Finals are coming up. So get ready for long sessions in the library, leaning over your computer in the same position for hours on end, risking permanent change in your spinal cord’s alignment. The books stacked next to your computer will threaten to topple over and take you out of your misery. And you will drink enough coffee to ensure the economy of Colombia stays afloat for the next few months. So let’s get working on those end-of-semester papers.
Wait, hold on. OK, I’ll start in five minutes. I just need to check out a few more cat pictures.
We at The Eagle do not condone procrastinating — an abhorrent practice if there ever was one. But if you’re so inclined, here are some of our picks for the most ridiculous blogs to peruse while waiting for your motivation to kick into gear.
1. Failblog Even if you’re tired of the word “fail” as a catch-all for any misfortune of our fellow people, it’s hard not to get a twinge of schadenfreude for the truly unfortunate problems people can manage to get into. Whether it’s an unfortunate choice in ad copy, a skate trick gone wrong or any other possible hardship, Failblog is a compendium of all the ways we can examine the fallibility of human kind.
2. PostSecret PostSecret is not a well-kept secret, but its combination of poignancy, humor and sadness make it a kind of aggregator for the emotions of a generation. The bits of small truths we get can tell a lot about a person, and not just because it’s a secret they wouldn’t tell their closest peers but would disseminate to the Internet anonymously. It captures a tone that one might imagine coats the submitter’s entire life, and can act as a lonely moment of connectedness in a seemingly less-connected world.
3. Hipster puppies A corgi wearing Ray-Bans assures us that he has that particular record on vinyl, and a caption for a pug in a keffiyeh explains, “The summer after his senior year, Mr. Chow traveled Europe by train for a month, and now aggravatingly insists that ‘It’s barthelona.’” Whether you’re a fan of our lovable canine friends or just have an excess of distaste for our less lovable hipsters, this site manages to skewer a whole social group while remaining adorable. It’s “Stuff White People Like” re-imagined by your dog hair-covered aunt.
4. Awkward Family Photos For every time you were forced to squeeze in tight with all your cousins in front of a fake Christmas tree, it’s reassuring to know that none of those photos turned out as bad as these. A tribute of sorts to the Norman Rockwell school of American traditionalism, the pictures on this site manage to subvert what we think of the family unit and how they relate to each other. Oh, and they’re hilarious.
5. People of Wal-Mart People of Wal-Mart can sometimes reek of condescension — it’s wrong to feel superior to someone just because you shop at a slightly more high-end convenience store. But if you can get over that, People of Wal-Mart will put images in your head that can’t be scrubbed away, even by bleach on sale two-for-one. Whether it’s fashion nightmares or men and women who need to be forcibly pulled away from the deep-fat fryers (also on sale), feeling superior has never been easier.
6. This Is Why You’re Fat There is a picture on this site of a cup completely made of bacon, filled to the brim with melted cheese. I’ll let that sink in. There are probably a select few in this world who would find that appetizing, and they are the reason that cardiologists seem happier than the rest of us. But for normal people, the treats featured on this site bounce back and forth between sounding delicious and revolting.
7. Unrelated Captions The Internet loves captions, and this may be the logical ending to this trend. After all those Lolcats, fake motivational posters and any other use of this meme, it’s nice that someone has essentially made it all meaningless. They’ve created a Web site that pairs irrelevant captions with random pictures, and makes them just as funny as the sensical ones on other Web sites. It really makes you think, although it probably shouldn’t.
8. Selleck Waterfall Sandwich The problem in describing these blogs is that words don’t really do them justice. Sure, I could describe this Web site, which consists solely of collages of Tom Selleck, a landscape featuring waterfalls and a picture of any variety of delicious sandwiches. But that wouldn’t capture its absurdist style and the reason for flipping through picture after picture of these three disparate items. Just go ahead and laugh.
9. Garfield Minus Garfield Jim Davis’ Garfield strips have become a slightly edgier Family Circus over the years. There’s only so much humor one can squeeze out of a lasagna-crazed cat. How do you make it funnier? Take out the cat. In the altered strips of Garfield Minus Garfield, all other characters are removed leaving only hapless owner Jon and his inane statements to himself. Removed from context, these bits of wisdom carry depressing chunks of alienation and angst that have no punch line. The result is a Saturday cartoon as drawn by Samuel Beckett.
10. Indexed The Internet is mostly populated by nerds. Sorry guys, but it’s true. How else can we explain the popularity of xkcd or this blog, Indexed. When you learned about Venn diagrams in elementary school, you probably thought they would never be fun. And that is why you don’t have a well-read blog. Indexed combines the fun of graphing (!) with the passions of creator Jessica Hagy, which, on any given day, can include politics, math, biology or just typical social interactions. The result: 3x5 index cards that can safely encapsulate the monotony of the daily drudge — with jokes!
