The Best Page in the Universe is a personal satirical humor website created by self-proclaimed pirate George Ouzounian, better known as Maddox, from Salt Lake City, Utah. The site originated from a text document that he wrote listing 50 things that "pissed him off." He gave the list to several people on EFnet's #coders. The response was positive, so in 1997 he created the web site. In historical scholarship, a primary source is a document, or other source of information that was created at or near the time being studied, by an authoritative source, usually one with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. ... In library and information science, historiography and some other areas of scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1280x800, 56 KB) Summary http://maddox. ... “URL” redirects here. ... George Ouzounian,[1] better known by his pen name Maddox, is an American author and magazine columnist, who rose to prominence through the success of his satirical rant website, He attended the University of Utah, but does not hold a degree. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... This article is about maritime piracy. ... George Ouzounian,[1] better known by his pen name Maddox, is an American author and magazine columnist, who rose to prominence through the success of his satirical rant website, He attended the University of Utah, but does not hold a degree. ... For ships of the United States Navy of the same name, see USS Salt Lake City. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ...      IRC Abjects • AbleNET • AfterNET • Aitvaras • AusIRC • AustIRC • AustNet • Blitzed • BRASnet • DALnet • Delinked • DeltaAnime • EFnet • EsperNet • freenode • Gamma Force • GamesNET • GameSurge • IRCHighway • IRCnet • LinkNet • NetGamers • Open and Free Technology Community • QuakeNet Rizon • SlashNET • UKChatterbox • UniBG • Undernet • ZiRC EFnet or Eris Free network is a major IRC network, with over 70,000...

Maddox claims that he decided to name it "The Best Page in the Universe" despite his knowledge that Yahoo! blocked sites with the words "the best" in the title from inclusion in their search engine.^[1] Yahoo redirects here. ...

As of November 29, 2007, Xmission.com, which contains the home page and related pages for The Best Page in the Universe, had an Alexa rank of 9,472 [1] and has had more than 205 million visits. TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net, which hosts all of the articles written by Maddox, had an Alexa rank of 11,420 on the same date [2]. is the 333rd day of the year (334th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... Alexa Internet, Inc. ...

Site format

Maddox states on his site the layout is minimalistic primarily in order to save on bandwidth costs. However, he also uses the simple format to protest the theme of many contemporary websites: too many images, small fonts, not enough content. Maddox uses large text in light colors on a black background; he explains that reading black text on a white background is like "staring at a lightbulb" , and that light text on a black background is less harsh on one's eyes .^[2]

The page is headed with an image of Maddox's face superimposed over a bust of Che Guevara. In the image, he is wearing an eye patch and donning a beret emblazoned with the Jolly Roger. Maddox uses this image as a parody of the revolutionary icon, and does not proclaim to be either a socialist or communist.^[2] Instead, he often proclaims himself to be a pirate, and typically portrays himself as such in his articles and artwork. Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che or just Che was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary, medical doctor , political figure, and leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas. ... Basque style Beret Black beret with military emblem A beret (pronounced in English, except in North America where it is pronounced ) is a soft round cap, usually of wool felt, with a flat crown, which is worn by both men and women. ... Wingdings version of the Jolly Roger (character N). Many pirates created their own individualized versions. ... Socialism is a broad array of ideologies and political movements with the goal of a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community for the purposes of increasing social and economic equality and cooperation. ... This article is about the form of society and political movement. ...

Maddox also has an online store which sells merchandise such as stickers, hooded sweatshirts, and t-shirts with controversial messages such as "For every animal you don't eat, I'm going to eat three" and "Littering kicks ass."^[3]

Maddox deliberately keeps his site free of advertisements and doesn't specifically ask for donations from his readers, but he does not refuse them either. ^[4]. One time, he asked for donations in the form of store purchases for the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and collected over $3000 in donations ^[5]. "The reason this site doesn't have advertisements on it is because I want to say whatever I want to without having to worry about offending advertisers," wrote Maddox in an article regarding plagiarism of his material. This article is about the Atlantic hurricane of 2005. ...

Articles

Most of Maddox's articles are satirical, focusing on society and pop culture, although he does occasionally write a nonsensical article with no intentions other than being entertaining. Popular culture, sometimes abbreviated to pop culture, consists of widespread cultural elements in any given society. ...

Maddox often adds images in his articles to illustrate a point. Drawings on his website include pictures of his testicles, hippies being killed, elderly people being fired into the sun and other items that may be considered offensive. Maddox asserts that he draws most of the pictures himself using Microsoft Paint, and occasionally Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and other graphics manipulation software. Singer of a modern Hippie movement in Russia The hippie subculture was a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread around the world. ... Paint (formerly Paintbrush for Windows) is a simple graphics painting program that has been included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows since its first release. ... Photoshop redirects here. ... Paint Shop Pro (PSP) is a bitmap graphics editor and vector graphics editor for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system that was originally published by Minneapolis-based Jasc Software. ... This article is about the scientific discipline of computer graphics. ...

Maddox writes about his masculinity in some of his articles, especially his earlier ones. One of his earlier articles that brought him his initial internet fame was an article apparently ridiculing children's artwork, though he actually created the artworks himself. Many of his earlier articles were controversial for his self-proclaimed hatred of children, senior citizens, women's rights activists, vegetarians, environmentalists, hippies, Mac users and jocks. For other uses, see Child (disambiguation). ... Paul Kruger in his old age. ... Feminists redirects here. ... A variety of vegetarian food ingredients Vegetarianism is the practice of a diet that excludes all animal flesh, including poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crustacea, and slaughter by-products. ... The historic Blue Marble photograph, which helped bring environmentalism to the public eye. ... Singer of a modern Hippie movement in Russia The hippie subculture was a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread around the world. ... For other uses, see Jock (disambiguation). ...

The articles as a whole have evolved throughout the years. Earlier articles between 1998 and 1999 were short and were posted several times per month. As updates became less frequent, the articles became longer. Newer articles also included multimedia such as sound clips and add-on pages. Some recent articles have also been translated, such as the Sideways article and his "Ben Stiller should star in every movie" article.^[6][7] Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... This article is about the year. ... Sideways is a 2004 Academy Award-winning and Golden Globe Award-winning comedy/drama film, co-written and directed by Alexander Payne. ... Benjamin Edward Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an Emmy-winning American comedian, actor, film producer and director. ...

On August 29th, 2007, The Best Page in the Universe hit 10 years of "literary genius."

Hidden pages

Maddox's website is also known to contain several "hidden pages," many of which are unfinished works or first drafts of articles that were moved around. Maddox Addicts, a new fan site of Maddox, posted a large list of them.^[8]

Other media

Maddox has shifted attention into comics and books, including The Alphabet of Manliness, published in January 2006, and updates started coming in less frequently than before. Updates to his site have become so infrequent that their non-appearance has become an ongoing joke. A comic book is a magazine or book containing the art form of comics. ... The Alphabet of Manliness is a New York Times Bestseller humor book written by Internet satirist and self-proclaimed pirate George Ouzounian, who is better known by his pseudonym Maddox. ...

He recently launched a competition for people to send him cartoons about himself or his website, most of which are attacks about emails for "more updates." Later, he parodied this himself by stating that now that he's finished with the comic book, he'd be able to "Not update the site more regularly." Entries so far include a depiction of Maddox leaping out of a computer monitor and smashing two fans' faces together and a cartoon of one boy who checks the site for new content only to find a cartoon of himself that he had posted 10 seconds earlier, et cetera.^[9][10][11]

Controversy

Blocking

Due to the controversial content, four countries and some internet filtering products have banned the website. On January 8, 2004, the United Arab Emirates was the first country to ban his website [3]. On September 11, 2005, the site was banned in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. His site is also banned in Myanmar. Maddox himself has said that his website has been filtered and banned on Websense, Lexmark, and the Department of Defense. He has criticized many of them by saying such things as "forget about all the gang bang, bukkake and rape sites your filters miss — satire sites should be your top priority." He has also said they block health and education sites. ^[12]. He states that he blocked Websense computers from accessing his site in response to Websense filtering his, claiming that "Being on the receiving end of your self-appointed judicial bullshit for a change, you may disagree with this label and want to submit an appeal to change your categorization...Upon receiving your request, I will give it a passing glance and shrug it off lightly, regardless of the fact that the number of requests to change your status to something else may outweigh the number of requests to keep it the same." DansGuardian blocking whitehouse. ... is the 8th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 254th day of the year (255th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Websense classifies websites and allows customers to block access to certain categories of websites. ... Your All willy heads, i said Your All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All willy headsYour All... The United States Department of Defense, abbreviated DoD or DOD and sometimes called the Defense Department, is a civilian Cabinet organization of the United States government. ... For other uses, see Gang bang (disambiguation). ... For the Japanese noodle preparation method, see udon. ...

Mothers Against Maddox

Beth Robbins, a "concerned mother", formed Mothers Against Maddox. Her slogan was, "Help Us Fight and Finally Shut Down the Most Hateful Site on the Internet." She also created a petition to get the site shut down. When Maddox wrote about it in the Websense article including a link to the original GeoCities site, Mothers Against Maddox was inundated with visitors and repeatedly exceeded its bandwidth limit. In response, Maddox hosted a mirror so all his fans could view it, without clogging up her site's bandwidth.[4]. After Maddox posted the petition link, the MAM petition shot up to the Top 10 Active Petitions on PetitionOnline, with Maddox fans flooding the petition and posting extremely vulgar comments. Maddox said "Hell, I even signed the petition. Too bad nobody gives a shit." The petition was eventually deactivated.^[13] Yahoo! GeoCities is a free webhosting service founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Maddox states that he received emails with similar viewpoints as expressed by MaM. Such messages often contain sentences expressing a dislike for his viewpoints and/or that his site is a bad influence on their children. Maddox responded by saying that if his site offends people, they should not read it and "it's not my job to be your children's guardian."

On October 27, 2007 CNN ran a story about Mothers Against Drunk Driving asking another organization, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, to cease using "Mothers Against" in the name of their organization. CNN went on to cite various other organizations that use "Mothers Against" in their name with Mothers Against Maddox being one of their examples.^[14] Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, is a single-issue non-profit victims rights organization in the United States and other countries. ...

Something Awful

Maddox had a misunderstanding with Something Awful webmaster Richard Kyanka and many of the site's forum members. In June 2006, Maddox stated that he had resolved his feud with Kyanka at a book signing in New York City.^[15] Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

References

is the 77th day of the year (78th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... [[Media:Italic text]]{| style=float:right; |- | |- | |} is the 50th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 305th day of the year (306th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 90th day of the year (91st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 300th day of the year (301st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Best Page in the Universe

• The Best Page in the Universe
• The Alphabet of Manliness
• Interview on Salon.com