While the long, boring days of winter are still far off, it's never too early to have a few Web sites to browse on that rare occasion when the math is done, the paper is written, and there is some time to kill. So skip bored.com and just point that clicker at these hilarious Web sites.

Always a favorite, The Onion (www.theonion.com) still manages to produce weekly news pieces that are both funny and, on occasion, ironically poignant. This newspaper parody, dubbed as "America's finest news source," has a refined and easy layout that's not too crowded or difficult to navigate.

The Onion has become a master at parody, being able to take a common fact and produce a brilliant and witty piece about that fact. The top story on Aug. 30 was "Dolphins evolve opposable thumbs."

The story played off the notion that some scientists believe that dolphins, having a greater brain capacity than humans, are smarter. The advent of opposable thumbs (and the ability to fashion and create objects) spells certain doom for man's dominance.

Some other recent articles have been "Science Guy Bill Nye Killed in Massive Vinegar/Baking-Soda Explosion" and "Troubled Robert Downey Jr. Placed Under 24-Hour Media Surveillance." All the articles derive from consistently funny ideas and maintain their quality throughout the piece.

The Onion also features weekly section like the horoscopes and a man on the street feature called "What do you think?" The horoscope is far from the traditional horoscope, with such predictions as "You've always been a lightning rod for controversy, but it gets worse when you become an actual lightning rod."

The Onion has an incredible and organized archive that is worth a search, as well. All the stories are archived and indexed after each weekly issue. Some of the best lie in the "Point-Counterpoint" archive.

"Point-Counterpoint" contains sets of articles such as "'Life Begins at Conception' vs. 'Life begins at 40!,'" or "'We Gave Rex to a Nice Farm Family'(by a mother) vs. 'They Put Me to Sleep at the Vet' (by the dog, Rex)."

The problem with The Onion is that it is simply an online newspaper, nothing more. The exact same material is available in its weekly print version. The Onion does not embrace the Internet fully.

The Modern Humorist (www.modernhumorist.com), however, embraces its online forum completely. Along the same type of humor as The Onion, The Modern Humorist is updated daily with new material and takes a more varied approach to its pieces.

Oftentimes, The Modern Humorist will parody the Internet itself. It has a take on AskJeeves.com, called Ask Jeez. In Ask Jeez, questions such as "Is this not the carpenter's son?", "Who then can be saved" and "Where can I find mp3s online?" are all answered by the Son of Man Himself.

This Web site also has semi-regular pieces, like the Encyclopedia Brown stories. Written like the fourth grade novels, these stories follow the 12-year old on mysteries that parody actual events. In "Encyclopedia Brown and Case of the Pirated Mp3s," Encyclopedia helps Dr. Dre and Metallica discover who's been stealing their music.

Some of the parodies are available for purchase as well. There is a collection of campaign sticker available for both parties. A surfer can mock the Democrats with stickers like "Al Gore: He gave us the Internet, he can take it away" or mock Republicans with "George Bush: Tough as nails and just as smart." One of the most popular items available for sale, however, is its now-famous 1950s era parody poster, "If you're downloading mp3s, you're downloading communism!"

The Modern Humorist's "coverage" of the political conventions was certainly more entertaining than the conventions themselves, offering a variety of parodies ripping on both Republicans and Democrats.

This Web site's archives are not very well organized, however. The stories are listed by date, but this is very muddled and there is no clear order to the archives. It boils down to an arbitrary listing of former pieces piled together on one Web page.

If Ebert's thumb doesn't do justice as a movie review, click over to Shadowculture's Mr. Cranky (www.mrcranky.com). Mr. Cranky forgoes the thumb and star systems for a range of bombs. One bomb dubs a movie as being "almost tolerable" while five bombs denote a movie "as good as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." Truly unbearable films receive a special dynamite bomb.

Like any other movie critic, Mr. Cranky offers weekly reviews of just-released films. As the name implies, however, his reviews are somewhat more negative-focused than the typical critic is.

In his review of "X-Men", which received a generally favorable two-bomb rating, he says, "First of all, everybody who lives in New York is already a mutant. I don't see how a little genetic scrambling is going to affect anything. And as one person next to me noted, 'Why is Captain Picard in a wheelchair?' That one question sums up the whole movie." He also describes the characters' mutant powers. Halle Berry as Storm apparently has the mutant ability where she "can leave the scene of any accident undetected."

The Mr. Cranky archives are easy-to-use and organized by title and rating. This Web site offers new reviews every week, and typically manages to review all new releases for that week.

Another online movie review site, The Editing Room (www.ter.air0day.com), is much smaller than Mr. Cranky and not nearly as consistently updated. This site offers an original perspective on film reviewing. While The Editing Room does have a traditional scale of five stars for movies, it reviews the film by writing a hilarious parody script for it. All too often, the parody is written far better than the movie itself.

The humor is mainly based on the characters in the movie stating outright what is really true. In the abridged script for "The Cell", Jennifer Lopez's character says, "I care about children. You can tell I care about children by my sweet voice and bouncy, non-threatening hairstyle."

The Editing Room is updating only sporadically, however, and is certainly not in synch with the national release schedule of films. Still, the material is almost always funny, with little dip in quality.

To vent frustration over a certain professor, why not write a witty and scathing complaint letter about him or her?

The Complaint Letter Generator (csag.cs.uiuc.edu/individual/pakin/complaint) will ask the name and sex of an individual and randomly produce a letter.

The letters are combinations of phrases and make no real sense, but the right combination can be funny and, on rare occasion, true.

Check out allparody.com and humor.about.com for even more humorous Internet sites. But be forewarned: many sites listed on these sites are simply crude, lowbrow and disappointing. The Web sites listed above are all high quality, hitting the delicate balance between funny and stupid nearly all the time.

These are safe sites that are almost guaranteed to pull a laugh from even the most bogged-down and stressed student.

• Surf the Web to laugh your homework away: Internet humor sites provide welcome distraction for stressed-out students