ODDITY REIGNS ON NET

Happy Halloween.

Today is a day that we revel in the strange and even scary, so why not visit some odd sites on the Internet? There's certainly plenty to choose from.

As I was driving to work one morning, I heard a radio report on some guy that planned to break the world record today for eating live worms. And you thought your life was trying.

Let's zip over to the Guinness Book of World Records to learn more about such oddities.

www.guinnessworldrecords.com

I was intrigued to find out how the Guinness Book of World Records all came about. This is their story: "The Guinness Brewery was founded in 1759 at St. James' Gate in Dublin, Ireland, by Arthur Guinness. By the 1930s Guinness' special porter stout was available in every public house in Britain, and the brewery was always on the look-out for good promotional ideas to bring the Guinness name to the public's attention. One of these ideas came about when Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director, went on a shooting party in 1951. He became involved in an argument about which was the fastest game bird in Europe, the golden plover or the grouse, and he realized that a book, published by Guinness, that supplied answers to this sort of question might prove popular."

The rest, as they say, is history.

The first edition was published in 1955. Since that time, the book has sold more than 80 million copies in 77 different countries and 38 different languages. The Web site was launched earlier this year.

You can search the site by keyword, or simply peruse the featured records or even the "Daily Wow." The Monday "Wow" centered on a man from Los Angeles who blew 117 soap bubbles in 30 seconds with a live tarantula in his mouth.

Hmm. What does this guy do for fun?

Under most valuable gown, here's this entry: A gown worn by Marilyn Monroe when she sang "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy on May 19, 1962, was sold on Oct. 27, 1999 for $1,267,000, including commission, at Christies in New York City.

You can also get involved. There's advice on how to find a record you could realistically break.

Since it is Halloween, we'll stop by a scary site by the folks at Discovery.com.

www.discovery.com/ guides/special/halloween.html

It reminds me a bit of the Guinness site because it focuses on oddities of real life.

Here's the boast at Halloween Central: "You don't need fables or fairy tales to frighten your friends. Here at Discovery.com we know that there's nothing scarier than real life."

You can check out The Ultimate Guide to Mummies or dig deeper into the Salem Witch trials. You can also investigate killer creatures, monsters or myths, ghosts cams, phobias, haunted holidays and even a chance to do interactive surgery on the big green guy, Frankenstein himself.

Just for fun, I checked out the Ghost Cams -- one is a brick wall in Oregon where writing supposedly appears.

The other is a ghost lady that is said to inhabit a library in Indiana. You can save the Internet photo in Indiana and submit it back for others to judge if you really saw something. I've been here once before. It's very clever.

I also read the story on the Salem Witch trials, and the hysteria which took over this small town. It was interesting and disturbing.

Ready for something really scary? How about a guy who claims to be the first pregnant man.

www.malepregnancy.com

"POP! The First Human Male Pregnancy" purports to follow the medical progress of a Taiwanese-born man who has volunteered to have an embryo implanted in his abdominal cavity. It looks pretty real, which can tell you something about the dangers about the Internet.

On the World Wide Web, imagination can closely resemble reality.

But it's not real at all. It's an elaborate hoax by an arts group that is developing work about the human body through medicine, society and technology.

Is this really art? I think not.

Too bizarre for you? OK, let's try something a little more down to earth.

Are you one of those guys or girls that loves to tool around the yard on your riding mower? Well, have I got a site for you.

www.letsmow.com

This group wants to turn a weekend chore into a competitive sport!

It all began on April Fools Day in 1992. Executives of Chicago-based Gold Eagle Co. makers of STA-BIL(r) Fuel Stabilizer, brought lawn mower racing to the United States after visiting friends with the British Lawn Mower Association in England.

You can read the mower requirements and rule book online. You must remove the cutting blades to participate.

Unfortunately, I think this group is for real. "They meet on soccer fields and baseball diamonds across this country and put on helmets and racing suits," according to one report about the organization.

Ready for more weird and odd, and perhaps even true?

www.3bp.com

This site boasts to be the largest collection of funny and odd headlines, photos, and video-clips submitted from all over the United States and the world. You'll find hundreds of articles and clippings from newspapers, magazines and products.

You can read about the man who attempted suicide with a Butterfinger. As it turns out, he has a severe allergy to peanuts ate the candy bar despite the pleading of sheriff's deputies. He was rushed to the hospital after a terrible reaction. That's certainly one odd police report item.

Warning: Some of the typos are little bit suggestive. Others are just plain pathetic, like the photo of a fast-food restaurant with its sign advertising "Now hiring closers." Someone removed the "c." Ouch.

And if you're at work, you might enjoy Workhumor.com

www.workhumor.com

You can check out blunders, incidents and tales or share some office jokes. There's also an assortment of office games, cartoons, crosswords, trivia and tests.

I enjoyed the category: "Strangest interview question you have been asked." Some of them were very odd.

Questions ranged from "If you could be any animal what would it be and why?" to "If you only had $5 in your wallet, would you pick up your dry-cleaning or buy beer?"

What are your favorite odd sites on the Internet? You can e-mail me at jonia@sehosp.org.

See you in Cyberspace.

Joni Adams is the webmaster at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, www.southeastmissourihospital.com.