10 Websites for Comedic Relief from Holiday Stress

Between the shopping, family and traveling, the holidays can end up being even more stressful than they are relaxing. Sneak away and have a laugh with these five great time wasters.

I love the holidays, but there is always a certain amount of stress that goes along with all of the Yuletide cheer.  Catching flights, remembering to bring the food you spent hours cooking in the oven and tracking down the perfect present for your friends and family can be exhausting.  What if you could take a break from all of this stress with some mindless humor?  Well, you are in luck!  I have put together a list of ten websites that all have made me laugh uncontrollably at some point.

1. People of Walmart

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

To be fair, I think a few of these pictures are just people unfortunate enough to be photographed in their worst clothes when stopping to buy paper towels. However, people wandering through Walmart with just a bikini top on, who have no business EVER wearing a bikini, deserve all of the laughter that they cause.  Where else but Walmart could you see someone wearing a hat like this?

2. I Can Has Cheezburger

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

This is one of the original comedy websites that I have found, where people will take random pictures of cats and add captions to them.  Although the LOLcat can be an acquired taste that borderlines on cat-obsessive, some of the captions that have been thought up here are pretty clever.

2a. Also, people familiar with LOLcats would enjoy the website Averagecats, http://averagecats.com/. Read the description of the website to understand fully what they are talking about: What the internet fails to realize is that most cats do not think like people. They think like cats. AverageCats seeks to remedy this misinformation by providing a helpful, pictorial primer on cats.  AverageCats uses the accepted lolcat style to explain simple truths about cats. Any humor that arises from these pictures is coincidental.

3. Item Not As Described

http://itemnotasdescribed.com/

This is a website of various Craigslist advertisements that were false or misleading to the point of being ridiculous.  Some of the gems found here are an ad that asks for a female sperm donor or a free 1998 BMW.

4. Hot Chicks With Douchebags

http://www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com/

“What in God's name does that girl see in that guy?  He is a douchebag!”  Let me introduce you to a website full of pictures of ‘those' guys.  While the pictures are funny enough, the comments section is where all of the comedy exists.

5. Funny Or Die

http://www.funnyordie.com/

This is where Youtube meets a voting booth.  Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell and others have joined together to start this site.  You, the viewer, have an opportunity to vote whether the video is funny or not.  There is a button that says Funny and a button that says Die.  When you press Die, the clip will stop short and show a clip of a gangster movie villain dying.  It is a great feeling to stop an unfunny clip halfway through by pressing Die.  When enough people say that a video is funny, it will appear on the front page of the website, getting more traffic and exposure to a larger audience.

6. Geekologie

http://www.geekologie.com/

My roommate recommended this site to me a few months ago and I have been cracking up ever since.  The creator of this website points out bizarre things that he finds on the internet and adds funny commentary.  There also seems to be a hidden theme of posts about dinosaurs, and who doesn't like dinosaurs?

7. Stuff White People Like

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

This one is a classic and isn't updated that often anymore, but the sarcastic humor is hilarious.  Christian Lander started this website in January of 2008 and has written about 129 things that white people like.

Here is the first part of his description of why white people like to hate people who wear Ed Hardy: Often it can be easier to find common ground with a white person by talking to them about something you both hate.  Discussing things you both like might lead to an argument over who likes it more or who liked it first.  Clearly, the safest route is mutual hatred.  When choosing to talk about something that white people hate, it’s best to choose something that will allow white people to make clever comments or at the very least feel better about themselves.  Currently, the easiest way to do that is to ask a white person for their thoughts on people who wear Ed Hardy.

8. FAIL blog

http://failblog.org/

Have you ever wished that you had a camera the last time your mom ran the car into the garage door?  These people did have a camera and forever captured the garage door failure on film.  Check out pictures and videos of failures from all walks of life.

9. Texts From Last Night

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

This one is a little bit more graphic than most, but there are some gems in here.  Each small post will have the area code of the text and then the content of what was sent.  All of the texts are anonymous and several are added each day.  Hopefully none of my texts ever end up on this website!

10. Awkward Family Photos

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

Hilarious.  Out of all of these websites, this is by far my favorite.  These families have taken these pictures knowing full well how strange they look.  The best thing about this website is that there are years and years of photos that are buried in grandmothers' cabinets that still have yet to surface.

You probably have been to a few of these websites before, but maybe there was one in this list that you haven't seen yet and could make you laugh.  Hopefully you'll laugh as much as I have.  But unfortunately now you've finished the article and it is time to get back to work.  Those lights aren't going to hang themselves!

Benjamin Wilcox

Ben is new to Baltimore/DC area by way of a new job. He is an engineer who grew up in Cleveland and graduated from Ohio State. He is obsessed with music, football, dogs and meeting new people. You can read more of his writing at www.benjamintwilcox.com/.