Sickipedia is a website run by Rob Manuel, he of b3ta, founded in 2005 and with the express purpose of cataloguing the world's largest collection of unprintable, gruesome, horrible, squicky, and just plain offensive and rude jokes. Here, nothing whatsoever is beyond the pale.
"Statistically, 9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape." - The highest rated joke on the site for over a year.
The site initially started off to produce a book, which it did, but then it snowballed into a compendium of all the stuff that even 4chan would turn up their nose at. There are no taboos. The jokes are categorised into things such as "Sex and shit," "Religion and racism," "Illness and Mortality" (which is there all the dead baby jokes are found) and, of course, the biggest category on the site, "Celebrities."
"Whitney Houston found dead in the bath. Must have been trying to get clean." - On the death of Whitney Houston.
The headlines are often a source of merriment for Sickipedians, and it's oft cited on the site that whenever a celebrity dies, the site crashes. This was indeed the case when Whitney Houston bought it, when Amy Winehouse bought it, when Steve Jobs bought it, when Michael Jackson bought it - especially then - within hours, its page was being e-mailed to everyone in peoples' address books, mine included, which was immensely gratifying considering the emotional fascism that went on at the time. And of course, when Jade Goody (piss be upon her) carked it, the site also crashed.
"What turns an ignorant racist pig into a beautiful loving mother? Cancer!" - On the death of Jade Goody.
Of course, it's not just jokes about celebrities and other plagues upon the earth dying or getting into trouble. There's a significant category on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and also the death of the teenager Francesca Anobile when she ran her bobsled into a barbed wire fence. This category resulted in Police action against the site on behalf of the recently bereaved, but this only had the side effect of increasing traffic further. And there's just plain unprintable stuff and every last museum piece joke from the casually racist 1970s, of course, most of which really aren't funny. Then, of course, there's the usual conglomerate of dead baby jokes and suchlike.
"What's harder than stapling a dead baby to a tree? My nob while doing it." - Ibid.
To be fair, I'm kinda glad that a site like Sickipedia exists. Yes, there's a lot of dross and stuff you've probably heard before, and a load of hotheads who reckon that pearoasting Bernard Manning is somehow being rebellious and sticking it to the man, but there's also stuff that acts as a refreshing antidote to the straitened, po-faced, easily offended times, and that there are people out there who aren't going to be cowed by the fact you can get 12 weeks' porridge for upsetting someone on Twitter.
Also, when a celebrity dies, and there's the usual phony outpouring of grief from luvvies, its rapidly filling category on same is really heartening that there are people out there who aren't going to wear their hearts on their sleeves and be speechless with grief at someone they never knew or owt. And that's about it really.
They also run now "Sickidates," which is an Internet dating site for people who appreciate gallows humour. I'm not a member, before you ask.
In closing, "Can all those waiting to make a joke about Amy Winehouse please form a line. It's what she would've wanted."
(IN129/30)