Journey from Gnomes to Neuticals

Just a quick trip in the Way-Back Machine: there was a time in the not-so-distant past when communication was accomplished at a glacial pace. To get information or make contact, people relied on the telephone, publications in the form of magazines and newspapers, or (shudder) the postal service. Finding someone or something often took a lot of time and research, and there were no guarantees of success.

You could hunt forever for a social group, a mate, a professional service or an object and never find fellow soup tureen enthusiasts (1), a romantic partner (2) to share your interest in sea sponges (3), a shaman teacher (4) or collectible Civil War surgical instruments (5). And that's all relatively mainstream.

When I would read that a charismatic prophet had gathered a flock of followers at a compound to sleep with him/her and give him/her all their money, I was often bemused. How did he or she advertise for this sort of thing? How did cranks find one another? Was it just pre-internet kismet that brought Heaven's Gate folks together to meet at a California La Quinta and plan their off-planet odyssey? Did they bump into one another coincidentally in the aluminum foil aisle while buying supplies to wear on their heads to prevent the government from reading their thoughts, and the rest was just destiny?

If you were interested in something prosaic like, say, collecting garden gnomes, you could probably find a publication and a community of gnome-collectors by doing a little research at the library. It might have taken you six-weeks to get your first issue of “Gnome World” delivered, but over time you would have been able to enter the larger aggregate of gnome collectors and join your cohorts at swaps and socials across the country. Eventually, perhaps, someone would have organized a tour to visit the Great Gnomes of Europe, and your circle of friends and contacts would have grown.

But if you were a true nut-bag, or had nut-bag interests, it must have taken some tenacity to find kindred spirits. Not so any more. Since the World Wide Web came into our lives, we no longer have to expend energy on a fruitless search for like-minded whackos or wacky stuff. If you can think it, you can find it. With a little imagination, a motivated Google-banger can satisfy any whim or inclination no matter how esoteric almost instantly.

Even my brief search for gnomes came up with over six million hits in a tenth of a second. At www.freethegnomes.com you can join a platform through which you can work toward "Garden Gnome Liberation" by advocating "an end to oppressive gardening and freedom for garden gnomes everywhere." Likewise, on different sites you can order a fashionable Urban Gnome (not a Metro-Gnome…that would be something different), learn that there is a Gnome Reserve and Museum in Devonshire, England and "southeastern Austria is blessed with one of the highest concentrations of garden gnomes in the world" (according to Clay Risen in Flak Magazine).

And that's just gnomes. Gnomes aren't even odd. Slide a little further down the slope of normal reality and it seems that there isn't anything so strange that someone hasn't already been there and posted before you. To prove my point, I contacted my friends Sky, Emily and Bradley. They all rely heavily on computers and databases in their work – Bradley is an I.T. guy, Sky is a web designer and publisher for a national music teachers' organization and Emily supports a web-based online portfolio system (among other things) for a university. They can Google like the wind and all spend a good chunk of their day on-line. They were an excellent resource for esoteric web sites.

Sky came in first with a Neuticals merchandise site. Not that Neuticals themselves were new information – they've been around awhile. If you are not familiar, let's say you have a male canine and in a common veterinary procedure, you take your dog in to have him neutered. Obviously, while there are many very good reasons to neuter your pet, the surgery leaves your dog's under-tail area sort of minimalist. Your dog probably doesn't care, at least not on aesthetic grounds, but you might miss the vista that was once the swinging, intact Sparky and find the stark view of the non-bouncy Sparky a little disturbing. Thus Neuticals, a silicone implant whose motto is "It's like nothing ever changed", was invented to ease your distress.

So, okay. Neuticals are pricey, but it's no big deal for your vet to slip in a set, make you feel better about depriving Sparky of his original pair and put all of that unpleasantness behind both of you. Neither you nor your dog needs a support group. You don't have to find other people who chose to purchase Neuticals, too. That would be silly.

But, wait. Apparently it is not. Thanks to on-line marketing, not only can you learn all about Neuticals, you can CELEBRATE Neuticals (6)! You can make a Neuticals statement. You can meet other Neuticals enthusiasts and buy and gift Neuticals themed ball caps, t-shirts, totes, the inventor's autobiography "Going, Going NUTS: The Story That Had to Be Told" (I don't know why; I'm happy NOT hearing the story at all) and… wait for it...a Neuticals barbeque apron!

And, I won't even tell you about the key-chain…you'll just have to go find that out for yourself (but just as a cautionary note, if you're a guy, I would advise against carrying it around in your pants pocket; if you're a woman and tend to lose things in your purse, you're likely to be startled by your keychain for a long time to come and your involuntary shrieking might become annoying).

Then Emily followed with a comprehensive list of Web sites and I found it difficult to choose among the bizarre sampling. Are you fascinated with extremely boring postcards? Particularly boring postcards of East German government buildings? Then take a tour of www.retroglobe.com. Do you like to compete with your friends in seeing how long it takes your Kraft Cheese Single to inflate on a grill? Maybe www.cheeseracing.org is for you. Do you like to identify pictures in clouds or compete in extreme ironing (that's iron-ING, not iron-MAN) competitions? Perhaps you'd find friends and fun at www.cloudappreciationsociety.org and/or www.extremeironing.com.

Probably the most engaging site that Emily recommended was www.sugarbushsquirrel.com. Sugar is an Eastern Gray squirrel that was rescued from her nest by Kelly Foxton when her tree-home was being cut down. Sugar appears to be Foxton's alter-ego acting as the vehicle through which she expresses her opinions and champions her causes.

From what I can tell, Foxton devotes her life to making tiny, elaborate squirrel outfits and dioramas to create tableaus of theatre, political commentary and seasonal celebration. See Sugar as Pope Benedict the XVI; see Sugar as the anchor for SNN (Squirrel News Network); see Sugar as retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; see Sugar drive a tank and join US Forces to nab a "key player" in the Iraqi insurgency... Abu Talha, a.k.a. Mohammed Khalaf.

Sugar is one tolerant squirrel, given all the costume changes. Or she's stuffed…I can't tell.

As to meeting new people, Bradley has always been a social guy and I looked to him to find sites where people with diverse interests could meet and share their…well…diversity. Bradley offered Clayboard (7), the website devoted not only to fans of the singer Clay Aiken, but fans of Clay Aiken who want to create a larger social community...perhaps, a Clay Village.

Besides what you would expect from a fan site – the beatification of Clay Aiken and the instant blogging about every breath he takes or move he makes – Clayboarders come together to also share themselves. It struck me as actually religious in nature. People have long used their sites of worship as a place where the community gathers to connect with a supernatural Being(s) who is not physically present and, simultaneously, socially engage. In ritual services, affection for the Being is expressed. There is discussion and debate about what the Being said and did and what it means for the Being's followers. Money or goods are gathered to support projects that enhance the Being in some way – charitable acts, building funds for temples, etc.

Surf on over to Clayboard and you'll find many congregants who log-on not only to praise Clay Aiken and support his ministry via concert tickets and t-shirts, but also to share bird watching notes, recipes, investment advice, info about the dangers of lemon wedges in restaurant drinks, reviews of Spamalot, and photos from their spring trip to Saskatchewan. It's very much like the coffee-hour that churches across the country offer after services – it allows participants who share similar beliefs to create social ties with one another and form a micro-tribe.

Then, just to see how far I could go before I brought Google to its virtual knees, I engaged the nonsensical part of my brain (which is huge – the nonsensical part, I mean) and just wrote a list of whatever rose to the murky surface. This is what floated up: ultimate croquet, glottis, flim-flam-flamboyant, dust and galoshes. Although real Google-bangers make a sport of trying to stomp the engine, my sad banal searches left Google unimpressed and under-challenged.

The Australian Croquet Association profiled senior level champion Anna Miller from Victoria. Dr. Miller, a physician, was praised for her "quiet and considerate approach to the game and to other players." I learned that Miller had been President of Kalimna Park Croquet Club and Wimmera Croquet Association, as well as serving on the Croquet Victoria Committee of Managements and as Director of Croquet Victoria.

"Glottis", founded in 1998 to provide an alternative to predominant literary culture in New Zealand, turned out to be a journal that publishes poetry, short fiction, reviews and critical essays (about glottises? I don't know). Flim-Flam-Flamboyance led to an article about local elections in Jamaica in 1986. Apparently, a return to power by Mr. Manley, known for his flamboyant domestic and international policy, would have been regarded as a defeat for the Reagan administration.

"Dust" brought me to Scott Wade (8), a man whose artistic Muse moves him to create art in the dust that accumulates on the rear-view window of his cars and trucks. He's very good, but not very collectible.

And "galoshes" taught me that there are many, many people in the world who are fixated on the lowliest of objects and have a lot of free time. There is an Amazon-based customer community that meets to discuss their memories of galoshes, tips for buying galoshes, searching for esoteric galoshes, and pose such deep questions as "What is your favorite quotation about galoshes?" If you type in "Aprons"...well, the response is staggering.

What you find on your internet Journey from Gnomes to Neuticals is that humans have a limitless capacity to travel anywhere creatively. There's something really reassuring about having been awakened by a strange dream or a vision in the middle of the night, and being able to stumble over to your laptop and find, lo and behold, that you are not alone. Millions of other people are sharing your weird dream space and hypnogogic-phase inventions (one of mine was a programmable bumper sticker…a programmable t-shirt message is already available).

And for me...a person who can be obsessed by slack-key guitar on Monday and absorbed with the natural history and taxonomy of toucans on Tuesday…the World Wide Web proves that I am not even close to realizing the full potential of human eccentricity. I `have never even considered cheese racing or dressing up a squirrel. Although, I have been planning on visiting the Sponge Museum for quite some time now.

Websites:

Soup tureens: search Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens Opens at Winterthur or www.antiquesandthearts.com/archive/soup.htm
Mate: you're on your own here, but your options are boggling.
Sponges: search Tarpon Springs Sponge Museum or "Spongeguide: Guide to Sponge Collection and Identification".
Shaman teacher: www.shamanicteachers.com
Surgical instruments (don't go here if you're sensitive – it's grim): www.braceface.com
Neutical gifts: www.neuticles.com/shop/merchandisemart.shtml
Clay Aiken: theclayboard.yuku.com/forums/74
Dust art: www.dirtycarart.com
Sky is also VERY fond of www.graphjam.com, a site where virtual statisticians can finally express their deepest pie chart and vector longings. One of her contributions: "I Shot the Sheriff: I did NOT Shoot the Deputy" on an X/Ygraph.

Figure 1: Pie Chart by Jamie Schimley

If you have a favorite Web site, please write and pass it along. We'll keep your identity a secret if you prefer anonymity.

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Ingrid lives on San Juan Island.

While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

editor@sanjuanislander.com

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