I’ll be the first to admit it: I don’t have a large audience of readers. This dilemma is entirely my fault since I don’t write in a consistent manner. I really should strive to write every day to grow my readership and quell the little voice of guilt in my head that rebukes me for not keeping a regular writing schedule. But as my online nickname suggests, I am a slacker and I must accept my true nature.
That statement being stated, during the past few months I’ve noticed that one of the (very) few articles of mine on Medium that do get regular visitors each month is “Here’s Some Awesomely Strange Videos at Archive.org Just For You”. Which is completely understandable - people enjoy weird things on the Internet and, boy howdy, the Internet Archive is a wonderful depository of unusual media of all types.
So, why not motivate my fat and lazy underperforming-as-a-writer ass and, hopefully, grow my readership by writing more articles covering strange stuff that can be found on the Internet Archive? It’d certainly be better for everyone concerned if I don’t write more articles about horrible things I’ve accidently done to myself, such as “A Warning About Shower Enema Kits And Old House Plumbing” which, horribly enough, is the other article of mine that regularly gets monthly reads. I’m not sure why people would be interested in the traumatic time I nearly flash-fried my lower colon with near-boiling water, but it’s the Internet, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
(As a quick aside, I named this article with the description of “Elevated Unconventional” in honor of a book written in 1988 called “High Weirdness By Mail” by Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius. That sacred tome was one of the excellent literary works that spurred my interest in comedy writing oh so many years ago. As my homage to that book, I’m using a play on words of “High Weirdness” with “Elevated Unconventional”. I’d be remiss if I didn’t provide a link to the SubGenius Foundation, so check it out! “Bob” just may be YOUR salvation!)
Without further ado, for your consideration and (hopefully) entertainment, here are ten links to strange and interesting media at The Internet Archive. Enjoy!
1. Milton William Cooper - Hour Of The Time : Milton William Cooper
Milton William "Bill" Cooper was one of the first major conspiracy theorists to gain fame and notoriety in the United States back in the early 90’s. He wrote books on the subject of the secret global cabal ruling us all, which they do, and if you don’t believe me you’re just one of the “sheeple”, so there.
Bill also hosted a popular semi-underground radio show called “The Hour Of The Time” until, well, agents of the secret global cabal shot him dead at his house on his front lawn. The link above will take you to a very large archive of Bill’s broadcasts. It’s great listening and, although I don’t agree with all of Bill’s theories, he did touch upon some very intriguing subjects when he was on the air. His show is much more interesting than a lot of the current crap that’s on the radio these days because he spoke without compromise, unfettered by big media interests.
2. Up All Night Video Archives
As the description on the webpage states, “Employee training videos, infomercials, video game promotional videos and horror/paranormal related content from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.” Hey, don’t you have an uncontrollable urge to watch Hulk Hogan’s Ultimate Grill Infomercial? You don’t? Well, I can’t blame you. Maybe a Wendy’s Restaurant training video on how to serve cold drinks? No? How about a Ronco Showtime Rotisserie BBQ Infomercial? Still no? Well, I guess there’s no pleasing you.
3. Hologram Time Traveller : Digital Leisure
Here’s some interesting and oddly relaxing video footage from Sega’s 1991 LaserDisc interactive movie arcade game “Hologram Time Traveler”. It was promoted as "the World's First 3-D Holographic Video Game", said holographic effect being created by projecting the video picture on a spherical glass mirror. I remember seeing this game in the arcades back when I was young and had hair and the actual 3-D effect was kinda “meh”. But, for the time, it was vaguely interesting. The arcade game didn’t catch on with the quarter-dropping public, though, so it disappeared almost as soon as it appeared. The videos should be a nostalgic watch for all you GenX’ers out there, of which I am one, so there’s that. I miss my hair.
4. Novelties Johnson Smith and Co. 1951 Catalog : Johnson Smith & Co.
Back in the day, when comic books weren’t investments and were read by kids for, like, fun y’know, Johnson Smith and Co. placed full-page advertisements offering all sorts of cheap yet mystical looking crap you could order by mail with your hard-earned newspaper route money. Although 1951 is a bit before my time, I’m including the Internet Archive link to it because the illustrations in this catalogue are a real treat to behold. And there’s 290 pages of said snazzy commercial art to enjoy! Need a graphic of a “Musical Monkey Action Gum Bank”? Who doesn’t, really?
‘FoodFight!’ is a terrible movie. I mean, it’s bad, and not bad in the sense of at least being somewhat entertaining due to how crappy it is. I mean, it’s bad in the sense that the character CGI designs in it are a very disturbing sight to see. Uncanny Valley? Nay, more like Uncanny Marianas Trench. The story plot is disjointed, the humor is distasteful, and anyone who watches the whole movie emerges from the experience with severe mental trauma. So I thought I’d make the whole world an even worse place to live in by providing you the link to an archive of its CGI art, storyboards, and other assorted horrible crap. You won’t thank me, but your therapist will appreciate billing you the extra hours of psychological help you’ll need after browsing through this repository of regret and horror.
Let’s lighten up your day with a video of a kindly Japanese woman applying some sort of medical lotion to a bunch of octopus tentacles. No, it’s not that kind of Japanese tentacle video, you sick monkey, you.
7. Stokes TV Archive Experiment
Marion Stokes was a television producer and archivist who recorded hundreds of thousands of hours of TV news and programs from 1977 to 2012 on many, many, many VHS and BetaMax videotapes. She left her son all of the tapes after her death, who in turn donated the entire collection to the Internet Archive in 2013. According to Wikipedia, it took four shipping containers (!) to deliver the tapes to the Internet Archive, and it was the largest collection they’d ever received. The good people at the Internet Archive are still digitizing the collection to this very day. I greatly admire her dedication… back in the 80’s I couldn’t even program a VCR to record "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson".
8. X Minus One - Single Episodes
Ah, the olden days of radio. When entire families would gather in the living room and tune into their favorite radio stations to listen to programs featuring comedy, adventure, drama, and news. Nowadays it’s just young people sitting in groups ignoring each other while scrolling through social media sites on their smartphones, but back in the 1930’s to 1950’s radio was the king of media. ‘X Minus One’ was a popular science fiction radio drama that aired stories by such famous writers such as Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Ray Bradbury.
The link above goes to an online sampling of a few episodes of ‘X Minus One’ for your listening pleasure. Take a break from scrolling on TikTok or arguing with idiots on Facebook and give this radio program a try to relive the days when radio stars hadn’t yet been killed by video.
9. The Worst Demo Tape Compilation In The World Ever (c. Late 80's/1990)
Here’s a fun yet hideous example of the weird stuff that’s on the Internet Archive. From the description on the webpage: “From the late 1980's (or may have been 1990), a tape, compiled by a UK record company - and made purely for internal use - featuring the worst songs they'd ever been sent from the thousands of demo tapes they received each year. No details of artists of track names sadly, so I've made an educated-ish guess. This album will hopefully haunt you for life…”
And haunt you for life it will! From a cover of “Nothing Compares to U” sung by a guy who sounds like he has a large tree branch shoved up his butt to some maniac repeating the song lyric “I need a girl” over and over in a horrible attempt to sound cool (and of which I remixed into a song with the help of Suno music A.I. at I Need A Girl (Disco Mix) by SlackerDan), you’ll be wondering why buying a tape recorder doesn’t require a government license.
10. The Conet Project : The Conet Project
To end this first volume of “Elevated Unconventional Links At The Internet Archive”, here’s a fascinating collection of recordings of strange and eerie broadcasts from numbers stations on shortwave radio. Numbers stations are used by governments to send coded information to their intelligence officers (read: secret agents) posted around the world. A handy description of numbers stations can be found at Numbers station - Wikipedia . Thanks to the ham radio enthusiasts at The Conet Project, we can now listen to a wide variety of transmissions from numbers stations recorded through many years. Leave it up to world governments to find a more nefarious use of radio besides broadcasting “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan!
I hope you enjoyed this article about The Internet Archive, or at least have used the time reading it to avoid doing productive work at your job. If you’d like to see more volumes of my “Elevated Unconventional Links at The Internet Archive”, post a comment besides “don’t you have better things to do with your time? ”
A Neocities follow would be awesome, too. Being a writer, I naturally thrive on attention and validation from others, so I’d very much appreciate reading what you think of this article. Now I’m off to revisit the Up All Night Video Archives to watch the “Blockbuster Training” video because I’m positive that, any day now, VHS tape rental stores will make a spectacular return! I hope. Well, probably not. But I can dream.