This Page Should Be Censored

The Australian government's Internet censorship legislation took effect on 1 January 2000, to the dismay of almost anyone who actually uses the net (which doesn't seem to include 9 out of 10 Australian politicians). Among its many joys, it promotes the use of filtering software like Net Nanny or SurfWatch to stop kiddies (and—a bit of bad luck, this—grown-ups too) from seeing the wrong things.

These programs don't always work as intended. They can block perfectly innocent webpages, while still letting through a lot of hard-core ones. You wouldn't trust a medical test that did that: it would declare your headache fatal while not noticing that your arm had turned gangrenous.

They don't always work because either they use 'bad site' lists built by hand (and there just aren't enough hands to keep track of the billions of bytes on the web), or they automatically detect 'bad' words and block out pages that contain them. Mostly they do the latter.

When you have a look at a list of bad words used by one of the government's preferred filter programs, you can see why it blocks a lot of pretty harmless pages (including mine).

Well, when I see a list like that, I see a challenge. The challenge being to use every single word on one single page, and still get past the filtering software. This is that page.

To make it a little more challenging, I used the words in alphabetical order (or as close to it as possible), and as innocently as I could—though with a few of them that was a little, um, difficult. The results are... how should I put it... interesting.

The horrible deviant words in the story below start with a red letter, which, by happy coincidence, also gets them past the automatic filters. (The code used to colour the first letter breaks up the word and makes it undetectable.) The only way this page will be filtered by this software is if a human being adds it to their list of bad pages.

Of course, I can't imagine any reason why they'd want to do that...

Shooting the Breeze

Jennifer wasn't being very adult about the scratch on her hand. 'Swab it with alcohol,' I suggested.

'No,' she insisted, 'That's for amateurs, and I'm no amateur.'

'Oh, go on,' I said, 'Don't be so anal about it.'

'What are you, some kind of anarchist?'

'On the contrary. Anarchists want anarchy, just as Aryans want to be Aryan. I want neither.'

'Well, since I have an anus, I suppose you could say I'm anal, but you'd be a pompous ass if you did.'

'Babe,' I said, 'even babes-in-arms get scratched, but you don't see them banging on about it, do you?'

'Pass me my bangle,' she interjected, slipping it onto her bare wrist. I'd barely handed it over when I noticed the photo she was holding of our good friend Thomas.

'Tom! What's that old bastard up to these days?' I chuckled.

'Oh, he's busy as a beaver. The pay is small beer, and the hours are bestial, but that's the trouble with being a bikini designer. He's designed so many two-piece bikinis that he's seeing everything in binaries. But he doesn't want to bitch about it.'

'Never bitches about things, does our Thomas... How does he like being a blonde?'

'Well, he said he was sick of being a red-head, and as they say, blondes have more fun!'

'That scratch is looking a little bloody,' I noticed.

'Hmm,' said Jennifer. 'Anyway, he said his work is going like a bomb.'

'That's okay until it actually bombs.'

'True.' She looked at her hand more carefully. 'Perhaps I should wrap this in a bondage.'

'A bondage? Don't you mean bandage?'

We laughed at her unintentional boner.

'Bong!' I intoned, giving her the gong.

'I feel like a complete boob,' she giggled.

'I'd feel a little booby if I were you,' I agreed.

'So,' I continued, 'is he scoring a great swag of booty? You know, getting stuff gratis? He must get some good gear, working for a fashion house.'

'He's not dressing like a Bourbon,' said Jennifer, 'but he gets the occasional bra to add to his wife's bras collection.'

'She'd have to be multi-breasted to wear them all!' I laughed.

'With some of those over her breasts,' said Jennifer, 'she looks like she belongs in a brothel. Though at least brothels buff up their wardrobes now and then.'

'Bugger,' I muttered.

'What's wrong?', asked Jennifer.

'Oh, I just touched the butt of my cig on the warm end by mistake.'

'You shouldn't leave your butts lying around,' she admonished.

'So,' I continued, ignoring her unwanted advice, 'How is Tom's bra-collecting wife? Still as buxom as ever?'

'Well,' said Jennifer, gravely, 'not since the mastectomy.'

'I'm sorry,' I faltered, 'I had no idea.'

'The doctor has prescribed cannabis. For medicinal purposes. To soothe the pain.'

'So you've seen her recently?'

'I went to the hospital for a chat. Took her a Cherry Coke.'

'Chicks like that stuff,' I smiled, as I lit up my cigar.

'It was horrible. They were about to circumcise a baby boy in the next bed. I've never seen a circumcision before. It made me glad to have a clitoris.'

I let that one pass. 'Maybe the doctors should prescribe cocaine,' I said. 'I hear that's good for pain.'

I saw Jennifer cock an eyebrow at that. When Jennifer cocks an eyebrow, I get ready for an argument.

'That's a new-comer in my book,' she said. 'A very strange conception. How would they get hold of it?'

'Smuggle it in a condom, I guess; isn't that what people do?'

She started to crack a smile. 'What are you, some kind of crank? Where would they hide it?'

'Well, in their crotch, I suppose...'

'No!' she protested, 'Don't say another word! Good heavens, you'll be talking about cunnilingus next.'

'Oh, go on,' I said, 'does that mean I'm also destined to say "dildo"?'

'It must be the tobacco that's making you talk dirty.'

'What is this, an anti-smoking tirade? Enough of your domination.'

'That cigar will spell your doom, I tell you.'

'Only if I confuse it with a stick of dynamite.'

'Dynamite!' she began to ejaculate. But no sooner had this ejaculation begun than she calmed down, changing the subject back to the hospital.

'They were giving someone an enema at the other end of the ward.'

'Ooh. I hate enemas. Talk about the enemy of Eros.'

'There's certainly nothing erotic about them,' Jennifer agreed. 'But then, that's true of a lot of so-called erotica.'

'You need someone to escort you to the bathroom afterwards because your bowels are so explosive.'

Jennifer laughed. 'First dynamite, now explosives—that fag in your mouth is affecting your brain.'

'Hey, don't knock the fags,' I said, patting the cigar-case in my pocket, 'they're the stuff of fantasies.'

'They're nothing more than a thinly-veiled fellatio-reference.'

'Do you think I have some kind of fetish?' I asked, waving the cigar in my fist. 'Like some British MP who likes to flagellate his flesh?'

'Well, it's just the way you fondle it at times.'

'Fondling a cigar is half the fun,' I said. 'It's the tactile aspects of smoking that make it worthwhile. All the best people agree.'

'No, only that foolish foursome you call your friends.'

'You're free to call us foolish,' I said, adopting a haughty air, 'just as we are free to call such attitudes frigid.'

Jennifer snorted. She looked down at her hand again.

'That's quite a gash,' I said. 'Perhaps you'd better visit the hospital yourself.'

'I'm not some delicate geisha, you know.'

'All right then, try washing it in gin.'

She gave a girlie giggle.

'What,' I objected, 'that's a bit too unrefined for girls, is it? You'd rather something with a bit more glamour?'

'Well, it is a little Gothic. I haven't been hit by a grenade, you know.'

'Grenades don't cause wounds like that. A gun might.'

'Guns! That's overstating things, isn't it? Next you'll say I managed to hack away at my hand with a hacker.'

'Hacking at your hand wouldn't make such a hash of it. Forget cannabis or cocaine, you'll need heroin to soothe that level of pain. Unless you're a real heroine yourself.'

'I know how to get out of a hole when I need to.'

'Speaking of holes, do you prefer to drink your milk whole or homo...'

'Did you know that the ARL...' she interrupted.

'...genized? What? The Australian Rugby League? What about it?'

'Did you know that they've penalised Parramatta's hooker?'

'What have hookers got to do with anything?'

'Well, I was down at a game the other day, waving my scarf and hooting my hooter. I was tooting away, making all sorts of noisy horny tooting sounds, when I suddenly felt a little hot, right in the hymen.'

'Pardon?'

'Anyway,' she carried on regardless, 'this hustler came over and asked if I want to buy a cheap ticket to the next game. He said all of the hustlers had them; they had a cartel going.'

'Sounds a bit incestuous.'

'It could have been incest; they even looked like brothers, sculling down their beers together at half-time.'

'Just because they're engaged in social intercourse doesn't make them brothers, Jenny.'

'Yes, but whole jugs of the stuff? That much can kill a man.'

'The real killer is getting it down your throat.'

'Well, whatever's killing them, it looked a little kinky to me. They were even kissing each other on the cheek, like Europeans.'

'Maybe they were Klan members.'

'As in Ku Klux?'

'Yeah, the old white knights.'

'Maybe. Although they weren't wearing robes and brandishing knives.'

'Speaking of rugby, was the ball made out of latex or leather?'

'Good grief, you're always asking me about leather. Just because I'm a lesbian.'

'Hey, I've got nothing against lesbians. I just have an unnatural degree of interest in sporting goods.'

'You'll be asking me about lingerie next.'

'Only when I've had too much liquor.'

'You are a bit of a liquor-lover.'

'Yes, but liqour-lovers don't let it get out of hand; it's only when you develop a lust for liquor that there's a problem. Lustful attitudes towards anything are unhealthy, as my old grandmother used to say.'

'She wasn't too lusty herself, then?'

'Any sign of lust and she'd get out her can of mace. Policemen used to ask her, "Madam, please put that away," and she'd mace them because they called her "madam" and not "madame". After she was finished with them they'd wish they'd gone after the Mafia instead.'

'Males never know when to say the right thing.'

'Do you know how painful mace is? You'd need marijuana just to master the pain. The way she reacted you'd think she'd seen them masturbate.'

'Well, masturbating in public would be rather rude. Masturbation is not something to be forced on innocent grandmothers. Especially by policemen.'

'... No. Quite. But all they did was call her "madam", and she'd leave them having to slice up melons and lay slices over their eyes to take away the sting. She was a harsh mistress, my grandmother.'

'Not all grandparents make the best role-models. At least she would never molest you with her mace.'

'No, but that didn't stop her molesting my ears with a piece of her mind.'

'Every grandma molests her grandkids with all that moonshine.'

'And her cooking! She had enough munitions in her cupboard to murder the whole lot of us.'

'I'm sure she wasn't a murderer!'

'You don't know what she could do with mushrooms. The scenes of mutilation on her chopping board were hideous.'

'You didn't have to eat it, surely.'

'There was nowhere to hide. It was like you were naked, and vulnerable in your nakedness.'

'So you just had to eat it?'

'Whatever nasty concoction she had prepared that day. But I was naughty once. I called her an old Nazi and said she should feed her food to all the other Nazis.'

'That's a bit harsh.'

'I did feel bad, watching her stand there in her frowsy old negligee, wondering how she should react...'

'Wait'll I post this to the alt.grandmothers newsgroup!'

'... but then she came over and grabbed my nipple—I was half-nude at the time, and she hated nudity—and gave it a good twist, and shrieked at me, "You little nymph! I'm not having some nymphomaniac calling me a Nazi, you obscene little boy!"'

'"Nymphomaniac"?'

'She never was too strong on vocabulary.'

'Boy. What a story. So what was your mother's cooking like?'

'Oh, pure delight. Oral heaven. Eating her chocolate eclairs was the food equivalent of an orgasm. We used to have orgies of eating where we gorged ourselves on whole plates of the things.'

'A chocolate orgy—that sounds fun. What's your mother's name again?'

'Pam. Pamela.'

'Oh yes, she was the one with the panties, wasn't she?'

'Yes,' I sighed, 'she's the panty woman.'

'"Panties"! That's classic.'

'It's hard thinking up good email passwords.'

'Yeah, but what a way to prevent penetration of your email account. You might as well use "penis" or "penises".'

'My mother definitely wouldn't use those!'

'Are you sure? Have you been up to her penthouse lately to ask her?'

'What am I, some kind of pervert?'

'Nothing perverted about it—don't get yourself into a pickle.'

'The only pickles I'm into are green and vinegary.'

'Whatever turns you on.'

'You know what I mean! And don't you raise your pierced eyebrow at me.'

She smiled sweetly, and fixed me with a piercing gaze instead. 'Let's change the subject. How's John?'

'Oh, that old pimp. He's on the piss a bit too much these days. I saw him in a pub the other day, waving a pistol around.'

'What's he doing with pistols?'

'Fancies himself as a bit of a playboy, I think.'

'I wouldn't want that playboy for a playmate.'

'No, you'd want to choose your playmates more carefully, I reckon. You should have seen him eating this roast pork sandwich he'd ordered. It was positively pornographic.'

'Yeah, but watching him eat anything approaches pornography. He's got an enormous pot on him. I feel the urge to prick it like a balloon and watch him blow around the room.'

'It would take several pricks to burst his balloon, not just one.'

'Let's hope he never decides to procreate.'

'Lord, no. And think of his poor old pussy-cat. It must quake in fear every time he wanders around looking for a chair, worrying he might get some queer notion to sit down right on top of it.'

Jennifer remembered a John story of her own.

'I remember once when he dashed into the fish and chip shop for a quickie; he swallowed this whole piece of fish just swimming in rape-seed oil...'

'You mean canola.'

'Yes, canola—and this piece of fish...'

'Nobody calls it rape-seed oil.'

'Rape, canola, whatever. Anyway, this piece of fish is so oily that it passes right through his intestines and into his rectum in record time, and he shoots off like a rifle to the toilets and spends half an hour in there.'

'John on the john.'

'Exactly.'

'Have you seen him when he's in a bookstore? He always rifles through the romance novels. It's bizarre. "Romancing Rebecca", "Rum and Lavender", "The Colour of Sable". It's like he's Satan on a holiday.'

'Strange breed of Satanism, where the devotees read romance novels.'

'Yeah, Satan would want to scotch any rumours of that going on. Far too sensual. You don't want to be seen as sensuous when you're the prince of all darkness.'

'Why do you assume his sex is male?'

'Just convention, I guess. I don't really think of Satan as a sexual being, to be honest.'

'He might have a raw sexuality.'

'I doubt it would be sexually arousing to burn in hell for all eternity.'

'No, but fire can be sexy...'

'Maybe,' I said uncertainly.

'Has John had a shave yet?' asked Jennifer.

'Yes, he shaved off the beard last week. Looks really shit, but there you go. He had to do it for this film he's shooting.'

'What, "Shotgun Jamaica"?'

'That's the one. The director was worried the shotguns would set fire to John's beard.'

'Strange to think of a shy bloke like John being an actor.'

'Shy? Is this the same John we're talking about? The one who walked through a mall wearing leopard skins for that Tarzan Jungle Meal fast food promotion?'

'Yes, but he had to do that to get their slave wages.'

'You pay slave wages, you get slaves.'

'True enough,' she nodded. 'By the way, is he still going to that Slayer concert?'

'He was going to, but it's smack in the middle of the movie shoot.'

'I don't know... it's strange to think of him acting in that smut.'

'It was a part,' I shrugged. 'When one comes up, you have to snatch it.'

'Yes, but it's really not up to snuff. About the only thing that doesn't get a mention in that script is sodomy. The writer deserves a good spank. If he hasn't been spanked already.'

'I don't think spanking the script-writer is going to bring that movie up to speed. That part where the sperm whale attacks the pirate ship—they should strip that out, for a start.'

'They definitely need a script-stripper.'

'A whole bunch of script-strippers,' I agreed.

'But it might just end up being a script-striptease,' Jennifer joked.

We laughed, then fell silent. I played absent-mindedly with the press-studs on my shirt. 'Maybe the director would read a submission from me,' I ventured.

'Why not?' said Jennifer.

'But then, it could really suck.'

'You'd have to be a complete sucker not to submit it out of fear of rejection,' said Jennifer. 'The script's sucking or not has nothing to do with whether a film gets made.'

'Yeah, but a bad script can be professional suicide.'

'And a good one can let you show real supremacy. What's your script about?'

'It's a real disbelief-suspender. I don't know if I should say... you might find it hard to swallow.'

'Hey, come on. I'm a bit of a swinger when it comes to crazy ideas.'

'Funny you should mention swingers, because the opening scene is of this man swinging on a rope in the air... the camera focuses on him, and you can make out a tattoo. In fact, his whole arm is covered in tattoos...'

'And?'

'No, I don't think I should say any more.'

'Oh, don't be such a tease!'

'Well, it's about terrorism.'

'So this guy on the rope is a terrorist?'

'No, he's been captured by terrorists. From the dreaded Order of the Bull's Testicle.'

'Bull's testicles!'

'Yes, they wear them on a leather thong around their necks.'

'You'd look like a complete tit!'

'They don't care about looking like tits, they're dangerous people. They treat others like toys in their quest for ultimate power.'

'So this guy on a rope. What's he doing?'

'Well, he's hanging there by his arms, wearing only his underwear, with a pistol jammed into his crotch... you can see the pain in his eyes from the gun...'

'See, you don't have that with a vagina. Vaginas are much less vulnerable,' Jenny nodded knowingly.

'Um... yeah. And then the camera pans back, and you see he's hanging from a helicopter, but there's a stiff wind, so it shakes and shakes like some big vibrating... vibrating...'

'Vibrator?'

'I suppose so.'

'So this film has a fair bit of violence, then?'

'A little. Mainly it's about the Order's search for a virgin sacrifice for the Bull god.'

'Why do sacrifices always involve virgins? What does virginity have to do with it?'

'Well, y'know. It's traditional.'

'Are there any other good scenes?'

'There's the one where a watchman is guarding a stash of weapons, and a female member of the Order poses as a serving wench to lure him away, because he has a known weakness for wenches.'

'This guy sounds a bit wet.'

'He is. Anyway, they go around the corner and there's a gang of thugs waiting for him, and there's a big fight, and by the end of it he's totally whipped.'

'Then what?'

'They stash him into a whiskey crate while he screams at the girl who lured him, "You whore! You'll burn in hell like all whores!" He's totally wild by this stage. And she just laughs and drinks from a bottle of wine, while he's cursing and swearing and accusing her of witchcraft.'

'That's... that's brilliant!'

'Why, thank you.'

'Take off all my clothes and shag me senseless, right now!'

Less Frivolous Sources

Electronic Frontiers Australia
Fighting Internet Censorship
Prairie Dog

There are plenty more, but that's a start.