Newsweek readers choked down

bile in unison this week as

they spied the grotesque

physiognomies of the net's most

conspicuous assholes in "The Net

50," a survey of "computerdom's

Big Thinkers of tomorrow." The

two "thinkers" in question might

be advised to clue-up on their

fashion savvy - which evinces an

appreciation of rejected Echo

and the Bunnymen PR stills

hitherto dismissed by even the

most nebbish datageeks way

back in '91. FYI, Duke is the

tool in the foreground, sporting

a hairslick that could

generously be described as

slathered in an unholy mixture

of concentrated Aquanet and

bacon grease, while the

bespectacled Webster, had he

grown up in the 50's Liverpool

scene he appears to covet so,

would doubtlessly have suffered

the humiliation of daily

after-school thrashings at the

hands of George and Ringo.

Not weekly, daily. You

know the Newsweek reporters were

skimming when "Updated every

weekday." becomes "updated

weekly."

Gary Wolf, loosely paraphrasing

Conrad, probably summed it up

best with a simple "how

revolting." In light of recent

blurbs in Rolling Stone and

Spin, we estimate that the

process of pointless media

whoring and ensuing press

backlash can be compressed into

a tidy two-month process - two

months too long, perhaps, but

just long enough to maneuver the

"Cheeky Chums" from net

curiosity to dartboard fodder

without ever having had to cough

up anything more substantial

than a suspect string of

half-baked witticisms and

subpedestrian vulgarities. Just

wait until a flurry of Got

Milk?, Gap, and Powerbook ads

featuring the Sucksters hit

newsstands, bus stops, and

billboards everywhere. We

solemnly swear to turn out the

lights after the last person

leaves...

In more interesting news, Andre

the Giant still has a posse.

How NOT to print a retraction:

the corrections box would

undoubtedly be our favorite

section of any newspaper or

magazine, were it not for the

fact that a savvy publication

prints just the corrected info,

not the original error.

NewsPage, however, put itself in

the church bulletin league

courtesy of its raw Business

Wire feed, with the text "In

BW1067, which ran earlier today,

the sixth paragraph should read

'...with seamlessly integrated

links' instead of 'with

shamelessly integrated links.'"

We probably needn't add that the

subhead immediately preceding

the sixth paragraph read "About

Microsoft Network."

In the Haw! Haw! Redux corner,

one might be well-advised to

waste a dime of time on the Max

Cannon comix archive, an

unofficial weekly-updated

collection of the cartoonist's

strips with his Red Meat? Jack

Chick parody thrown in for laffs -

at least for some people.

Cannon's hyper-anal linework

reminds us of the more literal

excursions of Chris Ware, while

his hit-and-miss "humor" makes

Jack Handey seem studied. From

all appearances, Cannon is

unaware that this site exists,

and while we wouldn't expect him

to slap sitemaker Søren

Ragsdale with a lawsuit, a dose

of venom via FedEx probably

wouldn't be out of the question.

But if the trend towards

emulating clip-art leaves you

cold, you may enjoy the more

naive scrawlings of Greg Fiering's

Migraine Boy. Before his site

was named Cool Site of The Day,

flaccid mumbler Michael Stipe

named him cool cartoonist of the

hour, but don't write it off

just yet - the neurotic melding of

unabashedly primitive style and

humor with equally primitive

Real Audio and server-push

technology makes for a curious

net multimedia benchmark, and by

the time you see the same tactics

on a PayDay site, your patience

for the absurd (even the absurdly

trite) may get a second wind.

Whichever way you look at it, we

still think the Puking Dog

animation is cool - even if our

critiques of "art" still suck

just as fervently as ever.

One of the things we love most

about the Web is that it holds

the great potential to be a

medium which can perfectly

capture the dry wit and piercing

insight of those drunken,

drooling nights spent in front

of the tube with the gang.

Stoopid Band Names is a small

baby-step along a road of

promise that may only lead to

broken dreams, but with winners

like Beastie Boys II Men and the

Greatful Dead Kennedys, if it

turned out to be the road less

traveled, we'd be short at least

one halfway-amusing driving

game. As the page says, "[i]f

you had a good time at this page

please feel free to link up to

it!" Please, feel free.