Top 5 Sites for Wasting a Little Time at Work
By Leeanne Griffin

You’re stuck at work, the weekend is excruciatingly far away, and you’re afraid your brain might melt if you have to look at another TPS report. Best thing to do? Take a break before you go insane…or more insane. But before you turn to your old standbys MySpace and Facebook, check out these five websites that’ll help you get through your day.

Overheard In New York
(www.overheardinnewyork.com)

You don’t need to live in the Big Apple to enjoy this website, but after you check it out, you just might want to move there. Overheard in New York is just that ~ a collection of hilarious dialogue snippets submitted by eavesdroppers. Each party involved in the conversation is assigned a character description (Columbia girl, Thug, Hipster) and the location of the overheard quote is always included, a crucial element to some of the submissions (like when Southern Tourist asks a police officer how to get to Times Square and the officer sends him to Harlem). It’s a slice of life, a sociological experiment, and a hysterically funny timewaster. For purely office-related humor, try sister site Overheard in the Office (www.overheardintheoffice.com)

Perez Hilton (www.perezhilton.com)

Sometimes vicious, sometimes fawning, always entertaining, Perez Hilton is the author of one of the leading celebrity blogs online today. Whether he’s gleefully analyzing Tara Reid’s botched plastic surgery or crafting cutting nicknames for Hollywood’s elite (Asslee [Simpson], Mooriah [Carey], [Kirsten] Drunkst, [Jake] GyllenHO), Perez always knows what’s going on in Tinseltown. But don’t ask him to trash his namesake Paris ~ the two are apparently good friends.

OhNoTheyDidnt (community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt)

If you’d rather your celebrity dirt come from a variety of sources rather than from ust one guy who steals a Wi-Fi connection from an L.A. coffee shop (ahem, Perez, sound like anyone you know??), then the Livejournal community OhNoTheyDidnt is for you. Members post celebrity news, pictures, videos and diatribes, and then readers flood the comment sections with biting appraisals of the famous people in question (as the site’s header graphic reads: She’s Fat. He’s Crazy. She Can’t Sing. They’re So Ugly). With 42,135 members, this is one of Livejournal’s most popular ~ and notorious ~ communities.

Toothpaste For Dinner
(www.toothpastefordinner.com)

A twentysomething Ohio guy named Drew draws a bunch of primitive-looking cartoons on white paper with black ink, scans them, posts them online, and presto ~ four years later, Slate names Toothpaste For Dinner the “most addictive comic on the Web.” Therein lies the power of the Internet. But if you’re delving into this site, make sure you have nothing pressing; there are more than 1,500 comics available, dating back to 2002, and each one is funnier than the next. Drew’s scribbles touch upon topics such as graduate school, hamster ownership and Midwestern cuisine, but his best bits are about the drudgery ~ and stupidity ~ of corporate life.

Television Without Pity
(www.televisionwithoutpity.com)

Forget to TiVo your favorite show last night? Television Without Pity has your full recap ~ with a side of snarky commentary. The witty, sarcastic observations really shine on the reality-show summaries ~ where of course sometimes the jokes write themselves. Highlighted pull quotes, user polls and report-card grading lend an interactive angle to the site, but you might skip over those if you’re laughing too hard.