Blackout Flop; Australia's Internet Directory and Card Player

Ethan Switch - Friday, 20 February 2004 - Print Version

Falling asleep halfway through, reading the December 2003 issue of Australia's Internet Directory ran in at about two and a half hours or 150 minutes —whichever sounds more bearable. Rare in the find, it's one of the few magazines that were found from the stock growing toward the apex of the roof sporting the entirety of its cover. There is no attempt at a logo for the resultant look hams across a glossy homemade newsletter for those with no desire of aesthetics. A sour looking Christina Aguilera fronts the cover and across the lower, headshots of what are no doubt pornographic and erotic websites featuring subjectively hot naked and near naked women. Apart from a guy blowing into his tissue and a headless shot of rock abs, there is no showcasing of men.

One major challenge in disposing of corpses lies in the extraction and removal of any sort of evidence that would indicate the body having been there in the first place. An adult pull-out section with the disclaimer, "Please keep it away from the kids. That is why it is removable." makes the assumption that kids are idiots without logic, can't count or remember past a few pages such as the contents listing and don't ask questions. The removal of the section takes out a few page numbers and still leaves the warning box on the cover.

Australia's Internet Directory is a misnomer as there are more paragraphs and pages with Malaysia and Hong Kong as focal points and no more than three Australian-based sites mentioned throughout. Maybe that could explain why each and every page is headed by the guide. Indication of a shell.

Screen captures are slapped in a haphazard mess leaving no clear path of copy. TinyUrl gets a major workout with about 80% of the websites listed using the shorthand format and this could have made it easier for lay out but that's only one factor. Another problem is that the images often run on the otherside of pages in which they're mentioned. Most of the magazine is like this. It's a distinct contempt for readability that brings all the pages together.

It's a pain to read.

Much like the pain felt when reading Card Player. The three or four hours taken to read the first January issue of 2004 was interspersed with rounds of Need for Speed Underground and a nap which when woken from, rammed the top and back of the skull into the front door bell handle. Luckily, though with a little bit of regret, there was no fountain of blood. This little incident occured with half of Card Player left.

Terms such as "flopping a set," "in the small blind," "flat called from the button" and something funny (but didn't get written down while reading this bastard) that included a turn on the "pot" doesn't make for casual reading. Nor does the fact that half of the magazine consists of columns and the other half full page ads. At this point a nosebleed would have been sweet relief from having to wade through the endless recounts of matches with jargon and slang so common to the card players and so foreign to outsiders. One or two columns managed to not only skip using the tight vernacular but also the running commentary of a card game. Sadly, those were far too infrequent.

Ethan Switch