RückseiteÜberraschung
Everything I chanced upon on the Internet today was funny (well, not this or this. Three guesses as to why we don’t hear more about tainted food).
Instead! BBC reports on condom size problems in India and South Africa. And WTF, Comcast? More substantively, Pareene has the last word on Whole PaycheckFood’s John Mackey in possibly my favorite Gawker post this year.
Then there’s this. After almost two decades of the web, do we have a term yet (besides ‘distraction’ or ‘procrastination’) for the wonderful, terrible, scabby, or NSFW unexpectedness on the far side of a link? Call it far side surprise, or RückseiteÜberraschung, like in SF when a ship’s crew has to suddenly figure out where the heck they’ve woken up or jumped to, and all familiar bearings are gone (This happens a lot).
meaghano posted this bit of genius, which isabelthespy reblogged:
Once upon a mid-day sunny, while I savored Nuts ‘N Honey,
With my Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gal, 128 fl. oz., I swore
As I went on with my lapping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the icebox door.
‘Bad condensor, that,’ I muttered, ‘vibrating the icebox door -
Only this, and nothing more.’
Clicking through brings you to Amazon.com’s page for Tuscan Whole Milk by the gallon and the helpful review above by Edgar from Baltimore. There are six gallons of whole milk available, from $67.99 each. All of this is strange and wonderful enough, but it’s only the beginning. You have entered Parallel Amazon.
A quick glace through the “Customers Who Visited This Page Also Visited” brings you the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser / Tank, Fresh Whole Rabbit, The Very Best of David Hasselhoff, Inflatable Toast, Does God Love Michael’s Two Daddies by Sheila K. Butt, Communion Wafers Box of 1000, and Twilight Dessert Plates.
Land Cruiser/Tank buyers also bought Novelty Yodeling Pickle, Wind-up Hopping Lederhosen, Bacon Bandages, Bacon Flavored Mints, Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure, Racing Grannies, Forbidden Lego: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against!, and How To Avoid Huge Ships—which is for real:
written by an old captain who was tired of running over fools in their pleasure boats, and wanted to educate those same fools in a futile effort to save their lives.
Arrr! Also: The More You Know.
So. RückseiteÜberraschung. Always something new for you and for me.
