In computer news this week

Internet urban legends – the exploding whale

Listen my children and you will hear, the internet legend of the exploding whale …

The internet has a lot of strange places; weird places, sites where you can wile away great groups of your time, and one of the weirdest ones I’ve found are the myriad of sites related to on phenomenom that happened way before the world wide web was around, but now it’s all over it.

Humorist and columnist Dave Barry had even done a story on this one, and most of the verbage here is from his story; stating only the true facts of the incident, proving once again that real life can be funnier than made up things.

The Farside comes to life in Oregon.

I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on videotape. The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon, which sent a reporter out to cover the removal of a 45-foot, eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the beach. The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed on the Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects.

So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan -- remember, I am not making this up -- of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking is that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be eaten by seagulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal.

So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of dynamite next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in the history of the universe. First you see the whale carcass disappear in a huge blast of smoke and flame. Then you hear the happy spectators shouting "Yayy!" and "Whee!" Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound like "splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces of...MY GOD!" Something smears the camera lens.

Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge flaming chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere." One piece caved in the roof of a 1957 Buick parked more than a quarter of a mile away. Remaining on the beach were several rotting whale sectors the size of condominium units. There was no sign of the seagulls who had no doubt permanently relocated to Brazil.

This is a very sobering videotape. And it is all over the internet in various video formats, avi, real, quick time, in file sizes up to 11 meg. But if you’re an internet weird stuff fanatic – you have to see and have this video, and if you go to any search engine and type in Exploding whale you will see a list of more sites than you ever imagined would be dedicated to exploding whales.

In these lazy hazy days of summer, this is of course what the internet is for – entertainment.

Standing a safe half mile away from any exploding whale operations, this is Frank Delaney.

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 www.mtamicro.com frank@mtamicro.com