Net.Weirdness: Nice List and Weird Religions

 Let's get nice and weird! (Or at least, let's branch out and learn about something new.)

Nice Mailing List
Frendli-l
Mailing List
"Shiny happy people who don't know the meaning of the word 'flame.' A nice respite from the usual harsh stuff."
Still online? No, and it looks like it's a list that's down the electronic memoryhole, as I can't find any record of it now.

Weirdo Religions

Cousins (Wiccan Stuff)
FTP
"Keep up on the latest in Wicca. The Goddess orders you to subscribe!"
Still online? No, but 9 of (at least) 13 issues are archived here. (I'm miffed because while etext.org moved from an FTP to a website, it looks like the zine collection wasn't as complete as what was on the older FTP).

GASSHO: International Buddhist Electronic Journal
FTP
"Okay, a religion practiced by millions of people all over the world doesn't really qualify as 'weirdo,' but to most Westerners it's still a mystery. Learn something—read this journal."
Still online? Not via FTP, but DharmaNet is archived, which in turn archived four issues of Gassho, which was mentioned in a charmingly dated World-Wide Virtual Library page for Buddhist studies.
Still remembered? Yes, that, too, at the end of a really interesting article from Wired, published in 1994 and now online. The links are dead ends, and I doubt the old BBS numbers are still viable. But in more recent news, the world's largest collection of Tibetan Buddhist literature is available on the Internet Archive.

The Electric Mystic's Guide to the Internet
FTP
"The guide to religion on the Net."
Still online? No, but still remembered in this 1993 article on internet resources for religious studies, and in this digitized copy of Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists, which notes that the site was home to Bulletin of the General Theological Library. I don't find anything contemporary for that Bulletin, but I found Theology on the Web's archive of theological journals (though they're all about Christian studies, so it seems).

URANTIAL: The Urantia Book
Mailing List
"This religion revolves around bare-chested men wearing Egyptian headgear, a perpetually smiling blond matron prophet, aliens, and channeling dead spirits. Sure to teeter your world view just a little."
Still online? No longer limited to a mailing list, there's a website for the Urantia Book, which is online in full.

Pagans
Mailing list and FTP
"Pat Robertson's worst nightmare. The latest news and info from the Neo-Pagan community."
Still online? Not via that list and FTP, but possibly the origins of that community are discussed in this article on how paganism found a home on the net, and there's Green Egg Magazine, the online presence of the journal of the Church of All Worlds that started in the 1960s. Bonus: another interesting article from 1995, titled "Queer Spaces, Modem Boys, and Pagan Statues: Gay/Lesbian Identity and the Construction of Cyberspace."

Crowley
FTP
"Aleister Crowley—that nasty devil-worshippin' dandy—sure cranked out the text."
Still online? No, but the words of "the Beast" have found many homes online, including the Hermetic Library, and the Internet Archive.

The Necronomicon
FTP
"Isn't this the thing that caused Bruce Campbell so much grief in that cheesy horror flick Army of Darkness? Well, whatever you do, don't read this ancient evil text out loud after you've downloaded it, or else you'll summon monsters that'll destroy the universe."
Still online? Yes! Well, something is available there, but it doesn't look like it'll bring forth deadites. (And Ash was just one of the more recent to refer to H. P. Lovecraft's fictional book.)

Net.Weirdness: Games/Hints/Cheats/Cracks and Generally Weird Stuff

Time for some wicked thrills! That's right, it's 1995 and you can read about video games online! Even get hints and cheats for free! But beware, they'll probably turn you into a cold-blooded killer.

Games/Hints/Cheats/Cracks

FTP sites
"Why beat your head against the screen in your quest to find out how to get past that next level? The answers are here, homey! Hints, cheats, cracks, you name it."
Still online? Ho-leey shee-it, YES! ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/doc/games/solutions/ is STILL THERE! BUT ... the directories and files won't open there. OK, looks like a dead end. But, wait ...
Still remembered? YES! That site might be a no-go, but the University of Wisconsin Parkside FTP is offline, but the MSDOS/PC Games directory is archived!
Still needed? Depends on what you want. Cracking games isn't like it used to be, where you could do a little hexediting and break the copy protections, but Game FAQs is keeping up and current, saving you from having to call up 1-900-HOT-HINTS. My favorite part is that the ASCII art and layouts live on in 2020.

Apogee Game Site
FTP
"Shareware PC game extravaganza."
Still online? Nope.
Still remembered? Yes, fondly. Well, the games are. The old FTP? Not so much.


Generally Weird Stuff

The Site Which Must Not Be Named
FTP
"Underworld Industries FTP site o' weirdness. Too strange to even get a domain name, this site is only spoken of by its cryptic IP number. Check it out."
Still online? No. I think someone else had the IP in 1996, when I checked it out. Definitely not weirdness, either.
Still remembered? Yes, seen here in High Weirdness by Email from 1992 (?!) and it seems that Underworld Industries expanded into separate "nodes" (archived) in later years.

High Weirdness by E-mail List
FTP
"One of the masterpieces of Net publishing. If you like the list you're reading now, you'll love High Weirdness by E-mail."
Still online? No, sadly.
Still remembered? Yes! I previously linked version 1.1, and here's a copy of version 2.1, 38 pages of oddities that isn't dated. Well, the links are dated, but there's no date. You dig it, right? Anyway, this grew from High Weirdness by Mail, and later evolved into Hyper-Weirdness by Web, but that faded away before being archived. Luckily, the makers of Hyper-Weirdness re-posted some of that weirdness. Also, Rev. Stang shared more/ different/ other High Weirdness by Web.

More Weirdness 
FTP
"Truly demented. From Kibo to the Carbonist Manifesto, this is the site for some of the most mind-warping stuff you'll ever open up in your text editor."
Still online? No.
Still remembered? Somewhat. Here's the story behind Spies.com, "one of the first vanity domains in the world" (archived). If this seems familiar, it's because covered some of this before, under Alternative Media.