Humor Sites
Monday, April 10, 2006

If you’re looking for more high-tech humor, check out these web sites listed below.  And tell 'em who sent ya!  Updated regularly.  You can also take a look at some of our recommended humor books. 

The Toque

The Toque is a site dedicated to that long sought but rarely found beast: Canadian humor.  Ok, I know that lots of the best SNL guys were Canadian and that Wayne & Shuster practically invented TV parody back in the 1800's or whatever.  At any rate, these guys from The Toque (it's like a hat from Canada, the kind Bob and Doug McKenzie used to wear on the Great White North) seem to have a pretty broad assortment of humor covering the entire spectrum of Canadian politics, high-tech, and, of course, beer.  My only complaint is that the site does have a lot of ads, many of which are popups. 

RocketBoom

RocketBoom is an online video blog news satire site; sort of a hybrid of SNL Weekend Report and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart!  The show is put together by two-person team Amanda Congdon (anchor and co-writer) and (Andrew Baron co-writer and producer).  There's a new 3 minute report posted every weekday from New York.  While Rocketboom is going to push the boundaries of good taste once in a while, it's a heckuva lot better than the average television comedy.  My guess is this site will get acquired by Yahoo for a few million bucks or syndicated as a cable show within six months.  Interestingly enough, all the content is licensed under Creative Commons, so in fact, anyone can take the content and do whatever they want with it.  (Note: traffic can be pretty slow sometimes on this site.)

Joy Of Tech

Joy Of Tech has become a regular fixture in the Mac world with its great cartoons making fun of everything from Apple's chic iPod to Open Source geeks .  I noticed an odd resemblence in a recent cartoon to a story I wrote in 2002 about Steve Ballmer joining Kiss, but hey, great minds think alike.  Pseudonomynous Canadian authors Snaggy & Nitrozac (Liza Schmalcel and Bruce Evans) manage to bring to life all the foibles of Silicon Valley with their clever tongue-in-cheek humor and vibrant cartoon style.  Check out the new "Best of Joy Of Tech" book published by O'Reilly with a forward by the Woz himself.  It's a great gift for any Mac user with a sense of humor.  Also check out the GeekCulture forums and online shop for posters, t-shirts, beenies...

Larry Flynt Ad Parodies

Ok, I'm all for free speach and in that regard, parodists around the world owe a debt of grattitude to the extremely questionable taste of porn publisher Larry Flynt.  He established that even if something was in bad taste, it was still permissable as a parody.  So with that, I am publishing this link to some fairly amusing (and not too distasteful) ad parodies by Mr. Flynt.  The parody of Kenneth Lay (former Enron Chairman), Coca Cola's school campaigns and paper shredders are actually quite good.  Go figure.

NewsHax

Another recent humor website, NewsHax does a good job with mainstream satire on everything from J-Lo and Ben Affleck to Martha Stewart.  It's written in a blog format and you can register and post your own humor or leave comments, if you're into that.  They had some good banner ads, then I realized they were all from Valley of the Geeks anyways.  Hmmmm....

Zug

A buddy of mine sent me a link to Zug with a weird prank about signing fake names on credit card receipts. Turns out the site is full of dozens of pranks you can pull, from leaving weird pages on the office printer, to messing with someone's monitor. The pranks are harmless and may get a few laughs if you work in a big office that is somewhat comedy-starved.  Or maybe they'll get you fired.  But at least you'll know whether your boss has a sense of humor. There are also plenty of prank emails and phone calls to prominent companies. 

The (bitter) Network Administrator

Douglas Chick's Network Administrator site is a mix of useful technical information as well as satire and shockingly funny end-user stories.  If you are the guy (or gal) who has to tell users to reboot, put paper in the printer or that, yes, the Internet is down, then you'll find this useful and quite funny.  In fact, Doug's satire is smooth, satisfying and never bitter. You can also get helpful books, deals on computers and the classic pocket protector.  Also read this online interview from The (Bitter) Network Administrator with Zack Urlocker, author of the book "Valley of the Geeks".

SlashNot

SlashNot isn't slashdot.org, but a spoof that's at least as useful as the original. It has the same look and feel of the original, but the content is weirder, if you can imagine that.  Good fake stories on Apple putting OS X in storage, Linus Torvalds getting sued, Microsoft shipping Java.  Wait, I think that last one's actually true...

Broken Newz

Broken Newz publishes a more or less daily with fake news stories, fake movie reviews, fake TV shows ("Celebrity Toupees"), fake quotes and more.  Covers the spectrum of politics, business and technology.

Whitehouse.org

This site is a great source of original and timely political satire.  Not sure how they managed to get this domain name, but good on them!  If you're not paying close attention, you'd think it was a genuine government site except some of the announcements actually make sense.  Be sure to check out the homeland security material.

SatireWire.com

After Valley of the Geeks, this is the best source of original satire about Silicon Valley and the whole dot-com Internet thing.  SatireWire's unique talent is blending topical news with outrageous "Dave Barry" style humor.  SatireWire head honcho Andrew Marlatt has also published a book "Economy of Errors" with some of their best stories available directly on Amazon.com.  Unfortunately, Andrew is no longer updating the site, but if you pester him, maybe he'll send out an email encouraging people to read Valley of the Geeks.

DribbleGlass

If you like our fake banner ads, you'll love Scott Roeben's "Billboards We'd Like to See". Scott's got  a slew of bogus greeting cards, rejected movie posters, fake monopoly cards, bizarre stories, visual talent and way too much time on his hands.   Once you start taking a look at Scott's work you'll likely get sucked into this bizarre visual view of the world. 

I Love Bacon

This is another good source for jokes and outrageous and real (?) photos similar dribbleglass.com.  Plus you can get some pretty strange logo ware including Mr. Bacon t-shirts.   

The Borowitz Report

Andy Borowitz, author of the get-rich quick satire "The Trillionaire Next Door" writes a regular colum for Time Magazine and publishes his satirical news releases on his site.  If you can't get enough of SatireWire, this comes close.

LostBrain

LostBrain is an original site of satire on a range of topics from current news events to bass fishing (?) with a good dose of high-tech. There are great sendups of Martha Stewart, WorldCom, Verizon and more.  There's also a nice piece on the Pentium 4 which includes benchmark comparisons with the Atari 2600.  Go figure.

The Hammer

The Hammer is a Canadian satirical web site, eh?  Check it out for the latest take on Canadian politics, back bacon, Molson beer and other Canadian idiosyncracies.

WackyTimes

WackyTimes is Bob Ingraham's satire site aimeed squarely at mainstream news media.  It's not specific to high tech, but it's still very funny. 

Brunching Shuttlecocks

Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg is the brains behind this slightly offbeat humor site.  He's also the author of the forthcoming book "The Book of Ratings." Check out the Alanis Morissette llyric generator.

GiggleBytes

GiggleBytes is one of the first and longest running satirical columns in the computer industry.  Lincoln Spector has been writing GiggleBytes since 1986 in Computer Currents and now at Computer User.

Verity Stob

Very off the wall British programming humor.  This originated with the legendary UK programming magazine .EXE and is now carried by Dr Dobb's Journal. 

Modern Humorist

Although not focused on Silicon Valley, this site is consistently above average with original content. Especially good on business, politics and technology. Check out the Foreigner’ Guide to America or The Guide to Email Etiquette. Both are hilarious.  Also check out their great book, Original Draft, available on Amazon.com.

The Dilbert Zone

The Dilbert site is the place to get Dilbert comics, book, t-shirts or what have you. Also a good source for top-10 list, but generally a lot of the user submitted info is pretty lame. Still if you need your fix of cubicle-dweller cartoons, this is the place.

TheOnion.com

The Onion covers mainstream news and has written some excellent high-tech satire over the years including Microsoft Copyrighting Ones and Zeros. (Enter "Microsoft" into the search field on the home page.)  The Onion's full time staff publishes a ton of original content on their web site and also publishes a regular newspaper and books.

Laugh.com

This site is the place to get material ranging from George Carlin standup comedy to Heidi Fleiss sex tips. You can get videos, books, MP3s, CDs etc.