Zyra's web site is a massive collection of conceptually linked, freely associated ideas and facts where it is easy to spend hours roaming around making serendipitous connections by clicking links.

I was considering doing a party political version of the Toxic Drums. It appealed to me that the drums were red, blue and yellow, the colours of the three main political parties in Britain. I thought an image with the three leaders in their respective coloured drums would say a lot about what I think of party politics. As I like to be sure I am correct I did a quick search on Google for "colours uk political parties". To my surprise number four in the list was that eccentric mad scientist Zyra. The entry was:

Political parties (UK)
If you run a UK political party, then regardless of whether you pay me or not, you can be on this ... initially in a random order, and in neutral colours. ...
www.zyra.org.uk/politic.htm - Cached - Similar

So I had to click to see what Zyra had to say. The funny thing about Zyra's site for me is that I sometimes end up on it and like no other web site I know I end up browsing around. It is a complete labyrinth of conceptual connections and serendipitous links. From the Political Parties page I clicked on the myth of democracy . From there I noticed a link to people don't vote FOR politicians and, having read more than half the page I wondered how all this linking worked and I took a look at the Site Index.

Well that is weird. I say weird - I mean huge. It is a very clever idea to automate the site index for the whole web site. The page I landed on seemed to be just the 0 to A entries for the site and it has two rather historical looking computer graphics of a rotating globe which I include here with Zyra's permission. (Actually the permission should be sought from fg-a.com since they are the people from whom Zyra got the globe. They give away vast volumes of free gifs and animations.)

I clicked on one of them wondering if it was linked to anything and sure enough it was linked to THE FULL SITE INDEX. I was scrolling up and down the page wondering what 39391 entries looked like. It's a huge number but amazingly the internet and modern electronic communication allows it to load quickly enough that you have hardly had time to read the title of the page.

Apart from finding out that the south and north poles are the wrong way up at norsth.htm I also noticed 1-800 4 Clocks and wondered what that was about. Was it about atomic clocks or some weird historical format or what? So I clicked on the link. It was actually for a company called 1-800 4 clocks (I guess because it spells there phone number on a phone). So I went to the place and suitably impressed by the range of clocks they sell and the fact that they used to have a shop in Grand Central Station in New york.

I returned to Zyra's site and randomly clicked on the link to Antiques. That was a strangely coloured page and looked as if it was faded down the page. Not sure if this was an optical illusion or not I looked at the html. It was an optical illusion. Ah well! I then noticed Old Post Van ~~For Sale~~ - SOLD! and curiosity simply got the better of me so I clicked the link. Sure enough, there was a picture of a very dilapidated old Post Office Van.

I meandered down the page reading all about free association and gambling machines when I eventually decided to click on the link to Stuff for Sale wondering what other amazing "stuff" Zyra had for sale. Well I took a look at a number of odd things including old Amstrad bits and pieces and then I noticed a rather bizarre link titled FIDEL CASTRO; WAX HEAD so I had to click on that!

To my surprise, though I don't know why I should be surprised, I was confronted with an image of Fidel Castro's head in wax. It's a fascinating page and on all accounts the wax head of Fidel Castro is still for sale. I noticed at the top of the page a link saying Ask-You Index and wondered quite what angle this was.

So I clicked. The page seems like a collection of two conceptual things. One is where Zyra wants to know more about something, like a SALS MACHINE and the other is where someone has asked Zyra about something and, not knowing the answer, Zyra has put the question out to the world to try to get answers. It is as it suggests an Ask-You page. I noticed a mention of Amusement Machine Glass and clicked without thinking only to arrive at a page all about glass from those pub gambling machines. It appear Zyra collects this sort of stuff and is currently selling some of it off. At that point I wondered what on earth I was doing spending all morning roaming around Zyra's web site.

So - to make retrospective use of my time and to share some of the more pleasant encounters I have in this life I decided to make a page dedicated to the arbitrary roamability of Zyra's web site. As I am sure you will have been tempted to click some of the links by now and you will realise that Zyra's web site will appeal to some and not to others but one thing is for sure it is a massive collection of associated links to almost everything and makes for a real pleasant virtual ramble through hyperspace on a rainy day.