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Setting Spam to Music

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You can log onto the Webby site to vote for Spam Radio or one of the other nominees in the People's Voice category. (Links to the awards site and all the nominees are on the right. Online voting ends June 7 and winners will be announced June 18).

What's the criteria for weirdness? According to the Webby folks: "Sites so forward thinking they seem strange when viewed without the future in mind."

This category includes sites that reflect a fresh perspective in thought and action strong enough to start a revolution, change a behavior pattern, or advance old thinking lodged in bad habits. Sites that just seem strange or abnormal.

Here are the other nominees:

Nominee: Cut Off My Feet

In a time when it's getting harder and harder to earn your full 15 minutes of fame, Paul "Frek" Morgan caused quite a stir when he tried to sell $20 tickets to watch via Webcam as he cut his own feet off with a guillotine.

The 33-year-old Mississippi native says he suffered an accident coming home from a boat trip. He fell off the back of a truck and was run over by a boat trailer, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and in constant pain. He said that Medicare and Medicaid wouldn't pay for the surgery he needed and he responded by organizing a public amputation to underwrite his health costs.

For a mere $20 subscription, he was promising that you could watch the grisly action. He reportedly hoped to raise $150,000 to cover the cost of prosthetics, follow-up surgery and rehabilitation.

The live event — think of it as a reality TV version of Footloose — was supposed to be held last fall. But not enough people signed up to underwrite the cost of lighting, camera crews, a director, live band, the video and DVD production — not to mention EMT services and the homemade guillotine. Morgan says that legal troubles have also slowed him down.

But he's still signing up members and looking for investors. And if you can't stomach the show, you can always buy a "Cut Off My Feet" souvenir T-shirt.

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