McSweeney's

Entertaining half-truth, half-fiction literary pieces about a wide range of topics - Founded by Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), McSweeney's is a San Francisco-based organization that publishes a journal, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, which highlights works of up-and-coming authors. A comparable alternative to the print edition, their site's archives houses an entertaining assortment of creative, witty, and sometimes sarcastic, literary pieces. Among them are:

Conversations My Parents Must Have Had While Planning to Raise a Child:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/4/28statsky.html

Ernest Hemingway Blogs About the Top Teams in College Basketball:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/3/20weaver.html

LinkedIn Invitation Email Copy Revised:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2007/11/28kennedy.html

There are even book reviews, and interviews with people who have held interesting or unusual jobs:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/unusualjobs/

Hours of fun.

If you've read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (written by Dave Eggers) or any books in the annual series of the Best American Nonrequired Reading (edited by Dave Eggers) and thought they were funny, then McSweeney's is the website for you. McSweeney's is actually a publishing house founded by Eggers, who has his hands in starting all sorts of things, including Valencia 826, the pretty neat organization that started in San Francisco, which has also spread to other cities, to help write children and adolescents develop their abilities in writing.

McSweeneys.net is the on-line complement of McSweeney's print Quarterly Concern Journal, and you can get all the laughs without paying $15 per journal, which is a bit outrageous. Different writers are featured, but all the writing generally falls within what could be described as hilariously confusing performance art in writing form. Think the New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs times a hundred. I'll admit that I don't always get it, but it almost doesn't matter. What matters is that it's got you rolling on the floor laughing even if you can't explain it to your friend.