The Friday Fillip

I cannot resist employing useless things. One reason, I guess, is that I’ve been taught and brought up since the year dot to be useful. Naturally, this leads to a hankering after the useless, that which is instrumental to no purpose and the disappearance of which would not materially change the world. Music is one such. (Note, I said materially.) As is poetry and, indeed, most art. There is no point to any of it — and that is the lovely point, of course.

But poetry, painting, music . . . these are the heavies, when it comes to uselessness. There is also a vast ocean of lightweight inutilities to be, well, made use of — if you’re a composer of Friday fillips, as I am. And for your delectation I have a website that acts as a dipper into a bay of that ocean.

Aptly titled, “The Useless Web” has a big pink button that when clicked will whisk you to a website that has no purpose. Using the pink button has introduced me to such nonsense as

• Falling Falling, where graphics and, even moreso, sound create the impression of perpetual falling
• A site where a pug (I think it is) licks your screen from the other side
• Break Glass to Sound Alarm, which . . . Right.
• Staggering Beauty, featuring a tube worm that follows your cursor with all the enthusiasm of a black lab

You get the idea.

So if it should happen that your life is too full of consequentiality — if you’re involved in stuff with import — consider this as a mild corrective, easily applied whenever what you’re doing is simply too useful.