There's nothing like a photograph to tell the story of a weekend that would otherwise be forgotten once sobriety sets in. While most pictures paint a thousand words, drunken pictures usually paint lots of laughs, at least to an alarming number of college students.

For evidence of this go no further than a college dorm room where portraits of debauchery adorn the walls like prized trophies.

Or CollegeHumor.com, a Web site built by two recent college graduates, (the idea was born in their collegiate infancy) Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen who felt an urgent need to provide a place for college kids across the country to share their tales from the party-crypt, Van Veen said.

"We basically noticed our friends sending us pictures and movies on Mondays of drunk and passed out friends so we thought we'd set up a showcase for a glimpse into unfiltered college life," Van Veen said.

This simple concept of compiling thousands upon thousands of pictures, which has since turned into a directory of photos, games, humorous stories, videos, links and personal ads, among other time-consuming, pre-studying necessities, has won over many an Internet surfer as the site records over 150,000 hits a day. Among these happy clickers is Tim Aydin (sophomore-engineering) who discovered the site in high school as a hopeful look into university life.

"The pictures are the most amusing," Aydin said. "It basically represents all the stereotypes of college: boozing, partying, women, etc., are exposed to their fullest."

College student Mari Jeter, who attends co-founder Josh Abramson's alma mater of the University of Richmond, has witnessed the impact of the site on her campus as she noted hearing an accounting professor recently giving accolades to the young entrepreneurs' business prowess. But she finds an over-representation of drunkenness for the population of college students, she said.

"I think the site is hilarious and it's even better that it was designed by two actual college students. But it usually represents just the extreme social/party side of some schools," Jeter said.

"I only visit it if someone I'm talking to says there's something funny I should check out," she added, citing Internet word-of-mouth as what she deems to be the way the site's popularity.

As more and more college students enroll to the university of their choice and eventually sit behind a computer to do work, the daunting task of avoiding distractions, becomes increasingly difficult because of the strong appeal of entertainment. Founder Van Veen describes his site as a realistic look into the weekends of college America, with a generation transcending appeal.

"The cool thing about a college site is that it's the perfect market. We market to college kids with stuff they love and when you do this older people want to see it, they like to see any glimpse into their glory days. And high school kids look up to college kids because no matter what age you are, you want to be in college," Van Veen said.

Thanks to the principle of time, which brings new kids to college campuses yearly, and the advent of instant messenger programs, the market is continually growing Van Veen added.

"Every year we get a whole new audience mostly by word of mouth, a lot from people instant messaging each other over the Internet. Our goal eventually is to be like the next National Lampoon, for this younger generation," he said.

When juxtaposing CollegeHumor.com's version of college to other artistic medium's versions, such as television, Van Veen pointed out the key difference.

"If you watch TV you see an image that isn't what college is. TV is parents weekend college; you hide beer bottles and posters of (scantily clad) women. CollegeHumor.com shows what college is like up to last night. It is college life without a filter," he said.

CollegeHumor.com, which began in 1999 as "a refuge for not only students of all academic levels, but a place for people across the world to go for a laugh" as well as "an on-line source for all of the crap that floats around college computer networks" according to its Web site, has grown in popularity from its humble beginnings.

It now ranks as one of the top 3,000 Web sites worldwide, according to Alexa Internet Ratings, placing it even ahead of the likes of ComedyCentral.com

Outlandish commodities of humor are available at the site, which also serves as a venue with therapeutic effect to combat the stresses involved with school. Van Veen said that their busiest time is finals week.

"[CollegeHumor.com] is what you do when you have to write a paper. You [mess] around on the Internet," he said.