Friends and Family

Beth's Journal
It's a LiveJournal. It belongs to Beth. Need I say more?

Sidhe's Window
This would be Beth's page. Yes, she finally has another one. Yes, it's a weblog. It's both interesting and disturbing.

Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax: the home page of BonnieJean Kurle
This is Brad's friend's Bon's page (enough apostrophes for ya?). Has nerdly philosophy stuff, poetry, numerous recipes (she's a gourmet-type cook), odd links, and other interesting/bizarre stuff.

Skyler's Most Excellent Website
This is my kid brother Skyler's page. It's bizarre (just like him!). It's entertaining. It uses sarcasm. Go there. Look at the stuff. Beware of the short stories. Sign the guestbook.

The Inimitable Candice L. Cullitan's LiveJournal
I've finally jumped onto the LiveJournal bandwagon. This is where the uber-personal stream-of-consciousness blips previously found on the updates page will be going from now on. It has pretty colours and expressive suns.

Bulletins of the Revolution
Yet another one of Ryan's abandoned webpages.

Homepage Links

Gonzaga Academic Server
The reason I'm here. About $29,000/year; not too bad.

adotname.com
Domain names! Yayness! $12/year.

Matt's Script Archive
This is a pretty useful place if you want CGI/Perl scripts but don't know the first thing about programming 'em. Matt has several scripts that you can download, along with detailed ReadMe files, FAQs pages, and more.

Non-Dithering Colors by Hue
A decent place to get hexadecimal colour codes. Be forewarned that it takes a bit of time to load.

Graphics Gallery
Some great backgrounds, buttons, and overall homepage graphics. A good selection.

The Ball Boutique
Some good graphics--balls, buttons, fonts, titles, and many others. There's a great selection.

Dreambook
They provide great guestbooks that are very customizable; you can cook up any question for your guests and any number of possible answers. Dreambooks are funner to sign than your standard guestbook, too.

Writing Links

Rest Stop Writers' Newsletter
A newsletter for writers, full of tips and resources.

findpoetry.com (easy to remember, no?)
A big directory of poetry pages, ranging from humongous anthologies of famous poets to collections of submitted poetry to sites with their owners' own poetry.

Published.com
This is a site offering resources for writers. You can find a lot of online writing publications and homepages devoted to writing as well. Well worth checking out.

RhymeZone
Mainly a rhyme dictionary, and not too bad at that. There is also a (limited) searchable quotation dictionary.

Goth Links

Academia Gothica
All kinds of information on the "goth subculture," including dispellation of popular myths, a history of the culture, fashion, and links. A very interesting page; I highly recommend it if you want to learn facts about goths, and not the stuff the media has been serving up to us.

Gothic Martha Stewart
A collection of little projects you can undertake to beautify your house/room, as well as tips on having a gothic wedding, and advice for goths living in an apartment or with their parents. Well worth checking out for some good decoration ideas.

alt.gothic.fashion.faq
A huge compendium of answers to frequently asked questions on the alt.gothic.fashion (agf) newsgroup, ranging from clothing catalogue links to tips on obtaining clothing at low prices (and why being able to sew is a distinctly good thing) to hair advice to home decor. In other words, a font of useful information.

The Velvet Garden
This is an online yard sale of sorts where people can buy and sell gothic clothing, music, accessories, and other stuff. A lot of the items are new or have only been worn once. Look around, drool, buy (most sellers prefer Paypal or money orders, many will take checks, a few will take cash).

CheapSkates
CheapSkates is a bimonthly 'zine with resources and ideas for budgetgoths.

Generators

Random Log-line Generator
Looking for a story or movie idea? Try this site; it will give you a one-sentence plot summary. I guarantee you, the generator will give you some pretty absurd (and comical) plots.

Intramural Team Name Generator
Need an unusual name for your team? Try this one. You're bound to find something rather off-the-wall (examples: Explosive Zealot, Crushing Pizza).

The Advertising Slogan Generator
You put in your word. The generator will spit out an advertising slogan for it ("3-in-1 Protection For Your Angst," "It's A Homework Adventure," and other random stuff). Like most generators, it's kind of dumb and useless but mildly amusing. A word of warning, though: it does display at the bottom a short list of words people have recently put in, and many people seem to enjoy putting in insults or words for genitalia. So if that would seriously interfere with an otherwise enjoyable generator experience, you might want to give this one a miss. Otherwise, have fun.

Random British Movie Titles
Pretty much in the same vein as the generator above, only with movie titles (say, "Homeworkspotting," "Chariots of Homework," or "Shakespeare in Angst") and without the list of recent words. And it tells you the original movie title, as well as the director and year of release. Also fun.

Lee's (Useless) Super-Hero Generator
This is a great place to get names for superheroes, supervillains, and teams of either, as well as weapons, transportation, super powers, and sources of said powers. Very interesting and crazy names (villain team example: The psychotic Doom Gladiators of Antarctica).

Rigel 7: Techno Band Namer
Weird band names. Cool disclaimer. 'Nuff said.

The Random Bandname Generator
An interesting blip about Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as some truly strange band names.

Lord of The Rings Links

The Tolkien Sarcasm Page
A rather amusing site. Highlights include the Critique of Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings (remember the awful animated movie?) and the Tolkien Crackpot Theories. A good one to look at if you have the time (the Critique is rather long and detailed, but well worth it).

Very Secret Diaries
For those of you who've always suspected that Sam's feelings for Frodo were not just platonic . . . found Gandalf's post-Balrog costume-change a trifle fishy . . . wondered where the heck the phrase "pervy hobbit-fancier" came from--this site is for you! Slashy fun fun fun with all of your favourite characters from The Fellowship of The Ring (the movie, that is), including Gollum, Arwen, and Ringwraith #5. The Two Towers diaries aren't up on the main page yet, but watch for them in Ms. Claire's LiveJournal (linked from the main page). Be forewarned: VSD does contain ludicrously strong implications of s-e-x, so if your parents haven't explained that to you yet, or the thought of male-male couplings sends you into a Jack Chick-inspired rage, don't go there and blame me for your bewilderment/offense/whatever. Otherwise, enjoy.

Condensed Parody Version of The Two Towers (the movie)
Neatly and amusingly sums up TTT. Stuff that was in the movie, stuff that wasn't in the movie, and stuff that all you warped fanfic people insist is very strongly implied in the movie =), including spoilers, a gourmet cookery debate between Sam and Gollum, references to other movies, and audience reactions. Probably more amusing if you've read the books, but non-readers have given it a thumbs-up too, so go have fun.

the pencil show
An ongoing work of bizarreness by two bizarre fangirls. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes just "huh?". I think these children might be on crack. Actually, they remind me a little of my brother (he's about their age), or my friends when they were younger . . . only more so. Anyway, the premise is that they kidnap characters from The Lord of The Rings (books and movies) and fire bizarre questions at 'em. Super episodes include actors, too. Odd and fun.

LOTR in 2 hrs
Yes, I admit it, this is on the Tolkien Sarcasm Page too. But hey, I didn't know that when I stumbled across it, so it gets its own link. It's the scary answer to the question "What if the studio powers that be had insisted that Peter Jackson stick to a two-hour length for Fellowship of the Ring?". Eep.

The Hobbit, the Wizard, and the Jedi
Okay, this one isn't as strictly LOTR-related as the others; it also has ties to Harry Potter and Star Wars. Basically the heroes randomly show up and argue with each other: whose angst is deepest? whose potential for evil is greatest? whose chances for action are best? Gets mildly slashy about midway through, with some rather . . . interesting pairings. Kinda fun.

Miscellaneous Links

RinkWorks
This site is huge, and has a great deal of rather amusing stuff. Some of the highlights include Book-A-Minute (summaries much, much shorter than Cliffs Notes, and rather accurate at that), Movie-A-Minute, Crazy Libs (there are all kinds of things available to warp, ranging from original stories to Hamlet's soliliquoy), It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie, the Dialectizer, Things People Said (check out the courtroom section and translations of English section), Don't Throw a Brick Straight Up, Computer Stupidities, and The Duel of the Ages. But there's a whole lot more. I highly recommend it.

The Brunching Shuttlecocks
A very funny site! It's like Rinkworks, but not. For one thing, I have to say it's more twisted than Rinkworks. In any case, though, it has some very good features: quizzes (including "Are You God?" and "Are You Dead?"), the Self-Made Critic (interesting, and occasionally perceptive, reviews of selected movies--certainly always amusing), Ratings (including "Top Level Domain Names" and "Star Wars Villains," as well as a plethora of snack food and breakfast cereal ratings), webpage toys (such as "HellWeather" and "Tina the Troubled Teen"), a wide assortment of other toys (such as generators), funny articles, and more. They also have T-shirts, if you're interested. Check it out.

The Dreaming: The Neil Gaiman Page
Links, news, and other stuff concerning Neil Gaiman, oh-so-brilliant creator of the Sandman comics and author of a bunch of books and short stories. Stay informed about the adaptation of Death: The High Cost of Living and Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) into movies, as well as book signings, interviews, and all that great stuff.

GUTS Page
Sound gruesome? It's not. This page is devoted to GUTS (Gonzaga University Theatre Sports), Spokane's oldest improvisational comedy group. Learn about their history, traditions, and rules. Interesting to read about, funner to watch. Also includes book recommendations and links to other improv sites. The odd animated gifs at the top of each page add to your sense of wonder.

The First's Journal
For those of you who have been following the latest season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and wanting to eavesdrop on the First Evil's innermost thoughts, this is the place! Other members of the Buffyverse have been known to drop by and comment. A fun read, somewhat reminiscent of VSD.

Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid
This is a pretty dang cool site (at least if you're a Latin nerd like me). It has a Latin-English/English-Latin dictionary, some helpful hints for grammar stuff, and gobs of links to other Latin resources. It's a winner!

Adriane's Place in Cyberspace
Adriane has some beautiful poetry and very lovely artwork. There's a great deal of other stuff on her site; I haven't seen everything yet, but it is definitely worth a look.

A L T . G O T H I C . B O O K L I S T
This is a great list of books and reviews for people with varying tastes (books listed range from Ender's Game to Wuthering Heights to Interview with a Vampire). Well worth checking out if you want book recommendations.

The Hitchhikers' Guide to Star Trek: the Next Generation
This piece brings all your favourite Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a wholly remarkable book) and Star Trek: the Next Generation characters together in a rather insane adventure. Well worth checking out.

The Eye of Argon
This is a Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of what is quite possibly the worst sci-fi/fantasy story ever written. It features Grignr (a barbarian), Carthena (a, uh, woman of questionable virtue), the corrupt Prince Agaphim, evil priests, and a foot of blinding steel, as well as all your favourite MST3K characters. If you strenuously object to violence of the running-through-the-palace-and-decapitating/disemboweling-everyone-we-meet variety or incredibly bad prose of the let's-just-ramble-on-and-overdescribe-everything-so-the-readers-don't-notice-the-atrocities-we-commit-against-the-English-language variety, this would probably be a bad site for you to visit. Otherwise, you'll probably laugh your head off.

10 Big Myths about copyright explained
Know your rights. A good, up-to-date explanation of some copyright law basics.

MontyPython.net: The Ultimate Monty Python Site
Monty Python scripts, pictures, and .wav files. There is now a search engine, so that you can find out, for example, which sketch had the bit about Descartes, or which sketch had the lumberjack song. It's a very extensive site.

How to say "Oh, my God, there's an axe in my head!"
Improve your foreign language skills through humour. An entertaining way to spend a few minutes.

Merriam-Webster Online
A godsend. Online dictionaries are the greatest invention since the wheel. They have a nice little thesaurus, too. Very very helpful.

Wordsmith.Org
This is the home of A.Word.A.Day (AWAD) and Internet Anagram Server (or is it "I, Rearrangement Servant"?). You may have read about them in the December '00 issue of Smithsonian. At any rate, some very nice little services. After all, who wouldn't want to get a new word in the mail every day?

Research-It!
This site bills itself as "your one-stop reference desk." I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but it can be helpful. You can look words up in an English dictionary, a rhyme dictionary, a thesaurus, a quote dictionary, a translator, a pronunciation dictionary, an acronym dictionary, a law dictionary, or a computing dictionary, or use one of the countless other tools such as a currency converter, a ticker symbol finder, map services. . . .

The Death Clock
Enter a few very basic stats and the machine will calculate your date of death. There are four modes: Normal, Pessimistic, Sadistic, and Optimistic. The site owner will tell you that it's just a game, and it is. So keep that in mind, and if you really fear death or take this kind of stuff as an affront to your God, this is probably not a good site for you. Otherwise, have fun.

AOL Instant Messenger
No, this is not an advertising pitch for AOL, merely one of the very few good points of AOL (and you don't even need to join AOL to use it!).