage and screen many times over. Now you can access almost anything Shakespearian through this amazingly expansive website.

Whether you are interested in his brilliant plays, romantic poetry or the man behind the pen (which has been a subject of debate for years), you are guaranteed to find it here. The amount of content alone is astounding and includes a biography, analyses of his plays, essays and sonnets, a closer look into the thematic inferences in his work, as well as interpretations of various quotes and soliloquies.

Cyber Comic Relief

For many of us the best part about seeing the newspaper on our doorstep every morning is knowing that there are three pages of brand new comics inside. The 'little kid in us' craves our favorite comics that are, like cartoons, as entertaining to adults as they are to children.

At KingFeatures.com there is now an easier way to get your daily dose of the morning comics. With over sixty comic strips at your fingertips, listed alphabetically, you'll have a hard time choosing between such classics as 'Flash Gordon', 'Dennis the Menace' and 'Family Circus'.

You can finally give up trying to master the nearly impossible task of folding the newspaper properly so that you can read and drink your coffee at the same time.

Recycling Plastic

How many times have you read something in a newspaper and wanted nothing more than to share your opinion with the writer. Once information (articles, editorials, books, etc.) are submitted into the public discourse, they usually remain there to be debated, without much input from the actual author or editor. Rarely does the reader's commentary make it past the 'Letters to the Editor' section into an arena of legitimate discussion.

Plastic.com gives new meaning to the word 'recycling'. The website is a 'live collaboration between the Web's smartest readers and the Web's smartest editors'. Once you sign-in, you will be privy to Plastic's melee of opinions and commentaries.

Editors submit short articles that beg for critical response, which unfold into an interior dialogue between the readers (you and I) and the editors (them). The website is intellectual and light-hearted, with content that covers a variety of political and social issues from Madonna's latest video to the honoring of Japanese pilots who died during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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SUBSCRIBERS' SITES - Many of our subscribers have fascinating on-line projects. This weekly section will introduce you to some of these sites. Please let me know about your project so that I might mention it in this section. Write me at info@tricksandtrinkets.com

~Jeffrey K Bedrick - The amazing art of magical artist.

~Totally Awful Current Events - Bringing you the lighter side of world news!

~Pakadeva's Freebees - Love That Word Free.

~Caligraphy by Touchstroke

~Snapshot Spy - Do you know what your children are doing online?


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Heaven embraces the horizon.
No matter how jagged the profile,
The sky faithfully conforms.

TAO

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Have a great weekend.

Charles Kessler