Yeah, I know.  This is kind of obnoxious.  Who am I to be giving out awards?

Well, this started in the midst of my personal midsummer Sargasso Sea, or - to scramble my metaphors -  an abyss of depression that has dragged me down so far, light is just barely peeking over the rim at the top, but I suspect it is the flashlights of deer jackers. 

The daily roilings of Open Salon  are not soothing to severe mental disorder.  So I have been in the archives.  The archives are a peaceful place to be.  The flame wars are charcoal, the spam is invisible, and it is very, very quiet.  If you have been feeling more disaffected than usual, I highly recommend spending some time there. 

I decided to make a list of all the posts on OS that have made me cackle – “LOL,” in the vernacular.  I figured if they still made me cackle, I should horde up their urls for future dosing.  It’s a lot of work going through the archives, not helped at all by the OS software’s infuriating refusal to return one to the place on the previous page from which one clicked.  There is an inordinate amount of scrolling involved.  And I went through a lot of blogs.   To wit, I scrolled through the posts of at least 35 likely blogs in addition to the 21 represented here.  It was entertaining, but time-consuming.  And since it took me so much time to put this list together, it would be silly not to share it. 

Hence, this.  James Thurber makes me laugh immoderately, reliably, and often to the point of wrenching my innards.  "The Night the Bed Fell" is the best thing ever written, to my mind.  While I’m not proposing that these posts are quite as good as that, they all make me laugh out loud every time I read them.  That is the ONLY criterion for picking them.  They are not necessarily the best posts of the writers, nor the posts I like the best if I have to think about it.  But some uncontrollable part of my brain responds to them by making me issue unseemly noises, if not fall out of my chair and roll around in a twitching fit.  Thus, I have not technically chosen them.  They have chosen me.

There are a lot of funny posts in the archives (some of them are not quite as funny as their writers intended them to be, but many are).  Many make me smile, and some make me chortle quietly.  I couldn’t possibly make a list of all the funny posts.  I’d have to separate them into very funny, pretty funny, kind of funny, relatively funny, and not so funny, and that is way too much work.  This is my emergency go-to list, for use on bad days when even my Apocalypse Corners cannot cheer me up. 

Please note my brain’s sense of humor may not be your cup of tea. There is no point trying to argue with it.  So I don’t want to hear any grousing that your favorites aren’t on this list.  If you don’t like it, go make your own damn list.  Yes, I know I won’t be on it. 

THE WINNERS (in alphabetical order)

 

1 irritated_mother (Annthology)

My Night As A Paranormal Investigator

Things I Learned About Myself On Facebook

angrymom 

Why You Are Driving Me Home Tonight

bluesurly (Not-As-Needy Acres: tales from the heartland)

Skunk Tongues

The Worst-Behaved Horses on the Fairgrounds

Blevins, Steve  (Borborygmi)

Mom Feels Great, but I’m Planning Her Funeral Anyway

Chariot, Monsieur  (a gentleman of questionable relevance)

Bombarded by The Booty

My Shocking $7,500 “Tip!”

10 Things A Gentleman Must Never Do

 Running Into Faye

Cymraeg

Ah, Summer’s Here… Oh Crap

Freaky Troll (freaky salon  Cake Makes the Headlines)

The Freaky Troll Book Club Part 5: Rub Your Way to Joy

OS For Nitwits, Because I CARE!

Freaky’s been naughty… spank me!

Freaky Hats Off to Arthur James

kipouros

Chicken Translation of the Month – Restaurant Menus

Laurel, not Lauren (What good is a high-speed connection…when I’ve still got a dial-up brain?)

My walk on the wild side (with apologies to Lou Reed)

Elegy for a septic tank

Wanted! Your ideas for OS sponsorships

m.a.h.  (Living a Charmed Life by the Sea)

Driving Is Just Another Word For Aiming Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

mistercomedy (That’s MISTER comedy to you, pal!)

An oratorical history of america

NoisyNora (Flying Kites Down the Stairs)

You Practice Your Religion, I’ll Practice Mine

odetteroulette

The Tours Are Never Haunted, well almost

He Who Is Handsome Gets Fluffed But Not Folded

He Thinks

Peacock, Maggie

A Doberman, A Peacock, A frozen Model And A Crash

The Peanut & The Pea

What’s the WEIRDEST thing you’ve ever said?

Rodgers, Michael (Just the way I see it & other wandering thoughts)

The Last Final Issues

Ross, Cindy

The Rapture for Dummies -  A Clueless Christian Guide

Savasky, Sarah (Sarah’s Salon)

This is My Brain Off Drugs

Sheldon The Wonderhorse (Eating Apples Since 1969)

I Think I’m Going To Knock Over The 7-11

smac 972 (A Humdrum of Lesser Wit:  Average and overpriced)

Genesis

verbal remedy (Verbs and Spices:  once upon a snark)

The Animal Goes Mad

 

While it looks like Freaky Troll and Monsieur Chariot are in a showdown for the Grand Prize,  odetteroulette is also up for it, because in addition to her three qualifying posts, she also has this post, which is the scariest thing I've ever read on OS (and "The Night the Ghost Got In" is my other favorite Thurber piece).  Only Scoubidou has come close to scaring me this much.  Also, in this post, odetteroulette has embedded my favorite youtube video  of all time - the one that makes me shriek so loudly the dogs try to hide. 

And so the Grand Prize goes to - uh - well, actually - there is no Grand Prize.  I got nothing.   But somewhere I think James Thurber must be cracking a small smile.