wetthebed.com

The future of humanity? Imagine the Easter Bunny peeing on the ground and stomping his foot into it — forever.

Visiting wetthebed.com was the most soul-crushing experience I've had since watching "Das Boot" while going through heroin withdrawal. To be perfectly honest, it was actually a bit more existentially damaging.

With "Das Boot" the only clear casualties were me, and a submarine full of Germans. With wetthebed.com, the casualty is human dignity.

The brainchild of artist Dave McCoy, wetthebed.com takes a page directly out of doodie.com's book. Every weekday, he posts a new looping animated .gif that tells a short story about someone or something peeing somewhere.

Is it succeeding? Of course. It's getting twice as many hits as some zesty, well-produced independent web magazines, because its content is consistent: It's always little animated guys spraying urine directly into each other's mouths, or a variation thereof.

Americans love knowing what to expect.

But is it funny? Well, that depends. Do you think a man spinning around in circles while peeing in order to water a golf course is funny? I did. However, this is not an opinion I could defend under any circumstances. In fact, if anyone challenges this article, I plan to destroy it immediately. My position is completely untenable.

There is also a good one about Janet Reno peeing while wearing the Cuban flag that wins some points for its topical nature, and its complete disrespect for just about everything possible. Note that the subtitle is "Hey Mr. President — want some of this?"

Pretty much the only way this particular cartoon could be made any more disturbing is if McCoy had managed to somehow work in Parkinson's Disease, which, to be honest, might have put it over the top into the realm of "classic comedy."

McCoy describes wetthebed.com as not being "adult oriented", and it really isn't: everyone in the family will probably feel pretty much the same level of intrigued revulsion, except maybe for Grandma and Grandpa, who will probably take its existence as a sign that the apocalypse has finally arrived.

Of course, in today's America, this sort of content pretty much makes sense. We don't really have too many social boundaries anymore, because we don't need them - we're living in one of the most stable and prosperous ages known to mankind itself. If naked movie execs want to snort angel dust off the heads of homeless people who have been paid $50 apiece to be sprayed-painted with gold-flecked enamel, who are we to judge? It just doesn't matter. None of it means a damn thing anymore.

About the only way wetthebed.com could be any more disturbing is if it included digital video of Nelson Mandela clicking through its content. Well, we can always dream.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)