Monday, March 10, 2003		Book Review

YELLOW pages, traditionally, is a volume or section of a telephone directory that lists businesses, services, or products alphabetically according to field. Apply this to the world of the Internet and you have the Internet yellow pages.

The presence of all establishment (business, education, organisation and government) addresses on the Net has made it imperative to have a Web directory of sorts so that offline a Netizen should have a fair inkling of what’s in store for him when he gets online to browse for a particular topic. As it is, the Net is a vast ocean and without any ‘lighthouse’ a browsing sailor may get lost.

This 1000-paged maha-book, yellow in colour, has nearly 200 categories that are arranged in alphabetical order. The book content table starts with Advice and ends up with Zoology. The nice thing is that the book is comprehensive. Almost anything under the sun (read on the Web) has been listed with full details. Take for example, sub-head Missinformation in the Advice chapter. Missinformation is Jayne Lytel, a technically knowledgeable writer who seems to know everything and is more than willing to give informed advice to anyone who will listen. A kind of agony e-aunt

Then under the Agriculture section you have interesting information. Savour er… beat this eggy information that in April 2002, 7.08 billion eggs were produced in the USA of which 5.99 billion were table eggs and 1.09 billion were hatching eggs.

Full four pages have been devoted to Anarchy, a chapter on those rebels who redefined the recipe of government and stirred the stew. The book even has an interesting unlawful section, though different from anarchy, with links on looting, plundering and stealing.

So what do you do if you are not married and you do not have a mother-in-law? Not to worry. The Gargoyles and Grotesques sites are open, round the clock, to fulfil your need for surreal scariness. So screams the book in typical sense of humour and goes on to list two sites on this unique form of sculpting.

This yellow-page giant of a book is simply amazing. It suggests that those computer files that are not needed anymore can be sent to potatoland, the digital landfill. For more, one can log to potatoland.org.

Another nice thing is that the book is interspersed with pearls of wisdom that are more or less like Sidhuisms (cricket ignorant, please excuse). Like ‘a monkey covered with gold gets more respect than a wise man dressed in rags.’ Or ‘when you have a chocolate cake, always serve big portions.’ Then this one: ‘When there are no rules, most people choose to cooperate.’ ‘Jazz is to music as lust is to love.’

The fashion and clothing section has an interesting link on lipstick. If you want to know which lipstick shades and brands are used by famous models and movie stars, this is the place. The book has listed a link www.thelipstickpage.com for this.

Like a supermarket, there are a lot many sections in this book to suit everyone’s requirement. There is a section for kids, for teenagers, for young men and women and even a three-paged one on sex starting from abstinence right up to urban sex legends. The sound chapter has links on animal sounds, bird sounds and Christmas sounds. It even has sound archives and sound tools. Another link on lying starts with an advice – if you never lie you will never have to remember what you say. After explaining the vices of lying the book lists seven sites on lying including.

The book even has a section on motor cycles and biker women. As we said, this book has something for everyone.