THE THINKING MAN'S "ATE MY BALLS" PAGE
The modern "Ate My Balls" web page was invented circa 1996 with the transcendent and visionary Mr. T Ate My Balls! page. Not long after, the genre exploded as an avenue of artistic expression, launching dozens of sites dedicated to Ate My Balls-oriented humor and social commentary. Experienced web surfers will recognize the following images as, for good or for ill, typical of the genre:
Regrettably (in my view), too many of these pages limit their scope to current celebrities and popular culture. This I consider a disservice to such creatively fertile ground; I contend that incorporating more esoteric and scholarly topics will, if properly implemented, take this dynamic and exciting form of electronic literature into its next stage of development.
Though an amateur scholar, I take it on myself to at least "start the ball rolling," if the pun will be forgiven, by conceiving and presenting my own prototypical ideas.
My initial attempt, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN ALAN GREENSPAN ATE MY BALLS!!!!, may have been too topical and for that reason has only enjoyed limited success. I will attempt to be clearer in my intent by presenting a representative sampler of Ate My Balls pages drawing on a wide range of cultural and academic sensibilities.
This first notion draws, of course, on the world of renaissance art.
THE FRESCOES OF RAPHAEL ATE MY BALLS!!!
Already, we see a vast improvement over the desperately trendy "populist" Ate My Balls page. But this is only a launching point- students and aficionados of U.S. history could, I am confident, derive much entertainment from a properly written web page made up of images like the following:
THE FEDERALIST PAPERS ATE MY BALLS!!!
Even with my limited faculty in higher mathematics, I can create this prototypical image for a properly-trained mathematician to develop to its full potential:
GODEL'S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM ATE MY BALLS!!!
To date unexplored in this, the dawn of the Ate My Balls phenomenon, is its potential as a non-visual, strictly literary movement. Though only an excerpt at this early stage, Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Ate My Balls!!! is of sufficient size to warrant its own separate page.
At this early stage, I would not rule out Ate My Balls pages as educational resources. This example, taken from the field of Gestalt theory, could serve as an educational aid on the Internet or a textbook illustration off of it:
THAT WHICH CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD EXCEPT THROUGH DIRECT EXPERIENCE ATE MY BALLS!!!
Lastly, when thinkers and academics jump into a cultural pool, the self-referential "meta" piece cannot be far behind. I anticipate jokes of this sort:
THE "ATE MY BALLS" PHENOMENON ATE MY BALLS!!!
And there, such as it is, stands my proposal. Whether the educated webmasters of the world will follow my lead and raise the collective intelligence of testiculaphagic humor is now in their hands.