World's Funniest Website Hates Your Bad Jokes

How do those funny people at theOnion.com consistently come up with such hilarious headlines?

In a great feature, the Washington Post goes behind the scenes, and reveals all.

Money quote:

In an inversion of the traditional editorial process, the Onion chooses its headlines and then invents stories to fit them. For a headline to have made the first cut, at least two of the six writers in attendance had to okay it, generally an occasion of little fanfare in which a couple of people threw up their hands and murmured with a defeated sigh, "Sure, why the hell not?" Among the survivors were "Sudanese Man Best In Village At Stacking Bodies"; "Really Loud Whistle Guy Takes Every Opportunity To Whistle Loudly"; "Steven Tyler Laid Off From Aerosmith As Band Jobless Rate Hits 20%"; "Kid Not Sure What To Do With Sex And The City Action Figures"; "Bill Clinton Sadly Folds First Lady Dress Back Into Box"; "Price of Gas Rises To Four Expletives Per Gallon"; "50-Year-Old Prince Licks AARP Representative's Face"; and "Op-Ed: It Figures That Right After I Wash My Car, It Rains Blood."

The choicest material - the staff writers' ideas - had been pitched this morning, and the writers were sorting through the chaff, the jokes sent in each week by part-time contributors, known in local editorial parlance as "the [expletive] list." The writers fidgeted and slumped in their chairs, visibly oppressed by the haze of failed hilarity thickening in the room.

Fallen cannon fodder included: "Face Of God Seen On Bus Ad For God"; "California Courts To See What Else They Can Marry"; "Meter Attendant Accidentally Tries To Collect Change From Vending Machine"; and the following op-ed: "You're Breaking The Human Half Of My Cyborg Heart," which caused senior writer Dan Guterman to groan and offer a counter-headline, " 'I Suck,' By A Joke."