A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #324
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For January 17-23, 2024
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. A final reminder that we're switching over to Buttondown as our new newsletter platform starting next Thursday. You won't have to do anything--we're going to migrate everything over on our end. But if next Thursday rolls around and you're missing our latest edition, be sure to check your spam folder! See you on the other side!
What We Enjoyed This Week
There Is No Way I’m Pooping In This Weather (Guest Column By Your Dog) by Matt McInerney (The Hard Times) Matt does an excellent job with the voice and POV of the dog narrator here. There's just enough of the dog not understanding things and describing them in novel, dog ways to be plausible and interesting, but not so much to be cloying or confusing.
Crowd Witnessing Public Proposal All Quietly Hoping She’ll Say No by McKayley Gourley (Reductress) Long- and medium-time readers will know that we're big McKayley fans. She's got an excellent sense of premise, from clever observations, to silly ideas, to simple setups that rely on strong jokes. This piece taps into the sort of everyday mean thought that has always made for great comedy, and McKayley explores it with some great specifics and lines of dialogue. Great kicker too!
Someone Used AI To Rewrite My Book. It’s So Much Worse Than I Could Have Imagined by Matt Singer (ScreenCrush) This one isn't our usual kind of funny, but is rather fascinating and funny in an "Oh Jesus Christ" sort of way. The excerpts of the stolen summaries Matt highlights are funny in a vacuum, slices of bizarre non sequitur, but in context they're terrible. Books generated by large language models are unfortunately flooding the 'net, and some are potentially fatal. A nice moment to remember that generative images and writing are pretty plainly amoral, built on stolen work and exploited labor -- don't use 'em!
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An Old Favorite
This week's Old Favorite is a Brian Agler Selection (TM)--a piece whose accompanying note was written by Brian--from Newsletter #127.
Aww, Our Newborn Baby is So Beautiful...Right? by Kristen Mulrooney (McSweeney's) This piece is a great example of voice and specifics coming together in just the right way. The voice (and the confidence in that voice) lay the groundwork. The reference to Wallace Shawn takes it to the next level. That's the secret to comedy writing folks...Wallace Shawn.
Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Luke's got TWO advanced workshops starting next month: One on Feb 10th and the other on Feb 13th! Writing from previous workshops has gone on to be published in the New Yorker (print AND online), McSweeney's, and more!
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can subscribe to our paid tier, or you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you'd like to place an ad in the Newsletter, please fill out this form.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!