I Didn't Know There Was A Name For That

Sorry for the image.

Shortly after the release of the film Finding Forrester, I found myself mildly amused by a site with a simple but devastatingly inane premise: a wallpapered image of Sean Connery, with looping audio of his most famous line from that film, "You're the man now, dog!" I thought it was funny for about 30 seconds, and then I forgot about it altogether.

Well, as it turns out, that particular time waster started (or was at least emblematic of) an entire movement of what are now referred to as "YTMND" pages. I think you can guess what the acronym stands for.

In any case, thousands of such pages exist, so many so that there is actually a Wikipedia-like site cataloging them with comic-book collector care for detail. According to the site, the criteria for a webpage being classified as a YMNTD is:

"a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated or tiled, along with large zooming text and a looping sound file."

Naturally, my curiosity and curious lack of anything important to do at the moment have led me to list here my five favorite YMNTD's, as browsed in the past ten minutes:

1. "Mike Tyson: Insane Difficulty Unlocked": An animated GIF of a real Mike Tyson throws random punches while an 8-bit version of Mac, the hero from "Punch Out," scrolls back and forth across the bottom of the screen, trying to avoid the blows. The theme music from "Punch Out" provides the background audio.

2. "New Talent on 60 Minutes": During the telltale ticking intro of that one news show that I can never summon the boredom to continue watching, Mike Wallace and the regular cast introduce themselves. And then other people introduce themselves. It's annoying after only one viewing, but I still wish I'd thought of it.

3. "Clint Eastwood Loves Surprises": They wanted to throw him a birthday party. They made his day, but not in the way they meant to.

4. "Insurance Fraud Bust": This one's only funny if you've ever made it to one of the bonus levels of Street Fighter 2 with Guile.

5. "The Belarian Hummingbird": Will Smith flits about delicately, collecting pollen from a beautiful flower. I laughed audibly.

If you find others worth wasting time on, feel free to add them in the combox.