How about obsession with body parts?

"The World's Weirdest Web Pages and the People Who Create Them"
By Hank Duderstadt; No Starch Press; $12.95
Reviewed by Samuel Gaytan
Express-News Online Editor/News

If you haven't seen them yet, you soon will. They walk around with a manic look in their eyes and a strange, twisted, sickly beckoning smile on their lips as they recite the Webhead mantra: "Have you seen my home page?"

Some might have them institutionalized. Hank Duderstadt wrote a book about them: "The World's Weirdest Web Pages and the People Who Create Them."

Duderstadt, an online consultant, teacher and journalist, has brought together 40 of the Web's weirdest pages under eight headings: animals, art, body parts, collections, food, interactivity, obsessions and religion.

Food aficionados are among the featured HTML authors. Given the title, though, you won't find a recipe for quiche among the collection. However, if you've ever wondered what it would be like to embark on the pursuit of the perfect barbecue chip or say to heck with hygiene and let your refrigerator become a science project, then you'll find a kindred cybersoul here.

And if food can have its worshipers, then animals can't be far behind.

Even dead ones.

Angela Pogue's Dead Cats site explains: "It's the perfect pet, your child's best friend, and a dust mop all in one. It doesn't eat, it doesn't make messes, and it doesn't explode in the microwave! What more could you ask for?"

Pogue was inspired (or perhaps haunted) by her father's business idea (shared with her when she was 10) that dead cats could outsell Pet Rocks if marketed just right.

Eagerly taking part in the crass commercialization of animals on the Web, the Naked Dancing Llama not only ran an unsuccessful campaign for president, it also sells T-shirts to the faithful.

What brings people to the Llama site?

"I am cheaper than psychotherapy. I also lick people's faces."

Yes, there's much people can find on the Web.

So much that their heads might explode.

Doubt me? Then visit the Way of the Exploding Head. Gilmore (no last name, please) found and shares an epiphany sparked by visiting Secret Service agents: "DON'T (expletive deleted) WITH BOB DOLE. And don't try to use your home Scanner powers to explode the heads of presidential candidates."

It's all good fun until – you guessed it – someone's head explodes.

Overall, Duderstadt presents a good crop of weird pages. Asking pretty much the same questions of most of the authors, he brings a unity to what by its nature is an increasingly motley crew.

But Duderstadt should've dropped the question on what the police have to say about the site.

Gilmore is the only respondent who has a valid answer.

Duderstadt's fleeting glance with darkness on the Web also is unfulfilling.

There is no Q&A with the creator of the legendary Dan's Gallery of the Grotesque and the URL listed in the book is outdated. Surfers who find their way to the correct site learn that the curator has closed the gallery doors, leaving surfers no choice but to catch an electronic wave elsewhere in search of gloom.

Which only proves that the Web is everchanging. Strands have a way of breaking and a hit today is a file "not found" tomorrow.

But how can one be unhappy with an effort that brings together so many people bent on world domination? So many Cool Site of the Day veterans? So many dreamers?

And why did most do it? No, not because it's there. Certainly not because that's where the money is.

Because the space was free.

"The World's Weirdest Web Pages" is available by calling No Starch Press at (800) 420-7240, or on the Web at www.nostarch.com.