Let's Enjoy Ourselves For Once In Our Goddamn Lives

As you may have noticed, I tend to focus on the grimmer aspects of human existence. I say this to give you a heads up, because for the next seven months I'll be writing solely about incurable tuberculosis.

Ha ha! No, just kidding. (It will only be six months.) Seriously, though, I want to recommend four websites that (1) I find truly funny and (2) often focus on the more pleasant aspects of this small, blue planet. Of course, you may be familiar with them already, in which case you'll have to find some other way to cheer up.

1. Mimi Smartypants

Mimi Smartypants doesn't need me to tell people about her, since she's probably one of the most widely read people online. That's because she's hilarious and a fantastic writer generally. Indeed, she's almost too hilarious and too generally fantastic, because it's hard to write anything after reading her website that doesn't sound like a watered-down version of her.

Her site, which deals mostly with her life in Chicago with her husband and daughter Nora, has become such a success that HarperCollins has published a collection of her diaries. I highly recommend it.

To get you started, here's one of my favorite entries. She won my heart forever with the phrase "Atrocious Diarrhea Underworld."

2. Finslippy

Finslippy is in many ways similar to Ms. Smartypants -- young urban mom, genuinely funny, etc. Indeed, I suspect her site was inspired and heavily influenced by the Smartypants diary. But that's okay -- so was this site. Really. As I say, it's very hard not to be influenced by the Smartypants style. First it was other people with websites, then it will be newspaper columnists, then novelists, and then even our most solemn international treaties will include the phrase "Atrocious Diarrhea Underworld."

3. Dooce

Heather Armstrong, the proprietress of Dooce, is yet another young funny mom. And SO WHAT if you're beginning to believe this is an unwholesome fetish of mine. If God hadn't wanted us to indulge in unwholesome fetishes, he wouldn't have given us the internet.

Again, Dooce has no need of my hype, since she is already internet-famous for having been fired from a job several years ago because of some incautious entries on this site.

4. Rachel Arieff

Rachel Arieff is a somewhat different kettle of fish in that she is a professional entertainer. Go visit her, and download the video of her song "Have a Baby."