Your Mom www.yourmom.com
Lest anyone think that “Yo’ mama” jokes went
out of style like saying, “Word, dog,” and wearing
overalls with only one strap hitched, www.yourmom.com keeps this jesting
genre alive. Using the same format as Yahoo.com, yourmom.com
is a blatant and unapologetic rip-off of the popular search engine.
Upon entering the site, users can choose between various
“Mom” categories, where just a click will take site
spelunkers to a gold mine of Yo’ mama, er, “Your
mom” jokes. These goodies never get old, especially with
classics like “Your mom’s so ugly she made an onion
cry,” and “Your mom’s house is so small I put the
key in the door and it came out the back window!” Dubbed
“A User Generated Portal Into Your Mom,” the site
offers free e-mail and postcards for people to send mama jokes out
to, well, anyone but your mom. With easy to scroll categories and
hundreds of jokes therein, the simple lowbrow humor contained on
yourmom.com will make any mama’s boy smile. After using
the site, users should promptly get their mouths washed out with
soap, since the crass categories like “Slutty,”
“Stupid” and “Nasty” only tip off the crude
jokes. Aside from the content, just the look of the site is punny
and humorous with its Yahoo-esque motif. One shortcoming is worth
mentioning, however. The site can take a while to load, and the
intrigue of what dirty jokes lie under the “Fat”
category are lost in the wait. Perhaps yourmom.com should spend a
little less time trying to look like Yahoo, and a little more time
being as efficient as the search engine.
Sarah Monson Rating: 5
Genochoice www.genochoice.com
Finally, the Internet provides a forum for egomaniacs and social
pariahs alike to witness the creation of their own
genetically-fostered child. At www.genochoice.com, users can click their
way to a genetically superior baby. What makes this site so funny
is that it attempts to be serious. Genochoice.com truly offers a
medium for people to enter information about themselves and what
type of child they want to create. Users are even asked to put
their thumb against the monitor to “read” their genetic
makeup. The result is a coding of various genetic anomalies and
defects found in the parent, that ““ for a convenient, yet
steep price tag ““ the company will alter and alleviate in the
forthcoming über child. Come on, people! Laughable in its
severity, Web surfers can learn about never discovered, or even
thought about, genetic flaws, such as “Novelty
seeking.” And that might be…? Other genetic flaws are
labeled as “Anti- social behavior” and “Premature
baldness.” So, along with ignorant implications, the
information provided on this site is incorrect and just plain
weird. After site goers complete the profile and
“upgrade” the vitality of their super baby, they are
just an e-mail away from an image of what the child might look
like. Users can even add a 50-percent increase in artistic ability
for the bargain basement price of $6,000 or a 25 percent compassion
and sensitivity increase for $3,000. This is after opting to have a
6-foot-4 daughter with black hair and green eyes. What a world
today. Maybe when all these über babies grow up they can
make some sense out of this ominously creepy site.
Sarah Monson Rating: 7
Totally Awful Current Events www.tac-eworld.com
It’s easy to make fun of the latest blunders in the news
and expand your wardrobe simultaneously by simply taking a visit to
tac-eworld.com. Totally Awful Current Events World takes current
news headlines and puts some humorous idea about that headline onto
clothing (T-shirts, sweatshirts and baseball caps) that it sells
via the site. The sites creators claim they want to start a trend
of wearing what’s on your mind in public, through the
clothing they offer online. Site goers can click on a news
headline, read what the press is saying about it, and browse Tac-E
World’s assortment of clothes making fun of the news event.
If the user is unclear about what a product is referring to, the
site also provides real news stories about it from other sources
such as Time magazine or msnbc.com. Essentially the site is a
clearinghouse for clothes with designs ranging from cheesy to
downright stupid. By perusing the news headlines, it becomes
obvious that almost anyone with a semblance of talent could
reproduce the logos on the clothing. Arguably the most amusing
shirt logo is “Pardon me!,” which addresses former
President Clinton’s large number of pardons and commutations
he granted before leaving office. With a picture of Bill with a
speech bubble saying “Pardon me!” on a T-shirt,
sweatshirt or hat, users can show the world just what they think of
Clinton’s final acts. One of the more risque products
features the logo “Just say VAGINA,” alluding to Eve
Ensler’s play “The Vagina Monologues.” Another
humorous design makes reference to the large number of dot-com
companies that have recently gone bankrupt. The logo on the
clothing is a graph of a company’s earnings, with a trend
arrow going to the bottom and the label
“www.ilostabuttloadonmydotcominvestment.com” along the
arrow. Tac-E World’s layout is easy to use and logically
organized, but the overall design is uninspiring. There’s
nothing flashy, unique or really interesting that would motivate
users to log on again and again. One credit to Tac-E World is that
it donates 1 percent of its proceeds to charities such as the
American Red Cross, Amnesty International and Special Olympics,
Inc. Although the site has a number of “Features”
sections, such as “Arts and Entertainment,”
“Sports” and “Movies,” users need not even
bother looking at them. The sections are so low on content, they
amount to little more than long lists of advertising links. What
Tac-E World needs is people willing to buy the products and start
this “trend” of making fun of current events by wearing
T-shirts. Perhaps Tac-E World will fall victim to its own spoofing,
like its T-shirt that says, “I paid $13 to start a trend and
all I got for it was this tacky shirt.”
Chris Young Rating: 2