LIGHT TRAFFIC

© CeeFeezy

Since my release from J-school and my Grand Entry into the Real World, I’ve been spending shocking amounts of time front of the good ole iMac. While it’s true I’ve been moseying around town on my dingy white-and-yellow bike and destroying sandbags with my oh-so-glamorous pink Everlast boxing gloves, I somehow always end up back in front of the machine that is supposed to, according to plan, bring me work.

Nominally, I’ve been barrelling from journalism job board to journalism job board – a somewhat futile, gerbil-wheel-like endeavour when one is aware “real journalism jobs” almost always get snatched up before reaching the Web – researching story ideas and pitching columns left right and center.

In reality, I’ve been spending lots of time studying Twitter (to follow or not to follow @KarlRove?) and weaning myself off Facebook. (The quiz craze is driving me bananas. I was sent a request to take the “what airline are you?” quiz today – seriously, people. Seriously.)

But more importantly, I’ve been ever so pleasantly wasting my precious unemployed time on sites like the ones below. (I’d encourage fully-employed people to check them out too: there’s definitely a little something in there to dispell that nagging “I’m am so overdoing this” feeling. Just try.)

1- FMyLife, which is short for you know what, is a true mecca for people who retain their sense of humour in the bleakest possible times, and live to tell the tale. A collection of short, true anecdotes submitted by readers inclined to tell the world why, specifically, their day sucked (and you really do feel bad about laughing so loudly at some of them), FML is a great way to while away a morning break. (More like a whole morning in my case, interspersed with forced visits to Craigslist Montreal’s “writing/editing” job section.)

2- Vie de Merde (Subhead: “Ma vie c’est de la merde, et je vous emmerde”) is FML’s actual granddaddy. Launched in 2008 by three French guys, it strikes me as somehow less funny than the English spin-off, but it could just be that I find French French vocabulary prissy and annoying. Nonetheless, some submissions are worth a chuckle, if in a Reader’s Digest joke sort of way.

3- Awkward Boners (thanks to @seanpower for sharing.) As the name suggests, a delightful photo blog jam-packed with um, pictures of dudes with awkward boners! Some unbelievable stuff.

4- VICE Magazine‘s DO’s and DON’Ts: The reliably hilarious VICE column is even better on the internet. Just keep hitting the “Next” button until you figure you’ve gotten a respectable ab-workout from chortling out loud. I don’t know who writes the captions on these, but I’d really like an introduction. And depending on which kind of DO or DON’T he turns out to be (the gray zones are vast and wide in these matters), I’m thinking we should just call it quits and get married. This is pure gold.