If you were in Cuba this weekend, you may have been treated to the sight of happy Cubans proudly buying computers. Here in the real world, where some of us have computers in our shoes and marital aids, the purchase of a new computer might not raise any eyebrows, but in Cuba it qualifies as a very big deal indeed. You see, Cubans haven’t been allowed to have personal computers until now. (One can only imagine what primitive technology they use to keep their feet warm or to pleasure their wives with.)

The one snag is that most Cubans still don’t have access to the Internet yet - the government has long restricted access. Even if those restrictions were lifted somehow, there’s also the small matter of the trade embargo between the US and Cuba - one of the consequences being that we don’t ever ship any Internet too them (I don’t really understand how the Internet works.)

What I do understand is that computers aren’t much fun without the Internet. Sure you’ve got your word processing and your minesweeper and your disk defragmenter. I guess there’s also spreadsheets, but considering that the average monthly income for a Cuban is something like $20, I don’t imagine their personal finances are that complicated. Truthfully, computers can get boring pretty quickly. When was the last time you processed some words for fun?

However, given the recent reforms the Cuban government’s been implementing, Internet access for Cubans is at least marginally likely in the future. Which means that Cuba might actually become reconnected to the rest of the world soon, and find out what a shit-show we’ve turned it into. So in preparation for that moment, I’ve compiled some useful info for any current or future Cuban Internet pioneers (here I’m imagining that when first getting online they’ll Google “Holy shit, I’m Cuban and am on the Internet” which will lead them to this page.)

As I see it, the main problem with getting to the Internet twenty years late is that you’ll be really far behind on all the Internet meme’s that have come and gone, so you won’t get any of the references on our T-shirts. Seeing as amusing T-shirts make up something like 5% of the U.S. GDP, this is a pretty serious problem, so to ward off any chances of the demise of our sponsors, below I’ve cataloged the biggest Internet fads of the last 20 years.

Mouse Balls: If you were on the Internet back in the days when ASCII graphics were cutting edge, you probably saw this fake IBM “mouse balls” memo in your email inbox. To this very day, testicle humor remains the pinnacle of human achievement on the Internet.

Hampster Dance: Audio recordings were mastered over 60 years ago by Vikings, yet to this day, very few sites on the Internet have sound or audio content of any kind. And the reason is this fucking site.

Bert is Evil: One of the first photoshopped gag sites, it taught us some interesting facts about that Sesame Street mainstay, Bert. Hint: He doesn’t come off very well.

That Dancing Baby: An early example of 3D graphics, and an effective advertising spokesperson for the vasectomy industry.

Mahir: In 1999, Mahir wanted to have sex with you, and made a webpage about it. At the time this was revolutionary, and as it occurred at the height of the Internet bubble, I believe the site was eventually purchased by Yahoo for $5bn.

All your Base Are Belong To Us: In Japan they don’t write English very well, mainly because no-one there reads it. This unlikely confluence of events caused one of the most irritating trends to sweep the Internet.

YTMND: This stands for “You’re The Man Now Dawg,” which you Cubans probably won’t recognize as one of the most tin-eared pieces of dialog to ever be written, and the nadir of Sean Connery’s career. This site soon spawned a host of similarly themed pages - including this face melting example.

Star Wars Kid: Making fun of dorks being dorks is a little like shooting fish in a barrel. Honestly I always felt bad for this kid, and hope whichever one of his buddies put this video on the Internet lives in constant fear of being beaten to death with a golf ball retriever.

Chuck Norris Facts: This was a site full of made up facts about Chuck Norris, a martial artist who made some hilariously awful movies in the 80’s and some just regular awful television in the 90’s. No-one knows why he became suddenly popular again a couple years ago, as for the last 10 years he’s been coasting on his past success - a notion that radically redefines the meaning of the word “success.”

Snakes on a Plane: This was a poorly conceived, poorly executed movie that unexpectedly failed because it was poorly conceived and poorly executed. That it was championed by the Internet probably says something about the business and critical acumen of anonymous imbeciles.

LolCats: This is the current big Internet fad, although hopefully it will be something else by the time I finish typing this sentence.

I hope you enjoyed that, respected Cuban reader. As you’re new to the Internet, I’ll let you know that if you enjoy an article, it’s customary to provide your bank details on this page here.

Some Guy Getting A Tay Zonday Tattoo

Just for the record, I completely support this guy in his decision to get a tattoo of Tay Zonday. It’s not like “Chocolate Rain” is just some passing internet fad with a half-life of approximately one year or something. We’re talking about “Chocolate Rain” here! The thing has been viewed 18 million times! Surely all of those people will remember Tay Zonday for the rest of their lives, right? Yes, it’s going to be annoying when people from the other 99.997% of the global population (do the math) ask him “what’s up with that tattoo?” and yes, that’s going to be happening to him for the rest of his life, but that’s a small price to pay for having a hilarious internet joke permanently etched into your skin - particularly one like “Chocolate Rain” that will totally never get old or stop being funny or anything like that.

Yet still, for some reason I can’t help feeling sorry for the guy. It’s not because he now has a tattoo of Tay Zonday on his arm, and it’s not because he’s going to be explaining it to people for the rest of his life. No - I feel bad for him because he has just unwittingly joined a very exclusive club of people who have shitty tattoos that are famous on the internet. Now he’s going to have to start hanging out with Zune tattoo guy, cat ass tattoo guy, Star Wars tattoo guy, Hulk Hogan tattoo guy, and maybe Mr. Cool Ice if he’s lucky. Which sounds great at first, but seriously - what in the name of God are those guys going to talk about? Zune guy is gonna be like, “The Zune is superior to the iPod in every way,” and Hulk Hogan tattoo guy will be like, “Hulk Hogan is superior to the Zune AND the iPod in every way.” Meanwhile the Star Wars tattoo guy will be trying to explain why Boba Fett is badass to Mr. Cool Ice, but Mr. Cool Ice doesn’t speak English, so that’s going nowhere. It’s going to be a complete and utter disaster, but hey, Tay Zonday tattoo guy: it was worth the 31,000 YouTube views, wasn’t it?

Drinking Liquid Nitrogen

When I was a little kid, I used to do all kinds of stupid things to impress people. In 2nd grade I told a bunch of people that my dad held the Guinness World Record for “Best Driver” (and that he trained for it by playing Spy Hunter). In 3rd grade I told a kid that I wrote the lyrics to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” for Axl Rose. I had a jacket with all these patches on it, and one of them said “AIRBORNE” on it; I told everyone that a pilot gave it to my mom after she gave birth to me on an airplane.

I stuck gum in my hair at some kid’s house like three times in a row because he dared me to. At first his mom tried to get it out with peanut butter, but that didn’t work very well, so she eventually gave up and cut it out with a pair of scissors. When I did it again a week later, she didn’t bother with the peanut butter. The third time I’m pretty sure she just kicked me out of her house for being stupid.

I used to gather a small crowd in the cafeteria at school, step on my food, and then eat it.

I could go on, but you get the point: I was a weird kid who was willing to do basically anything for attention. I’ve matured quite a bit since then, of course, and have now channeled that impulse and turned it into a prestigious and lucrative career blogging for Cracked.com, but sometimes I wonder, “What would my life be like if I had never learned to control myself?”

Then I saw this video and I was like, “Oh, yeah - I’d be drinking liquid nitrogen and putting it up on YouTube.”

For some reason, I’m filled with a fetishistic glee at the ongoing demise of the record industry. Maybe it’s just the nerd in me thrilling to the birth of a new distribution medium, or maybe it’s that growing up, Dad used to break Velvet Revolver records on our backs when we were bad.

Whatever the case, I was pleased to see that even the most routine happening in the music world—like the start of the SXSW music festival in Austin—is as a matter of course paired with a discussion of record executives jumping out of office windows to their deaths and RIAA lawyers furiously and laughably suing people they choose at random off the street.

The next interesting thing to see will be where bands are making money once physical media is purchased only by anachronistic hold-outs who get off on self-indulgent liner notes (ie, Gladstone). The consensus in rock journalism seems to be that we’re going to return to the era of the wandering minstrel, when musicians earned their keep only through live performance and the occasional ballad about dragon slaying.

Which is romantic, but would probably lead to the premature dissolution of a lot of great, broke future bands. The more likely reality is that musicians will be getting a larger share of their own profits, and more directly, but they’ll have to be a little more clever about finding ways to generate it:

Of course they’ll have to offer a souvenir, like a nice signed photo of the sex act and a piece of chocolate with the band logo on it.

Speaking of Spitzer, there’s the new paradigm in action for you right there. Governor fucks prostitute, prostitute releases R&B singles online, prostitute becomes rich 98 cents at a time. That’s very likely to become a classic story as home production and distribution gets easier.

So I guess what I’m saying is entering a new age of music distribution isn’t necessarily going to make any of it any better. You’ll just get it differently. Like getting fucked in the ears with an ice pick instead of a seed drill. And that’s nice, right?

Vote for Michael’s entry in the YOUTUBE SKETCHIES II Semi-Finals by clicking this link, then “next video” on the randomizer until you see his (”The Hot Farts”), then on the thumbs up. Complicated, isn’t it? Well, do it once per day per registered youtube account.

Machine y la Pequena Adriana Barrientos

I’ve been looking at the internet for a long time now, and I’ve seen plenty of weird trends come and go. There was the whole Dancing Baby thing, then there was Hampster Dance and All Your Base and Goatse and a whole bunch of other crap I can barely remember.

It’s been a long internet.

Now that everyone is losing interest in Lolcats, I guess the new thing is videos of cross-dressing dwarf Latinas dancing. I’m not going to say this is the weirdest video I’ve ever seen (that honor probably still goes to a certain Japanese guy in a horse mask), but we’ve certainly come a long way from Hampster Dance, haven’t we?

The only thing that worries me about this trend is that it’s only a matter of time before cross-dressing dwarves and naked Japanese men in horse masks are simply a matter of course. Where do we go from there? Can things really get that much weirder, or will the pendulum swing back the other way, and we’ll go back to enjoying such simple pleasures as poorly-animated dancing babies and pictures of men ripping their own sphincters open?

Oh - and was the guy in the bondage mask ALREADY friends with the cross-dressing dwarf, or did he have to put an ad up on Craigslist to make this video? So many questions, so few answers.

Everybody loves LOLcats—you know, those witty combinations of humorous pictures and broken cat-English captions that have been taking the internet by storm ever since their invention in the mid-to-late Zero-ies—but as with any art form, the longer they exist, the more controversial they need to be to continue to attract attention.

Here are just a few examples which suggest that, in an effort to stay relevant and “edgy,” the phenomenon of LOLism may have crossed the line:

Awesome Video Of The Day

Live Action Garfield

I spend a lot of time here on the Cracked Blog making fun of stuff. Sometimes I make fun of idiots who genuinely deserve ridicule. Other times it’s people who probably didn’t really deserve it, people who innocently put themselves out there on the internet and happened to look kind of stupid at the same time. Does that make me a jerk? No - that makes me a BLOGGER. People looking stupid is what fuels the internet’s hilarity engine, okay? You know how they say you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs? Well you can’t make an internet without crushing a few souls, either.

But today is different! Today’s video is too special to make fun of, and the guys who made it are way too awesome to berate. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for LasagnaCat.com.

I’m not totally sure why someone decided to recreate Garfield strips in live action, but they sure did a good job! From the obsessive-compulsive attention to detail (even the background shading matches), to the ridiculous music videos, these clips just melted my face off with their brilliance.

They also make me a little bit nervous, though. Is this going to be the next big internet thing? Are people going to start making bizarre live action recreations of Dilbert and Cathy now? That would be okay for a while, but I’m worried that after it got old everyone would be like “Well, that was deranged - I can’t think of anything else” and the internet would be over. How can anything possibly top this?

I predict that by April the entire web will consist of eBay, Amazon, LasagnaCat and a handful of “MILF” porn sites.

Oh - and Cracked.com, of course. Only by April, Cracked.com will be a “MILF” porn site.

Awesome Video Of The Day

Golden Eagle Snags A Goat

While we’re on the subject of terrifying animals, I would like to add that I will never, EVER fuck with a golden eagle. I can’t imagine that I weigh much more than a goat, and that THING just totally picked one up and flew away it. You do the math. Sure, the crappy little goat sound effect 13 seconds in is hilarious, but that’s about all you get in this video in the way of comedy¹. Birds of prey don’t really “do” funny.

Wanna know what probably happens after this video ends? The eagle takes the goat back to its terrifying nest (presumably one made of broken glass and barbed wire) and proceeds to rip it to shreds with its razor-sharp beak. When I think of badasses of the animal kingdom, I don’t generally think of birds; wolves, cobras, tigers, and komodo dragons come more readily to mind. I guess I tend to think of fangs and venom instead of talons and beaks², but it’s starting to look like I’ve been all turned around on the subject. Apparently eagles are totally badass. Who knew?!

¹ Other than the part where the eagle flies away with the goat. In the laugh industry, we call this a “sight gag.”

² Although giant squid have beaks too, and they are most certainly badass animals.

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Awesome Video Of The Day

Terrifying Police Dogs

I’m not totally sure where this video is from, so I’m going to be sure not to commit any crimes ANYWHERE for the rest of my life. It seems like it was probably shot somewhere in Eastern Europe in France, but I’m not risking it - the mere idea that these dogs exist somewhere on this Earth is enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Did you hear that guy screaming?! Did you see the dog running straight at the guy shooting at it? I can’t think of a single crime that would be worth attempting to pull off if I knew that I might have to deal with one of those things. The only way these dogs could be any more terrifying would be if scientists were able to modify their genes to make them poisonous, and I’m pretty sure that’s just around the corner, too. My prediction: global crime rates will fall dramatically over the next few years. Y’know… because of all the poisonous dogs.

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Awesome Video Of The Day

The Hottie and the Nottie

On a first viewing you might be thinking to yourself, “Dear God - this looks like the worst movie of all time,” or maybe “This is what’s wrong with America,” but you know what? I think The Hottie and the Nottie is going to turn out to be one of the great love stories of our time.

Basic plot: A guy wants to hook up with a “hot” chick (played by world-renowned sex-haver Paris Hilton) but first he needs to find a mate for her “ugly” friend (played by the unbelievably hideous Christine Lakin). Hilarity ensues, I’m sure, but you know what else probably happens? I would bet you guys money that at some point in this movie the guy learns that beauty is only skin deep, decides that the “hot” chick (Paris Hilton) is actually kind of a bitch, and then realizes in the last 30 minutes that he’s fallen hopelessly in love with the “ugly” chick.

I know it sounds completely fucking insane, but I bet that’s what happens in this movie. With unexpected plot twists like those, I think this could easily be the sleeper hit of 2008. You know - because you wouldn’t think that the main character would hook up with an “ugly” chick, but then he does and it’s crazy because you totally figured he’d end up with the “hot” chick.

Oh, and it also has Paris Hilton in it, who everyone has seen have actual, real-life sexual intercourse. That can’t hurt either.

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