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ESC!Webs Site of the Week

Week of May 2, 1999

Dumbentia

Main Web Site: http://www.dumbentia.com/
Site Creator: Chris Condon

Dumbentia is a parody site.  Chris best describes it himself:

"What is dumbentia? Well, to start, it's a combination of a couple of words: dumb and dementia. My trusty dictionary defines dementia as "loss or impairment of mental powers." The word dumb, of course, goes without saying. That pretty much describes this place -- a showcase of the humor that is continuously slipping out of my mind."

What gets parodied on this site?  Everything.  There are really three major sections to his web site.  Advertising Parodies, Motivational Posters and Internet Postcards.  I found the Advertising parodies to be probably the best produced humor I've yet to find on the Net.  What makes it so good?  Well, Chris obviously has some desktop publishing experience under his belt because, using PageMaker, he is able to accurately produce computer game advertisements, magazine covers and ads for psychics which a lay person would have a hard time differentiating from the real thing.

Some of the ads I particularly enjoyed were the ad for the new computer game "Womb Raider" and his ad for the January 1999 Swimsuit edition of National Geographic Magazine.  It seems that nobody can escape his jabs including (especially?) Microsoft.

Moving on to his "motivational" posters, we find the ever familiar design, but... something is different...  Hmmm.  These motivational posters encourage employees to partake in such activities as SLOTH, PRIDE, WRATH, LUST, GLUTTONY, ENVY and GREED.  Sound familiar?  I'd recommend printing these out on a good color printer and hanging them around the office.  I'm particularly fond of SLOTH.

Chris' last major section is the Internet Postcard.  It is here that you can send an image from one of his Advertising campaigns to another fellow Net user.  There are many options to personalize the card including adding music, changing the background image/color and text color.  After creating your card, you are invited to preview the final version before sending it off.  This is probably one of the best digital postcard pages I've seen in a while.

The site is rounded off by a bookstore, comment pages, a mailing list and a list of links to follow if you haven't had enough yet. 

To view all of the ads and motivational posters on the site you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader (it's FREE) installed on your system.  To see if you have it, look under START -> PROGRAMS and look for a folder called ADOBE or ACROBAT READER.  You'll also know that you need it if you download his ads and your system won't display them, instead asking which program you'd like to use to view the file.

If by some chance you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can get a version for the Mac or Windows based PC by following this link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

This will bring you to a site which will allow you to download this FREE program.  This process of downloading Acrobat Reader is probably the only reason I'm rating his site a 9 instead of a 10.  I've found that newbies to the Internet have a hard time understanding how to download and install programs such as Acrobat Reader on their system.  I don't know why really and when it comes right down to it, I'm just as guilty as Chris because I plan to distribute documents on ESC!Webs in Acrobat format as well.  In fact, the back issues of ESC! Magazine are being converted to this format now.  For publishers it's really the best thing going out there now to ensure the integrity of the documents you are sending people.

Overall, however, this site is extremely enjoyable and worth your time to stop by.  Even if you have to download Acrobat Reader.  Enjoy the laughter.

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