Websites

Bill Pannifer

31 January 2000

The Original Mouse House.co.uk
http://www.mouse-house.co.uk/

The term "mouse pad" acquires a new meaning at this site, which launches a global campaign to house the worldwide population of homeless computer mice by providing little paper huts for them to sleep in. Downloaded in Adobe Acrobat form, the Mouse houses feature an additional, smaller mousehole at the rear for the flex. One of these on your worktop could, it is claimed, increase productivity. "Since then our mice have been working full-out 24/7. It's a miracle!" reports one satisfied user. Mouse houses may also be customised for promotional purposes. Commercially astute as well as cute, the site offers links for purchasing mice and extras include a mousy swimming pool and a downloadable piece of cheese.

Villains (UK)
http://www.villains.co.uk/

Even cheesier may be this site offering instructions for building an atom bomb for £10 using "weapons-grade" cheese such as Babybel or Dairylea. Just one of the dastardly projects available here at "Your One Stop Villainy Shop" devoted to world domination and generally being up to no good. Elsewhere, Ron the Hammer offers extracts from his book on how to duff people up and body disposal for beginners, and there is a section for small ads ("Necromancer seeks abandoned cemetery with plentiful supply of corpses.") Obligingly, the site provides links to both MI5 and the CIA, but then spoils it a bit with a disclaimer explaining that you can't really make nuclear devices out of cheese (except maybe Red Leicester).

African Rhino Owners Association
http://www.aroa.org.za/

Mice may be a bit tame for some, but those preferring larger animals should be warned this site offers no accommodation whatsoever for the beast in question. Rhinoceros owners are few and far between in the UK, parking permits being hard to come by, but these serious pages are aimed at conservationists in South Africa for whom the going rate for the black version (pictured above) at auction is some 250,000 Rand (£25,000). The site supports a regulated legal trade in rhino parts, and though members can subscribe to a newsletter, much of the argument is embodied in the photo gallery, with disturbing shots of animals killed by poachers and a wince-inducing view of one lucky specimen undergoing, for its own protection, a de-horning process with a chainsaw.

La Divine Comedie
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/dante/

Nuclear hoodlums and certainly rhino poachers may well end up in one of the deeper circles of Hell, as mapped by the Italian poet born in the 13th century. This Unesco-sponsored online Dante features the text – so far only in French translation – accompanied by 120 original illustrations. The Dantean cosmology is spectacularly evoked by Russian artist Vladimir Liagatchev, whose images range from treated photographs to high Surrealism. It's all meant to promote Unesco's aim of universal access to common artistic and intellectual property. Creation knows no boundaries, so let's have the text in the original Italian and perhaps English, too. More online Inferno at Digital Dante.

International Chindogu Society
http://www.info.pitt.edu/~ctnst3/chindogu.html

This cult of ingenious but useless inventions has prompted a number of books and sites. Classic Chindogu (literally "weird tools") on display here include a back-scratcher's T-shirt with itch-locator grid, an automated noodle-cooler (a fan attached to chopsticks) and the immortal Hay Fever Hat (a loo roll dispenser strapped to the top of one's head). A Ten Commandments of the form states: "Chindogu are manmade objects that have broken free from the chains of usefulness. They represent freedom of thought and action: the freedom to challenge the suffocating historical dominance of conservative utility; the freedom to be (almost) useless." A house for a computer mouse might well qualify.

Send interesting, quirky or, at a pinch, cool site recommendations to websites@dircon.co.uk

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