Stick to Your Dayjob, NY Times

After six months of trying stand-up comedy, I have decided to take a hiatus for several reasons:

a) I live in East Bumplefuck, which means I cannot do most of the open mikes in the city that I have been doing when I lived in Nassau

b) I need to get a job and move out of my parents' house, which I just moved back into

c) I need to lose weight - self-deprecating fat jokes have less mileage than a moped.

I strongly suggest that the New York Times stop doing comedy for a while. Make John Hodgman editor-in-chief, hire some simian script writers, wait for Rooster Teeth to do zany machinima dramatizations of violent outbreaks in Belarus and Egypt, anything but this godlessly stiff video ripping a new one into Microsoft's new mini laptop.

Soft headlines with club-footed puns are a staple of the tabloid world. Though the Grey Lady also has soft heds, it doesn't indulge in them. With an expanding blogosphere that is too jaded to be impressed by tacky tabloid wordplay, the Times' relative restraint was admirable.

In this video though, a baked editorial staff apparently gave a dim green light to this groan-worthy caption:

Honey, I shrunk the PC!

Referencing Rick Moranis Disney movies is no way to introduce a video.

But that's not the worst part. The caption is a set-up to a poorly acted dramatization of David Pogue putting his PC in the dryer and shrinking it.

So the New York Times thinks this is funnier than Stephen Colbert, huh?

And that dreadful Muzak in the background! Wasn't the NY Times a respectable paper? I couldn't see CNN having this abysmal stab at comedy online or offline.

Here's the most horrifying thought: in a future without net neutrality, the Colbert video will take a millenium to download while garbage like this takes a second. So while the Numa Numas and Rooster Teeth get pushed to the wayside, the Grey Lady takes to the super highway like Peter Fonda on a chopper.

Looks like the online comedy world will shrink as well without net neutrality.