It’s early January, and everyone on the internet is busy putting together their “Best of 2008″ lists. On top of that, it’s a Sunday, which many websites regard as a content-free day. Lucky for you, I discovered some mind-blowing weirdness earlier this week, and am now compelled to share it.

Behold, Lasagna Cat! Created by someone or something called Fatal Farm, the site takes a truly unpleasant premise — “What if we made poorly green-screened live-action versions of old ‘Garfield’ comic strips?” — and uses it to find humor in what would normally be stupefyingly unfunny. On top of that, each strip reenactment is followed by a musical tribute to “Garfield” creator Jim Davis.

These tributes range from simple parodies of well-known music videos to explorations of the complex inner life of Garfield’s owner Jon… You know what? It’s easier to just show you:

See? Jon’s got it pretty rough.

I don’t know what it is that makes these videos work. Maybe it’s the grotesque, ill-fitting costume worn by the actor portraying Garfield, or the inappropriateness of the songs, or the not-quite-concealed contempt for the source material. Maybe it’s the way that all these forms of banality — lame comic strips, painfully earnest pop music, ugly wigs — come together and transform into something almost sublime. Maybe it’s the fact that your average “Garfield” fan would probably think a lot of these videos were sincere, loving tributes.

Indeed, because this is the internet, I must assume that an intrepid fanfic author is, at this very moment, composing a heartrending tale about Jon’s miserable bachelorhood and Garfield’s cold indifference to his plight, and really meaning every last word of it. Before you start thinking too hard about that, here’s another video:

If that one doesn’t convince you of the goodness and rightness of Lasagna Cat’s mission, nothing will. Really, the only problem I can see is that it took me almost a year to discover this madness.